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This chapter contributes to a corpus of legal–anthropological studies concerning the role of cultural experts in legal institutions. It begins by identifying the reasons behind the fragile collaboration between Italian courts and cultural experts and outlining some of the consequences of this relationship. It then presents a collection of cases involving cultural experts including a focus on the L’Aquila trial recounted from first-hand experience by Antonello Ciccozzi, the anthropologist who acted as expert consultant. The conclusions attempt to summarize the “state of the art” of cultural expertise in Italian courts today and call for greater collaboration between law and anthropology as a means of guaranteeing a fair trial.

The introduction presents the challenges of teaching history and social studies within a society that questions why we should learn about the past. It summarizes federal legislation and funding that have both expanded and limited history education at various times. It suggests that historical interpretation and performance are ways to engage students in their ability to make meaning of the past and engage in inquiry, at a time when student access to historical information and media is often overwhelming. The introduction concludes with a summary of all chapters as they advance a process for historical inquiry through storytelling and interpretation.

Answering the call for research that seeks to bridge theory and practice for the advancement of social justice, this chapter presents a creative collaboration between a social equity scholar and an active serviceman in the Canadian Army. Within a theoretical framework of leadership for social justice, we will draw on the literature as it specifically relates to women leaders and the potential of a learning leadership to bring about a paradigmatic shift in power and politics. Particularly attentive to the challenges for women leaders in male-dominated fields, this chapter will present Golda Meir as an exemplar.

The most recent development in the accountability movement occurred in January 2002 when the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was signed into law. Surprisingly little work has illuminated how teachers experience standards-based accountability policy. Using survey data and interviews, this chapter explores the impact of NCLB requirements, namely adequate yearly progress and needs improvement status, on teacher perceptions of working conditions, especially the use of time and empowerment. I show how the policy has led to restructuring of classroom time and increases in collaboration and yet, simultaneously, a decrease in teachers’ perceptions of empowerment.

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate and discuss an exploratory research about an educational innovation project to be introduced in a higher education institution. The background of the initiative belongs to the rolling upgrades of information and communication technology infrastructures and services on modern university campuses. The chapter discusses the benefits of the decoupling Classroom Replay system, i.e., a classroom technology that records lectures and makes them available on dedicated online channels as video files or audio podcast. The chapter argues that learners will benefit from the service if a social tagging system is offered, such that users can quickly browse the files and create their own learning path through the recorded material.

Narrative inquiry and life history are privileged methods for studying people's lives, experiences, and identity construction. In this article, I argue that critical life history inquiry is especially suitable for studies of those, who have actively involved in progressive social and cultural movements and have developed an identity as activist educators.

Through the use of narrative inquiry, this self-study focuses on my teacher education practices. A flashback in time probes the influence of four simultaneous accountability reviews – a national accreditation review, a regional accreditation review, a university system review, and local campus review – on my personal experiences and identity within academia. The recollection provides a public view of private practice, explores the hidden curriculum of accountability, reveals cover stories personally and collectively lived, and illuminates how my knowledge of accountability became heightened. Through drawing on multiple forms of evidence, I reconstruct a series of changes I lived that had to do with human subjects’ reviews, course syllabi requirements, student assignments, grading procedures, and personal productivity. The self-inquiry lays bare individual and institutional compromises that were made to achieve acceptable measures of success as determined by external agencies. Reflections on what occurred in the aftermath of the reviews are also included. Most of all, hard lessons learned amid multiple accountability agendas are brought forward for discussion and analysis, not only by me, but by the national and international teacher education communities whose memberships face similar demands for performativity, the European equivalent of accountability. The accumulation of self-studies such as mine will help to show the incipit nature of the accountability phenomenon and its pernicious impact on teacher educator's work and personal images of teaching. Research such as this will demonstrate how desperately productive change is needed in the fields of teaching and teacher education.