"Hyacinth Evans' detailed case study of a Jamaican high school, formerly known as a junior secondary high school, breaks new ground. Her research demonstrates the continuing education problem encountered by students and teachers in a two-tiered educational system. The case study is an excellent example of the legacy of colonialism still evident in schooling processes in many of the former British colonies in the south (for example, countries in the Caribbean, Africa and India). Evans provides several solutions for the transformation of schools as places for learning and character development." -- Provided by publisher.

Migration and refugee settlement policies have brought significant demographic changes to some regional centres over the past two decades and this book focuses on one such centre, a mid-size town in New South Wales. Historically, social relations in rural settlements have been enacted primarily within a "white/black" (Anglo/Indigenous) binary but in recent years this town has become home to several hundred refugees from Africa, South-East Asia and the Middle East. Using interview, observational and documentary data, the book examines how multiculturalism is understood, valued and lived in the town's two public high schools. Schools are key sites for everyday interactions between people from diverse ethnic, cultural, language and religious backgrounds. Drawing on critical theories of discourse, space and race, the book examines a host of anxieties in the town and its schools about recent demographic changes revealing how notions of rurality, steeped in colonial narratives about European settlement, productivity and racial superiority, continue to shape how “difference” is perceived and experienced in regional communities.

A black widow spider kills beauty every time it eats. But in itself, it’s beautiful. People who say that high school is the best time to live are too wrapped up in themselves to realize they are not the center of the world and too stupid to admit that they will not live forever! Being a teenager is tough. Having to live in a world as a seventeen-year-old girl is even harder. Beth Davis and Marjorie Williams were best friends who began high school as teenagers, but only one would survive to be a woman. Beth was a Christian; Marjorie was not. When Beth succumbed to spinal meningitis, leaving behind a full and promising life. Marjorie began to learn that being popular and physically beautiful were all illusions that pass in time and end in death. Growing up in the late 1970s was a life of polyester dresses, bell bottoms, and fake IDs. Kids experimented with marijuana, sex, and cocaine, which seemed to wait outside like the door prize on their eighteenth birthday. Disco was not a myth, and Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana” was a hit. Seeing young women at clubs in nice dresses and clean-cut boys with styled hair was a pleasant change from the hippie generation. As Neil Sedaka would later write, “They had groove, they had feeling!” The perfect cloister inside the high school bubble shielded an aspiring generation from most of the heartaches of reality. Then death struck down Beth without warning, and youth was shattered, leaving an empty shell. Just like the spider devours the butterfly leaving behind only beautiful wings, so does spinal meningitis leave a fallen little girl. As life goes on in nature, so do goodness and love survive the human heart. Marjorie learned she needed Jesus.

Recent worldwide education policy has reinvented teachers as agents of change and professional developers of the school curriculum. Academic literature has analyzed changes in how teacher professionalism is conceived in policy and in practice but Teacher Agency provides a fresh perspective on this issue, drawing upon an ecological theory of agency. Using this model for understanding agency, Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta and Sarah Robinson explore empirical findings from the 'Teacher Agency and Curriculum Change' project, funded by the UK-based Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Drawing together this research with the authors' international experiences and perspectives, Teacher Agency addresses theoretical and practical issues of international significance. The authors illustrate how teacher agency should be understood not only in terms of individual capacity of teachers, but also in respect of the cultures and structures of schooling.

Appendix F: Generic Parent Permission Form -- Appendix G: Mapping the Driving and Restraining Forces (MDRF) -- Appendix H: Focus Group, Fishbowl Story Group, and Video Story Focus Group Guidelines: Roles, Skills, Participation, and Agreements -- Appendix I: PIP and AI Action Worksheet -- Appendix J: Outline for Writing Action Research Paper Using the Participatory Inquiry Process (PIP) -- Appendix K: Write Way Support Materials -- Appendix L: High School to Community College -- Bibliography -- Index

Lady Killer Richard Namey, 26, drug abuser and woman-beater, had already threatened a previous girlfriend with a gun, but she'd gotten away. Sarah Rodriquez, 21, wasn't so lucky. On April 16, 2002, in Orange County, California, she and her true love, Matt Corbett, 20, were forced off the road by Namey, who shot them both at point-blank range with a .357. Sarah was killed. Corbett was paralyzed for life. Real Hero After a 42-mile chase, Namey was finally cornered in a drainage tunnel by a police dog. He pleaded manslaughter, claiming he'd really meant to kill himself in front of Sarah. No deal. The man he faced was not your average deputy district attorney: Dennis Conway had pulled himself out of a wayward life torn by seemingly insurmountable tragedy and into law school. He knew all about guys like Namey--and exactly where to find the holes in his story. The verdict: first-degree murder, life sentence. Score one for the good guys. Includes 16 pages of shocking photos.