E Wayne Ross – Page 19 – Critical Theories in Education

CFP: Educate, Agitate, Organize! Teacher Resistance Against Neoliberal Reforms

Educate, Agitate, Organize!
Teacher Resistance Against Neoliberal Reforms

Call for Manuscripts
Special Issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor

Guest Editors:
Mark Stern, Colgate University
Amy Brown, University of Pennsylvania
Khuram Hussain, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

I can tell you with confidence, one year later [from the Measure of Progress test boycott in Seattle schools], I know where our actions will lead: to the formation of a truly mass civil rights movement composed of parents, teachers, educational support staff, students, administrators, and community members who want to end high-stakes standardized testing and reclaim public education from corporate reformers.—Jesse Hagopian, History Teacher and Black Student Union Adviser at Garfield High School, Seattle

As many of us have documented in our scholarly work, the past five years have witnessed a full-fledged attack on public school teachers and their unions. With backing from Wall Street and venture philanthropists, the public imaginary has been saturated with images and rhetoric decrying teachers as the impediments to ‘real’ change in K-12 education. Docu-dramas like Waiting For ‘Superman,’ news stories like Steve Brill’s, “The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand,” in The New York Times Magazine and high profile rhetoric like Michelle Rhee’s mantra that students, not adults, need to be “put first” in education reform, all point to this reality: teachers face an orchestrated, billion dollar assault on their professional status, their knowledge, and their abilities to facilitate dialogical spaces in classrooms. This assault has materialized and been compounded by an austerity environment that is characterized by waning federal support and a narrow corporate agenda. Tens of thousands of teachers have suffered job loss, while thousands more fear the same.

Far from being silent, teachers are putting up a fight. From the strike in Chicago, to grassroots mobilizing to wrest control of the United Federation of Teachers in New York, to public messaging campaigns in Philadelphia and boycotts in Seattle, teachers and their local allies are organizing, agitating and confronting school reform in the name of saving public education. In collaboration with parents, community activists, school staff, students, and administrators, teacher are naming various structures of oppression and working to reclaim the conversation and restore a sense of self-determination to their personal, professional, and civic lives.

This special issue of Workplace calls for proposals to document the resistance of teachers in the United States, Canada, and globally. Though much has been written about the plight of teachers under neoliberal draconianism, the reparative scholarship on teachers’ educating, organizing, and agitating is less abundant. This special issue is solely dedicated to mapping instances of resistance in hopes of serving as both resource and inspiration for the growing movement.

This issue will have three sections, with three different formats for scholarship/media. Examples might include:

I. Critical Research Papers (4000-6000 words)

Qualitative/ethnographic work documenting the process of teachers coming to critical consciousness.
Critical historiographies linking trajectories of political activism of teachers/unions across time and place.
Documenting and theorizing teacher praxis—protests, community education campaigns, critical agency in the classroom.
Critical examinations of how teachers, in specific locales, are drawing on and enacting critical theories of resistance (Feminist, Politics of Love/Caring/Cariño, Black Radical Traditions, Mother’s Movements, and so on).

II. Portraits of Resistance

Autobiographical sketches from the ground. (~2000 words)
Alternative/Artistic representations/Documentations of Refusal (poetry, visual art, photography, soundscapes)

III. Analysis and Synthesis of Various Media

Critical book, blog, art, periodical, music, movie reviews. (1500-2000 words)

400-word abstracts should be sent to Mark Stern (mstern@colgate.edu) by April 15, 2014. Please include name, affiliation, and a very brief (3-4 sentences) professional biography.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by May 15. Final drafts will be due October 1, 2014. Please note that having your proposal accepted does not guarantee publication. All final drafts will go through peer-review process. Authors will be notified of acceptance for publication by November 1.

Please direct all questions to Mark Stern (mstern@colgate.edu).

Reform and/or Revolution: Imagining a World with Transformative Justice (Left Forum 2014)

The theme for the 2014 Left Forum Conference is “Reform and/or Revolution: Imagining a World with Transformative Justice” (read or download it). The call for panels can be downloaded here.

This is the 10th year of the Left Forum, which will be held from May 30th – June 1, at the spacious new conference center at John Jay (CUNY) College in New York City. The conference grounds include beautiful open social spaces and many conference rooms (preview here).

ATEE Winter : Social Justice and Diversity in Teacher Education (Budapest)

Association for Teacher Education in Europe

Winter Conference 15-17 April 2014—Budapest

Social Justice and Diversity in Teacher Education

CALL FOR PAPERS

Extended NEW deadline: 20th February 2014

The main aim of the conference is to facilitate scientific dialogue around the theme of social justice and diversity in connection to teacher education in a wide sense through questions and answers offered by solid research studies. Traditional conferences often give very limited place for real dialogue and sharing around findings and problems. However, research is always a social activity too, and it needs to be discussed, shared and reflected in research communities. Scientific activities might also better contribute to the transformation and development of societies and communities if knowledge coming from research is constructed and reflected together by gathering findings, questions and possible answers. In order to promote dialogue, discussion and common knowledge construction, the sections of the conference will be organized in accordance with this principle, and the whole conference will be characterized by this atmosphere of sharing.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Peter McLaren (USA)
Geri Smyth (Scotland)

http://ateewinter2014.blogspot.hu/
http://ateewinter2014.blogspot.hu/p/call-for-papers.html
https://www.facebook.com/pages/ATEE-Winter-Conference-2014-Budapest/1452474464975307
http://youtu.be/GooHmVrSYWw

The conference welcomes any kind of theoretical, empirical or methodological research papers related to the conference theme from different disciplines, approaches and research traditions. Participatory, collaborative or practitioner research studies are particularly welcome as well as policy analysis.

Important dates:

EXTENDED deadline for submission of abstracts: 20th February 2014
Notification of acceptance: 5 days after the submission
Deadline for submission of papers and presentations: 15th March 2014 (on the form of the website that is under construction)

All participants who want to present their work at the ATEE Winter Conference are invited to submit a brief and concise abstract (max. 100 words!). Please use the registration form. Contributors can submit proposals for individual papers of one or more authors. This is the preferred type of presentation because of the special structure of the conference: parallel sessions of 60 minutes with two papers (10-10 minutes for presentations and 40 minutes for discussion). However, if a group of researcher would like to submit a symposium or a workshop related to the topic of the conference, they should contact the organizers: ateewinter2014@gmail.com

If you would like to participate in the conference without presentation, please also use the registration form.

In order to foster real dialogue in the sessions, participants have to send their full paper (between 5000 and 8000 words) or at least a shorter, draft version of their paper (2500 – 3000 words) and their presentation (if they wish to use slides) one month before the conference. The papers and presentations will be uploaded to the conference website (to a platform accessible for participants). It is very important that the participants choose and read the papers in advance, and in this way after the shorter presentations, there can be a real dialogue about the research studies in the sessions. The number of presentations is limited to 110, and each author can submit only one abstract as single (or main) author, and another one as co-author.

General guidelines for abstracts:

All abstracts should be submitted in English, which is the official language of the conference.
All abstracts should be submitted on the registration form on this website.
High quality research can be presented in some words. Abstracts should be very concise, no longer than 100 words (title not included). They should indicate briefly the (theoretical and/or epistemological) approaches and applied methodology and the summarized main findings; or they should present the theoretical or methodological problems of the paper, and the offered answers, views or statements.

Criteria of evaluation:

connection to the conference theme;
clear and brief formulation of the focus of the paper;
scientific quality: methods, theories clearly indicated;
convincing summary of the findings or views;
appropriate style and language in accordance with the topic of the paper and with the concise nature of the abstract.

Full papers, after a process of double blind review, will be published online on the Conference Proceedings. High quality papers could be sent for submission to the European Journal of Teacher Education.

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor archive project completed

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor founding editors—Kent Puckett and Marc Bousquet—published the first issue of the journal in the fall of 1998. Closely connected to activism emerging from the Graduate Student Caucus of the Modern Language Association, the journal’s mission was defined by Bousquet in his Foreword to the first issue, “The Institution as False Horizon”:

Workplace is a … journal that asks you to join with Graduate Student Caucus as the agent of a new dignity in academic work. This means that most of its contributors will try to convince you that becoming a Workplace activist is in your immediate and personal best interest, even by the narrowest construction of careerism.

Let me be clear about this. If you’re a graduate student, I’m saying that becoming an activist today will help you get a job in your interview tomorrow.

If you’re an undergraduate, or parent, or employer, I’m saying that a dignified academic WORKPLACE delivers better education.

By “dignified” I mean very simple things.

I mean a higher-education WORKPLACE in which first-year students—those most at risk for dropping out and those requiring the best-trained and most-expert attention—can expect as a matter of course that they have registered for classes taught by persons with experience, training, and the terminal degree in their field (usually a Ph.D.), an office for conferences, a salary that makes such meetings possible, a workload that enables continuing scholarship, a telephone and answering machine, reasonable access to photocopying, and financial support for professional activities.

Remove any one of these values, and education suffers. Who would ask their accountant to work without an office? Or a telephone? Or training and professional development?

Most of the teachers encountered by students in first-year classes have none of these things. No office. No pay for meetings outside of class. No degree. Little or no training. No experience to speak of.

Little wonder that nobody’s happy with the results.

The good news is that there’s plenty of work in higher education teaching for those who want to do it. The bad news is that all of that work no longer comes in the package of tenure, dignity, scholarship, and a living wage that we call “a job.”

The struggle for dignity in the academic workplace continues and 17 years later Workplace remains a journal focused on critical analysis of and activism within universities, colleges, and schools.

Throughout it’s existence Workplace been an open-access journal. Initially housed on servers at the University of Louisville, the journal moved to the University of British Columbia and transitioned from an html-based journal to the Open Journal Systems (OJS) a journal management and publishing system developed by the Public Knowledge Project. PKP is a multi-university initiative developing free open source software and conducting research to improve the quality and reach of scholarly publishing.

Workplace is now published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies at UBC and hosted, along with a number of other OJS journals, by the University of British Columbia Library.

The Workplace journal archive project, led by Stephen Petrina (co-director of the Institute for Critical Education Studies and Workplace co-editor), has been underway for several years and is now complete. Back issues #1-#12 are now reformatted and accessible through the journal Archives, bringing the journal up to date under a new unified numbering system and collecting the complete journal contents in one place for the first time since 2005.

This was a monumental task, facilitated by the impeccable editorial work of Graduate Assistants Maya Borhani and Michelle Gautreaux.

We encourage you to explore the very rich archives of the journal and to join us in promoting a new dignity in academic work. We welcome your submissions on issues of workplace activism and dialogue on all issues of academic labor.

Marketing Canadian Universities (New issue of Critical Education)

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled.

Marketing Canadian Universities: The Sociology of Institutions Perspective
Joe Corrigan, University of Alberta

Abstract
This is a critical response to a Government of Canada study using the institutional-sociology notions of structuration, isomorphism and professionalization. The primary recommendation of three proposed in the DFAIT Study (2009) creates an international education marketing agency (IEMA) funded by the Government of Canada and international students who choose to study in Canada. This paper re-positions the primary recommendation of the DFAIT Study outside of the dominant narrative of global competition and into the sociology of institutions framework offered by DiMaggio and Powell. Using this alternative framework, major assumptions and the example of Country X from the original study are problematized. This will be of interest to critical educators, administrators and others who envision a direct international role for their institutions and Canadian universities in general.

Keywords
Institutional Sociology; Educational Policy; Internationalization

Published by the Institute for Critical Education studies at University of British Columbia, Critical Education is an international peer-reviewed journal, which seeks manuscripts that critically examine contemporary education contexts and practices. Critical Education is interested in theoretical and empirical research as well as articles that advance educational practices that challenge the existing state of affairs in society, schools, and informal education. Read more about the journal’s editorial policies and how to submit a manuscript for consideration here.

‘Out of the Ruins’: The Emergence of New Radical Informal Learning Spaces

Below is a call for chapters that is sure be of interest to folks interested in both resisting the authoritarian, hierarchical, and standardizing approaches to education that dominant public education and creating new radical informal spaces for learning.

Rob Harworth and John Elmore, two of the folks behind the fantastic Critical Theories in the 21st Century Conference at West Chester University, are putting together a new edited book titled:’Out of the Ruins’: The Emergence of New Radical Informal Learning Spaces and they are looking for chapters on the following broad topics:

The Purpose of Education and The Politics of Learning
Developing Theories of Transformative Possibilities and Radical Informal Learning
The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces
Learning from Our Experiences: Sharing Narratives of Resistance

The complete call for chapters, with an extended framework for the book and detailed chapter topics, timeline and contacts please take a look at this PDF: Out of the Ruins CFP.

Good luck to Rob and John on what is an exciting project!

Teach for America and the Future of Education in the United States (Part 3: Altering TFA’s Trajectory)

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled

Part 3 of our special series “Teach for America and the Future of Education in the United States”, focuses on altering the trajectory of TFA. Guest editors for the series are Philip E. Kovacs and Kathleen deMarrais.

Critical Education
Vol 4, No 13 (2013)
Table of Contents
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/182474

Teach for America and the Future of Education in the US
Part 3: Altering TFA’s Trajectory
——–

“I want to do Teach For America, not become a teacher.”
Mark Stern, D. Kay Johnston

An Issue of Equity: Assessing the Cultural Knowledge of Preservice Teachers
in Teach for America
Eric Ruiz Bybee

The Outsized Effects of Equating Teaching with Leadership: Implications of
Teach for America’s Vision for Engaging Teachers in Reform
Laura Gutmann

Problems, Politics, and Possibilities: Imagining a Teach For America that
really is for America
Erinn Brooks, Kathleen Greene

Education for Revolution special issue of Works & Days + Cultural Logic launched

Education for Revolution a special issue collaboration of the journals Works & Days and Cultural Logic has just been launched.

Check out the great cover image (Monument to Joe Louis in Detroit) and the equally great stuff on the inside. Hard copies of the issue available from worksanddays.net and Cultural Logic will be publishing and expanded online version of the issue in the coming months.

Rich and I want to thank David B. Downing and his staff at Works & Days for the fabulous work they did on this issue, which is the second collaboration between the two journals. Read Downing’s foreword to the issue here.

Works & Days + Cultural Logic
Special Issue: Education for Revolution
E. Wayne Ross & Rich Gibson (Editors)
Table of Contents

Barbarism Rising: Detroit, Michigan, and the International War of the Rich on the Poor
Rich Gibson, San Diego State University

Resisting Neoliberal Education Reform: Insurrectionist Pedagogies and the Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship
E. Wayne Ross, University of British Columbia
Kevin D. Vinson, University of The West Indies

Reimaging Solidarity: Hip-Hop as Revolutionary Pedagogy
Julie Gorlewski, State University of New York, New Paltz
Brad Porfilio, Lewis University

Learning to be Fast Capitalists on a Flat World
Timothy Patrick Shannon, The Ohio State University
Patrick Shannon, Penn State University

Contesting Production: Youth Participatory Action Research in the Struggle to Produce Knowledge
Brian Lozenski, Zachary A. Casey, Shannon K. McManimon, University of Minnesota

Schooling for Capitalism or Education for Twenty-First Century Socialism?
Mike Cole, University of East London

Class Consciousness and Teacher Education: The Socialist Challenge and The Historical Context
Curry Stephenson Malott, West Chester University of Pennsylvania

The Pedagogy of Excess
Deborah P. Kelsh, The College of Saint Rose

Undermining Capitalist Pedagogy: Takiji Kobayashi’s Tōseikatsusha and the Ideology of the World Literature Paradigm
John Maerhofer, Roger Williams University

Marxist Sociology of Education and the Problem of Naturalism: An Historical Sketch
Grant Banfield, Flinders University of South Australia

The Illegitimacy of Student Debt
David Blacker, University of Delaware

Hacking Away at the Corporate Octopus
Alan J. Singer, Hofstra University

A Tale of Two Cities ¬– and States
Richard Brosio, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

SDS, The 1960s, and Education for Revolution
Alan J. Spector, Purdue University, Calumet

New York City Council votes to replace high-stakes tests with multiple measures

Press Contact: Jane Hirschmann, 917 679 8343
HISTORIC VOTE BY CITY COUNCIL ON HIGH-STAKES TESTING

The New York City Council passed today Resolution 1394. This is historic because it is the first time that a legislative body has sent a clear directive to the DOE, NYSED and Governor that high stakes standardized tests must be replaced by multiple measures. As heard in testimony endorsing the Resolution, “Learning is complex, assessment should be too. A one-size fits all approach to learning and testing fails children, teachers and families. And, as we have seen, the so-called testing reform approach used by Bloomberg/Klein for the last 12 years resulted in many negative unintended consequences and failed to deliver quality education.

Resolution 1394 was modelled on a national piece of legislation that has been endorsed by many Boards of Education across the country, and more than 500 organizations. In Texas alone more than 80% of the school boards endorsed a similar position. “The New York City resolution is an important step in the growing, grassroots-powered national movement seeking to replace testing overkill with better, educationally sound forms of assessment. Across the U.S. parents, students, teachers, community leaders and, increasingly, local elected officials, are saying ‘Enough is enough!’ to politically mandated standardized exam misuse and overuse, said Robert Schaeffer, Public Education Director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest)

“Our New York City electeds have taken the lead by passing Resolution 1394, ” said Evelyn Cruz of Time Out >From Testing. “The City Council is sending a loud and clear message that we have had enough of this testing mania which drives curriculum. When these tests have such high stakes attached to them —graduation, promotion, school grade, teacher evaluations, school closings and even principal bonuses—there is no question that teachers will teach to the test. This is not a 21st Century education. We want more for our children.”

“All of us think our children should be challenged by difficult tasks in school and that the performance of teachers in the classroom should be judged by the highest standards, but there is no scientific validity whatsoever to the use of high stakes tests as the primary instrument for evaluating children and teachers. We cannot kid ourselves that just because high-stakes testing has become predominant in our schools, it is moral or even rational,” said Jeff Nichols of Change the Stakes.

” This action by the City Council is of central importance to all those who care about public education. Since NYC has been seen as the leader of the so called “reform” movement, the fact that our City Council took action will be regarded nationally as a critical moment—turning around a 12 year failed experiment, said Dani Gonzalez, Co-chair of Time Out From Testing.

[Note: the National Resolution Against High-Stakes Testing is on the web at http://fairtest.org/national-resolution-highstakes-testing – get your school board or other organization to endorse it!]

25th Annual Peace Studies Conference: Security, Surveillance, and U.S. Imperialism

25th Annual Peace Studies Conference

!! FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC !!

THEME: Security, Surveillance, and U.S. Imperialism
December 7, 2013
12PM to 7PM
Building: University Union West
Room: UUW 324 & 325
Binghamton University, New York, USA
___________________________________________________________
University Map, Directions, Lodging, etc:
http://www.binghamton.edu/visiting-campus/maps-and-directions.html

For General Questions contact Anna Pinchuk with Peace Action: 607-245-6695
___________________________________________________________
SCHEDULE

12:00 – 12:30 Tabling & Arrival Time
12:30 – 12:45 Welcome Address – Mallory Schmackpfeffer, President of Binghamton University Peace Action
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1:00 – 2:30 PANEL 1. PEACE IN EDUCATION

(1) Peace Studies for SUNY
The desirability of a SUNY-directed model of Peace Studies that would promote alternatives to violence through the creation of a minor by 2016 and a major by 2020.

Jack Gilroy is a high school teacher at Maine-Endwell and has been a peace activist since the Vietnam War. He was the director of the Committee of Responsibility in Upstate New York working to bring back war injured children from Vietnam.

(2) Activist Strategies for Peace Education
Educational pedagogies and projects that promote the implementation of peace that can be implemented in anti-bullying and other existing programs directed at youth.

Tim Wolcott teaches Life and Physical Science and supervises the greenhouse projects at Waverly Middle / HighSchool. As Adjunct Professor at the University of Albany he also directed Waverly’s Science Research Program.

(3) Guns on Campus: Securitization and Campus Policing
An interrogation of debates surrounding the campus presence of guns to police student populations and securitize the university environment to the detriment of peace.

Ben Brucato is a doctoral candidate in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has published research on surveillance and policing at colleges and universities.
___________________________________________________________

2:30 – 4:00 PANEL 2. RESISTANCE FOR PEACE

(1) End of Prisons
This is a two person presentation on a recently released book “The End of Prisons,” which provides an in-depth look at what prisons try to accomplish and how we can dismantle them through an abolitionist strategy of decarceration in the relation to the American legal system, national security, and human rights.
Mechthild Nagel is Professor of Philosophy at SUNY Cortland and is the Director of the Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies.

Ute Ritz-Deutch received her PhD in History From Binghamton in 2008 and currently teaches out of the History Department at SUNY Cortland.

(2) Resisting Federal Surveillance: The Case of Burning Books
After a decade of being under heavy federal surveillance for exercising free speech in support of the Earth Liberation Front, Leslie James Pickering discovered his associates are being questioned by the FBI, the Post Office copying his mail, and was individually put on a secret list for maximum security screening at airports. This multimedia presentation will show the methods of federal government uses to repress activists and ways in which they can be resisted.

Leslie James Pickering is an activist, author, and co-owner of Burning Books in Buffalo, NY. He was a spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front Press Office from the late 1990s to the early 200s.

(3) The Embodied Resistance of the Black Body
Argues that resistance must come from one’s epistemic privilege and that the black body offers a unique positionality to confront sites of violence through their constant engagement with anti-blackness.

Raul Cepin is an undergraduate at Binghamton University and is a Varsity member of the University’s debate team.
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4:00 – 4:30 Break
___________________________________________________________

4:30 – 6:00 PART 3. Drone Warfare: Consequences and Resistance

(1) A History of Drones and Resistance
As drone warfare has increased the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars has begun campaigning to say no to targeted assassinations. Their actions of civil disobedience has resulted in numerous jailings and detentions of activists.

Jim Clune has been active with the Upstate Coalition to Down the Drones and End the Wars since its inception and has been to El Salvador, Iraq, and Palestine to stand in solidarity with those who have suffered.

(2) Syracuse’s Hancock Airbase
A focus at the 174th Attack Wing of the NY Air National Guard and recent court rulings that have issued orders of protection meant to suppress collective outcries against the victimization of women, children, and other non-combatants.

Ed Kinane formerly worked on Wall Street and taught high school and college. He has worked with Peace Brigades International in Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, and Sri Lanka.

(3) Drones as War on Terror
An account of people on the ground who have been killed by drone strikes and the absence of reports from the United States to provide a justification for their strikes, as drone policy finds itself exempt from national and international laws.

Judy Bello was jailed for 3 days for protesting the Hancock Air National Guard Base, co-led a FOR Delegation in Iran, administers the website for Upstate Drone Action Coalition, and blogs at The Deconstructed Globe.
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6:00 – 6:45 Awards – Dr. Amber E. George

Anna Pinchuk
“2013 Peace Studies Undergraduate Scholar of the Year”

Drew Winter
“2013 Peace Studies Graduate Scholar of the Year”

Reies Romero
“2013 Peace Studies Undergraduate Project of the Year”

Sarat Colling
“2013 Peace Studies Graduate Thesis of the Year”

Dean Nieusma
“2013 Peace Studies Faculty Project of the Year”

Animals and War: Confronting the Military-Animal Industrial Complex
“2013 Peace Studies Book of the Year”

Greedy Lying Bastards
“2013 Peace Studies Media of the Year”

Louis Kriesberg
“2013 Peace Studies Lifetime Achievement Award”

6:45 – 7:00 Concluding Remarks – Dr. Mechthild Nagel
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