The notion of democracy occupies a privileged place in our society. Educators and policymakers are increasingly pursuing a variety of programs to promote democracy through civic education, service learning, and other pedagogies. The nature of their underlying beliefs, however, differs. This article underscores the political implications of education for democracy and suggests that the narrow and often ideologically conservative conception of citizenship embedded in many current efforts at teaching for democracy reflects not arbitrary choices but rather political choices with political consequences. Three conceptions of the "good" citizen are treated in this article: personally responsible, participatory, and justice oriented. They emerged from an analysis of both democratic theory and a 2-year study of educational programs aiming to promote democracy. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from two of the programs studied, it is argued that these conceptions embody significantly different beliefs regarding the capacities and commitments citizens need for democracy to flourish, and they carry significantly different implications for pedagogy, curriculum, evaluation, and educational policy. The authors conclude that politics and the interests of varied groups are often deeply embedded in the ways efforts to educate for democracy are conceptualized, implemented, and studied. (Contains 34 references and 3 tables.) (RT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.

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You can try and change things, but basically it will just make you feel bad for trying. They didn't even want to hear what I was saying. They don't care."-Justin, a high school senior, when asked about the semester he spent working to improve his community

studied 10 educational programs whose objective-to develop democratic citizens-is largely ignored by school reform policy. Schools can fulfill this mission, they discovered, through specific strategies that promote civic commitments, capacities, and connections. BY JOSEPH KAHNE AND JOEL WESTHEIMER W HICH OF THE following headlines never appeared in a daily newspaper? a. Capital City Students Show No Gain in Reading, Math-Governor Threatens Takeover b. Middletown Schools to Be Taken Over by State for Failure to Develop Democratic Citizens If you answered b, you not only answered correctly, your response also reflected an important challenge facing our democracy today. While we say that we value a democratic society, the very institutions expected to prepare democratic citizens-our schools-have moved far from this central mission. There is now frequent talk of "state takeovers" of schools that fail to raise test scores in math or reading, but it is unimaginable that any school would face such an action because it failed to prepare its graduates for democratic citizenship. The headlines we read are about test scores, basic skills, and the role schools play in preparing students for jobs in the Information Age. The vast bulk of school resources are

This article challenges vague and underconceptualized notions of teacher professional community prevalent in both the theoretical and policy-oriented reform literatures. The findings from a close examination of two schools'teacher professional communities suggest that current models obscure significant differences in beliefs and practices. Whereas one school's professional community emphasizes teachers' individual autonomy, rights, and responsibilities to colleagues, the other's is driven by a strong collective mission. A provisional model for examining teacher professional communities, which distinguishes between liberal and collective commitments, is presented.AhighschoolprincipalwhomIhaveknownformanyyearsrecentlyasked the teachers at his school what aspect of teaching they would most like to change. A surprising number of them, he told me, said that teaching is too isolating. "Why is the work in our classrooms so secluded?" one asked. "We see each other too seldom." "Teaching is a labor of love, certainly," another said, "but why can't we labor in some way connected to other adults?" In the period of renewed emphasis on educational reform that has characterized the last decade, many school reformers have posed these same questions. Indeed, teachers' professional relationships in schools have been the target of dozens of school reorganization efforts, such as smaller schools, cluster teaching, and site-based management (see also Barth