Volume 1, Issue 1 - 2018
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A photograph posted on Facebook by Nikos Giannopoulos, the Rhode Island 2016 Teacher of the Year, went viral on the Internet because he engaged in a very provocative pose, complete with black lace fan, while standing in the Oval Office of the White House with President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. This paper, using the photograph and accompanying Facebook post as text, uses queer theorizing to explore how teachers may be intentionally provocative and subversive. The central question—Can you be queer in the age of Trump?—asks how one may engage in teaching that moves between and beyond traditional and expected pedagogical methods. Deep introspection and reflection on one’s teaching is encouraged.
This paper proceeds on the basis of a subjectively established premise: As an institutionalized system and culture grounded in neoliberal ideology, American education (K–12 and up) functions as a force of objectification (i.e., dehumanization) specific to people (i.e., students, teachers, even administrators) and curriculum. Therefore, a fundamental question underpins the discussion that follows: What are the long-term effects of institutionalized, pedagogical objectification on new undergraduate students? The paper argues that students as strangers—mass-produced in this way—are not aware or seemingly concerned with their own state of objectification and the developmental limitations that have been imposed upon them.
In this review of Alison Kadlec’s (2007) Dewey’s Critical Pragmatism the author reviews Kadlec’s analysis of Dewey’s pragmatism through his epistemological, philosophical, educational, and political viewpoints. The author then considers Dewey’s rejection of traditional bifurcations and its implications for a critical pragmatism. Finally, the author notes additional connections in several of Dewey’s original texts and possible implications for future research. The implications of Kadlec’s work, especially her critically pragmatic notion of confluence, are particularly salient in today’s political climate, fraught with dichotomous contention and lacking in open and critical public dialogue. The model of critical pragmatism Kadlec has developed gives us a creative way to approach deliberative democracy in hopes of improving our individual and shared capacity to realize the critical potential of lived experiences in a contingent world.
Educational leadership preparation should include the integration and influence of philosophy, liberal education, and the humanities to further students’ ability to think and lead well and to help them understand and appreciate liberal education’s value, so its benefits flow to teachers and their students. This essay is primarily reflective, personal, and philosophical in nature. This essay is assuming the general value and importance of the historic Western liberal learning and liberal arts tradition: that this tradition and its essential values are still good for and necessary in 21st-century education. Applied in the context of this essay, this means not only guiding our educational leaders to think well, but also steering their hearts toward right action based on humane principles such as compassion, justice, and equality, all based on respect for the dignity of every person.
Diane Ravitch’s impact on education policy has been and continues to be highly significant. Substantial revisions to her long-held beliefs are reflected not only in her popular blog, but also in two of her more recent books, The Death and Life of the Great American School System (2010a), and Reign of Error (2013). Ravitch’s shift in position has attracted the attention of both progressives and one-time supporters. Each has sought to recast the “new” Ravitch in light of these developments but have often done so unsatisfactorily. This article separates the political and educational aspects of Diane Ravitch and, through analysis of her writings, explicates the language and essential aspects of Ravitch’s thought over time. Having assessed what undergirds both her changing and persistent educational beliefs, progressives and conservatives, along with educators in general, might more aptly contextualize and interpret her positions in current reform debates.
Today’s dominant model of improving and monitoring teacher quality is standardization. After describing how this model generally serves to limit teacher agency, this paper presents several methods teachers are using in the current standardized context to assert their professional knowledge and experience. To construct this counternarrative, the authors mine recent literature on teacher agency and professionalism in standardized contexts for examples of teachers’ professional expression. Using a case study approach, the authors identify three methods teachers used to assert their professional authority and agency: (a) finding opportunities for wise practice within mandated frameworks, (b) substituting wise practice for mandated practice, and (c) engaging in teacher activism to challenge restrictive policies and frameworks. Making those methods of expression more widely known is important for increasing teacher efficacy and developing teacher professional identities that incorporate a strong sense of teacher agency.
Across a myriad of standardized cognitive tests, racial and ethnic groups differ (Jencks and Phillips, 1998; Thernstrom and Thernstrom, 2003). The mission of ‘participants’ in the race and intelligence debate is to explain why such gaps exist—so that they may be closed if at all possible. The Debate seems, however, mired in the persistent use of scientifically invalid, misleading, and antiquated constructs, and methodology—I.e., the belief in the existence of human races, IQ heritability, and the nature versus nurture paradigm (Block, 2002; Fish, 2002; Graves, 2004; Horn, 2002). The driving undercurrent appears to be conservative and liberal ideological approaches to what race is and what it means for human mental capabilities. An ideology is a system of beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions which guide individual and group behavior (Marger 2002: 379). An ideology may rationalize a culture’s structures of power and privilege. It is ‘faith’ based, and usually unrelated and/or unresponsive to empirical facts.
The “race” component of the Debate entails a non-existent entity: there are no substantive human races (Fish, 2002: 114; Graves, Jr. 2004: 2; Venter 2000:www.genome.gov). The heritability of human traits, like intelligence or IQ, are not fixed (Lewontin 1995). That is to say that there is no intrinsic heritability value for IQ, or any other human characteristic. And perhaps most importantly, the correct way of conceptualizing the intricate nexus between organisms’ phenotypes, genotypes, constituent environments is not ‘nature versus nurture,’ but a phenomenon called the norm of reaction (Lewontin, p. 21).