Addressing the common misconception that Japan is a mono-ethnic, mono-cultural, and monolingual society, this article focuses on several areas of sociolinguistic concern. It discusses: (1) the bimodalism of the Japanese deaf population between Japanese Sign Language as native language and Japanese Spoken Language as acquired second language; (2)…

This article presents the personal literacy journey of the author that originated while driving through Scotland. The journey serves as one touchstone of his own personal and professional life. The author shares what he finds on "this" particular journey: (1) Particular (and often peculiar) interest; (2) Active engagement of the four…

Masafumi Ogawa cares deeply about improving music teacher education and has grave concerns about Japan's current music education and teacher training system. He notes reduced instructional time, cuts in teaching positions, and classroom management issues resulting in the devaluing of music education by administrators, students, and the general…

A collection of essays presents the updated positions of nine critics of the community college who from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s participated in a debate with two-year college proponents over many of the fundamental assumptions of the community college movement. The volume contains: (1) "From Mass to Class in Higher Education," by…

Teaching at-risk students can be one of the "most stressful, complex and difficult challenges facing public education today and perhaps one of our greatest failures." What further complicates this challenge is that there is no commonly accepted definition of the term at risk, and it is difficult to determine which students this label should…

Richard Rorty, in his "Consequences of Pragmatism" (1982), acknowledging the pragmatic direction taken by both modern and postmodern philosophy, declared that "James and Dewey were not only waiting at the end of the dialectical road which analytic philosophy traveled, but are waiting at the end of the road which, for example, Foucault and Deleuze…

The relationship between talk and learning has been well documented in preservice and inservice teachers' and administrators' education. These studies demonstrate that talk is a central part of teacher learning and change, that particular forms of talk are more or less effective for such change to take place, and that talk must be conducted over…

In the state of Florida, several of the principles of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have been enacted earlier than at the federal level. For example, the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT) is required for all students through grade 10 and must be passed for promotion to grade 3 and for high school graduation. Schools are graded A through…

The essays in this collection provide contrasting points of view on a number of community college issues that have become more pressing during periods of economic constraint. The volume contains: (1) "Part-Time Faculty: The Value of the Resource," by William R. C. Munsey; (2) "Part-Time Faculty, Full-Time Problems," by David Hartleb and William…