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Controversial issues characterize life in democratic societies, and they often arise unexpectedly in the classroom, without being planned for by the teacher. However, controversial issues are rarely addressed beyond a mandatory curriculum and are often avoided. The aim of this exploratory study is to investigate what teachers identify and address as unplanned controversial issues in the classroom and the content of such issues. Unplanned controversial issues identified fell into three categories (1) mainstream controversy, (2) teacher-initiated controversy, and (3) controversial pedagogy. The findings suggest that more attention needs to be paid, among other things, to the political dimension of education, teacher vulnerability, and who the person in teaching is.

Conceptualizing schools as learning organizations provides a potential avenue to meet the pressing challenges of school improvement in the USA. District and school leaders play an important role in creating and sustaining the conditions for a learning organization, yet little is known about how leadership responds to learning-resistant contexts in their mission to improve schools. This study aims to examine the relationship between the district and school leadership and schools as learning organizations. The focus is on the conceptualization of schools as learning organizations and the challenges involved in creating and sustaining conditions and processes in which to improve schools.

This paper uses semi-structured interviews with district and school leaders in the state of Georgia and data from completed dimensions of a learning organization questionnaire (DLOQ) study to analyze how district and school leaders conceptualize or make sense of schools as learning organizations and overcome challenges associated with creating and sustaining a learning organization in learning-resistant contexts.

The analysis find that participants perceive their school or district as a learning organization when the structure allows others to work together to learn and grow for the benefit of students.

This study is unique in that it adds to a growing number of studies that examine schools as learning organizations using the DLOQ and sheds light on the nature of learning-resistant contexts.

This paper aims to explore how one elementary school administrative team responded to their changing student populations to include Latin(x) within their black community. The responses included looping practices, relationship building with families and culturally relevant pedagogies. In particular, this paper considers how the three aspects of the change worked together toward the goal of providing its students with quality educational opportunities and enhancements.

The research presented here is part of a longitudinal (four-year) qualitative study where ethnographic approaches to data collection were adopted.

The four-year immersion in the values of culturally relevant pedagogy created a reciprocal growth in understanding among the teachers and the students of the black and Latin(x) populations, sustained the overarching ideas of deep family connections and contributed to asset-driven curriculum.

A national trend shows rapid changing demographics where Latin(x) families are moving into black neighborhoods and schools. This change in schools’ student populations finds educators facing new challenges in addressing the educational and cultural needs of two minoritized populations. This research adds to the existing scholarship by documenting how one school shifts their learning atmosphere to deeply engage students in culturally relevant pedagogies.

In this qualitative case study, we examine pre-service teachers’ understandings’ of history as narrative. This analysis specifically explores the kinds of new historical narratives pre-service teachers create as a result of purposeful secondary social studies methods instruction that juxtaposes traditional narratives (e.g. individual achievement and motivation) and alternative narratives (e.g. those attentive to empathy and race, class, and gender) in an effort to help future teachers understand the nature of critical historical inquiry. In examining the understandings and initial efforts of young secondary social studies teachers, the study concludes that while troubling the traditional narrative is viable and likely event, the challenges of developing critical historical inquiry are clear and persistent.

This paper aims to provide an evaluation of the new education system, based on Life Skills and Citizenship Education (LSCE), in Egyptian primary schools. This study analyzes how effective could be the implementation of LSCE in the process of constructing active democratic citizens, in particular, in the case of Egypt, highlighting problems facing the new education approach.

The study methodologies are twofold; the content analysis of the primary one new curriculum “Discover”, to assess the curriculum's strengths and weakness; and the questionnaire to the primary six students, to investigate the relationship among the twelve life skills.

Content analysis of the textbook shows that the learning process based on LSCE is appropriate for the construction of active citizens. The textbook provides Egyptian children with the necessary opportunities to learn and create, through creative participatory methods. The relationship between the social dimension and other dimensions has been proven by means of the chi-square test. The relationship between participation and the two approximately absent skills “resilience and empathy” has been clarified as both are strongly interrelated with participation. The results illuminate a strong relationship between participation and the remaining life skills.

More questionnaires are needed to assess the grade of life skills achievement among students in grade one and two, as it is regarded one of the limitations of the present study, owing to the complicated procedures and the limited time.

The research suggests the formulation of wider project-based activities to be included in the textbooks of all the primary grades. In this regard, real contribution with NGOs and local governments shall be developed to facilitate the involvement of children in actual projects, in accordance with their ages, and to encourage students to participate, as they notice the efficient results of their contribution.

The research stresses on the importance of enhancing participation, as it is proven through the chi-square test that it is strongly related to other skills.

The scarcity of analytical studies to evaluate the effectiveness of citizenship education programs on children, after the application of the new Egyptian education system.

Women’s empowerment is a multidimensional concept that encompasses different aspects such as access to education, freedom to make vital decisions, labor market access, wages, and political participation, among others. In this research, the authors construct a multidimensional index of women’s empowerment that takes into account individual resources and achievements and analyze its evolution across countries using data from the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations for 17 gender indicators across 96 countries over the period 1995–2015. By means of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the authors identify three dimensions of women’s empowerment: reproductive health, economic participation, and basic education. In addition, the authors use cluster techniques to classify countries into four groups with similar behavior patterns in the different domains of women’s empowerment: a group of countries with high levels in the domains of reproductive health and basic education but with low levels in economic participation; a group of countries with high levels in the domains of reproductive health and economic participation that should pay attention to education; a group of countries with medium levels across the three dimensions of women’s empowerment, especially in reproductive health and economic participation; and a group of countries with low levels in all the dimensions of women’s empowerment, especially in reproductive health and basic education. The comparison of these different patterns serves to highlight the aspects in which improvements have been made or, on the contrary, to highlight the obstacles that are hindering the improvement of gender equality. Finally, the results suggest that advancements in women’s empowerment improve the countries’ level of development.