The recent turn in teacher education reform in the United States toward hyper "professionalization" and assessment-based accreditation, spearheaded by the largest accrediting agency, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), has moved beyond codifying knowledge and skills to codifying the internal existence of those…

In this article I seek to investigate and to rebut charges that Dewey had either too authoritative a conception or use of philosophical and educational inquiry, or not enough of an authoritative use. I look specifically at two critics, one in the discipline of education and one in the discipline of history. These two are, respectively, Clarence…

In this article I address some assertions made by one of the most outstanding educational historians, Diane Ravitch, regarding the relation between immigration rates and academic achievement among children in the United States. In her book The Great School Wars Ravitch asserted that low immigration levels during the 1920s to early 1960s period…

In this article I argue that it is impossible to look at educational issues before we develop a clear understanding of the dominant ideologies that currently perpetuate unsustainability. Only if we appreciate the pervasiveness and the fallacies of such concepts as "development," "growth," and "progress" within a limited biosphere can we start to…

In this article, we argue that critical and revolutionary educational praxis is increasingly shaped by and through ecological politics and imaginaries. Indeed, given the pervasiveness of environmental crisis in our everyday lives and vocabularies, we argue that critical educators can no longer ignore questions of ecojustice. In keeping with a…

The central idea of "The Choice Before Us" is that the Moacir Gadotti prescription for an ecopedagogy, which is supposed to lead to "one nation" and a "planetary consciousness," is based on many of the same liberal assumptions that underlie current efforts to globalize the West's industrial/consumer-based culture. In addition to examining the…

Fast food explored both as metaphor and social reality help us challenge the assumptions about education as a universal good transformed into a universal human right. Relations between education, development, and "one world" discourses expose the incommensurability of Western liberal ideals with diverse cosmo-visions now flourishing among…

Feminists and ecofeminists argue that relatedness and the care that emerges from this underlie an ethical response to other people, beings, and the planet, itself. The ability and willingness to care may well be the matrix within which a society characterized by ecological sustainability and social justice can be cultivated. Educators concerned…

Evoking a concern for intergenerational equity and claiming that the bounty and beauty of Earth have become diminishing prospects, I introduce the Earth Charter as an expression of the hopes of diverse communities around the globe. I argue that the Charter deserves educators' attention as an integrated vision of social justice, peace, and…

How is the university connected to the pressing social and environmental problems that confront citizens in its region? What sorts of communities will students build in this changing cultural and environmental landscape as a result of their experiences in education? In this article I explore how an ethnobotany seminar uses critical pedagogy of…

In this article I use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the contextual foundation from which to discuss issues concerning the unfortunate perpetuation of historical trauma through escalations in fear, miscommunication, resentment, and anger. I examine the concept of forgiveness in similar vein regarding its ability to redirect memory toward…

In this article we provide an analysis of the way in which we have designed and implemented an interdisciplinary service-learning course that overcomes the institutional barriers that often hinder creative collaboration in postsecondary environments.

Is it possible and desirable to transcend ideological perspectives within educational policy research and decision making? If so, what would it entail and how should we proceed? At heart, the relation among research, ideology, and policy may be characterized as a complex and interconnected web. The common view of this web is that good social and…

The purpose of this article is to present the conclusions of a Deweyan-oriented constructivist educator concerning what I believe to be a number of crucial dysfunctional elements embedded in the very structure of the traditional teacher education program. My experience as a teacher educator has led me to conclude that certain time-honored aspects…

This paper examines the rating scale data of oral proficiency tests analyzed by a Rasch Analysis focusing on an item map and factor analysis. In discussing the item map, the difficulty order of six items and students' answering patterns are analyzed using descriptive statistics and measures of central tendency of test scores. The data ranks the…