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Is empowering peace education primarily about providing individuals with skills to respond to violence they experience and capabilities to enhance their own lives? Or is inspiring social transformation to alter forms of injustice that contribute to violence an equally valid and important dimension of an empowering peace education program? This article draws upon the authors' experiences researching peace education programs implemented by local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in two different contexts: Jamaica and Peru. The basis for comparison is grounded in the discourse key actors in these NGOs utilized in reference to their respective educational initiatives, explicitly emphasizing empowerment for marginalized groups. Using critical qualitative techniques and troubling the idea of "empowerment," the authors analyze the discourse of empowerment to look beyond explicit truth claims and unveil tacit assumptions regarding the purpose and desired outcomes for the beneficiaries of their respective programs. The authors interrogate what definitions of empowerment--social and/or individual--the program stakeholders envision as well as how they believe such empowerment comes about. The study's findings contribute to the need to critically unpack the commonly uncritical use of the term "empowerment" as necessarily directed toward addressing social inequalities and altering unjust power relations.

The demise of Soviet genetics in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s has stood for many as a prime example of the damage that social and political dogmatism can do when allowed to meddle in the workings of science. In particular, the story of Trofim Lysenko's rise to preeminence and the fall of Mendelian genetics in the Soviet Union has become a lasting testament to the dangers of state power and a seemingly blatant manifestation of totalitarianism in practice. In recent years, historians have begun to complicate this story. The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which this conventional account of state power in Soviet biology, symbolized by the disappearance of Mendel, still holds true. Using middle school textbooks, encyclopedias, and pedagogical journals that were published between 1934 and 1964 this article argues that despite its efforts, the state apparatus was functionally incapable of eradicating genetics from its schools.

The year 2015 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, with a goal to contribute to gender equality globally. As scholars continue in their quest to "take stock" of the ways in which gender and education work in tandem to achieve greater gender equality, we observe a revival in interest regarding conversations on gender and education. These conversations cover a gamut of related issues, including teaching and achievement as well as a number of intersecting issues such as gender-based violence. Within the conversation has been a continued focus on the role of equity primarily defined as access and opportunity. This paper explores the context of quality as it relates to equity in education and addresses the problems that are still left on the margins. Our goal is to take stock and assess the strength of evidence and to provide directions for future research.

Gamification is the use of game mechanics to drive game-like engagements and actions. It applies game mechanics, dynamics and frameworks to promote desired learning behaviours. Positive and effective gamification could enhance learning and engage learners in more social and context-rich decision-making for problem-solving in learning tasks. Effective gamification design should understand the game personalities of learners, social engagement styles, and intrinsic- and extrinsic-motivated user styles initially and evaluate and select appropriate game mechanics, game dynamics, to create ideal gamification instructions. The research question this study investigated is: How will four types of gaming personalities (i.e. Explorer, Socialiser, Killer and Achiever) predict the level of game dynamics in online discussion environments? This study concluded that examining how gaming personalities relate to game dynamics in a gamified online discussion instruction is not sufficient to design effective gamification. It suggests future studies in game instructions should focus on the relationships between game dynamics, gamification contexts, gaming personalities or preferences, dynamic gaming engagement styles, etc.

This paper reviews some of the social, historical, and political forces and events that influenced the development of Bennett Reimer's early philosophy of music education in the late 1950s and continuing to his death in 2013. John Dewey's ideas about the moral and political purposes of art education are employed as critical tools for understanding the political dynamics of Reimer's career during the early Cold War as all education was conceived by government and prominent education reformers as social control rather than liberation.

Like general theories of human communication, previous research into second language (L2) communication strategies (CSs) has also been characterized on either interactional conceived account or cognitively conceived one. However, this paper is a critical attempt to show that CSs' full significance can only be understood if the domain of CSs research is expanded beyond the particular kinds of psycholinguistic and interactional approaches that currently dominate the field. The expansion requires a significantly enhanced awareness of the other important dimensions of language within L2 contexts that affect/are affected by CSs, such as social variables and contextual factors. Widened in this way, it is argued that the concept of L2 CSs can be fruitfully tailored to a very large literature outside L2 acquisition, and it becomes a rich forum for the investigation of interactional, social, and educational issues.

Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" Saga has achieved extraordinary popularity and scholars have interrogated the nature of its appeal from a variety of perspectives. Its popularity raises questions because in many ways it mirrors romantic fictions from the 1960s and 1970s. Such fictions have been read by critics as expressions of female anger and frustration at their lack of power in relationships and in society--as stories of revenge and appropriation. Yet it is often stated that girls today can compete and succeed in their own terms and there are many powerful, emancipated fictional heroines. For these reasons, girls' enthusiasm for a romance like "Twilight" is initially difficult to understand. There is, however, a well-developed literature on girls and girls' education which problematises their apparent empowerment and demonstrates that although girls have opportunities denied to previous generations, they are subject to intense and insidious forms of patriarchal control. This article examines "Twilight" in the light of this literature. It focuses on the imperative to conform to norms of female beauty and the growth of self-harm as a defining characteristic of female identity. These are explored through the examination of two tropes in "Twilight": the repeated use of the beauty makeover and the repeated use of what Tania Modleski called "the disappearing heroine" in her analysis of Harlequin romances of the 1960s and 1970s. I conclude that one reason for "Twilight"'s exceptional success may be its capacity to provide fantasy resolutions to some of the intense conflicts and contradictions girls face growing up in the twenty-first century.

In Agnew's general strain theory, repeated strains can generate crime and delinquency by reducing social control and fostering social learning of crime. Using a sample of 615 middle-and high-school students in China, this study examines how social control and social learning variables mediate the effect of repeated strains in school and at home on delinquency. The findings from an integrated model support Agnew's mediating argument in a non-Western society. Repeated negative treatment by teachers promotes delinquent behavior both through weakened conventional bonds and beliefs and through heightened association with delinquent peers. Repeated negative treatment by parents affects delinquency only through weakened conventional bonds. The prominent role of school experiences in the lives of Chinese adolescents is discussed.

Corruption in the system of higher education in Russia is a barrier to fair access to the labor market for educated specialists, and a survey of programs to combat this type of corruption shows that it needs to be taken more seriously as a problem.

Injunctive norms, or perceived peer approval of drinking is a potentially important influence on college student drinking. Few studies on college student drinking have attended to injunctive norms during the first few months of college. Longitudinal data from 534 first semester freshmen are used to describe the contributions of injunctive norms to alcohol consumption. Injunctive norms were measured by peer approval of drinking and alcohol consumption was measured by the typical number of drinks consumed in the past 30-days while partying. Results indicate that injunctive norms were a significant predictor of drinking after controlling for gender and effects of time.

This study aims to predict social determinants of alcohol use and examines the influence of social bond/attachment, parental control and social learning on the frequency of youth alcohol use. The total of 1843 complete responses were received from 25 high school students in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to examine the results of this study. There are very few studies assessed the aspects of the social learning and social control theories in Kyrgyzstan and it is a total new area for youth deviant behavior studies. The results of this study indicate that social bond and attachment decreases the use of alcohol among high school students. However, parental control and social learning (differential association) increase the the frequency of the alcohol consumption among Kyrgyz youth.

Harvey Graff in his 1979 study of literacy taught in common schools in mid-nineteenth century Canada, demonstrated that beliefs in the acquisition of literacy for upward mobility and economic success were a myth. Moreover, literacy instruction was promoted by educational reformers and manufacturers as a means of controlling the working class masses and instilling in them the traits, including thrift, order, and punctuality required for employment in factories. In this paper, we consider how this thesis can be adapted to describe contemporary national adult literacy policy discourse in Australia. The main drivers of Australia's national policy are peak industry associations and skills agencies, and the human capital rationale for their promotion of literacy is derived largely from the powerful influence of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We critique this discourse on literacy through reference to studies which conceptualise literacy as social practices, including one recent Australian study of three manufacturing companies. We reinforce the claim that the literacy myth in relation to economic development continues in contemporary adult literacy policy, and we explain how the social control function of adult literacy education continues in the interests of industry elites and the capitalist relations of production.

The paper explores pedagogies of surveillance and counter pedagogies of radical democracy and co-operative practice and their implications for continuing professional development (CPD). Teachers have had to respond to an increasing naturalisation of surveillance in schools. However, this naturalisation can be countered by drawing upon the emergent development of the co-operative education movement in the UK. I argue that critical to developing effective pedagogies of radical democracy and co-operation is the formation of a "public space" of discussion and debate about courses of action. This will be illustrated through research drawn from a co-operative school and its use of information technologies. Although the intentions are to improve standards of learning, the hidden curriculum implicit in the use of the technologies can lead to "supersurveillance." Teachers, I argue, have a critical role in the deconstruction of the naturalisation of supersurveillance and both pre-service and CPD urgently need to address this.

The importance of public education in democratic states is almost beyond dispute. Too often, though, discussions of democratic education focus solely on policies and systems, forgetting the individual teachers who are ultimately responsible for educating future citizens. This paper attempts to illustrate just how complex and significant the role of teachers in a democratic republic can be.

Getting in trouble at school is often a student's first point of entry into the school-to-prison pipeline. What trouble entails is shaped by underlying and complex notions of justice that operate in a given school setting. These notions of justice shape the range of responses social actors use to address students who break school rules. These include, as is the case in society at large, establishing strategies to stop rule violations or repeat offenses, punishing wrongdoers for their offenses, removing offenders from the community, teaching wrongdoers a lesson, and helping offenders to help themselves (Daly, 2001). In this article, I argue that improving school discipline is a matter of balancing and managing complex, differentiated, systems of trouble. To advance this understanding, I use a social constructionist perspective to theorize school discipline systems as nets of social control that, if too expansive and overly punitive, can be counterproductive to the educational mission of schools.

High-stakes testing is changing what it means to be a "good teacher" in the contemporary school. This paper uses Deleuze and Guattari's ideas on the control society and dividuation in the context of National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) testing in Australia to suggest that the database generates new understandings of the "good teacher". Media reports are used to look at how teachers are responding to the high-stakes database through manipulating the data. This article argues that manipulating the data is a regrettable, but logical, response to manifestations of teaching where only the data counts.

The past 30 years have seen a series of major shifts in English education. Central to these changes has been the growth of data systems which now measure and control the work of teachers to a huge degree. This form of data-led surveillance was predicted in the work of Gilles Deleuze, a totalising process where data become more important than the individuals to which they relate. This article considers the ramifications of the development of a "Society of Control" within education before arguing that teachers have begun to identify and occupy nomadic spaces capable of subverting State narratives and building new opportunities for professionalism. The development of teacher-led professional development and the use of social media have both led to new opportunities for professional dialogue and debate which are important in counteracting policy developments enacted by those outside the profession. Finally, it is suggested that responsibilities come with the creation of new spaces for professional dialogue and development if teachers are to move centre stage in the wider educational debate.

This analysis involves an investigation of the corporate control of food in relation to low income and culturally dominated schoolchildren in cities. This includes an exploration of the problem as expressed globally and historically in relation to transnational policy networks. Since corporate growth always necessitates controlling the direction of what people talk about on the ground, I additionally critique the emerging popularity of the policy-linked language of "food deserts" and "food security." I reveal these terms as postcolonial constructs, forged out of the tradition that those with power control both material and mental production. Given the economic struggles now felt by the middle classes, I contend such language seeks to contain this growing anxiety. Lastly, I review some widespread failed efforts to address the problem of lack of access to healthy and affordable food among marginalized urban communities. All of these attempts are shaped as part of broader and evolving policy networks and in this research include progressive resistance collectives, policies as commodities, and big box failures. I focus here on city initiatives in particular given the ongoing urban implosion taking place in much of the world as people continue to lose their access to land. Although I consider conditions in the USA, these arguments can be applied in various ways to other contexts.

This paper considers different conceptualisations of school discipline within both UK education policy and wider educational and philosophical literature. Initially, it is noted that notions of "behaviour management" dominate discourses about school discipline. It is suggested that this is unhelpful as behaviour management skills are underpinned by a behaviourist understanding of learning that denies pupils an important degree of agency over their own development--pupils are rather portrayed as unruly and morally deficient. It is therefore maintained that discipline needs to be reclaimed as an educational concept as it can be a valuable personal quality whose possession indicates a capacity to set important goals for oneself and see them through even in the face of difficulty. With reference to the diverse philosophies of Dewey, P.S. Wilson, Durkheim, Oakeshott, and MacMurray, it is contended that a re-conceived notion of school discipline might enable less controlling and behaviourist and more educational discipline in at least three ways: the ethical (by guiding the ethical development of pupils), the humanising (by encouraging pupils to act for the sake of others rather than only think about themselves) and the epistemic (by supporting pupils to engage in the pursuit of valued interests and knowledge).

Substance use and delinquency in Thai adolescents are growing public health concerns. Research has linked neighborhood characteristics to these outcomes, with explanations focused on neighborhood disorganization, social cohesion, and social control. This study examines the independent associations of these neighborhood constructs with Thai adolescents' substance use and delinquency, through peer deviance, to determine which neighborhood aspects are particularly important. Families ("N" = 420) with adolescents aged 13 to 14 were randomly selected from 7 districts in Bangkok, Thailand. Structural equation modeling showed that adolescents', but not parents', perceptions of greater disorganization were related to increased rates of both minor and serious delinquency. Surprisingly, greater neighborhood cohesion was related to greater minor delinquency. Peer deviance was unrelated to neighborhood variables. Findings can inform prevention strategies for Thai adolescents, as results suggest that neighborhoods are important for adolescent behaviors regardless of culture. Further work should help communities make use of social cohesion to benefit residents.

This paper examines the educational policy implemented by the British for the Malays, the indigenous community of Malaya. Underpinned by the policy of divide and rule, the British implemented a dualistic system of education for the indigenous Malays: one for the Malay peasantry and another for the Malay nobility. The two systems of education served different purposes and needs of the British. The Malay peasantry was provided with a rural-based Malay education which only had limited value in terms of educational mobility. This rural-based education was to serve as a means of social control for the British by entrapping the Malays in the semi-subsistence economy. On the other hand, the British provided the Malay nobility with an elitist English education that was intended to co-opt the ruling Malay traditional elites into their fold. But contrary to the intention of the British, the Malay-educated intelligentsia, in particular those from the Sultan Idris Training College became radical nationalists who adopted an anti-British stand. Such an unintended development was the result of the role played by O.T. Dussek (the college principal), the infusion of nationalistic sentiment from neighboring Indonesia and the threat posed by the Chinese immigrants. However, the radical stand of the Malay-educated intelligentsia was neutralized by the Malay traditional elites who adopted a pro-British stand. It was the Malay traditional elites who eventually led the Malays toward the independence of Malaya. (Contains 1 table.)

Age is one of the most robust correlates of criminal behavior. Yet, explanations for this relationship are varied and conflicting. Developmental theories point to a multitude of sociological, psychological, and biological changes that occur during adolescence and adulthood. One prominent criminological perspective outlined by Gottfredson and Hirschi claims that age has a direct effect on crime, inexplicable from sociological and psychological variables. Despite the attention this claim has received, few direct empirical tests of it have been conducted. We use data from Pathways to Desistance, a longitudinal study of over 1,300 serious youthful offenders (85.8% male, 40.1% African-American, 34.3% Hispanic, 21.0% White), to test this claim. On average, youths were 16.5 years old at the initial interview and were followed for 7 years. We use multilevel longitudinal models to assess the extent to which the direct effects of age are reduced to statistical and substantive non-significance when constructs from a wide range of developmental and criminological theories are controlled. Unlike previous studies, we are able to control for changes across numerous realms emphasized within differing theoretical perspectives including social control (e.g., employment and marriage), procedural justice (e.g., perceptions of the legitimacy and fairness of the legal system), learning (e.g., gang membership and exposure to antisocial peers), strain (e.g., victimization and relationship breakup), psychosocial maturity (e.g., impulse control, self-regulation and moral disengagement), and rational choice (e.g., costs and rewards of crime). Assessed separately, these perspectives explain anywhere from 3% (procedural justice) to 49% (social learning) of the age-crime relationship. Together, changes in these constructs explain 69% of the drop in crime from ages 15 to 25. We conclude that the relationship between age and crime in adolescence and early adulthood is largely explainable, though not entirely, attributable to multiple co-occurring developmental changes.

In this article we first trace the history of "management," particularly in the United States, from the plantation to the factory to the corporation, with the intention of understanding and contextualizing "classroom management" in today's educational lexicon. To do so, we look at the intertwining history of racial knowledge and the management of enslaved persons; the subsequent development of scientific management; social efficiency educators' application of scientific management to education; and conceptions of classroom management in today's neoliberal environment, in which education is increasingly positioned as a consumer good subject to individual choice and competitive markets. We further look to examples from post-colonial Africa to demonstrate the ways in which neocolonial forms of scientific management comingle and entwine with neoliberal policies and procedures. The global phenomenon of scientific management, rife with neoliberalism and racism, is finally examined in the context of (so-called) Culturally Responsive Classroom Management, a neoliberal project that claims to advocate social justice through the process of managing bodies in classrooms.

The major social science theories on adolescent risk-taking--strain, social control, and differential association theories--have received substantial empirical support. The relationships between variables central to these theories and individual differences in temperament related to risk-taking, however, have not been adequately studied. In a sample of adolescents, this study examines how behavioral inhibition and activation relate to variables central to social control, strain, and differential association theories and how interactions between behavioral inhibition and activation and these theories predict aggressive and nonaggressive forms of risk-taking. The results of this study suggest that (a) BIS (behavioral inhibition system) and BAS (behavioral approach system) are related to strain, social control, and differential associations; (b) the effects of these social science and personality variables are, at least partially, additive; and (c) significant interactions exist between BIS/BAS and social control and differential association. Combining social science and personality concepts therefore could advance the understanding of differences in risk-taking. (Contains 4 tables and 2 figures.)

In "The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society," David Garland linked contemporary crime control policies and welfare reforms to a cultural formation that he termed the "crime complex of late modernity." According to Garland, once established, the crime complex exerts a contemporaneous effect on public views about both criminal justice and the welfare state, increasing popular support for security measures as well as more restrictive public assistance policies. Although Garland's thesis has featured prominently in scholarship on crime and punishment, few empirical studies have tested the specific predictions that underlie his arguments. To address this research gap, this study uses public opinion data to assess the extent to which key dimensions of the crime complex are associated with public views about criminal justice policies and welfare reforms that emphasize security and control. The results support several of the theoretical underpinnings of Garland’s thesis. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for theory, research, and policy. (Contains 3 tables and 13 notes.)

This article provides a critical examination of a common form of adult attempts to promote civic engagement among young people, namely, youth advisory councils. While youth councils have been widely celebrated as an effective way to integrate young people into political processes, little research has explored why some politically active youth choose to leave, or refuse to join, youth councils. Based on two qualitative studies of politically active teens throughout North and Latin America, the authors argue that teenage activists possess valuable dissident knowledge of, and critical perspectives on, the potential for youth advisory councils to promote youth political power. We argue that young activists understand democracy in ways that are fundamentally different from that offered to them by youth councils. Youth activists put forth a theory of democracy that emphasizes authority and impact, not just voice; they understand democracy as representing collective concerns and perceive youth councils as elitist and nonrepresentative; and they emphasize the value of controversy and contentious politics while expressing anxiety that youth councils can function as modes of social control that tame and channel youth dissent, rather than opportunities to foster youth political power.

The policy and philosophy of school curriculum formation in this article is interpreted from phenomenological and critical pedagogy perspectives. The main features of the phenomenology, set against the instructional method for an individual's development, and his/her relationship with the surroundings, are herein explicated. The distinction between these two methodological standpoints towards sustainable development results is presented using the Lithuanian case. The research hypotheses tested are: the Lithuanian common curriculum is not convenient for teaching dialogue and critical thinking and furthermore cannot help foster students' abilities to understand unique world phenomena. Content analysis results of the national curriculum presented in this article help prove the tested hypotheses. Improving the curriculum appears to be merely an imitation of change and one that produces new instructions for setting limitations upon teachers' creativity.

School delinquency has been linked to an array of negative educational outcomes, and if left unchecked, may lead to more serious problems in adulthood. Identifying the risk and protective factors that influence school delinquency is therefore crucial to develop effective intervention programs. Utilizing Hirschi's social bond theory as a framework, the authors investigated the relationships between social bonds (i.e., parental involvement, bond to school, beliefs, commitment to sport activities, commitment to non-sport activities, and involvement) and school delinquency among a nationally representative sample of 10th graders. Special attention was given to gender differences. Results indicate that social bond measures account for a significant variance in school delinquency (11.2%, "p" less than 0.001) above and beyond that predicted by socioeconomic status (1.5%, "p" less than 0.001), and that the relationships between social bonds and school delinquency vary across gender. Practical and theoretical implications are for educators and researchers alike. (Contains 5 tables and 1 footnote.)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of girls and boys about the effects that body-based harassment would have on girls' eating habits and engagement in physical activity. Five scenarios were read to focus groups comprised of 12- to 14-year-old students in grades 7 and 8. Each scenario represented behaviours that fall within the definition of body-based harassment. The students were asked how they thought the target of the behaviour felt when it occurred, how they would be likely to respond and why they thought the harasser engaged in the behaviour. Results corroborated previous literature that body-based harassment can have a negative effect on eating patterns of young girls and can be a contributing factor to disordered eating. Additional results suggested that body-based harassment could play a role in altering participation in physical activity and sport in two negative directions; impetus for dropping out of activity and motivation to become a pathological exerciser. These data were analysed within the theory of sexual objectification with the dynamics of gender hierarchy and power providing complementary influential perspectives.

This paper extends the work of Gamble, who followed Marx in seeing a reconstitution of the reserve army of labour as a key function of capitalist crisis, but it suggests a wider class reformation that includes what can be called the middle-working/working-middle class. Education and training to all levels are deeply implicated in this class reformation, not only by relegating an unskilled section of the previously manually working class to worthless vocational certification at one end, but in cramming for academic qualifications to "restart social mobility" at the other. The riots of summer 2011 are seen as a crystallisation of this new class formation, which goes further than during economic crisis in the 1970s manifested in what Finn called "training without jobs" to be succeeded by what Ainley and Allen called "education without jobs". Delusionary efforts to "educate our way out of economic crisis" are questioned in relation to "education's credibility crunch" since there is no "new correspondence" between education and the economy so that the main remaining "function" of institutionalised education and training is increasingly one of social control. Education must therefore regain its purpose of critically learning from the past to meet the crisis of the present.

Breaking down the social, political, and cultural processes through which race, class, and gender worldviews are established, ideological literacies help students look closely at the intricate, contradictory meanings in texts. The purpose of developing ideological literacies in urban youth is so they become more socially conscious of the communication strategies guiding their identities. This article highlights the ways ideologies are consumed, re-produced, and often internalized by marginalized youth of color in urban communities, ultimately, offering a teacher-oriented analysis of using ideological literacies as an empowering tool for students to examine issues of privilege, social control, and oppression in U.S. society. (Contains 1 note.)

This study examined mediators of relations between adolescent religiousness and pornography use. The sample consisted of 419 adolescents (ages 15-18 years; M age = 15.68, SD = 0.98; 56% male). It was hypothesized that religiousness (religious internalization and involvement) would protect adolescents from pornography use (accidental and intentional viewing) by increasing self-regulation, conservative attitudes towards pornography, and social control against pornography. Path analyses revealed religious internalization and involvement were indirectly linked to intentional viewing through all three mediators. For accidental viewing, the only indirect effects were from religious internalization through self-regulation and social control, and from religious involvement through social control. Thus, religiousness may protect adolescents from intentional and accidental exposure to pornography. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

In this article, the concept of school discipline will be explored in relation to that of educational interest. Initially, Clark's account of two different kinds of school order (discipline and control) will be explained. The interest-based theory of school discipline advanced by Pat Wilson will thereafter be analysed. It will be argued that both these scholars persuasively explain how school discipline may follow when learning activities are successfully married to pupil interests and experiences. However, it will be maintained that the epistemic position adopted by Wilson is problematic. Although Wilson suggests that Richard Peters placed too great an educational emphasis on initiating pupils into public traditions of knowledge, it is here claimed that Wilson did not value that development enough. With reference to Whitehead, it is concluded that discipline in schools ought to be arranged so as to help pupils foster wisdom for life, as this concept integrates liberal knowledge and educational interest. (Contains 9 notes.)

On taking power the coalition government embarked on what many commentators believe is a radical programme of public policy reform. Under Michael Gove, education policy has become totemic to those arguing that Britain's classrooms are mired in academic mediocrity and behavioural failure. One policy response by the government has been to propose fast-tracking ex-armed services personnel into schools in England as teachers, especially in inner-city areas. This paper examines the educational and pedagogical merits of this proposal and the underlying beliefs that underpin it. Based on a critical evaluation of the literature, it argues that rather than representing a genuinely radical and innovative attempt to tackle educational underachievement, the Troops to Teachers initiative is deeply reactionary. One, based on discredited pedagogical philosophies which fail to address what the educational community believes a "good" education is, devalues teaching as a profession and ignores the socio-economic factors that primarily determine academic performance.

Urban middle school students of color are disproportionately subjected to exclusionary discipline, reflecting a discipline gap between White students and students of color. The discipline gap results in negative outcomes similar to those caused by the academic achievement gap. Although the discipline gap occurs at all levels of schooling, it becomes exacerbated at the middle school transition when all students are subject to exclusionary discipline more frequently than they were in elementary school. Some students experience repeated discipline events throughout the school year causing them to become persistently disciplined. Although persistently disciplined students are frequently subjected to discipline experiences, they are rarely asked their perceptions of these experiences. Drawing upon stage-environment fit theory, this qualitative study examines the experiences of 11 persistently disciplined urban middle school students of color to understand how they experience the middle school transition, how it adversely impacts them, and how it contributes to the rise in the discipline gap at this developmental stage. Findings suggest that peer "drama" plays a key role in derailing persistently disciplined students and attention to peer relationships will be required in successfully decreasing discipline events. Additionally, these students require rigorous content be made accessible to them by supportive teachers and through means that do not require the mastery of reading.

The historiographical tradition which developed within the history of education from the 1970s regarded religious organisations as distractions from the "real" task of developing state-funded universal compulsory education. Despite more positive evaluations of voluntary agencies within the history of social policy, since the 1980s, the schools affiliated to the national co-ordinating religious societies are still regarded as potential agents of social control, inadequate in numerical terms, with poor standards, dull curricula and brutal discipline. This article seeks to redress the balance of this historiography by means of a case-study of part of the London hinterland. It will show how voluntary schools attached to national and international "modern" co-ordinating bodies might provide sufficient school places, a curriculum which was structured, with results evaluated positively by inspectors, and could operate systems of rewards rather than corporal punishment. Comparisons with the period after school boards were founded indicates that attendance rates stayed about the same, that the curriculum initially narrowed in one area, and that corporal punishment increased. While these factors were due partly to population increase, the evidence nevertheless demonstrates how voluntary schools could provide adequately, even well, for local populations, and that rate-aided school provision might have negative consequences. (Contains 115 footnotes.)

This article explores the tension between social control and democratic participation in the first American peace education curriculum, "A Course in Citizenship" (1914). Previously, this "Course" has been read as a case study of progressive era peace education, during which the call to teach democratically increased in volume. Building on this critical history, the "Course" can also offer historical perspective on the high value of discipline and obedience to law inscribed in some teachers' views of citizenship education. Read alongside archival transcripts from the American peace movement before World War I, the warrants for predicting future peace in the "Course in Citizenship" suggest that peace education requires innovative methods of constituting classroom authority on the basis of representation.

This article provides a brief snapshot of a girls school in Northern India called Prerna. Girls in India are unwanted, unequal and unsafe. Every year a million of them are killed in the womb. One third of the world's child brides (read "girl slaves") are in India. They live their lives in a grim, complex context where, gender, poverty and caste intersect. They face domestic violence and sexual abuse regularly. Many of them are forced into child labour at home and outside. Succeeding in this grim context, Prerna demonstrates how girls need not drop out because they are girls. Schools can indeed defeat the social obstacles to girls' education if it is so committed and engages actively to counter the gender-based factors that keep girls out of school in order to "keep in" girls who are in danger of being "pulled" or "pushed" out. The uniqueness of the Prerna programme is that it puts an empowerment course with a strong focus on the critical study of institutionalised gender power relations in society, in the official curriculum and time table. It does not treat empowerment work as an extra curricular or after-school activity. Most importantly it demonstrates that classrooms can be transformed into "radical spaces of possibility" (bell hooks) when the curriculum is centred on students' lives and its challenges.

While associations with deviant peers are well understood to impact individual development, less is understood about the relationship between friendship quality and delinquency. Two criminological theories--social control theory and self-control theory--are able to offer an explanation for the latter relationship. Social control and self-control theories both premise that delinquents will have largely fractured, weak, and "cold and brittle" friendships. This study investigates how variations in perceptions of friendship quality are related to the delinquency, maternal attachment, school attachment, and self-control levels of both a participant and his/her close friend. To explore these relationships, we use a diverse (14% black; 18% Hispanic; 9% Asian) sample of 2,154 emerging adults within 1,077 friendship pairs (66% female). In each dyad, both members perceived the friendship's quality and reported personal markers of delinquency, social bonds, and self-control. Several series of multilevel models are estimated that regress each participant's friendship quality perception onto the participant's and their friend's delinquency, attachments, self-control, and demographic characteristics. Results show that delinquents have as intense, or more intense, friendships as non-delinquents. However, low levels of both actor and partner attachments and self-control are independently related to low friendship quality, and this is especially true for self-control. Supplemental analyses demonstrate that the effect of self-control on friendship quality may be reduced when individuals in dyads are delinquent. In conclusion, studies that address friendship quality without including characteristics of multiple members of the friendship are only capturing part of one's estimate of friendship quality. (Contains 4 footnotes, 4 tables, and 2 figures.)

This article examines the focus on teacher policies and practices by a range of global actors and explores their meaning for the governance of teachers. Through a historical and contemporary reading, I argue that an important shift in the locus of power to govern has taken place. I show how the mechanisms of global governance of teachers are being transformed from "education as (national) development" and "norm setting" to "learning as (individual) development" and "competitive comparison." Yet despite tendencies toward a convergence of agendas, there are important differences between them. I conclude by examining the limits and possibilities of governing at a (global) distance, as well as the contradictions inherent in neoliberal framings of teacher policies to realize the good teacher. (Contains 3 footnotes.)

This study explores the impact of school-based victimization on the adolescent's social bond. Previous research has provided empirical support for Hirschi's social control theory that the strength of the adolescent's social bond is associated with the probability that he or she will engage in criminal offending. However, research identifying what factors influence the strength of the adolescent's social bond is limited. In addition, research has established that school-based victimization is associated with numerous negative outcomes, including diminished educational outcomes and criminal offending. Therefore, it is plausible that school-based victimization undermines the adolescent's social bonds to school. Using a sample of 10th-grade students from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, HLM models were developed to explore the relationship between school-based victimization and the adolescent's social bond to school. The results suggest that school-based victimization has a negative association with three elements of the adolescent's social bond to school: attachment, commitment, and belief. This study demonstrates the need for further research to identify the determinants of the strength of the adolescent's social bond to school. (Contains 3 tables and 2 notes.)

It's a challenge for schools in every country: How to provide the right kind of discipline and create a climate that nurtures learning. This challenge may look different in different countries. A school's disciplinary climate not only is the product of educators' beliefs and actions, students' beliefs and actions, and the interaction of these, but also is shaped by the legal and social context of the country. Yet when they became involved in researching questions of school discipline and the moral authority of teachers, the authors were surprised at the dearth of research comparing various countries' ideas about discipline and typical responses to challenging behaviors. They recently brought together an international group of 18 social scientists to study the relationship between school discipline and student achievement. Their study examined assessment and survey data from 49 countries that participated in the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS), with in-depth case studies of Canada, Chile, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. The authors compared these countries in terms of how extensive their schools' discipline challenges are, the national context and organizational structure of their schools, and the way discipline is typically administered in schools. The study also examined the relationship between the level of school discipline problems and the level of student achievement--and found a definite correlation between the two. In this article, the authors explore some of what these case studies reveal and reflect on lessons for U.S. educators. (Contains 1 endnote.)

How the neighborhood environment relates to intimate partner violence against women has been studied using theories applied originally to general violence. Extending social disorganization and collective efficacy theories, they apply a traditional measure informal social control that does not reflect behaviors specific to partner violence. We conducted a concept mapping study in two New York City neighborhoods, to understand what behaviors neighborhood residents might enact to prevent partner violence and how feasible and effective residents believed them to be. Results revealed a range of "preventive intervention behaviors." Cluster analysis revealed that these behaviors grouped into four general areas, corresponding to the victim, perpetrator, community, and formal systems. Preventive intervention behaviors rated by participants as most feasible focused on the victim, whereas those rated most effective involved formal systems. Results have theoretical and practical implications for future research and programs to engage neighbors and neighborhoods in intimate partner violence prevention. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

This essay seeks to explore the representation of Asia in Jose Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi's "El Periquillo Sarniento" (1816), which is often considered the first novel produced in Latin America. Although many scholars have examined the picaresque element as well as the nationalist aspect of the novel, the Asian presence in Fernandez de Lizardi's narrative has not received the attention that it deserves. My analysis focuses on the main character's voyage to the Philippines and the fictional Pacific island of Saucheofu, two places through which the author envisions an alternative model of society for colonial Mexico. The Philippines represents an ideal space in two ways: first, the protagonist begins the process of becoming an upright individual in Manila; and second, the discourse of antislavery can be articulated in an Asian country while it is prohibited in Mexico. Furthermore, Saucheofu symbolizes the idea of "utopia" to some extent, because of its exemplary system of productivity and the highly controlled mechanism of law and punishment. By studying the importance of these countries in the Far East, I propose a reading of "El Periquillo Sarniento" as the first transpacific novel in Latin American literature. (Contains 7 notes.)

Although the relationship between neighborhood characteristics and collective efficacy is well established in urban populations with community samples, it is unclear if this relationship holds in rural areas. The current study fills this gap by assessing the perceptions of adolescents from nonurban areas to examine the relationships between neighborhood characteristics and collective efficacy in areas with lower population density. Our sample comprised 402 late adolescents attending a Midwestern university (average age 19.1 years). Consistent with previous studies using urban neighborhoods, we found that higher concentrated disadvantage was related to lower levels of social cohesion, regardless of population density. However, neither residential stability nor concentrated immigration was predictive of social cohesion. None of the neighborhood characteristics significantly predicted social control, after controlling for population density. (Contains 1 table.)

Recent decades have seen many studies dealing with the effects of teacher expectations. While most have focused on students' cognitive outcomes, we relate teacher expectations to student deviancy. We expect low expectations to be associated with students' feelings of futility and less teacher support, which, according to respectively strain theory and social control theory, give rise to misconduct. Multilevel analyses of data (2004-2005) from 11,844 students and 2104 teachers in 84 Flemish secondary schools suggest that, in schools where teacher expectations are low, students report less perceived teacher support, which is associated with higher rates of self-reported school misconduct. (Contains 3 tables.)

This study uses geospatial and regression analyses to examine the relationships among social disorganization, collective efficacy, social control, residence restrictions, spatial autocorrelation, and the neighborhood distribution of registered sex offenders (RSOs) in Chicago. RSOs were concentrated in neighborhoods that had higher levels of social disorganization and lower levels of collective efficacy, offered greater anonymity, and were near other neighborhoods with high concentrations of RSOs. Furthermore, social control mechanisms mediated some of the effects of structural disorganization. The neighborhoods where RSOs were likely to live did not exhibit characteristics that would support the informal social control of such offenders, as RSO legislation assumes. (Contains 13 notes, 1 figure, and 3 tables.)