African-American student achievement outcomes have been and continue to be a critical concern for education researchers. Much of the framing of African-American student outcomes centers on what is known as achievement gaps that exist between African-American and White students. Unfortunately, these gaps have remained roughly the same since the…

In an effort to explore how racial and class oppressions intersect, the authors use their autobiographical narratives to depict cultural and experiential continuity and discontinuity in growing up white working class versus Chicano working class. They specifically focus on "racializing class" due to the ways class is often used as a copout by…

Uses "U.S. News and World Report" Web site data to investigate sources of education school prestige, examining rank of the college or university in which it is located, education school rank, and rank of different programs within the education school. Results highlight the strong relationship between status of the social/philosophical foundations…

Offers an alternative perspective on school violence and other crime on school property that seeks to understand school violence as a contextually determined social phenomena. The paper discusses district-to-district variability in crime on school property in terms of out-of-school and in-school community and variability in economic and…

Approaches critical thinking as a socially constructed orientation embedded in collective histories, asking how social conditions and cultural representations may foster critical thinking. Examines the work of Vygotsky and Gramsci, suggesting that concepts forged in literate or academic traditions are the basis for critical thinkings. Also…

Illuminates one example of a critical ethnography in practice, exploring the life of Dr. Huey P. Newton, a leader in the African-American community, and arguing that critical ethnography cannot teach African Americans how to overcome oppression. The suggested postcritical ethnography would be part of African Americans looking to their own…

Critiques the views of E.D. Hirsch, highlighting limitations of his book, "The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them." The paper acknowledges Hirsch's influence on public opinion about school reform, but details flaws and errors Hirsch makes, asking foundational scholars in teacher education to better prepare students to respond to social,…

Educators working to improve dropout prevention programs should closely examine the development of defensive overlays in children's world views. Efforts to neutralize defensive world views within existing dropout prevention initiatives should refocus efforts to be more holistic. Such neutralization may best succeed in small schools. (SM)

Uses field data gathered in two school districts to explore multicultural activity in social studies classrooms. The focus is on the source, treatment, and incorporation of multiculturalism into the lessons. The study concludes that larger structures, school culture, and teacher and student histories influence multicultural practice. (SM)

Examines the concept of linguistic legitimacy (and illegitimacy) using three specific cases--Black English, American Sign Language, and Esperanto. The paper argues that legitimacy is grounded more on personal, political, and ideological biases than on linguistic criteria. (SM)

Examines the view that computer technology is a tool that will, in and of itself, improve education and ultimately ameliorate social ills, arguing that it is important to think of how social relations are encoded in technologies and technologies encoded in social relations and how the two are mutually constituted. (SM)

This theme issue of the serial "Educational Foundations" contains five articles devoted to the "Images of the Foundations." In "Through the Disarray of Social Foundations: Some Some Notes Toward a New Social Foundations" (Erwin V. Johanningmeier) traces developments in the field and challenges a move beyond the images of school and society based…

Suggests that Tozer's draft position paper on the social foundations of education could be improved by asserting more directly the substantive values that professional organizations wish to forward. The article recommends forwarding standards informed by educators' own scholarship that are theoretically tenable. (SM)

Discusses the extent to which the processes of "othering" (marking and naming those considered different from oneself) fall into the physical and sexual realm. The paper examines three studies, highlighting the extent to which othering is sexual, naming and exploring what it means for current school practice in multicultural environments. (SM)

A study of predominantly white teachers participating in a multicultural education staff development program illustrated how social class and gender experiences informed their understanding of the social order they used to understand race. Following the staff development, few teachers substantially restructured their perspectives about racial…