It is commonly understood that policy makers make curriculum policy and teachers implement it. Some teachers, however, have been in on the ground floor of curriculum policy development. Driven by events in their life histories and teaching contexts, these teachers develop and teach original course material in their own classrooms. Over time they begin to work collaboratively on further course development, secure organizational support to ensure adequate resources and legitimacy to disseminate these new curricular forms, lobby for course acceptance by educational jurisdictions, and help establish course infrastructure such as teacher professional learning opportunities and textbooks. In other words, in some cases, teachers may participate actively in every stage of policy development and practice. This article discusses the phenomenon of teacher‐driven curriculum innovation as a process of individual, social, and political evolution. It describes three cases of secondary‐level courses developed by teachers in Ontario, Canada, and formalized in district or provincial policy. In doing so, the article extends the notion of teacher agency from its established arenas of classrooms and schools and into the realm of policy making.

In this article, a continuum of resistance and receptivity constitute s a framework for understanding a cosmopolitan orientation “on the ground.” Such a continuum is based on an understanding of the effects of globalization, when it comes to individual people, as both containing a potential for an active interest in other ways of life, and a resistance toward others’ values and ways of living triggered by a feeling of being forced into situations without one’s own voluntarily choice. The notion of continuum implies that each individual occupies a different position depending on the situation and context, and that these positions can shift. In the conceptual use of cosmopolitanism in empirical studies, there is need for more developed and specified terms to be used as analytical tools for discerning if and when something may be considered as a possible cosmopolitan orientation. For this purpose, the four capacities for self‐reflexivity, hospitality, intercultural dialogue and transactions of perspectives, are developed out of Delanty’s understanding of critical cosmopolitanism. To be able to distinguish between institutionalized routine conversations and conversations that seem to engage the students in a more active cosmopolitan meaning making, the continuum of efferent and aesthetic‐reflective experiences, taken from Rosenblatt’s studies of reading, has been suggested. A preliminary analysis of data from an empirical research study focused on classroom conversations, and contextualized by an analysis of a curriculum concerning fundamental values, indicates that it is possible to discern different discursive actions of self‐reflexivity and hospitality in classroom conversations, as well as a potential for intercultural dialogue.

This discussion examines some of the major issues and attributes of culturally responsive teaching. It begins with explaining my views of culturally responsive teaching and how I incorporate cultural responsiveness in my writing to teach readers what it means. These general conceptual frameworks are followed by a discussion of some specific actions essential to its implementation. They are restructuring teacher attitudes and beliefs about cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity; resisting resistance to cultural diversity in teacher education and classroom instruction; centering culture and difference in the teaching process; and establishing pedagogical connections between culturally responsive teaching and subjects and skills routinely taught in schools. Excerpts from samples of my own and others’ scholarship are woven throughout to exemplify general patterns, themes, and principles of culturally responsive teaching.

Pedagogy within mathematics classrooms is of keen interest in any educational discussion. On a wider scale, pedagogical practice that produces desirable outcomes is considered a major instrument for achieving national objectives. Circumstance and setting may vary, but the question relating to how mathematics teachers construct their practice is as relevant in the contemporary environment as it has been in the past. That question lies at the heart of this review. The review will first reflect briefly on past understandings of pedagogy within mathematics education. It will then discuss more recent work focused of pedagogy and pedagogical change that draws on poststructuralist thinking. In keeping with a poststructuralist sensibility, within these discussions the notion of teachers’ identity as key to pedagogical practice will be a central organizing principle.

To date, literacy educators receive little instruction and, indeed, little research exists on facilitating critical discussions about sexuality in classrooms. Addressing these issues with students, however, grows increasingly urgent, particularly in light of critical media literacy efforts and progressive literacy pedagogies that incorporate students’ identities and life experiences into the classroom. Given the pervasive nature of sexuality in popular culture and in adolescent lives, such efforts are far less likely to be effective if educators ignore or repress this significant area of student experience. Addressing sexuality, however, is important not only because the current trend to ignore it is impeding current critical literacy efforts, but also because sexuality is itself an important site for students’ critical literacy development. In this article, I draw from my 9‐month ethnographic study of a community‐based educational program to offer an initial look at what classroom languages and practices for critical discussions of sexuality might look like. At the same time, I illustrate how these critical examinations of sexuality were frequently undermined by competing discourses of self‐esteem. Ultimately, I identify implications for educators in public school classrooms, taking into account their differing constraints.

A significant body of research articulates concerns about the current emphasis on high‐stakes testing as the primary lever of education reform in the United States. However, relatively little research has focused on how children make sense of the assessment policies in which they are centrally located. In this article, we share analyses of interview data from 33 third graders in an urban elementary school collected as part of a larger qualitative study of children’s experiences in literacy in high‐poverty classroom. Our analysis of assessment‐focused interviews focused on two research questions related to children’s perspectives on high‐stakes testing: What patterns arise in children’s talk about high‐stakes testing? What does children’s talk about high‐stakes testing reveal about their perceptions of the role of testing in their school experiences and how they are positioned within the system of accountability they encounter in school? Drawing on tools associated with inductive approaches to learning from qualitative data as well as critical discourse analysis, we discuss three issues that arose in children’s responses: language related to the adults invested in their achievement; their sense of the stakes involved in testing; and links between their feelings about test taking, perceptions of scores, and assumptions of competence. We argue that children’s perspectives on their experiences with high‐stakes testing provide crucial insights into how children construct relationships to schooling, relationships that have consequences for their continued engagement in school.