Collaborations Between Multicultural Educators and Archivists: Engaging Students with Multicultural History Through Archival Research Projects

When multicultural educators and archivists collaborate to design projects that engage students with multicultural history through archival research, students can learn in-depth research skills with primary source documents, creatively share their knowledge, and, on a broader level, engage with their local community history. The projects shared in this article serve as examples of how partnerships between multicultural educators and archivists can occur, the types of projects that can be developed and how they are implemented, and students' responses to their work. The three student projects, including a display, a history guidebook, and an oral history project, are intended to offer a variety of ideas to inspire multicultural educators to reach out to their local archivists to develop archival research projects of their own. And, to promote effective and fruitful partnerships, also included are lessons learned as well as tips for successful collaborations between multicultural educators and archivists.     

A missing link? Contemporary insights into principal preparation and training in Russia

Over the last decade, the Russian education system has undergone significant transformation that has radically changed the expectations placed upon the school principals. This current reform process has placed far greater responsibilities and accountabilities upon principals to secure school effectiveness and improved student learning outcomes. This article offers some insights into the way in which principals in Russia are currently prepared and trained. It outlines initial quantitative findings from Russian principals, as part of a contemporary, large-scale empirical study of principal leadership preparation and training. The emerging empirical evidence highlights that the new principal standards and training requirements in Russia reinforce “managerial approaches” that are not necessarily meeting the needs of principals.     

Before the Federal Bilingual Education Act: Legislation and Lived Experience in California

The federal Bilingual Education Act (BEA; 1968) augured a new era in the national politics of diversity, schooling, and state, and California became symbolic of the problems and promise of bilingual pedagogy. This article explores how the BEA was pivotal not only in conceiving a federal commitment to the educational achievement of limited-English-speaking children but also in spurring state and local action. Yet close attention reveals how philosophically and fiscally limited were the terms of the federal act. California had been experimenting with bilingual education in many districts, where innovative programs operated independently of state or federal involvement. On one hand, the emerging legislative structure embodied by the federal BEA pushed districts and states to question the received attitudes about Mexican American underachievement that permeated their practice. On the other hand, the BEA supplanted earlier, locally developed programs, increasing oversight and enforcement and often casting districts as villains and at times even checking adventurous earlier programs. In the 1960s, Californians as well as national politicians and educators engaged in an unprecedented, bipartisan dialogue about bilingual education, in which California conservatives earnestly advocated albeit moderate programs during these early but crucial years in the modern history of bilingual education.     

The Russian Orthodox Church and Russian Emigration as Documented in the Archives of the Western American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia

ABSTRACT

Among the extensive archives of the Western American Diocese of the ROCOR (over 2,000 document files), of greatest historical value are undoubtedly the archives of St. John (Maximovich) and of Archbishop Tikhon (Troitskii), the archives of the Russian spiritual mission in China, the archives from the Archbishops and Ecumenical Councils of the ROCOR, and the archives of the oldest clerics and parishes of the ROCOR. Also, the correspondence and labors of Bishop Nektarii (Kontsevich) and Archbishop Antonii (Medvedev) are of considerable significance for historians. In archives is hidden the potential for many research projects, for historians and linguists alike. Some documents have been researched, translated and published in the Diocesan Russian–English magazine, Spiritual Spring Journal. However, the majority of these unique materials are waiting for its researchers.     

Making a New and Pliable Professor: American and Soviet Transformations in German Universities, 1945–1990

This article discusses the history of American and Soviet transformations in German universities during the period of the Cold War, 1945–1990. Both American and Soviet policies were resisted by the university community, particularly by the conservative German professoriate, in both parts of the divided Germany. The article shows how and why both American and Soviet policies of the reforms of German universities were eventually failed.     

Context of validation of non-formal and informal learning in Spain: a comprehensive view

ABSTRACT

The system of validation and accreditation of professional qualifications in Spain is offered as a certification opportunity, especially for vulnerable groups. The procedure is presented as an evaluative proposal that allows some inequalities associated with training and employment to be addressed. In this article we analyse whether this system really fosters social cohesion, considering the political situation that frames the procedure and the educational approach underlying it. The research methodology combines the documentary analysis and interviews with the application of the Delphi method.

The most relevant results show that the socio-political context is favourable to competences accreditation, while the lack of expectations of the population, as well as of financial resources is hindering its implementation. The educational approach focused on learning outcomes and the evaluative control give the process an instrumental and credentialist value. The government intervention on the accreditation system can turn the procedure into a new instrument of political control of curriculum and education. Learning responsibility is shifted to those that access the procedure, both accrediting and generating new risks of exclusion. In conclusion, the system will offer inclusion opportunities if contextual aspects that humanise the procedure are taken into account.