Education Commons^™

Good Intentions Gone Awry: Education Policy And Paradox Of Consequences In Rural Ethnic China, Jinting Wu

Journal of Educational Controversy

This paper provides a situated critique of how evidence-based, “best practices”-oriented research can result in unanticipated consequences and perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophesy at the expense of deeper understanding of educational problems. I structure the paper along two analytical steps. First, I explore the sociology of unintended consequences through German Sociologist Max Weber and his contemporary critic Mohamed Cherkaoui. Second, I draw from an ethnographic study in rural ethnic communities of Southwest China to illustrate how best intentions at providing free compulsory education go awry, and how the controversial policy both fails and succeeds in fabricating its intended outcome. The ethnographic …

Is “Best Practices” Research In Education Insufficient Or Even Misdirected? An Issue Dedicated To John G. Richardson, Lorraine Kasprisin

Journal of Educational Controversy

Editorial and Dedication for Volume 11, Issue 1

Is “Best Practices” Research in Education Insufficient or even Misdirected?

AN ISSUE DEDICATED TO JOHN G. RICHARDSON

A Violence Of “Best Practice” And Unintended Consequences?: Domestic Violence And The Making Of A Disordered Subjectivity, Tracey Pyscher

Journal of Educational Controversy

Often, efforts by schools to standardize marginalized children with histories of domestic violence have alarming effects. More recent efforts of standardization typically find a sustained existence in the discourse of “best” practices predicated upon a religious-like adherence to behavioral data driven frameworks. This article traces how children and youth with histories of domestic violence (or HDV youth) navigate and resist deficit laden school subjectivities shaped by special education discourses of medicalization and pathologization. In one case study, I spell out how an elementary school created and maintained an HDV child’s EBD (emotional behavioral disordered) subjectivity with detrimental effects. The article …