A volume in Education Policy in Practice: Critical Cultural StudiesSeries Editors Bradley A. U. Levinson, and Margaret Sutton, Indiana University
This book explores the diversity of American roles in education for democracy cross-culturally, both within the United
States and around the world. Cross-cultural engagement in education for democracy inevitably bears the impressions of each
culture involved and the dynamics among them. Even high-priority, well-funded U.S. government programs are neither
monolithic nor deterministic in their own right, but are rather reshaped, adapted to their contexts, and appropriated by their
partners. These partners are sometimes called "recipients", a problematic label that gives the misleading impression that
partners are relatively passive in the overall process.
The authors pay close attention to the cultures, contexts, structures, people, and processes involved in education for democracy.
Woven throughout this volume's qualitative studies are the notions that contacts between powers and cultures are complex
and situated, that agency matters, and that local meanings play a critical role in the dynamic exchange of peoples and
ideas. The authors span an array of fields that concern themselves with understanding languages, cultures, institutions, and
the broad horizon of the past that shapes the present: history, anthropology, literacy studies, policy analysis, political science,
and journalism.
This collection provides a rich sampling of the diverse contexts and ways in which American ideas, practices, and policies of
education for democracy are spread, encountered, appropriated, rejected, or embraced around the world. This volume introduces concepts, identifies processes, notes
obstacles and challenges, and reveals common themes that can help us to understand American influence on education for democracy more clearly, wherever it occurs.

Preface, Bradley A.U. Levinson; Introduction: Education Policy, National Interests, and Advancing Democracy, Doyle Stevick and Bradley A. U. Levinson; Beyond Nationalism: The Founding Fathers and Educational Universalism in the New Republic, Benjamin Justice; Becoming American in Time?: The Educational Implications of Binary Discourse on Immigration, Patricia Buck with Rachel Silver; Higher Education and Civic Engagement in the United States: Budgetary, Disciplinary, and Spatial Borders, Kathleen Staudt; Discourse Versus Practice in Civic Education for Development: The Case of USAID Assistance to Palestine, Ayman M. Alsayed; Foreign Influence and Economic Insecurity in International Partnerships for Civic Education: The Case of Estonia, Doyle Stevick; Civic Education Reform for Democracy: U.S. Models in Mexico and Indonesia, Bradley A. U. Levinson and Margaret Sutton; Developing Citizenship Education Curriculum Cross-Culturally: A Democratic Approach With South African and Kenyan Educators, Patricia K. Kubow; Putting Equity Into Action: A Case Study of Educators' Professional Development in Twenty-First Century Kazakhstan, David Landis and Sapargul Mirseitova; From Monsoons to Katrina: The Civic Implications of Cosmopolitanism, Payal P. Shah; Building Towards Democracy in Apartheid South Africa: A Pioneering Partnership for Training Black School Leaders, 1989-95, Ronald R. Atkinson and Judy L. Wyatt; Index; About the Authors.