Suchergebnisse

Inclusion is a fundamental aspect of social studies education in general and democratic education in particular. Inclusion is especially important when we consider the possibilities for transnational civic culture and education. The theoretical framework of this study is based upon concepts of positionality, identity, and belonging as they are related to student understanding of communities. A dual-language, third-grade classroom provided the site for this ethnographic study. Data included participant observations, interviews with the teacher and students, and artifacts of student work. Findings illustrate how the students in the study understood the complexity of their identities at a young age and how the teacher used culturally sustaining pedagogy to foster a third space where this understanding was encouraged.

"When issues of 'diversity' and 'race' arise in higher education scholarship and practice, they frequently mean a focus on students of color. If there are people of color being marginalized on college campuses, there is a structural mechanism facilitating the marginalization. Within this context, this monograph explores the relevance of whiteness to the field of higher education. The problem arises in that whiteness as a racial discourse is continually changing and being reconfigured. That is, whiteness is both real in terms of its impacts on the campus racial dynamics, but it also is fluid and defies absolute classification. Within this context, the current monograph highlights many of the contours of whiteness in higher education, specifically exploring the influence of whiteness on interpersonal interactions, campus climate, culture, ecology, policy, and scholarship. Additionally, it explores what can be done--both individually and institutionally--to address the problem of whiteness in higher education. Ultimately, this monograph is offered from the perspective that racial issues concern everyone, and this engages the possibility of both people of color destabilizing whiteness and white people becoming racial justice allies within the context of higher education institutions"--Back cover

A successful democratic transition requires citizens to embrace a new set of political institutions. Citizens' support is vital for these institutions to uphold the burgeoning constitutional and legal order. Courts, for example, often rely on citizens' support and threat of electoral punishment against the government to enforce their rulings. In this article, I consider whether education under democracy can engender this support. Using regression discontinuity, difference-in-differences, and difference-in-difference-in-differences designs, I find an additional year of schooling after the fall of the Berlin Wall has similar positive downstream effects on East Germans' support across institutions. Since schooling similarly affects public support for judicial, legislative, and executive institutions, citizens are not necessarily inclined to electorally punish the other branches when they ignore a court's ruling. This potential inability of courts to constrain unlawful government behavior threatens the foundation of the separation of powers and the survival of democracy.

Since the year 2002, Politecnico di Milano has been developing several educational projects aimed at schools, based on advanced technology (3D virtual worlds, shared over the Internet). The two most recent projects are about history: Learning@Europe (www.learningateurope.net) deals with the formation of European nation-states, and Stori@Lombardia (www.storialombardia.it) with medieval history in Northern Italy. Both projects underwent massive testing in spring 2005, thanks to the support of Accenture Foundation and the regional Government of Lombardy. L@E involved almost 1000 students and 60 teachers from 6 different European countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Norway, Spain); Stori@Lombardia involved 800 students and 40 teachers from Lombardy region (Italy). A huge amount of data was collected in order to verify the cultural impact of the project. The projects were very successful — beyond our expectations — both in terms of pedagogical impact and of customer satisfaction. The paper will present the most relevant data and the most salient aspects of the qualitative analysis. It will also argue a generalization of this case study, exploring how a deep impact (cultural and pedagogical) upon users can be achieved through technology, and in particular, the role of "virtual presence" in collaborative 3D virtual environments

The passage of the 2008 Post-9/11 GI Bill created the most complex policy iteration of the GI Bill to date. The bill's payment structure forced closer interactions between the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and higher education institutions, as well as their representative associations. These relations are examined against the larger societal backdrop of a civil-military gap established in a robust literature of military sociology and specific research on civil-military relations. However, higher education researchers have not studied the policy relations between higher education associations and military- and veteran-serving agencies (e.g., the Department of Defense [DoD] and VA). This study's purpose was to illuminate, using a case study design including both document analysis and interviews with participants from three higher education associations, the worlds of veterans education policy and associations representative of institutions charged with implementation. Narratives, counternarratives, and metanarratives were identified using a transformative research paradigm. Findings indicate that a civil-military gap exists in associations' interactions with military- and veteran-serving agencies but relationships are dynamic and complicated by organizational cultural divides. The study contributes to the literature on higher education associations, providing evidence regarding the little-researched power and behind-the-scenes influence on national higher education policy. The second contribution is a focus on documenting dimensions of the civil-military gap in veterans education policy. However, results also indicated a dynamic, symbiotic and mutually dependent, and sometimes contentious relationship rather than a single, static gap. Against this constantly changing backdrop, associations attempted to influence the enactment of orderly veterans education policies befitting intended federal goals for student veterans and commonly accepted higher education practices. Yet the civil-military gap also disrupted associations' capacity to implement veterans education policy including modes of operation among military- and veteran-serving agencies that hinder not only communication and Post-9/11 GI Bill benefit payment processing, but also realistic assessment and research on student veterans' academic and social needs. The study proposes an action plan for research, policy and practice that higher education associations might use to attempt to bridge the civil-military gap in veterans education policy and enable veterans' success in higher education.

In 1989, U.S. President George H.W. Bush presented a vision of the
United States and Germany as "partners in leadership" in building a peaceful
and secure post Cold War world. A confluence of factors brought this vision
closest to realization during the overlapping tenures of U.S. President Barack
Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Persistent limitations and
shifting conditions including the election of U.S. President Donald Trump now
call the future viability of the vision into question, even as U.S.-German ties
remain the most plausible anchor of cooperative transatlantic ties in a period
of global change.