Education Commons^™

Teaching For Social Justice In A Highly Politicized Historical Moment, Lorraine Kasprisin

Journal of Educational Controversy

The theme for the Volume 15 issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy, “Teaching for Social Justice in a Highly Politicized Historical Moment,“ is a continuation of a conversation that began in two earlier issues. In Volume 12, we explored the larger institutional structures that maintain inequalities and racism with the theme, “Black Lives Matter and the Education Industrial Complex.” That was followed with an inquiry in Volume 14 on the role that the past plays in wrongs in the present and the issues it raises in our attempts at seeking reconciliation in “The Ethics of Memory: What Does it …

Troubling The Null Curriculum Through A Multiple-Perspectives Pedagogy: A Critical Dialogue Between Two Equity-Minded Teacher Educators, Rachel Endo, Deb Sheffer

Journal of Educational Controversy

In this article, the authors explore the ways by which they, as equity-minded teacher educators, have introduced predominantly White pre-service teachers to the notion of a multiple-perspectives pedagogy as a vehicle to promote critical thinking and multicultural integration. The conceptual framework charts a new course for theorizing the various ideological challenges that arise when attempting to model a multiple-perspectives pedagogy to critique various aspects of the null curriculum in PK-12 and teacher education as it relates to integrating multicultural perspectives. Through critical reflection and dialogic interviews, the authors discuss how they have negotiated the various challenges and possibilities of implementing …

The Sociohistorically Situated And Structurally Central Nature Of Race: Toward An Analytic Of Research Regarding Race And Racism, Rolf Straubhaar

Journal of Educational Controversy

In a response to Wacquant’s (1997) call for “an analytic of racial domination” (p. 230) to theorize about race and racism, this conceptual article puts forward one such analytic. This analytic is based principally on the continued centrality of race in society, the recognition that racism is always shaped by particular sociohistorical factors, and the importance of documenting racism’s contextual intersectionality with class, gender and other elements of social structure through academic inquiry focused on both discourse and measurable action as data for racial analysis.

Stories Read And Told In An Antiracist Teaching Book Club, Jennifer Ervin, Madison Gannon

Journal of Educational Controversy

This manuscript explores the stories both read and told by graduate students and preservice teachers in an antiracist teaching book club. Thinking with critical and engaged pedagogy, the researchers use narrative inquiry to explore how the book club supported White female preservice teachers’ understandings of antiracist pedagogy in English language arts classrooms. The themes that the authors explore through these narratives include the ways that both teacher and student identities are at the forefront of enacting antiracist pedagogy, how teachers receive and seek support for implementing antiracist pedagogy, and what pedagogical decisions are needed when intentionally planning to engage with …

Dissonance As An Educational Tool For Coping With Students’ Racist Attitudes, Adar Cohen

Journal of Educational Controversy

Teachers in multicultural societies that are beset by severe rifts and political polarization encounter students who express racist and extreme attitudes. According to the students’ dichotomous views, anyone who is different from them poses a threat, and teachers find it difficult to overcome this challenge solely with moralistic utterances. Anger, shock, and punishment do not help change the students’ opinions; they often have the opposite effect. This article proposes, instead, that teachers use dissonance as a tool for helping students rid themselves of their dichotomous views and become accustomed to complex thinking about society. On the basis of an educational …

On The Continuity Of Learning, Teaching, Schooling: Mead’S Educational Proposal, From The Perspective Of Decolonization And Land/Place-Based Education, Cary Campbell

Journal of Educational Controversy

In her 1943 article “Our Educational Emphases,” Margaret Mead inquired: What constitutes education in “the broadest sense” of the term, as a continuing human process. More specifically she asked, how and from what basis can we understand the educational processes of long-standing/Indigenous societies as continuous with the forms of education practiced in modern industrialized society? In short, Mead proposes that we recognize the essential continuity of learning, teaching, and schooling across all human societies. In this article, I explore the controversies that Mead’s proposal raises for contemporary, intersecting discourses on decolonization, Indigenous pedagogy, and place- and Land-based education. I argue …

“Teaching In A War Zone”: A Collective Reflection On Learning From A Diversity Course In Contentious Times, Elena Aydarova, Jacob Kelley, Kristen Daugherty

Journal of Educational Controversy

Diversity courses in teacher education often become sites of conflict and contestation. Numerous proposals have been put forward on how to address these conflicts and contestations through pedagogical interventions and teaching innovations. However, such proposals rarely take into account the impact of broader sociopolitical forces on classroom interactions and learning. In this collective reflection, we document our experiences of navigating a diversity course in highly contentious times when anti-critical race theory campaigns resulted in widespread bans on the teaching of “divisive concepts.” We explore critical incidents and challenging situations to capture the erosion of civility and engagement with evidence. In …

A Critically Conscious Analysis Of Institutionalized Racism In Teacher Education: Imagining Anti-Racist Teacher Preparation Spaces, Tatiana Joseph, Jennifer Brownson, Kristine Lize, Elizabeth Drame, Laura Owens

Journal of Educational Controversy

Teacher education scholars serving five different teacher education license programs came together to collectively examine this question: What would it look like if a college of education took on the work of revealing and dismantling structural racism? Using Critical Consciousness theory, we analyzed how structural racism is embedded in teacher education on both a macro systems level and a micro program level. First, we discuss what we know about how institutionalized racism is prevalent within teacher preparation spaces. Then, we take a focused look at some of our programs within our own school of education. More specifically, we explored both …

About The Authors

Journal of Educational Controversy

"About the Authors" page for Volume 15 issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy on the theme, "Teaching for Social Justice in a Highly Politicized Historical Moment."

Eco-Justice Poetry: An Emotive Transgression, Nicola H. Follis

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Dualistic value-hierarchies that are deeply embedded within Western culture assign certain identities, traits and ways of knowing as superior to others. According to eco-justice frameworks, these hierarchies allow some humans to be valued over others and all humans to be valued over the Earth. I specifically talk about the mind/body and human/nature split as two dualities present in Western discourse. Emotions are deemed inferior to the mind’s rational and objective ways of knowing while humans are considered separate and superior to nature. I argue that eco-justice poetry acts as a small transgression against a value- hierarchized culture that devalues emotional …

New Frontiers In Gaming: Playing With Hope, C. Thumper Ormerod

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

The author, a queer educator, documents how a transformative experience sharing their love of collaborative storytelling games with peers lead to them designing a new game. The author explores the potential of games like Dungeons and Dragons to make space for voices that popular media doesn’t offer a platform to. They explore opportunities to use role playing to practice new social skills, build community, and the potential for emotionally therapeutic play. Finally, outlined is an original game entitled Frontiers which aims to help players develop environmental hope.

Collecting: A Process Of Learning, Growth, And Forming Identity, Nate Trachte

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Why do people stuff their homes full of things that have no real utility and attach such great personal attachment to them? It is the relationships involved in any action that provide a lasting sense of satisfaction. Transformation in life as with education is about being able to sit with uncertainty, asking questions, and seeking to understand with the spirit of earnest curiosity. We should seek to hold each other gently in the uncertainty of learning and growth. What if instead of focusing on rushing to meet standards and goals, we slow down and embrace the process of learning missteps …

What To Make Of A Diminished Thing: Re-Envisioning Spirit And Relation In Environmental Education, Zoe Wadkins

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Traditional westernized systems of education reflect complex historical, social, and political forces that prioritize uniformity at expense of people’s multi-dimensionality. This paper details a returning to relation via education’s potential to entwine multiple perspectives in mutual understanding of lived experience. Education in this way becomes an interwoven tapestry and a means to speak across difference in mending, rather than in mutual deterioration. Enjoining personal storytelling with indigenous epistemology, the author pursues hope in reconfiguring the display of our educational tapestry.

Nourishing Solidarity: Critical Food Pedagogy And Storytelling For Community, N. Tanner Johnson

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This piece was delivered in four parts in tandem with a four-course meal, with the intention of providing the audience with time to engage in the sharing of their own perspectives around food and eating. Foodways, the particular cultural and social contexts within which food sits offer a unique entry point into deeper, more connective opportunities for environmental education. The food justice and food sovereignty movements provide a foil for traditional forms of environmental education which reinforce settler-colonial narratives about the more-than-human world. Food is something that everyone has some sort of interaction with every single day. At the same …

The Queer Agenda: A Fluid Education, Charlee Corra

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Throughout this paper, I weave together various aspects of my identity in order to investigate how fluidity and questioning form an undercurrent of my being and therefore of the way I teach. Through metaphors and narratives of my experiences within environmental education and experiential learning I seek clarity and expansiveness rather than definitive answers, leaning into the certainty that change is inevitable and there are rarely any static answers. Using queerness, Judaism, and my scientific background as the layers of my unique identity lens and positionality, I explore the ways in which the power of questioning, critical thinking, democratic education …

Pedagogy Of Tarot: Simultaneity Of Past, Present, And Future, Ashley S. Hill

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

A three card tarot spread can represent the past, present, and future. As a reflective practice, tarot does not divine the future; rather it invites the practitioner to consider context and imagine multiple futures. Simultaneously experiencing the past, present, and future of education is valuable and is possible through a pedagogy of tarot. A pedagogy of tarot connects fxminist and democratic approaches to education through non-hierarchical relationships that honor lived experiences - calling teachers and learners to remain conscious and awake to one another. By acknowledging the possibility of multiple truths within current sociopoliticial and hxstorical contexts, we can make …

The Effects Of Background Music On The Executive Function Of Children With Adhd In The Classroom Setting: A Study Proposal, Jennifer Mittag

Occam's Razor

The purpose of the proposed study is to determine how children diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperac­tivity Disorder (ADHD) and neurotypical children will perform on executive function tasks while listening and not listening to music in a classroom setting. Prior research suggests that the presence of background noise improves the executive function performance of children with ADHD during specific memory tasks. In this study, fifty children diagnosed with ADHD and fifty neurotyp­ical children from Bellingham, Washington will take the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (Picker­ing, 2006), either with or without classical music play­ing in the background. Scores will be calculated, and an …

Occam's Razor Vol. 10 - Full (2020), Ally Remy

Occam's Razor

No abstract provided.

How Historical Context Matters For Fourth And Fifth Generation Japanese Americans, L. Erika Saito

Journal of Educational Controversy

Japanese Americans have a longstanding history in the U.S.-- comprising of more than five consecutive generations. Yet generational research on this ethnic group is understudied (Meredith, Wenger, Liu, Harada, & Kahn, 2000; Pang, 2007). By connecting the historical experiences of previous generations of Japanese Americans to the present, findings on how history has impacted this population can be applied in other ethnic multi-generational groups in the United States.

An Ethnic Identity & Generational Status Model was developed by the author that was influenced by Jean Phinney (1990), Handlin (1951), Mannheim (1927), and Matsuo (1992) to support the varied roles that …

A Case For Unforgiveness As A Legitimate Moral Response To Historical Wrongs, Hollman Lozano

Journal of Educational Controversy

Abstract:

The emergence of forgiveness as the preferred mechanism through which historical wrongs are addressed within reconciliation discourses has meant that for the people who cannot forgive or will not forgive, there are no alternatives other than insisting on forgiveness until it hopefully one day arrives. As such, the point of unforgiveness is to constitute an agentic space where the people who cannot forgive can articulate their stance in ways that not only allow them to articulate their resistance to the injunction to forgive, but also constitute alternative spaces whereby they can articulate their stance in inclusive ways. If we …

Allusive, Elusive, Or Illusive? An Examination Of Apologies For The Atlantic Slave Trade And Their Pedagogical Utility, Esther J. Kim, Anthony Brown, Heath Robinson, Justin Krueger

Journal of Educational Controversy

This critical essay explores the topic of slavery within the context of public apologies.

Drawing from both the historical lens of cultural memory (Le Goff, 1977/1992) and the critical race theory construct of interest convergence (Bell, 1987), the authors offer critical examination of the following questions: (1) Where do collective apologies fit in the narrative of slavery in the US? (2) What affordances might they offer to the social studies at the intersection of curriculum, instruction and the historical memory of enslavement? (3) What do apologies for slavery in the present potentially reveal about contemporary social and political relations as …

Making Sense Of And With “Profound Regret”: Howard County Board Of Education’S Apology For A Racially Segregated Public School System, Rachel Garver, Benjamin Nienass

Journal of Educational Controversy

In November 2012, the Board of Education of Howard County, Maryland approved a proclamation that expressed “profound regret that the Howard County Public School System maintained segregated and unequal public schools both prior, and subsequent to” Brown v. Board of Education. The proclamation describes Howard County’s slow response to comply with the 1954 decision, such that the school system was not officially desegregated until eleven years later in 1965. Through the analysis of stakeholder interviews and board meetings, we explore the various ways and the extent to which the Board of Howard County’s apology was bestowed with meaning. We …

Anti-Affirmative Action And Historical Whitewashing: To Never Apologize While Committing New Racial Sins, Hoang V. Tran

Journal of Educational Controversy

Apologies, official or otherwise, for historical wrongs are important steps in the road towards reconciliation. More difficult are historical wrongs that have yet to be fully acknowledged. The reemergence of affirmative action in the public consciousness via the Supreme Court represents a striking example of the ways in which our collective consciousness has yet to fully account for our past educational sins: segregation and income inequality. This essay explores the multiple consequences to our historical memory when the anti-affirmative action narrative continues to dominate the public discourse on racism in education. I offer a renewed focus on ‘fenced out’ as …

Review Of Jefferson’S Revolutionary Theory And The Reconstruction Of Educational Purpose By Kerry T. Burch, Tony Decesare

Journal of Educational Controversy

This is a review of Kerry T. Burch's book Jefferson’s Revolutionary Theory and the Reconstruction of Educational Purpose.

Author's Response To Book Review, Kerry Burch

Journal of Educational Controversy

This is an invited response by the author to a review of his book, Jefferson’s Revolutionary Theory and the Reconstruction of Educational Purpose, published in this issue.

The Ethics Of Memory: What Does It Mean To Apologize For Historical Wrongs, Lorraine Kasprisin

Journal of Educational Controversy

The controversy for this issue focuses on the theme, “The Ethics of Memory: What Does it Mean to Apologize for Historical Wrongs.” Although the controversial scenario we posed for this issue stems from current events in the news, we invited authors to examine more deeply the historical and cultural undercurrents that gave rise to them. Our authors responded from a number of different perspectives that encapsulate different times, populations, scholarly disciplines, methodologies and ways of interpreting the question.

About The Authors

Journal of Educational Controversy

"About the Authors" for Volume 14 of the Journal of Educational Controversy

Farm Camp Fun, Rebecca Moore

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

This piece is a personal narrative about the journey of a young woman in the constant process of becoming an educator. The wonder of children is what drives this individual, discussed here through the lenses of thought of adultism and with a focus on play. The fallacies of higher education and the systemic injustices the US is built on are touched upon, with specific reference to the industrialized standardized school system. The author promotes the notion that this nation needs educators who see the inherent wisdom in children, because kids are the ones who are the hope for bringing this …

Womxn: An Evolution Of Identity, Ash D. Kunz

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

Environmental Education is situated firmly in the hegemony of White, settler-colonial, capitalistic, able-bodied and –minded, heteronormative, patriarchal society. Individuals whose identity does not conform to this dominant metanarrative are excluded from and marginalized by “othering”. Trauma and violence are commonplace in society against Indigenous peoples, Black and Latinx folx and People of Color, womxn, people with disabilities, people in the LGBTQIA+ community, and all minoritized identities. That history of trauma, coupled with social and physical isolation can lead to mental and emotional struggles that negatively impact personal wellbeing. A lack of wellbeing, in turn can lead to or further depression. …

It’S Not All About Climbing Rocks: Reorienting Outdoor Educators Toward Social Justice, Sarah J. Clement

Summit to Salish Sea: Inquiries and Essays

The field of outdoor adventure education was born in the Western world in the twentieth century because of several specific factors. These factors include, but are not limited to: changing Euro-American attitudes toward wilderness, Kurt Hahn’s character education schools and the pervasiveness of white supremacy. Today, outdoor adventure education is widely popular among the white middle class. According to current instructors in the field, outdoor education is for the purpose of individual development, learning in a wilderness setting and teaching students how to be environmental stewards for wild places. These purposes result from underlying, sometimes false, assumptions about the nature …