Education Commons^™

Bodies At Home And At School: Toward A Theory Of Embodied Social Class Status, Sue Ellen Henry

Sue Ellen Henry

Sociology has long recognized the centrality of the body in the reciprocal construction of individuals and society, and recent research has explored the influence of a variety of social institutions on the body. Significant research has established the influence of social class and child rearing practices and variable language forms in families and children. Less well understood is the influence of children’s social class status on their gestures, comportment, and other bodily techniques. This paper brings these two areas of study together to explore how working class children’s bodies are shaped by the child-rearing practices associated with their social class …

Vulnerability And Emotional Risk In An Educational Philosophy, Sue Ellen Henry

Sue Ellen Henry

This article explores my thought and emotional growth following a difficult, yet very common, teaching moment. By exploring the bifurcation between thought and feeling, and making a theoretical distinction between feelings and emotion, I reposition emotion as a critical window into learning that works alongside cognition and suggest that a commitment to good teaching requires continual reflection on the emotive aspects of teaching and learning. This piece combines Laura Micciche’s (2007) idea that “emotion is central to what makes something thinkable,” (47) with Robert Kegan’s theory of orders of consciousness, to make an argument for what is lost in classrooms …

Alienated Motherhood And The Quest For Certainty, Sue Ellen Henry

Sue Ellen Henry

“Man (sic) who lives in a world of hazards is compelled to seek for security.”

-John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty

The age of “scientific motherhood” has dawned. Inundated and overwhelmed with the enormous stakes of new motherhood, contemporary mothers are likely to seek what little “certainty” there is in caring for newborns by relying heavily on “expert” texts and parenting advice books. This paper examines my first experience in new mothering and the false sense of security that emerged from my own “quest for certainty.” Following Dewey’s critique of a bifurcated view of knowledge and belief, this argument exposes …

Toward A New Frameowkr Of "Server" And "Served": De(And Re)Constructing Reciprocity In Servicel-Learning Pedagogy, Sue Ellen Henry, M. Lynn Beryfogle

Sue Ellen Henry

This article problemetizes the contemporary view of reciprocity and offers a philosophical foundation for an enriched view based on Dewey’s critique of early stimulus-response theory in psychology and his view of democracy. We situate the argument for reconsidering the provider/recipient model of service-learning in the context of a collaboration between a university and school serving children 5-9 years old while implementing an after-school tutoring program. We develop and describe the traditional and enriched models of reciprocity and create a vision for future establishments of similar collaborations.

A Different Approach To Teaching Multiculturalism: Pragmatism As A Pedagogy And Problem-Solving Tool, Sue Ellen Henry

Sue Ellen Henry

This article explores the moral imperative for teaching multiculturalism from a classically pragmatic point of view. Critique of the conventional race-based approach reveals several durable dichotomies that can serve to distinguish Students of Color from White Students in unproductive ways.

'I Can Never Turn My Back On That': Liminality And The Impact Of Class On Service0learning Experience, Sue Ellen Henry

Sue Ellen Henry

Service-learning is often framed as a pedagogical perspective and instructional tool that can help “privileged” students gain greater insight into the life experience and perspectives of “others,” namely those “served” in the service-learning arrangement. Central to this positive conception of service-learning is a binary between “privileged server” and “underprivileged recipient” or an “us/them” dichotomy. Recently, this dichotomy has been questioned by some researchers as problematic to a transformative understanding of service-learning (Hourigan 1998; Flower 2002; Novek 2000).

Central to the critique of the binary of “server/served” is its overly simplistic approach to understanding those involved in the service-learning relationship. Rather …

The Role Of Reflection In Epistemological Change: Autobiography In Teacher Education, Sue Ellen Henry, Mary Bushnell

Sue Ellen Henry

The authors promote the use of autobiography in the social foundations of education classroom as a means of connecting education to real life experiences, history, and fostering epistemological development of college students. Autobiography involves students’ awareness of the relationship between theory and lived experience. As a form of reflective knowing, autobiography may help students understand complex terms such as “learning,” “knowledge,” and “education” by exploring various contexts which influence such understandings. Reflective knowing explores some of the experiential and purposive contexts that influence knowledge creation. Intellectual maturity and self-awareness may arise from circumstances that can lead students to be more …