SEGREGATION IN MILWAUKEE'S CATHOLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

While the achievement gap between African American students and white and Asian students is discussed widely in the media (e.g. Schemo, 2003 Schemo, D. J. 2003. Students' scores rise in math, not in reading. New York Times, A18 November 14 [Google Scholar]), the gap in discipline between African Americans and these groups has gained much less attention. Few studies have explored teacher processes that affect the over-representation of African American students in discipline referrals. Teachers decide which students are considered a discipline problem, what is driving the problem, and how to intervene. This qualitative study examines teachers' implicit theories about the causes of discipline problems, and specifically examines how they consider race and culture in their theorizing. The results show that teachers considered forces inside the school, the adolescent, and the community as causes for misbehavior. Most teachers' theories were culture- and race-blind and could not account for the discipline gap. Drawing on the teachers' theories, we present a new framework of Culturally Relevant Discipline that takes into account the ecology of the school, community, and society in understanding discipline problems. This multifaceted framework has implications for culturally and racially conscious solutions to narrow the discipline gap.     

MARKETISATION AS A STRATEGY FOR DESEGREGATION AND REDRESS: THE CASE OF HISTORICALLY WHITE SCHOOLS IN SOUTH AFRICA

This article examines the process of desegregation in historically white schools in South Africa. It is argued that reforms within these schools can be understood as an example of the marketisation of education. The article commences with a consideration of the relevance and scope of such an approach. Exponents of marketisation in South Africa (as elsewhere) have claimed that the introduction of market forces can help to increase "choice" for the consumers of education. It is also suggested that it can act as a means of redressing past inequalities. These arguments are critically considered in relation to the experiences of black pupils both within the schools themselves and within the wider educational system. It is argued that a marketised approach towards desegregation may have increased choice for whites and for a minority of blacks, but has not increased choice for blacks as a whole. Nor has it served as an efficient mechanism for the redistribution of educational resources. Although the article is critical of many aspects of the marketisation process, it is acknowledged that some of the policies associated with marketisation are compatible with the creation of a more equitable and efficient education system.     

THEORIZING THE UNIVERSITY AS A CULTURAL SYSTEM: DISTINCTIONS, IDENTITIES, EMERGENCIES

A bstract .  Universities currently face new environmental demands and significant internal complexities that appear to challenge their traditional modes of work and organization — and thus their very identities. In this essay, Mark Considine argues that the prospect of such changes requires us to reflect carefully upon the theoretical and normative underpinnings of universities and to delineate the structures and processes through which they might seek to negotiate their identities. Considine re-theorizes the university as a higher education system composed by distinctions and networks acting through an important class of boundary objects. He moves beyond an environmental analysis, asserting that systems are best theorized as cultural practices based upon actors making and protecting important kinds of distinctions. Thus, the university system must be investigated as a knowledge-based binary for dividing knowledge from other things. This approach, in turn, produces an identity-centering (cultural) model of the system that assumes universities must perform two different acts of distinction to exist: first, they must distinguish themselves from other systems (such as the economy, organized religion, and the labor market), and, second, they must operate successfully in a chosen resource environment. Ultimately, Considine argues that while environmental problems (such as cuts in government grants) may generate periodic crises, threats within identities produce emergencies generating a radical kind of problematic for actor networks.     

行政法解释的主体制度初探

在中国现行的有效的法律解释体制中,国务院以及政府主管部门作为享有行政解释权的主体行使着对行政法规和行政规章的解释权。这一体制不仅排除了具体的适用机关和行政官对行政法的解释权,而且排除了司法机关在行政执法领域中对行政法规、行政规章和行政性法律的解释权。这种制度安排并不契合行政法适用的原理,也有悖于行政法治原则。其客观后果会助长行政权力的滥用,弱化法律对行政的控制,消解了司法的最终效力性。因此,尽快建立对行政法规、行政规章的司法审查制度和优化行政法解释体制乃是必然的选择。     

AGING EDUCATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS: A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

From kindergarten to college, as today's students learn to see the world as a global village, they can also learn that aging is part of the human condition, that older people do exist, and that the increasing numbers of older people is both a national resource and a national problem. Students can develop an awareness of the interdependence not only of cultures and countries but also of generations. Still scarce, though increasingly available, are curricular materials and programs that help young people explore how we and other cultures deal with aging and the elderly.     

DELINQUENCY AND THE SCHOOLS

Primary teachers in their first year of teaching, and two groups of students in their final year of university, were surveyed in order to determine the nature of attitude changes during teacher education and in the first teaching year. One group of students was followed into its first year of teaching. The attitudes of the trainee teachers and novices were contrasted with those of experienced teachers and non‐education students over a two‐year period, using a semantic differential instrument.

The overall finding was that Lortie's contention that the attitudes of American teachers are based on their own early experiences as pupils in school holds for Australian teachers also. While there was some change in student attitudes during the final university year, towards the ‘progressive’ orientations of the university course, this orientation did not persist far into the first year of teaching.