In higher education, many of the new teaching interventions are introduced in the format of audio-visual files distributed through the Internet. A pedagogical tool consisting of questions listed as learning objectives and answers presented using online videos was designed as a supplement for a molecular biology course and made available to a large…

According to the United Nations, education is a right to which all human beings are entitled. Since 2000, the UN has been promoting the Millennium Development Goal to achieve free universal primary education for all, regardless of gender, by 2015. If the UN is correct to suggest that education is both a human right in itself and an indispensable…

Across the United States, researchers and youth workers alike have identified an increasing number of civically engaged youth who are organizing to improve their communities and schools. By taking an action-oriented approach, these youth are speaking back to the notion that they are uninvolved in society. This interview-based study explores the…

This article explores civic learning, civic participation, and the development of civic agency within the Council of Youth Research (the Council), a program that engages high school students in youth participatory action research projects that challenge school inequalities and mobilize others in pursuit of educational justice. We critique the…

Three variations of experience identified in the educational literature entail different ways of thinking about and developing learners' imaginations. The relationship between these different imaginative modes resembles shifts between different kinds of understanding in Kieran Egan's theory of imaginative development. From this theoretical…

How do students from privileged communities respond to educational efforts encouraging them to become justice-oriented citizens? Observational and interview data collected during a semester-long case study of eleven high school students in a social studies class at an elite private school reveal four markedly different interpretations of their…

"What is the right use of books?" Responding to the question he famously raised, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "books are for nothing but to inspire," which we take as endorsing a pragmatic and pluralistic view of reading literature and other kinds of texts in a manner that keeps books open to a flow of continual questioning and renewal. The…

Faced with the facts of economic inequality, the wealthy are confronted with a particular set of moral, social, and political questions, not least of which is the question of how to preserve a sense of being a "good" human being. In the case of justifying privilege, the problem becomes how to position oneself as being uniquely able to enact a…

Opponents of the neoliberal privatization of schools must be cautious in formulating their opposition so as not to situate themselves as the defenders of an otherwise indefensible status quo. Though we might expect professors in traditional university-based educational-leadership programs to protect their institutional self-interests and their…

By nearly all accounts, the staff and students at Sandy Hook Elementary School did everything right on Dec. 14--and with the security measures they took before that day--when a young man armed with powerful weapons blasted his way into the school. But the deadliest K-12 school shooting in American history, a day that President Barack Obama has…

In late 1987, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White circulated a draft opinion to his colleagues in a case about whether high school journalists had the right to be free of interference from school administrators. His opinion in the case, "Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier," sided with Missouri administrators who some four years earlier…

Within the wide expanse of social networking, educators appear to be gravitating to more protected and exclusive spaces. While teachers often use such popular mainstream social networks as Facebook, they are more likely to seek out and return to less-established networks that offer the privacy, peer-to-peer connections, and resource sharing that…

State lawmakers will attempt to tackle a range of issues in legislative sessions getting under way this month, from making common academic standards a reality and funding schools based on performance, to allowing armed teachers and staff members on school grounds. Their task may be complicated by the still small and spotty economic recovery in…

This 17th edition of "Education Week's" annual "Quality Counts" report takes aim at an issue freighted with emotional as well as policy implications: the impact of a school's social and disciplinary environment on students' ability to learn and on the teachers and administrators tasked with guiding them. National initiatives to improve schools…

Seventh and 8th grade English-learners in selected urban schools will soon dive into some of the most celebrated speeches in U.S. history. They'll dissect, for example, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream," and Robert F. Kennedy's "On the Death of Martin Luther King." Though their English-language skills…