Developing Transnational Literacies

The development of autonomy in children is a central concern of liberal philosophers of education. We endorse the liberal intuition that autonomy matters and that it is an appropriate aim of education. However, we divert from autonomy liberals, who defend

The purpose of this article is to revisit Brown as a paradigmatic understanding of social justice and its barriers, by reconsidering Brown in light of the three moral pillars of democracy identified by Cornel West (2004). West maintains that authentic dee

In the sociology of childhood and youth, children have been conceptualized as passive subjects on hold, still in the process of becoming-rather than in an effective state of being. In effect, children have been conceptualized as the subjects rather than t

In 1997 the government of Hong Kong reformed its policy on the language medium for teaching at the secondary-school level and removed schools' right to choose their own medium. Among the 404 public and "aided" secondary schools in Hong Kong, the governmen

This article describes my experiences teaching a course on Transmedia Entertainment and Storytelling at the University of Southern California, a course which sought to bridge across multiple media and methodologies, to integrate the perspectives of indust

This paper examines the contribution of human rights education (HRE) to conflict prevention and to the promotion of security. It outlines the difficulties in evaluating the long-term impact of HRE, but then proposes five benefits of a rights-based approac

There is confusion and misunderstanding about the concepts of knowledge translation, knowledge transfer, knowledge exchange, research utilization, implementation, diffusion, and dissemination. We review the terms and definitions used to describe the conce

This article describes the culture of some English departments and the value system often attached to various forms of media in them. Because English studies so often values the letter, texts, and the consumption of these, it's been caught in its own hier

Beatrice Namuzibira's class of 90 pupils is not even considered a large one, compared to classes in other schools. Universal primary education has filled classrooms beyond capacity across Uganda, putting a strain on teachers.

The purpose of this article is to examine the authors' experiences while trying to enter and engage local communities in bottom-up literacies through participatory action research (PAR) toward the community's own collective self-development. In trying to enter five different communities, I have found several challenges and roadblocks such as mistrust of 'university people': legacy of the conventional outside-in and top-down research procedures for working in communities; power struggles with community 'gatekeepers', including 'building keepers'; and bureaucratized project-driven community work. I consider that under the current neoliberal educational policies that are plaguing the world, for example, No Child Left Behind in the USA, self-development projects promoted through PAR can be viable ways to defy these policies and their fatalist thinking. School children's parents and their communities are nowadays in a better position than teachers to fight for reclaiming local control of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

"In universities, the need for education associated with sustainability is widely accepted and it is increasingly being introduced. However, the associated concepts and terms are contested-education for sustainable development and education for sustainability represent increasing levels of change required in curricula, while achieving sustainable education will require even greater change. A transformative pedagogy underlies and contributes to the extent of the change, as more argue for a range of analytical and context-related skills to be developed in students."

Critical multiculturalism and social justice have emerged in educational contexts as primarily pedagogical concerns, confined to the processes of teaching and learning. This article raises the question about the application of these principles to the research process. Through a critical self-reflection on researcher roles and practices, this article highlights four emergent characteristics of the multicultural/social justice researcher: the commitment to a common good; the re-definition of the researcher-researched relationship; the interrogation of the traditional roles, norms and power dynamics of academic research and researchers; and the merging of the tripartite distinctions of teaching, research and service in the role of the professor. These serve as a starting point for dialogue on the re-conceptualization of the role of the multicultural/social justice researcher.