This article is about policy decision making and racial politics in the St. Louis, Missouri, school district. From a research standpoint, traditional policymaking models are inadequate for explaining the evolution of school reform events in St. Louis over the past year. Teachers, principals, school staff, and parents perceive themselves to be…

This article describes school desegregation as a 3-generational, intricately linked process. The 1st generation included efforts toward physical desegregation for African American students; the 2nd generation emphasized equal access to classrooms, teaching bias, and ability groups; and the challenges of the 3rd generation include barriers to equal…

There is no doubt that the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, Supreme Court decision was instrumental in initiating monumental change in the ways public schools have operated. The central question addressed by the Supreme Court in the Brown cases (1954, 1955) was whether segregation of children in public schools solely on the…

This article provides a brief overview of segregated education in Kansas and then explores 3 legal cases: (a) Reynolds v. The Board of Education of the City of Topeka (1903), (b) Wright v. Board of Education of Topeka (1930), and (c) Graham v. Board of Education of Topeka (1941), the precursors to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas…

"I feel like a winner" was the recollection of Mrs. Vivian Scales as she reflected on hearing the Supreme Court's decision in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, case on May 17, 1954. Scales was one of the original plaintiffs who challenged the existence of separate elementary schools for African American and White students in…

Who should research and represent the experiences of the other in scholarly discourse? Some scholars argue that an oppressed group should be researched and represented exclusively by the members of that group, in particular, the privileged should be excluded from representing the oppressed. This policy raises pertinent questions concerning the…

Normative confusion in education often stimulates 3 responses, appeal to: (a) top-down standards, (b) traditional communal norms, or (c) laissez-faire individualism. Strangely neglected is a collaborative approach, the attempt to consult with others and negotiate in an inclusive, fair, and open manner. Neglect of collaboration is undoubtedly due…

The use of systematic reviews in educational research is a growing phenomenon in the UK, but is highly controversial. This article argues that such reviews have a useful place in a research cycle that wishes to inform and be informed by practice and policy. It proposes and discusses a model of educational research, showing how reviews relate to…

This paper discusses the reliance of numerical analysis on the concept of the standard deviation, and its close relative the variance. It suggests that the original reasons why the standard deviation concept has permeated traditional statistics are no longer clearly valid, if they ever were. The absolute mean deviation, it is argued here, has many…

Borrowing from epidemiological and economic analysis, we argue that the central constructs by which children are judged educationally rest in contrastive judgements and that such judgements are based on "everyday" constructs--not objective descriptors. But because these everyday constructs become seemingly objectified by the procedures and…

This article argues for a new theoretical paradigm for the analysis of change in educational institutions that is able to deal with such issues as readiness for change, transformational change and the failure of change strategies. Punctuated equilibrium (Tushman and Romanelli, 1985) is a theory which has wide application. It envisages long-term…

This paper wishes to clarify the definitions of the central terms relating to assessment. It argues that all assessment begins with summative assessment (which is a judgement) and that formative assessment is in fact summative assessment plus feedback which is used by the learner.

Character education is a specific approach to morals or values education, which is consistently linked with citizenship education. But how is it possible for a heterogeneous society that disagrees about basic values to reach a consensus on what constitutes character education? This article explores how character education has returned to the…

This paper sets out to explore apparent contradictions between claims or assumptions to the effect that: (i) teaching is a profession; (ii) good teaching involves the cultivation of positive personal relationships with pupils; (iii) professional relationships should be of an essentially formal or impersonal nature. It is argued that the very real…

In this paper I explore the role of manners and morals. In particular, what is the connection between emotional demeanor and the inner stuff of virtue? Does the fact that we can pose faces and hide our inner sentiments, i.e., "fake it," detract from or add to our capacity for virtue? I argue, following a line from the Stoics, that it can add to…