Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Education
Practices To Live With, Invitations For Change. A Book Review Of Descriptive Inquiry In Teacher Practice: Cultivating Practical Wisdom In Create Democratic Schools, Dana Frantz Bentley
Practices To Live With, Invitations For Change. A Book Review Of Descriptive Inquiry In Teacher Practice: Cultivating Practical Wisdom In Create Democratic Schools, Dana Frantz Bentley
Democracy and Education
This review explores the discourse between theory and practice put forth in Cara E. Furman and Cecelia E. Traugh's Descriptive Inquiry in Teacher Practice: Cultivating Practical Wisdom to Create Democratic Schools. Through the practice of descriptive inquiry, these two authors engage in a lively examination of schools and educators developing individualized democratic practices. This review explores the engaging conversations between schools, educators, and school communities as they learn to center their democratic teaching on human dignity, and a focus on practical wisdom.
Controversy And The Common Core. A Book Review Of Common Core: National Education Standards And The Threat To Democracy, Courtney L. Gilday
Controversy And The Common Core. A Book Review Of Common Core: National Education Standards And The Threat To Democracy, Courtney L. Gilday
Democracy and Education
For a decade, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been no stranger to controversy. Tangled in the discourse have been numerous scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and community members. Many of those in favor of the Common Core argue that national standards provide a foundation on which to build equitable opportunities for student success, while those opposed say that they disempower autonomy of local schools, community members, parents, and students themselves. In Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy, Tampio (2018) highlights how national standards create barriers for students to operate as citizens in a democratic society. He …
Restoring The Political: Exploring The Complexities Of Agonistic Deliberation In Classrooms, John Ambrosio
Restoring The Political: Exploring The Complexities Of Agonistic Deliberation In Classrooms, John Ambrosio
Democracy and Education
This article is a response to a theoretical and philosophical examination of agonistic deliberation in classrooms, which requires accepting the legitimacy of perspectives that are outside of prevailing societal norms and the expression of political emotion. The author argues that students must develop certain dispositions to achieve productive ends in negotiations and that the role of teachers in the deliberative process must be clarified. He concludes that modifying instructional practices to include agonistic deliberation can potentially open up public spaces in classrooms for more inclusive and equitable deliberative practices.
Drawing On The Past To Open Up Possible Futures. A Response To "The Cultural Contours Of Democracy: Indigenous Epistemologies Informing South African Citizenship", John Ambrosio
Democracy and Education
This article is a response to a qualitative study that examined how the indigenous African notion of ubuntu informs how some school teachers in a Black township in South Africa conceptualize Western-oriented narratives of democracy. While the study acknowledges important differences in how ubuntu is understood and defined, the author argues that it nonetheless tends to overlook them in order to harness ubuntu as a force for positive social change and national development. The author argues that ubuntu could potentially serve as a powerful cultural force for change, but this requires a context in which some of the moral qualities …
What Kind Of Teacher For Our Citizens? A Book Review Of What Kind Of Citizen? Educating Our Children For The Common Good, Tony Decesare
What Kind Of Teacher For Our Citizens? A Book Review Of What Kind Of Citizen? Educating Our Children For The Common Good, Tony Decesare
Democracy and Education
Westheimer’s central argument in What Kind of Citizen? Educating our Children for the Common Good is that the current climate around public education—marked, in general, by standardization in our schools—is not conducive to the development of thoughtful and critically engaged public citizens. Westheimer demonstrated convincingly that schools—in response to recent education reform and, in some cases, pressure from parents and other education stakeholders—have increasingly emphasized individual goals at the expense of educating children for the common good. Furthermore and related, in this age of standardized testing, school curricula have become more narrowly focused on achievement in math and literacy at …
Media Literacy As Mindful Practice For Democratic Education. A Response To “Transaction Circles With Digital Texts As A Foundation For Democratic Practices”, Theresa Redmond
Democracy and Education
This essay is a response to Brown’s (2015) article describing her strategy of transaction circles as a student-centered, culturally responsive, and democratic literacy practice. In my response, I provide further evidence from the field of media literacy education (MLE) that serves to enhance Brown’s argument for using transaction circles in order to promote democratic discourse, specifically augmenting her ideas by connecting the purposes and processes of transaction circles with key implications of media literacy pedagogy. I invite Brown to consider how her concept of transaction circles may be extended in three ways: (a) through acknowledging the indispensable role of the …
Critical Pedagogy And Participatory Democracy: Creating Classroom Contexts That Challenge "Common Sense." A Response To "The Political Nuances Of Narratives And An Urban Educator's Response", Lilia D. Monzó, P. Zitlali Morales
Critical Pedagogy And Participatory Democracy: Creating Classroom Contexts That Challenge "Common Sense." A Response To "The Political Nuances Of Narratives And An Urban Educator's Response", Lilia D. Monzó, P. Zitlali Morales
Democracy and Education
In this response to “The Political Nuances of Narratives and an Urban Educator’s Response,” the authors applaud Pearman’s critical approach to deconstructing and challenging narratives of heroic figures who single-handedly change the world and agree with him that these narratives restrict the sense of agency that may propel citizens to become actively involved in social change efforts. We argue that it is important to question why these narratives exist and to understand them in light of the hegemonic capitalist structure that exploits the masses in service to the capitalist class. Although we agree with Pearman that democracy is best served …