Education for Citizenship in For-Profit Charter Schools?

Most Americans and many residents of other democratic countries hold public schools to the social and political goal of preparing children to be good citizens. This goal is being challenged by some new forms of schooling promoted through popular education reform movements, especially in the US. This article reveals potentially insurmountable conflicts between the beliefs and practices of one of those forms of schools, for-profit charter schools, and their public task of educating for citizenship. This study begins by exploring the public nature and purposes of public schools, especially their role in creating particular types of citizens. This understanding of public schooling and good citizenship, then, becomes the theoretical lens for analysing the practices of for-profit charter schools. A critical discourse analysis was conducted of school materials such as websites, curricula, investor relation materials, proposals for new charter schools, and interviews with charter school founders. That analysis was used to indicate aspects of support for and incompatibility with quality citizenship education and to assess the overall likelihood that for-profit schools can educate citizens well

From citizen science to policy development on the coral reefs of Jamaica

This paper explores the application of citizen science to help generation of scientific data and capacity-building, and so underpin scientific ideas and policy development in the area of coral reef management, on the coral reefs of Jamaica. From 2000 to 2008, ninety Earthwatch volunteers were trained in coral reef data acquisition and analysis and made over 6,000 measurements on fringing reef sites along the north coast of Jamaica. Their work showed that while recruitment of small corals is returning after the major bleaching event of 2005, larger corals are not necessarily so resilient and so need careful management if the reefs are to survive such major extreme events. These findings were used in the development of an action plan for Jamaican coral reefs, presented to the Jamaican National Environmental Protection Agency. It was agreed that a number of themes and tactics need to be implemented in order to facilitate coral reef conservation in the Caribbean. The use of volunteers and citizen scientists from both developed and developing countries can help in forging links which can assist in data collection and analysis and, ultimately, in ecosystem management and policy development

Citizenship Education within the process of portuguese social democratization

Propomo-nos discutir, neste texto, algumas das raízes do ideal de cidadania ao nível do debate pedagógico, tal como se desenvolveu em Portugal nos anos 60 e 70 do século XX, um período marcado pelo final do Estado Novo autoritário e pela fase inicial de construção da democracia portuguesa, que sentiu a necessidade de educar os cidadãos para o exercício pleno do seu papel, numa perspectiva crítica e participativa. É, em particular, no período revolucionário que o projecto de democratização do ensino se torna central na agenda educativa, surgindo Rui Grácio (1921-1991) como uma figura marcante, não só da reflexão sobre essa matéria como da tentativa de a concretizar no terreno educativo, por via de experiências como a unificação do ensino, o serviço cívico estudantil ou a educação cívica e politécnica. É os contornos dessa reflexão e dessa acção que procuraremos aqui delimitar

Introduction

What is critical thinking, especially in the context of higher education? How have research and scholarship on the matter developed over recent past decades? What is the current state of the art here? How might the potential of critical thinking be enhanced? What kinds of teaching are necessary in order to realize that potential? And just why is this topic important now? These are the key questions motivating this volume. We hesitate to use terms such as “comprehensive” or “complete” or “definitive,” but we believe that, taken in the round, the chapters in this volume together offer a fair insight into the contemporary understandings of higher education worldwide. We also believe that this volume is much needed, and we shall try to justify that claim in this introduction

The Need to Expand Immigration Legal Services in Northern California

Presents survey results on the scope and capacity of nonprofits providing legal services to low-income immigrants in northern California, with a focus on the naturalization process. Makes recommendations to funders to expand capacity and civic education

Educating citizens for participatory democracy: a case study of local government education policy in Pelotas, Brazil

A case study was undertaken of Pelotas, a large town in southern Brazil, where a recent government of the Workers’ Party (PT) implemented a range of social policy reforms. The study draws on interviews with key members of the Municipal Secretariat of Education and policy documents, analyzing them in relation to theoretical literature on citizenship and education. The Pelotas approach is seen to be distinctive for its emphasis on active political participation as a citizen’s right and as a means to social justice for all. The local government also places a higher value on critical and autonomous attitudes towards the authorities than on cultivating allegiance to the municipality or nation-state

A Description of Lobbying as Advocacy Public Relations

This study defines lobbying as advocacy public relations. Data were collected from self-administered surveys of 222 registered lobbyists in Oregon. This study provides insight into a specialized group of public relations practitioners

Global citizenship education in school curricula. A Polish perspective

The purpose of this study is to present global citizenship education from a Polish perspective. Analyzing the issue, the first part of this paper presents the development of citizenship education, followed by the current status of global citizenship education in Polish schools. In the second part of the study I draw attention to national curricula and other supporting documents published after 1945, to verify whether issues of global citizenship education in Poland are included in the curricula, and if so, what they highlight. I then argue that global citizenship education in Poland is based on a framework of world-centered perspectives within a national context. In this understanding, global citizenship education is aimed at creating citizens who are members of the world community, without giving up their own national identity. The Polish perspective on global citizenship education urges pupils to consider global problems as part of the challenges of their own country, and offers the perception of local and global problems being linked and complementary to each other.The inspiration to write this paper came from the research work I undertook as part of the international Erasmus+ project, ‘Future Youth School Forums’, led by Oxfam UK, funded with the support of the European Commission and the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education

Civic Republicanism Provides Theoretical Support for Making Individuals More Environmentally Responsible

The genesis for this essay is the recognition that individual behavior is contributing in a significant way to the remaining environmental problems we have. For a variety of reasons, ranging from the difficulty of trying to identify and then regulate all of these individual sources to the political backlash that might result if such regulation was tried, efforts to control that behavior have either failed or not been tried. The phenomenon of individuals as irresponsible environmental actors seems counter-intuitive given the durability of the environmental protection norm and polls that consistently show that people contribute to environmental causes, are willing to pay more to protect environmental resources, and consider protecting the environment among their highest priorities. This conflict between thought and deed and its serious effect, if not resolved, is the puzzle that has sent me on this quest. This essay is the author\u27s third attempt at unraveling the problem of irresponsible individual environmental behavior and at suggesting possible ways to reform how people behave toward the environment. The first article proposed expanding the abstract environmental protection norm to include individual environmental responsibility as the approach most likely to overcome barriers to behavioral change. The article recommended enlisting environmental groups as the most effective norm entrepreneurs to achieve widespread change in personal environmental conduct. In that piece, she concluded that the best way to change norms and thus change behavior was through education, but additional measures might be necessary. The second article expanded on the earlier discussion of norms and their influence on behavior, and why changing norms, though difficult, is more effective than other means of inciting behavioral change. However, given the difficulty inherent in creating or changing norms, the second article also identified and evaluated other norm and behavior-changing tactics, such as shaming, public education, and market-based incentives, which might supplement norms as a means of changing behavior. The article concluded that no one approach alone is sufficient to secure both norm and behavior change, but a combination of any or all of them when properly tailored to the source and nature of the harm and when accompanied by public education can lead to both norm and behavioral changes. Thus, both articles concluded that public education plays a critical role in any effort to alter public behavior through changing norms. This essay examines how republican theory supports that conclusion and provides the theoretical framework within which norm change can occur. All three pieces start with the premise that the current crisis over global climate change has created the circumstances in which norm change can occur--circumstances that collectively have created what the author calls a second environmental republican moment. This second republican moment, like the first one in the 1970s, might result in widespread public support for a variety of environmentally protective legislative and regulatory initiatives and offers a rare, albeit brief, opportunity in which to educate the public about its contribution to environmental harm. This essay develops the republican aspect of that thought further, demonstrating how the overlapping strands of republican thought and norm development support the creation of a new norm of personal environmental responsibility. The essay also shows how, during republican moments, the public is more amenable to being educated about civic matters, including their responsibilities as environmental citizens. It is particularly during republican moments that people acquire information that may influence their expressed preferences, lending a sense of urgency to the present moment we find ourselves in. This essay begins by discussing the concept of an environmental republican moment, and why the public\u27s response to the crisis of global climate change appears to be such a moment. The essay then identifies the key features of republican theory and shows how those features replicate many of the elements necessary for norm and behavioral change. The essay concludes by showing how republicanism--with its emphasis on public education, civic involvement, and achieving the common good through civic virtue--provides a useful construct for thinking about how to make people behave in more environmentally responsible ways