Education Commons^™

What Makes Hope Possible. A Book Review Of Strike For America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity, Amy B. Shuffelton

Democracy and Education

This is a positive review of Strike for America, by Micah Uetricht.

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 …

The Changing Challenges Of Transformational Resistance. A Response To "Building The Dream: Transformational Resistance, Community-Based Organizations, And The Civic Engagement Of Latinos In The New South", Edmund T. Hamann

Democracy and Education

A long-time researcher of "education in the New Latino Diaspora" considers how ephemeral the demographic and sociopolitical contexts were for the endeavors captured in "Building the Dream" but concurs with the aptness of considering the five focal students’ participation in a local Spanish radio program as acts of transformational resistance (Solorzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001) with particular consequences for their sense of coming-of-age into a welcoming intergenerational Latino community.

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 …

Deliberative Democracy: A Contested Interactive Space. A Response To "Deliberative Democracy In English Language Education: Cultural And Linguistic Inclusion In The School Community", Esperanza De La Vega

Democracy and Education

This is a response to Liggett’s (2014) call to implement “deliberate democracy” in English language education classrooms. While the concept of participating in deliberate democracy is a solid ideal and worthy of pursuit, I present questions and scenarios that illustrate the complicated nature of the tasks. By sharing my testimonio along with the research, I propose that in order for teachers to guide their students' participation in deliberate democratic activities, they must step back and understand the context of the sociocultural interactive space created in the classroom and whether ELL students are able to and/or prepared to speak in an …

The Social And Emotional Components Of Gaming. A Response To “The Challenge Of Gaming For Democratic Education”, Ellen Middaugh

Democracy and Education

This response considers the role of video games in promoting the social and emotional aspects of civic education and engagement. Specifically, it discusses how design choices in iCivics and video games generally may impact students’ emotional responses to issues and other people, sense of internal efficacy, and social connectedness.

Being Critical About Being Critical. A Response To "Toward A Transformative Criticality For Democratic Citizenship Education", Nicholas C. Burbules

Democracy and Education

This response to "Toward a Transformative Criticality for Democratic Citizenship Education" takes a positive and supportive stance toward pressing the arguments forward. By focusing on the communicative components of democratic citizenship education and activist pedagogy, it highlights some of the tensions and difficulties of actually doing this work.

Democratic Foundations For Spiritually Responsive Pedagogy, Audrey Lingley

Democracy and Education

Spirituality has been identified as an important component of democratic education by influential scholars such as Dewey, Freire, hooks, and Noddings. However, many teachers in the United States do not engage openly with a framework for understanding, organizing, and integrating pedagogical knowledge of spirituality within the context of culturally conscious social justice education. Drawing from an analysis of the works of Dewey, Noddings, Freire, and hooks and using a critical construct of spirituality that emphasizes inquiry, practical experience, meaning making, and awareness of interconnectedness, I argue that spiritually responsive pedagogy is a vital element of emancipatory, culturally responsive education in …

The Cultural Contours Of Democracy: Indigenous Epistemologies Informing South African Citizenship, Patricia K. Kubow, Mina Min

Democracy and Education

Drawing upon the African concept of ubuntu, this article examines the epistemic orientations toward individual-society relations that inform democratic citizenship and identity in South Africa. Findings from focus group interviews conducted with 50 Xhosa teachers from all seven primary and intermediate schools in a township outside Cape Town depict the cultural contours of democracy and how the teachers reaffirm and question the dominant Western-oriented democratic narrative. Through ubuntu, defined as the virtue of being human premised upon respect, the Xhosa teachers interrupt the prevailing rights-and-responsibilities discourse to interpose a conception of democracy based on rights, responsibilities, and respect. …

Sam And Cristina: A Critical Dialogue Between A Teacher And Student About The Commoditization Of People Of Color By Schools, Samuel J. Tanner, Cristina Corrie

Democracy and Education

This article was written by a white high school teacher (Sam) and a high school student of color (Cristina) in order to consider the harmful potential for schools in the United States to commoditize students of color at the expense of critical, antiracist work. It was written out of a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) study and uses a critical whiteness framework in order to examine how Cristina, in dialogue with Sam, came to theorize that her racial identity was commoditized as a cultural asset of their high school in exploitative ways. Her thinking, juxtaposed with Sam’s consideration of his …

The Challenges Of Gaming For Democratic Education: The Case Of Icivics, Jeremy Stoddard, Angela M. Banks, Christine Nemacheck, Elizabeth Wenska

Democracy and Education

Video games are the most recent technological advancement to be viewed as an educational panacea and a force for democracy. However, this medium has particular affordances and constraints as a tool for democratic education in educational environments. This paper presents results from a study of the design and content of four iCivics games and their potential to meet the goals of democratic education. Specifically, we focus on the games as designed experiences, the nature and accuracy of the content, and the nature of intellectual engagement in the games. We find that the games, while easily accessible and aligned with standardized …

Toward A Transformative Criticality For Democratic Citizenship Education, Lisa A. Sibbett

Democracy and Education

This article uses a well-received recent text—Hess and McAvoy’s The Political Classroom—to suggest that democratic citizenship education today has a social accountability problem. I locate this discussion in the context of a longstanding conflict between the critical thinking approach to democratic citizenship education, the approach typified by The Political Classroom, and the critical pedagogical approach, which has an equal but opposite problem, that of indoctrination. If democratic citizenship educators are truly interested in transforming the social order, I suggest, then we need to listen appreciatively, and respond thoughtfully, to critiques of the approach we favor. The article ends …

The Hard Work Of Teaching. A Book Review Of The Charged Classroom: Predicaments And Possibilities For Democratic Teaching, Paula Mcavoy

Democracy and Education

This is a review of the book The Charged Classroom: Predicaments and Possibilities for Democratic Teaching, by Judith L. Pace.

Martin Buber’S I-Thou Perspective As An Alternative Approach To Antibullying Efforts. A Response To "Exploring Prosocial Behavior Through Structured Philosophical Dialogue: A Quantitative Evaluation", Carrie M. Nolan, Sarah Stitzlein

Democracy and Education

The paper "Exploring Prosocial Behavior through Structured Philosophical Dialogue: A Quantitative Evaluation" ambitiously made the argument that a pedagogy grounded in dialogical inquiry as part of the Philosophy for Children program will positively affect incidents of bullying in schools. This response to the author’s work includes a brief overview of her main argument and subsequent study and proceeds to suggest one possible alternative that she did not consider, namely Buber’s perspective on the I-Thou relation and the potential this holds in regards to bullying. Making the argument that bullying is a normative issue stemming from how people receive each other, …

The Missing Elements Of Change. A Response To "Youth Change Agents: Comparing The Sociopolitical Identities Of Youth Organizers And Youth Commissioners", Matthew L. Goldwasser

Democracy and Education

By establishing a set of theoretical frameworks to view and compare the work of youth organizers and youth commissioners, and through personal interviews, the authors of the paper “Youth Change Agents: Comparing the Sociopolitical Identities of Youth Organizers and Youth Commissioners” presented their explanation of the development of the sociopolitical identities and civic commitments of each group. This response paper asks questions about the authors’ limited use of context and complexity to explain how their youth arrived at their opinions, perspectives, and ultimately their sociopolitical identities. Their work also raises questions of how and why civic engagement and social activism …

Neoliberal Ideology And Democratic Learning. A Response To "Challenging Freedom: Neoliberalism And The Erosion Of Democratic Education", Emery James Hyslop-Margison, Andrés Ramírez

Democracy and Education

In "Challenging Freedom: Neoliberalism and the Erosion of Democratic Education," the author suggests that the presumed decline of democratic learning in public schooling follows from two primary forces: (a) the metaphysical implications of Cartesian psychophysical dualism that support an ontological understanding of the self as distinct from social influence and (b) a corresponding concept of freedom emerging from this ontology that exonerates individuals from any meaningful level of social moral responsibility. Although we agree in large part with the general argument advanced in the essay, there are some theoretical and historical gaps that we attempt to bridge in this response. …

Reinventing The High School Government Course: Rigor, Simulations, And Learning From Text, Walter C. Parker, Jane C. Lo

Democracy and Education

The high school government course is arguably the main site of formal civic education in the country today. This article presents the curriculum that resulted from a multiyear study aimed at improving the course. The pedagogic model, called Knowledge in Action, centers on a rigorous form of project-based learning where the projects are weeks-long simulations. The first section introduces the course and the study, the second describes the methodology and design principles, the third describes the political simulations that are the spine of the course, and the fourth examines implementation and design issues that emerged across the years. The …

Education For Deliberative Democracy: A Typology Of Classroom Discussions, Martin Samuelsson

Democracy and Education

The theory of deliberative democracy places public deliberations at the heart of democracy. In order to participate in democratic deliberations, citizens need certain skills, attitudes, and values. Within the field of education for deliberative democracy, it is assumed that these are learned through participation in democratic deliberation. Thus, one way to educate future citizens for deliberative democracy is by constructing democratic deliberations in the classroom. In this article, four strategically chosen examples of discussions taking place inside classrooms are analyzed, in order to flesh out the abstract criteria of democratic deliberations and to create an empirically based typology of classroom …

“I Didn’T See It As A Cultural Thing”: Supervisors Of Student Teachers Define And Describe Culturally Responsive Supervision, Linda B. Griffin, Dyan Watson, Tonda Liggett

Democracy and Education

Student teaching supervisors can play an integral role in teacher candidates’ ability to understand and enact culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP). However, supervisors may lack the awareness, knowledge, skill, or willingness to serve as culturally responsive supervisors. This paper reports the findings from a qualitative study to find out how supervisors described and supported CRP. We found that supervisors hold unsophisticated views of CRP and face the following challenges enacting culturally responsive supervision: feelings of inadequacy, difficulty talking about race, color-blind orientations, and a tendency to purposefully avoid race talk. We provide recommendations for professional development to address these challenges and …

Challenging Freedom: Neoliberalism And The Erosion Of Democratic Education, Robert Karaba

Democracy and Education

Goodlad, et al. (2002) rightly point out that a culture can either resist or support change. Schein’s (2010) model of culture indicates observable behaviors of a culture can be explained by exposing underlying shared values and basic assumptions that give meaning to the performance. Yet culture is many-faceted and complex. So Schein advised a clinical approach to cultural analysis that calls for identifying a problem in order to focus the analysis on relevant values and assumptions.

This project starts with two assumptions: (1) The erosion of democratic education is a visible overt behavior of the current U.S. macro-culture, and (2) …