Nicola Rollock is a researcher at the Institute of Education, University of London. Her research interests include race equality and wider issues around social justice, education and the criminal justice system. �David Gillborn is Professor of Critical Race Studies in Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. Recently described as �one of Britain�s leading race theorists�, David has twice been recipient of the UK�s most prestigious education research award, the Society for Educational Studies (SES) prize for outstanding education book of the year; for his books � Racism and Education: coincidence or conspiracy?� and �Rationing Education� (co-authored… with Deborah Youdell).Stephen J Ball is Karl Mannheim Professor of the Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. His work is in �policy sociology� and he has conducted a series of ESRC funded studies which focus on issues of social class and policy.Carol Vincent is a Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London. She has written and published extensively on the themes of social class and parents� interactions with the education system, parenting, especially mothering, the operation of markets in education, and education policy.
Gloria Ladson-Billings was a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She worked for a decade as a teacher and administrator in the Philadelphia Public Schools. She is the author of The Dreamkeepers (Jossey-Bass, 1997).
A Congregational minister engaged in the task of establishing a spiritual code in a new country, Taylor explored the discursive possibilities of the metaphysical tradition of George Herbert, John Donne, and Richard Crashaw. His Protestant religious convictions made his vocation of teacher and minister difficult in Restoration England. When Taylor refused to sign the 1662 Act of Uniformity, he was prevented from teaching school, and finally, in 1668, he set sail for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1671 Taylor graduated from Harvard College, and by 1673 he possessed his own parsonage and congregation in Westfield, Massachusetts. A year later he married Elizabeth Fitch, with whom he would… have eight children. Their union lasted until her death. In 1692 Taylor married a second time; he and his second wife, Ruth Wyllys, would produce another six children. As a theologian, Taylor---like Milton and his Puritan forebears---needed to explain "God's ways to men," and both his poetry and his elaborate sermons endeavored to do so. Taylor's poetic meditations frequently dealt with divine love, while his sermons sought to teach the necessary doctrine that resulted from that love. But Taylor also tried to employ history, both cultural and personal, as an instructive device. In the early eighteenth century, Taylor inscribed an epic poem of over 20,000 lines that would later be published as A Metrical History of Christianity. Because Taylor preferred to be perceived as a minister, rather than as a writer, he went largely unpublished during his lifetime. But his use of metaphor, history, and language have established his reputation as an important American writer. His creative use of language has led contemporary critics to find his work particularly compelling.