A serious problem in Botswana is the large number of girls and young women who drop out of school. Just over half of the female population attends secondary schools, and the percentage of school-enrolled females has fallen in recent years. Few researchers have studied the dropout problem in Botswana. Twenty-four individuals selected for this study…

This article examines the life of education reformer Flora White, who both represented and deviated from the stereotypical new woman portrayed in popular literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. White's decision to reject marriage and children in favor of a career resulted in greater financial insecurity and an unmet desire…

This article argues that by using theories of the spatial to understand how situated materiality (i.e., place) and contestations of identity matter when conceiving global and curricular space, educators may interrupt and rearticulate practices and systems of oppression. By focusing on globalization writ large, there is danger of leaving important…

A middle-school classroom of English as a Second Language (ESL) for Somali and Vietnamese refugees is examined here. With Lefebvre's (1991) theory of the production of space and an additional help of postcolonial criticism (Fanon 1967; Willinsky 1998), this article first reviews how interplays among national flags, teaching and learning…

This article presents an interpretation of Plato's "Republic" that has many striking similarities to the social agenda of modern educational conservatives in the United States, which is particularly timely because George W. Bush's administration is, at this writing, coming to an end. Plato's ideal city is best seen as one that promoted an…

Present standards include creative and critical thinking among dispositions essential for the teaching profession. While teaching introductory courses in educational psychology, I have noticed that even though students can easily describe critical thinking in the abstract, they rarely and reluctantly engage in thinking critically about their own…

This article takes its inspiration and method from Slavoj Zizek's work that reads and integrates social theory with popular culture through the medium of film. I use the film "The Graduate" (Nichols 1967) as a prism to illuminate the concept of reification as a fundamental, defining feature of modern societies and their educational systems. The…

Among the avant-garde organizations in Europe during the middle of the twentieth century, a few of them combined in 1957 to form the Situationist International (SI). This article locates relevant aspects of their theory in the increasingly visible constellation of Critical Geography and educational scholarship, both in the foundations of education…

Drawing upon the concept of "thirdspace" (Soja 1996), this article extends sociocultural theorizations of space in relation to alternative educational programs: programs designed to re-engage youth who have been pushed out of mainstream schools. Snapshots of educational programs, provided by ethnographic research gathered in the United States,…

This article examines the norms of school failure and illuminates ways in which low-income students of color respond to their needs for educational advancement when conditions to support their college-going identities are severely limited in the school context. This study's primary finding confirms the value of a grassroots approach to improving…

When examining the experiences of adolescent girls, a study into the presumptions teachers have regarding female adolescent sexuality is a very important aspect to explore. This article presents the findings from a study we conducted with eleven middle- and high school teachers in a southeastern state from both rural and urban districts. In-depth…

This article examines the applicability of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi's (1871-1944) educational ideas in what Denzin and Lincoln (2005) call the "fractured future," a time marked by human, environmental, and climatic destabilization, and a time in which the social sciences "are normative disciplines always already embedded in issues of value..." (13).…

This article presents a dialogue with Monte Joffee. Joffee has been an active leader in the small school and charter school movements in New York City for over 20 years. He is a cofounder of The Renaissance Charter School in New York City and served as its founding principal (1993-2007). In this dialogue, Joffee articulates the ways in which…

This article examines the record of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi's interrogation as a thought criminal following his arrest in July, 1943. By comparing and contrasting his responses and statements against the official government positions, I hope to clarify the nature of his critique of the wartime fascist regime. Makiguchi himself was an educator, and…

This article focuses on two of the earlier works in the Makiguchi corpus, "Kyoju no togo chushin toshiteno kyodoka kenkyu" ("Research into Community Studies as the Integrating Focus of Instruction," 1912/1987; hereafter "Community Studies"), and "Chiri kyoju no hoho oyobi naiyo no kenkyu" ("Research into the Methods and Content of Geography…