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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Disease, Bread, Efficiency: Rhetorics Of Victorian Education Reform, Vicki Jean Davis
Disease, Bread, Efficiency: Rhetorics Of Victorian Education Reform, Vicki Jean Davis
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Disease, Bread, Efficiency: Rhetorics of Victorian Education Reform arose from my observation that, historically speaking, Anglo-American schools have always been “in crisis.” I argue that the crisis of the “failing school” is a rhetorical problem rather than an economic problem as most scholarship suggests. Much like the cultural myth of “the One True Love,” education reform debates tend to position the school as an institution that can rescue the nation from all perceived social ills. Not only is this unrealistic, the patterns of language are inconsistent as ideas about the purpose of school are translated into policy. This causes further …
Painful Conversions: Reading And Writing Education Reform In Louisiana, Thomas George Sowders
Painful Conversions: Reading And Writing Education Reform In Louisiana, Thomas George Sowders
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
In January 2013, the superintendent of a rural Louisiana school system initiated a plan to increase school choice in his district through the implementation of a new virtual magnet school and the conversion of an existing elementary school into a magnet school. Both plans were set into action in April 2013. This study uses performative writing to document the better part of a year spent engaged in this project as a contracted educational consultant. Melding William Blake’s theories of apocalypse and social metonymy with experimental modes of scholarly production as praxis, I theorize education reform as an interactive performance. By …
Minding The Gap : A Rhetorical History Of The Achievement Gap, Laura Elizabeth Jones
Minding The Gap : A Rhetorical History Of The Achievement Gap, Laura Elizabeth Jones
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Minding the Gap: A Rhetorical History of the Achievement Gap arose as an inquiry into the rhetorical congestion around the phrase achievement gap in public discourse. Having been used in support of multiple, often competing, education agendas, the phrase seems versatile almost to the point of emptiness, and yet it seemingly retains its persuasive power. Examining the history of the phrase, I reveal that the notion of the achievement gap is rooted in the logic of segregation and the rhetoric of disability, and serves to construct students in ways that paradoxically undermine efforts to expand access to educational opportunity. Although …