Education Commons^™

The Give Away Spirit: Reaching A Shared Vision Of Ethical Indigenous Research Relationships, Jioanna Carjuzaa, J. Kay Fenimore-Smith

Journal of Educational Controversy

This paper discusses the dilemma that emerges when codified protocols taken from dominant research paradigms are applied to research in Indigenous communities. We examine the underlying beliefs and assumptions of research paradigms, both Western and Indigenous, and explore how this incompatibility can be reconciled. We seek to reframe paradigmatic structures to reflect the values and beliefs of Indigenous peoples so that the Indian/non-Indian divide is bridged with a culturally responsive research paradigm. This process raises a number of ethical issues related to voice and privilege that we believe have to be resolved in order to be inclusive of multiple perspectives. …

High Stakes Motherhood And School Choice, Amy B. Shuffelton

Journal of Educational Controversy

Because it does not conform to the standard conception of a profession, motherhood might seem to have no place in this issue. A woman requires no special expertise, no knowledge, skill or educational degree to become a mother. Furthermore, the work she does as a mother is unpaid, sometimes even unrecognized as work. These two features of motherhood – its accessibility to any fertile girl or woman, and the fact that society provides no financial compensation to mothers for their hard work--are often lamented, though towards very different political ends. In fact, motherhood might be considered the very opposite of …

Freedom Of Conscience And The Wall Of Separation, John F. Covaleskie

Journal of Educational Controversy

The thesis of this paper is that the fifty-year-old experiment of interpreting the First Amendment as a complete and absolute separation of church and state—a wall of separation as the familiar trope puts it—has not achieved the stated goal of producing civil peace between people with different views about religion. Further, the prospect of achieving this sort of peace in the near future does not seem likely.

In this paper, I will discuss the significance of public speech in a democratic polity. Then I will consider the complexity of the church-state-polity question, arguing that this complexity makes complete separation between …

Situating Our Racialized Beings In The Race Talk In The U.S.: African-Born Blacks, Our Experience Of Racialization, And Some Implications For Education, Rosaire I. Ifedi

Journal of Educational Controversy

Racial discourse in the U.S. has traditionally been represented by a dichotomous paradigm of White/Black. Additionally, discourse on the existence and practice of racism has focused on uncovering personal, systemic, and symbolic structures of inequity in education, business, law, health, and society. Critical race theory has been used to generate such inquiry. As variant and inconclusive as research has been and as much as race continues to be very divisive, I propose a reexamination of understandings and theorizing on race and racism through a reinterpretation of racialization. Both substantive literature and the findings from a study on African-born women faculty …

Waiting For Superman: He’S “Adequate” And Near Proficient!, Alice E. Ginsberg

Journal of Educational Controversy

In the second week of its national release, the documentary film Waiting for Superman-- about America’s so-called “failing” public school system-- jumped from number 194 in gross receipts to number 20 (Entertainment Weekly, 2010). It couldn’t have hurt that the film was featured as a cover story by Amanda Ripley (2010) in Time magazine only a few weeks earlier, with the provocative tag line: “Can a movie change education?” (Ripley, 2010). Or for that matter, that the film was lauded on The Oprah Winfrey Show (2010), during the course of which Oprah, so moved by the movie, pledged …

About The Authors

Journal of Educational Controversy

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Ethical Breach And The Schizophrenic Process: Theorizing The Judge And The Teacher, Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer, Bryce Bartlett

Journal of Educational Controversy

As the title of this piece suggests, we theorize some of the similarities and differences between the judging and teaching profession. At first glance, the differences seem more apparent than any similarities. As we've discussed this text with colleagues and friends, overwhelmingly, the first question asked is: A judge and teacher, what do they have in common? However, we believe that the judge and teacher are uniquely positioned as fraternal partners across the labor/cultural landscape; we see more similarities than differences.