Education Commons^™

Beyond "Bad" Cops: Historicizing And Resisting Surveillance Culture In Universities, Amy J. Wan, Lindsey Albracht

Publications and Research

In this article, we define and examine surveillance culture within US college classrooms, a logical extension of pervasive carceral and capitalist logics that underlie the US educational system, in which individual success is tied to behavior monitoring, rule following, and sorting, particularly within marginalized student populations. Reflecting anxieties about the expansion of educational access, we argue for how crisis and change have historically contributed to the
urgency and opportunity to expand surveillance culture and consider why this has continued to happen as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. We offer suggestions and alternatives to surveillance culture that have helped us …

Rethinking Thinking About Thinking: Against A Pedagogical Imperative To Cultivate Metacognitive Skills, Lauren R. Alpert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In summaries of “best practices” for pedagogy, one typically encounters enthusiastic advocacy for metacognition. Some researchers assert that the body of evidence supplied by decades of education studies indicates a clear pedagogical imperative: that if one wants their students to learn well, one must implement teaching practices that cultivate students’ metacognitive skills.

In this dissertation, I counter that education research does not impose such a mandate upon instructors. We lack sufficient and reliable evidence from studies that use the appropriate research design to validate the efficacy of metacognitive skill-building interventions (not just evaluate their relationship to learning outcomes). I argue …

Coalition And Creativity On The Bridges And Fringes With Immigrant Student-Contributors In Nonprofit Adult Education, Katherine E. Entigar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The nonprofit education of adult immigrants is an under-researched aspect of U.S. education. Adult immigrants, often perceived as passive and quiescent, bring voices and contributions to learning in powerful yet unheard ways. This research agenda invokes a new critical lens in education scholarship to uplift and center these contributions as a coalitional, dialogical project. Drawing upon critical sociocultural, women of color feminist, and poststructual theories, critical intersectional epistemology, and Bakhtinian dialogical thinking, this research project pursues inductive, recursive meaning making as an innovative exploration. A multiphase, sequential study including surveys and two focus groups foregrounds the complex, fluid ways adult …