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Full-Text Articles in Education

Essential Reading On Education Reform Dynamics. A Book Review Of Philanthropy, Hidden Strategy, And Collective Resistance, William Wolff, D. Brent Edwards Jr. Oct 2020

Essential Reading On Education Reform Dynamics. A Book Review Of Philanthropy, Hidden Strategy, And Collective Resistance, William Wolff, D. Brent Edwards Jr.

Democracy and Education

This review looks at what sets Philanthrophy, Hidden Strategy, and Collective Resistance (2019) apart from the rest of the available literature surrounding the politics involved in behind the scenes policy-making decisions. The book is broken down into easily digestible chapters that focus on a variety of topics from a quick primer on neoliberalism to the hidden hand of philanthropy and the way it shapes education. Of special note is the focus on praxis, with concrete examples on how the reader can fight to bring democracy to education whether they are a student, professor, teacher, or parent.


Toward A Pedagogy Of Cooperative Learning. A Review Of Education And Democratic Participation: The Making Of Learning Communities, Xiuying Cai Oct 2020

Toward A Pedagogy Of Cooperative Learning. A Review Of Education And Democratic Participation: The Making Of Learning Communities, Xiuying Cai

Democracy and Education

No abstract provided.


A Vision For Change. A Book Review Of Questioning Allegiance: Resituating Civic Education, Sherri Sklarwitz Oct 2020

A Vision For Change. A Book Review Of Questioning Allegiance: Resituating Civic Education, Sherri Sklarwitz

Democracy and Education

In a time where global tensions are running high and productive dialogue on conflict resolution feels difficult to come by, Questioning Allegiance: Resituating Civic Education (2019) provides a rousing and well-researched manifesto to provide a compelling argument for creating a global system of civic education that will teach people to live together in a way that leads to positive social change.


What Is Education For? A Response To "What Kind Of Citizens Do Educators Hope Their Students Become? A Response To 'Storypath: A Powerful Tool For Engaging Children In Civic Learning.'", Margit E. Mcguire, Laurie Stevahn, Shari Wennik Bronsther Oct 2020

What Is Education For? A Response To "What Kind Of Citizens Do Educators Hope Their Students Become? A Response To 'Storypath: A Powerful Tool For Engaging Children In Civic Learning.'", Margit E. Mcguire, Laurie Stevahn, Shari Wennik Bronsther

Democracy and Education

Darwich (2020) asked “What Kind of Citizens Do Educators Hope Their Students Become?” in her response to “Storypath: A Powerful Tool for Engaging Children in Civic Education” (McGuire et al., 2019). She argued that civics should be rooted in social justice grounded by critical civic empathy, which requires focusing on power and privilege given persistent disparities in caring for all people within our democracy. We agree and here further emphasize the importance of dismantling systems of oppression that block efforts to advance this goal. We also recognize pragmatic complexities in elementary school classrooms that require teacher professional judgment to create …


That's My Voice! Participation And Democratic Citizenship In The Early Childhood Classroom, Monica Miller Marsh, Elizabeth A. Kenyon, Terri Cardy, Erin M. West Oct 2020

That's My Voice! Participation And Democratic Citizenship In The Early Childhood Classroom, Monica Miller Marsh, Elizabeth A. Kenyon, Terri Cardy, Erin M. West

Democracy and Education

This paper shares a participatory action research study conducted by a team of researchers at a university laboratory school in collaboration with three classroom teachers and 60 preschoolers. The team engaged in this research in order to examine the ways in which school personnel could generate more authentic community service experiences with, rather than simply for, children. Findings illustrate that with the support of adults, children generated ways to address issues, discussed their ideas with adults, reflected on their actions, and understood that their voices were being heard beyond the school community. With this increased participation, young people were able …


Education As Commons, Children As Commoners: The Case Study Of The Little Tree Community, Yannis Pechtelidis, Alexandros Kioupkiolis May 2020

Education As Commons, Children As Commoners: The Case Study Of The Little Tree Community, Yannis Pechtelidis, Alexandros Kioupkiolis

Democracy and Education

This paper presents the emergent paradigm of the "commons" as an alternative value and action system in the field of education, and it critically draws out the implications of the commons for refiguring education and its potential contribution to democratic transformation. The paper delves into an independent pedagogical community, Little Tree, which is active in early childhood education and care, aiming to explore the ways in which children conduct themselves in accordance with the ethics and the logics of the commons and to show how they thereby unsettle the conventional meaning of citizenship. Proceeding from an enlarged notion of the …


Negating Amy Gutmann: Deliberative Democracy, Business Influence, And Segmentation Strategies In Education, Brian Ford May 2020

Negating Amy Gutmann: Deliberative Democracy, Business Influence, And Segmentation Strategies In Education, Brian Ford

Democracy and Education

The task of creating a public will is daunting in any political system, but a democracy dedicated to the principles of participation and public deliberation faces specific challenges, including overcoming organized opposition that may not accept democratic tenets. In the sphere of education (and social reproduction more generally), business-influenced movements to reform public education question many of the established goals and norms of democratic education and thus may be the vanguard of such opposition. In order to interpret and explore these movements, this article enlists Amy Gutmann's work as a heuristic device. In so doing, it looks at the task …


The Value Of Conflict And Disagreement In Democratic Teacher Education, Kiel F. Harell May 2020

The Value Of Conflict And Disagreement In Democratic Teacher Education, Kiel F. Harell

Democracy and Education

Deliberative democracy surfaces disagreements so that people holding conflicting stances understand each other’s reasons for the purpose of decision-making. Democratic education approaches should provide students with the opportunity to learn and practice how to address conflict in the collective decision-making process. In this paper, I examine the Foxfire Course for Teachers, a professional development retreat in which teachers learn to practice democratic teaching by themselves experiencing democratic decision-making. In particular, a series of disagreements among course participants is analyzed in detail to understand the learning that resulted and the conditions that supported that learning. As a result of this experiential …


The Foot And The Flag: Patriotism, Place, And The Teaching Of War In A Military Town, Brian Gibbs May 2020

The Foot And The Flag: Patriotism, Place, And The Teaching Of War In A Military Town, Brian Gibbs

Democracy and Education

This manuscript describes the patriotism taught and not taught by nine teachers to the children of soldiers near a military base in the American South. The nine teachers, all participants in a qualitative study, detail the pressures endured and the pedagogical and curricular decisions made as result. The teachers experienced social and political pressure from the broader community to avoid controversial or complex issues, fear that complicated teaching troubling more simple notions of patriotism would stress or possibly traumatize their students (the children of soldiers), and pressure to teach within the district-assigned curriculum map. The teachers responded in different ways. …


Supporting The Arts As Disciplines Of Learning. A Book Review Of The Role Of The Arts In Learning: Cultivating Landscapes Of Democracy, Karen Mcgarry May 2020

Supporting The Arts As Disciplines Of Learning. A Book Review Of The Role Of The Arts In Learning: Cultivating Landscapes Of Democracy, Karen Mcgarry

Democracy and Education

Learning through and in partnership with the arts has the potential to expand experiences beyond what can be measured on any standardized test assessment. The arts may offer sites of reflexive contemplation and engagement, extending learning outward, away from disciplinary silos and toward transdisciplinary action learning—a heuristic device enabling multiple modes or processes of multitextual knowing and becoming. In The Role of the Arts in Learning: Cultivating Landscapes of Democracy, the editors nurture a space of consideration toward democratic learning. By harnessing the historical and pragmatic theories and philosophies of John Dewey and Maxine Greene, in concert with additional …


Controversy And The Common Core. A Book Review Of Common Core: National Education Standards And The Threat To Democracy, Courtney L. Gilday May 2020

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 …


Dialectic Of Empathy. A Book Review Of Educating For Empathy: Literacy Learning And Civic Engagement, Dan Deweese May 2020

Dialectic Of Empathy. A Book Review Of Educating For Empathy: Literacy Learning And Civic Engagement, Dan Deweese

Democracy and Education

In Educating for Empathy: Literacy Learning and Civic Engagement, Mirra describes the value of teaching “critical civic empathy” in K–12 literacy classrooms. Distinguished from standard curricular uses of empathy that stress politeness at the level of the individual, critical civic empathy challenges students to take active steps toward questioning how imbalances of power and privilege arise and what assumptions should be questioned in order to address those imbalances. Mirra examines various teachers who center social issues in their literacy classrooms through the use of literature, the techniques of high school debate, research methodologies that see students as knowledge producers, …


Envisioning Democratic Education In Neoliberal Times: A Book Review Of Radical Schooling For Democracy: Engaging Philosophy Of Education For The Public Good, Jessica Lussier, Samuel D. Rocha May 2020

Envisioning Democratic Education In Neoliberal Times: A Book Review Of Radical Schooling For Democracy: Engaging Philosophy Of Education For The Public Good, Jessica Lussier, Samuel D. Rocha

Democracy and Education

In Radical Schooling for Democracy: Engaging Philosophy of Education for the Public Good, Neil Hooley (2017) sets out to reexamine formal education by highlighting six competing ideologies that contemporary schooling must contend with and respond to (religious, conservative, neoliberal, social-democratic, scientific, and Marxist). Under the political and economic dictates of neoliberalism, Hooley argues, the scope of learning has become narrow and constrained to the frustration and alienation of many students and teachers. Reflecting on these concerns within the many issues of education today, Hooley’s project positions philosophy of education as a meaningful tool in our globalized context. …


Media Literacy As An Internal And External Process. A Response To “Red States, Blue States, And Media Literacy: Political Context And Media Literacy”, Jolie C. Matthews May 2020

Media Literacy As An Internal And External Process. A Response To “Red States, Blue States, And Media Literacy: Political Context And Media Literacy”, Jolie C. Matthews

Democracy and Education

Curry and Cherner’s article, “Red States, Blue States, and Media Literacy: Political Context and Media Literacy,” discusses preservice teachers’ perspectives of teaching media literacy skills in politically opposite “Red” and “Blue” States. In this response, I argue the inclusion of additional demographic information about participants might open up new avenues for which to analyze the data. I also address how the article theoretically takes up media literacy as well what other definitions exist, with suggestions for how the term might be expanded to include internal (self-reflective) and external (outside sources) processes for students and educators to consider.


The Struggle For Strong Democracy: We Need To Go Deeper. A Response To "Democratic Spaces: How Teachers Establish And Sustain Democracy And Education In Their Classrooms", Rick Ayers May 2020

The Struggle For Strong Democracy: We Need To Go Deeper. A Response To "Democratic Spaces: How Teachers Establish And Sustain Democracy And Education In Their Classrooms", Rick Ayers

Democracy and Education

The article by Collins, Hess, and Lowery (2019) explores struggles teachers faced in order to pursue Deweyan educational practices. This response proposes that even more is needed for a critical educational practice, called “strong democracy.” Such an approach requires addressing and countering the White supremacist legacy of U.S. capitalism and U.S. education. The article advances examples and various projects in strong democratic education.


Beyond The Invisible Barriers Of The Classroom: Iengage And Civic Praxis, Kevin Russel Magill, Victoria Davis Smith, Brooke Blevins, Karon N. Lecompte May 2020

Beyond The Invisible Barriers Of The Classroom: Iengage And Civic Praxis, Kevin Russel Magill, Victoria Davis Smith, Brooke Blevins, Karon N. Lecompte

Democracy and Education

Research literature suggests students need to engage in actual civic experiences; however, in most cases, teachers feel unwilling or unable to facilitate experiences beyond the formal classroom setting. In this project, we sought to understand the relationship between social studies teachers’ civic ideology, pedagogical approaches, and instructional decision-making through their engagement in an action civics camp. The project is part of a more significant effort to help critically minded teachers engage in more activist praxis by moving past the often-limiting ideological barriers of the classroom. By activist praxis, we refer to the ways a teacher’s ideology informs pedagogy related to …