This article presents an overview and discussion of qualitative research in education by analyzing the roles of researchers, the history of the field, its use in policymaking, and its future influence on educational reform. The article begins by describing the unique position that qualitative educational researchers have in higher education, as they often attempt to serve both academic and policymaking audiences. The article then moves to discuss the ascent of qualitative methods in the social sciences and educational research. The article concludes by attempting to work through a number of pressing concerns that qualitative researchers may face in upcoming decades; specifically, the final section presents possible strategies to improve the relevance and impact of qualitative researchers' work on reframing educational policy at local, state, and federal levels to meet the demands of equality and social justice.

was about Augustine’s philosophy of love, and Augustine’s conceptions of caritas and cupiditas have influenced most of Arendt’s thoughts on natality, worldliness, initium, immortality, evil, etc. Many studies have tried to unfold the hidden philosophical foundations that Augustine’s ideas laid in Arendt’s mind, or to display the buried connections between Arendt’s political theories and Augustine’s politics of neighbourhood or his philosophy of will and freedom.Whether intentionally or not, such studies place philosophy as an authority over or basis for political thinking, and it would have been good if Buckler had provided more evaluation of the Augustinian basis to Arendt’s thinking and questioned how strong the influence actually is.

This paper discusses the work of Noam Chomsky in the context of democracy, the media, and education. Through the analysis of selected works, a critical perspective emerges. This view demands that educators at all levels understand and confront the often deleterious effects the media can have on students' social and political views and further how the media can undermine democratic action in schools and society.The recent cut-backs in higher education seen in much of the world cannot simply be traced to economic problems. Rather, they reflect fundamental choices about the nature of the society in which we will live. If it is to be designed for the wealthy and privileged, mostly engaged in management and finance while production is transferred abroad and most of the population is left to fend somehow for themselves at the fringes of decent and creative life, then these are good choices. If we have different aspirations for the world of our children and grandchildren, the choices are shameful and ruinous. (Chomsky 2009, para. 1)

This paper discusses the work of Slavoj Zizek and links several of his ideas to educational contexts. After giving a brief background on his unique intellectual perspective, I pull three themes (control, torture, and politics) from his body of work, and I consider their educational connections and implications. I conclude by speculating on the future use of Zizek's work to educational philosophy and educational studies.

This article takes its inspiration and method from Slavoj Zizek's work that reads and integrates social theory with popular culture through the medium of film. I use the film The Graduate (Nichols 1967) as a prism to illuminate the concept of reification as a fundamental, defining feature of modern societies and their educational systems. The main character of the film, Benjamin Braddock (Ben), has just graduated from an elite college, but he seems to have learned nothing about the world or his place in it. Ben senses that he missed something in his education and he has tremendous anxiety about reentering the anodyne land of his upbringing in suburban southern California. The film details Ben's varied attempts to reject the reification of this world and its vapid, empty, and meaningless relationships for something more significant and authentic. Of course, Ben's attempts to reject reification are fraught with contradictions and his attempts to break free from this reified existence prove to be futile. Nonetheless, his anxiety and his distaste for plunging into his prescripted future are instructive in better understanding this forgotten and beleaguered concept of reification. For progressively minded education scholars, the reinvigoration of reification as a term of analysis can provide a needed critical lens to question the misleading, misguided, and mistaken educational policies that trap so many graduates (from primary school, high school, college, and graduate school) into a world of reified social, economic, and political processes.

This article analyzes the epistemological aims and justification of character education legislation passed by the North Carolina General Assembly. I take this specific state law as representative of the broader national trends in the character education movement. I primarily use the work of Richard Rorty as the theoretical lens for the analysis and critique. I conclude by commending aspects of the legislative effort, but I suggest that greater emphasis must be placed on strengthening students' ethics through democratic action inside and outside schools and not on a right-leaning, conservative, and didactic curriculum. Further, as social foundations educators, it is imperative to make strides in our classrooms to expose preservice teachers to the apparent and hidden contradictions of using character education as a tool of educational reform.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to continue the dialogue on the issues raised by my review. The rejoinder that my review provoked seems, to me at least, to illustrate the divide between Marx...