Critical Literacy in the Early Childhood Classroom: Unpacking Histories, Unlearning Privilege

The OECD as Pivot of the Emerging Global Educational Accountability Regime: How Accountable are the Accountants?

The article analyzes the ideological and political context and mechanisms which have allowed OECD to become a major unchecked power in global educational policy making.

Change Management in the Governance of Schooling: The Rise of Experts, Planners, and Statistics in the Early OECD

This paper analyzes the political strategies of the early OECD stakeholders in transforming schooling from a cultural to a technological system. In doing so it focuses on the specific rhetoric these stakeholders used and how they were in need of standardizing different existing patterns of thoughts or institutional behaviors in the member countries.

The New Development Paradigm: Education, Knowledge Economy and Digital Futures

Cultivating an Ethical School

Venture Philanthropy and Teacher Education Policy in the U.S: The Role of the New Schools Venture Fund

This article analyzes the role of venture philanthropy in shaping teacher education policies in the United States, with a particular focus on the role of the New Schools Venture Fund in promoting the Growing Excellent Achievement Training Academies for Teachers and Principals Act.

Rethinking Children, Violence and Safeguarding

Tenuous Findings, Tenuous Policies

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” –Albert Einstein

Methodological problems have plagued international test-score comparisons from the time they began 50 years ago. Since then the number and type of countries and other jurisdictions participating in the comparisons have increased, as have the methodological problems. At the same time, the results of the international comparisons have had an increasing impact on education policies throughout the world, despite the fact that the policy implications drawn from the comparisons are based on seriously flawed data. The commentary describes the intractable problems inherent in making valid comparisons of student achievement across countries and recommends an approach to reformulating the research.

Advisory in Urban High Schools: A Study of Expanded Teacher Roles

The Civic Web: Young People, the Internet, and Civic Participation

Common Core Meets Education Reform: What it All Means for Politics, Policy, and the Future of Schooling

Let’s Measure What No One Teaches: PISA, NCLB, and the Shrinking Aims of Education

PISA has come up with an ingenious solution to the problem of how to measure student achievement across national school systems with different curricula. Instead of measuring how well students learn what they are taught in each system, it measures a set of economically useful skills that no one teaches. This article explores PISA as one type of educational accountability system, based on how well students demonstrate mastery of particular cognitive skills, and compares it with the current state-level accountability systems in the United States, which are based on how well students demonstrate mastery of the formal curriculum.

Education under the Regime of PISA & Co.: Global Standards and Local Traditions in Conflict—The Case of Germany

This article is focused on the conflicting ideas of education behind the PISA study and the German school system. It addresses the changes taking place in the German school system enforced by compliance with the educational standards set by the PISA context.

Creating Solidarity Across Diverse Communities: International Perspectives in Education

Sleepiest Students in the World: Heavy Media use and Sleep Deprivation

The 2011 results of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) propelled some scholars to call for new educational reforms to improve U.S. students’ score rankings. However, few seem to have noticed that U.S. students indeed ranked first on one measure: Sleepiness. U.S. students were reported to have the highest percentage of sleepiness in classrooms among all participating countries in TIMSS and PIRLS. Surprisingly, the prevalent sleep deprivation in U.S. students has largely been overlooked by educational researchers and policy makers. Drawing upon relevant literature, I argue that heavy media use may be one of the main reasons for sleepiness and, in turn, poor academic performance. Therefore, perhaps the top priority for improving U.S. students’ academic performance is not new educational reforms, but awareness of and interventions to counter the detrimental impact of heavy media use on sleep. After all, schools, however reformed, if occupied by sleepy students, are not likely to be effective.

Using Social Media Effectively in the Classroom: Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, and More

Sharing Our Pathways: Native Perspectives on Education in Alaska

Bridging Research, Policy, and Practice: Voices from Inside the Academy

Inside the Academy, an online educational historiography, models the innovative use of technology to transmit educational research beyond academia. This is done by chronicling the personal and professional journeys of highly esteemed educational researchers and scholars through video interviews. In this study, researchers conducted an in-depth qualitative analysis of twelve honorees’ interview data. Analyses revealed that Inside the Academy has the potential to function as an accessible, relevant, research dissemination platform by providing policymakers, practitioners, pre-service teachers, graduate students, and others increased access to open source information and expert knowledge about foundational and contemporary educational philosophies, salient policy issues, and research-based practices of utmost prevalence in America’s public school system, and beyond.

Teacher's Roles in Second Language Learning: Classroom Applications of Sociocultural Theory

Lifelong Learning in Europe: National Patterns and Challenges

Researching and Teaching Social Issues

Our Impoverished View of Teacher Education

Returning to David Berliner’s (2006) Our Impoverished View of Educational Research, this commentary reflects on what the author conceptualizes as an impoverished view of teacher education. Drawing on his experience working in teacher education and contextualized in Taubman’s (2000, 2009) analysis of educational audit culture, the author concludes that in the context of corporate reform discourses, teacher educators must reflect on the role of teacher education programs in the face of mounting threats to public education. Teacher education programs should serve as sites through which seemingly common sense discourses about education must be problematized. Further, both teacher educators and their students must critically reflect on their own assumptions and positionalities in order to clarify their values, which may not coincide with the values expressed in hegemonic education discourses.

Mass Education, Global Capital, and the World: The Theoretical Lenses of István Mészáros and Immanuel Wallerstein

Digital Social Studies

Reading the Visual: An Introduction to Teaching Multimodal Literacy