E Wayne Ross – Page 20 – Critical Theories in Education

Call for Papers: NETWORKED REALMS AND HOPED-FOR FUTURES: a trans-generational dialogue

CALL FOR PAPERS
NETWORKED REALMS AND HOPED-FOR FUTURES:
a trans-generational dialogue

During the past decades, people from all walks of life – educators, information scientists, geeks, writers, film makers etc. – envisioned various futures for the relationships between education and technologies. Step by step, the logic of technological and social development has cherry-picked the most viable options and dumped others deep into the waste bin of history. Yesterday, our present was just one of many possible futures – today, it is our only reality.

This Special Issue of the journal E-Learning and Digital Media (www.wwwords.co.uk/ELEA) invites authors to step back from the never-ending quest for new concepts and ideas and to revisit past insights into the relationships between education and technologies – including, but not limited to, the formal process of schooling. Based on analyses of historical ideas, we invite authors to reflect on the relationships between past, present and future.

What is viable today might not have been viable yesterday: history of human thought is packed with excellent ideas that once failed to make an impact because of wrong placement, timing or simply bad luck. Therefore, we are particularly interested in identification and examination of ignored/abandoned/neglected/forgotten concepts and ideas that might shed new light to our current reality and/or (re)open new and/or abandoned strands of research.
Working at the intersection of technology, psychology, sociology, history, politics, philosophy, arts, and science fiction, we welcome contributions from wide range of disciplines and inter-, trans- and anti-disciplinary research methodologies.

SUBMISSIONS
All contributions should be original and should not be under consideration elsewhere. Authors should be aware that they are writing for an international audience and should use appropriate language. Manuscripts should not exceed 8000 words. For further information and authors’ guidelines please see www.wwwords.co.uk/elea/howtocontribute.asp

All papers will be peer-reviewed, and evaluated according to their significance, originality, content, style, clarity and relevance to the journal.

Please submit your initial abstract (300-400 words) by email to the Guest Editors.

GUEST EDITORS
Petar Jandrić, Department of Informatics & Computing, Polytechnic of Zagreb, Croatia (pjandric@tvz.hr)
Christine Sinclair, Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, UK (christine.sinclair@ed.ac.uk)
Hamish Macleod, Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, UK (h.a.macleod@ed.ac.uk)

IMPORTANT DATES
15 February 2014 – Deadline for abstracts to guest editors
1 May 2014 – Deadline for submissions/full papers
1 July 2014 – Deadline for feedback from reviewers
1 October 2014 – Final deadline for amended papers
Publication date – in 2015, to be decided

Wayne’s Faves for 2013

Back in the day, when I first started blogging at Where The Blog Has No Name, I wrote quite a bit about music, something I’ve not done in recent years. Thought I’d share my favourite tunes of 2013, which includes some blues, R&B, Americana, folk, pop, rock, post-rock, electronica, and a bit of hip hop. [Unfortunately Rdio doesn’t have some of faves from the year, including tracks from Steven Wilson, Paul Burch, and Guided by Voices.]

http://rd.io/x/QVL_TjMvaks/

Call for Manuscripts: The Media and the Neoliberal Privatization of Education

Critical Education
Call for Manuscripts:
The Media and the Neoliberal Privatization of Education

Series Editors:
Derek R. Ford, Syracuse University
Brad Porfilio, Lewis University
Rebecca A. Goldstein, Montclair State University

As the neoliberal agenda for public education in North America intensifies, educational literature has increasingly turned its attention toward understanding the logics and processes of neoliberal privatization. Additionally, attention has been paid as to how educators resist these processes and practices, both in the classroom and beyond. This special issue seeks to deepen our understanding of the neoliberal privatization of education by extending critical examinations to an underrepresented field of cultural production: that of mainstream media reporting on education and the neoliberal privatization of education, which many believe represents a new round of primitive accumulation. By examining and analyzing the mainstream media’s relationship to the processes in which neoliberal education ideologies are constructed, reflected, and reified, articles in this issue will explicate the various ways in which the mainstream media has helped facilitate and legitimate neoliberalism as a universal logic in reforming education, both locally and globally. Articles will also speak to how critical educations have guided students in K-20 schools to understand the mainstream media’s relationship to supporting the neoliberal takeover of schools.

We welcome conceptual, empirical, theoretical, pedagogical and narrative articles that approach this topic from a variety of perspectives and frameworks. Articles included in the special issue may ask and examine questions such as, but not limited to: How has media coverage of teachers’ unions and teachers’ strikes reinforced and/or advanced privatization? What shift has taken place in terms of who is positioned in the media as educational “experts”? What are the differences between the way that various major news networks, newspapers, and news magazines talk about educational privatization? How are Teach For America and Teach For All being propelled by media coverage? What are the variations in media coverage of the neoliberal agenda for education? What are the alternatives and prospects for challenges to the mainstream media? How has ALEC impacted school reform policies and practices on the state level and to what extent has the media covered it? How have critical educators positioned their students to understand the mainstream media’s role in supporting the corporate agenda for schooling?

Manuscripts due: May 1, 2014

For details on manuscript submission see: CE Information for Authors

BC Education Plan Linked to Private Corporations

BC Education Plan Linked to Private Corporations
Partnership between education ministry and not-for-profit with billionaire partners raises concerns.

By Katie Hyslop, 5 Oct 2012, TheTyee.ca

The government is proud of using citizen engagement and best practices to decide what and how to teach children in the BC Education Plan. But it’s also engaging at least one not-for-profit organization whose partners include technology corporations and private foundations that favour private market solutions to issues in the public education system.

British Columbia is one of 12 “jurisdictions” of the Global Education Leaders’ Program (GELP), a not-for-profit social enterprise organization based in the United Kingdom that according to its website is “committed to using the power of innovation to solve social challenges.”

“GELP’s ability to bring people together to think collectively and intensively about important issues around transformation is the key,” Rod Allen, B.C.’s superintendent of student achievement, says in a video posted on GELP’s website last month.

“It will be interesting for people to learn from us and we learn from them, but it’s what happens when you’re in the room together actively discussing and thinking about those issues that, to me, is the real magic.”

Run by the Innovation Unit, another not-for-profit social enterprise organization, GELP’s partners include technology corporations Cisco Systems Inc. and Promethean, and private foundations The Ellen Koshland Family Fund and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the latter of which openly supports the growth of charter schools in the U.S.

The relationship between the province’s Ministry of Education and GELP concerns Tara Ehrcke, president of the Greater Victoria Teachers’ Association, a local of the BC Teachers’ Federation (BCTF).

The government presented the BC Education Plan as a solution to the needs of B.C. students, but the partnership with GELP leads her to believe the plan is actually suited to the needs of technology corporations.

“I think [the Ed Plan’s] goals are related to allowing companies to have a piece of the [Kindergarten to Grade 12] market,” she said.

When GELP met government

The BC Education Plan, launched last October, promises improved access to digital technology for students at school and at home, and includes a partnership with telecommunications corporation Telus to connect all schools to the Internet.

The plan’s online presence is designed around the idea of a continuous discussion with the public about what it would like to see in the future for education in B.C., but the ministry hopes to have a new BC Education Program by 2014.

A key part of the plan is personalized learning, also referred to as 21st century learning. According to the plan’s website, this include identifying what makes an educated citizen and how the K-12 system can achieve that, a focus on the “core competencies, skills, and knowledge that students need to succeed in the 21st century,” and flexibility regarding whether a student learns in the classroom or through online learning.

In comparison, GELP has similar goals. The organization’s main objectives include advocating for 21st century learning and what it calls Education 3.0, a set of ideas outlined through a series of white papers co-written by software corporation Cisco Systems.

Elements of Education 3.0 include a focus on “holistic change” to the school system, “collaborative learning technologies,” and “a transfer of ownership from teachers to learners.”

According to a GELP case study on the BC Education Plan, the Ministry of Education was introduced to GELP when ministry officials met the organization’s co-founder Valerie Hannon at the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement conference held in Vancouver in 2009.

The case study outlines stages of the BC Education Plan that are already underway, including redesigning curriculum, allowing school boards to set school calendars, and emphasizing school choice for parents. It notes the ministry has developed a team of 20 experts in order to deliver the plan, chosen by school superintendents, principals and vice-principals.

Future steps for the plan include a focus on reading — which the ministry announced earlier this year with the hiring of Superintendent of Reading Maureen Dockendorf — re-examining assessment, and a “decategorization of special needs education,” after which student achievement superintendent Allen is quoted as saying “no labels and no medical model. In a 21st century personalised [sic] world, I’ll tell you what a special education looks like if you can tell me what a ‘normal’ education is.”

BC Teachers’ Federation president Susan Lambert has concerns about the changes to special needs education, particularly since class size and composition, and the environment children live in at home, aren’t addressed in the BC Education Plan.

“We know that those are the two key factors around teaching and learning that build success; the BC Education Plan is completely devoid of any kind of conversation or addressing of those factors,” she told The Tyee.

“There’s this sense now that if you can just teach children correctly, if we can find a best practice that will allow every child to learn and grow, then we’ll be fine, we won’t have to put in special services for children with special needs, we won’t have to reduce class sizes so that children get more one on one attention. It’s duplicitous, because in fact it is designed simply to reduce the need for funding a high quality system, and that will be at the expense of every child.”

The Tyee contacted the Ministry of Education with questions about its relationship with GELP. A spokesperson told The Tyee the ministry consulted with several groups about the plan.

“The ministry staff talked to educators and other organizations in Alberta, Ontario, Finland, among other jurisdictions, and that was part of the research into the Ed Plan. The discussions and research into the Ed Plan began before the ministry engaged with GELP,” he said, although he could not confirm when that was.

Both Ontario and Finland are listed as GELP jurisdictions on GELP’s website, which outlines how much help they provide: “Each jurisdiction team is supported through six-monthly collaborative events, extended workshops, on-site and remote consultancy support, cross-country working groups and webinars. At the biannual Global Events, the whole GELP community meets in one of the participating countries to share leading-edge thinking and ideas. Teams work together to solve mutual challenges and offer critical support to one another.”

In a follow-up email, the ministry spokesperson told The Tyee although the BC Education Plan was officially launched last year, government has been looking at education reform for the last 10 years.

“There isn’t one moment in time when the research began, or research started with one specific organization – this has been an ongoing process. The ministry is always reviewing new and exemplary practices in B.C. and other jurisdictions across Canada and around the world that support students,” reads the email.

Value from every dollar

Innovation Unit, GELP’s parent organization, says in their mission statement they “have a strong track record of supporting leaders and organisations [sic] delivering public services to see and do things differently. They come to us with a problem and we empower them to achieve radically different solutions that offer better outcomes for lower costs.”

The Tyee couldn’t find a reference on the GELP website to the necessity of lowering the costs of education.

In an email to The Tyee, co-founder Hannon confirmed that working with finite resources is GELP’s specialty.

“Resources available to education are not infinite. Rightly and reasonably, the need and demand from education increases. Therefore we need to get the most value out of each $ spent,” Hannon writes, adding, “our sponsors have never attempted to exercise any ‘editorial control.'”

Ehrcke, who wrote a blog post on the ministry’s association with GELP, says Hannon’s focus on saving money jibes with the B.C. government’s history of closing down 176 schools in the last 11 years, citing a lack of funding.

She’s concerned that an organization with private corporations for partners doesn’t have the best solutions for a public education system in mind.

“It’s not surprising if your perspective is profitability for Cisco Systems or whoever, that your point of view would be ‘how do we expand into those markets?'” she says.

“I see public education as something that ought to be provided publicly with public funding and publicly managed, upholding principles of equity, and the private sector really shouldn’t have a part in that.”

GELP’s partners aren’t the only corporations the Ministry of Education has been linked to recently. Donald Gutstein, a School of Communications professor at Simon Fraser University, produced a research paper for the BCTF in June examining the BC Education Plan and speculating as to how the corporate aspirations of Pearson Education, a global education supplies and technology corporation, could fit with the ministry’s plans for education reform.

Pearson purchased the Ontario company The Administrative Assistants Ltd., which produced the software for BCeSIS, the troubled Ministry of Education database, in 2010.

One of the links Gutstein points out between the BC Ed plan and Pearson’s mandate is one that GELP shares: a focus on personalized or 21st century education. It’s a framework both Lambert and Ehrcke find misleading.

“It’s packaged under the guise of a love affair of technology and this criticism of the current system of not keeping up with the pace of change, which is so untrue,” Lambert told The Tyee.

Ehrcke says she isn’t against change in education, and acknowledges that all school boards will purchase computers. But she challenges the assumption that digital gadgets are necessary for learning, and believes the $346,326.66 her district spent on Apple products could have been better spent.

“From an educational point of view, you think about learning first, and then you think about what are the tools that we need to create the best learning environment. You don’t start with the tool and build your curriculum around it,” she says.

BCTF not consulted

Superintendent Allen says in the video on GELP’s website the partnership with GELP isn’t about answers to the ministry’s problems, but rather the correct framing of the questions.

“One of the things that we like about GELP is that it’s more about the questions than about the answers, because we’re just trying to refine the questions. Once you get to answers, it feels like then the inquiry stops,” he says.

“So we want increasingly interesting and engaging questions that lead us deeper and deeper into the work.”

Lambert is upset, however, that GELP was consulted on education reform when, after two years of asking to be part of a revisioning of education in B.C., the BCTF was only asked to consult with government earlier this year after the BC Education Plan was announced.

“We were asked by the [then] minister [George Abbott] during job action,” she told The Tyee.

“We declined during job action. We were at such huge odds at the bargaining table: we weren’t able to negotiate class size and composition, we weren’t able to bargain adequate salaries that would attract the brightest and best into teaching, we weren’t able to bargain prep time, so we couldn’t then go in with the minister and chat about education reform.

“It was hypocritical of them, I think, to ask us in after the development of the vision, even though they knew we had been demanding, asking, pleading to get in on the ground floor, they shut us out.”

Katie Hyslop reports on education and youth issues for The Tyee. Follow her on Twitter @kehyslop.

Class Struggle and Education

Critical Education
Vol 4, No 10 (2013)
Table of Contents
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/182467

Articles
——–

Class Struggle and Education: Neoliberalism, (Neo)-conservatism, and the
Capitalist Assault on Public Education
Dave Hill

Abstract

In this article I examine the nexus, the mutually reinforcing connection between neoliberal and neoconservative ideology and social and political forces, and variation between countries such as Britain, the USA and Turkey. This analysis is then applied in particular to neoliberal/ neoconservative education `reform’ in England, focusing on marketisation, high-stakes testing, privatization and pre-privatisation, and the increased surveillance of teachers as a result of new public managerialism in education, as reinforced and enforced by the school inspection system. These effects are then related to the lived work experiences of specific teachers, using their own word. I conclude the article by examining and calling for resistance, for teachers and critical education workers to educate, agitate and organize in various arenas, and to consider the importance of political programme- in particular to consider the utility of the transitional programme as advanced by Trotsky.

Teach for America and the Future of Education in the US

Critical Education
Special Series
“Teach for America and the Future of Education in the US”

Founded in 1990 by Princeton graduate Wendy Kopp, Teach for America (TFA) has grown from a tiny organization with limited impact to what some supporters call the most significant force in educational reform today. Indeed the organization has recently been embraced by both the president of the National Educational Association and U.S. Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan as a force for tremendous good.

Critics argue otherwise, pointing to data that is mixed at best while questioning the almost $500 million annual operating budget of the non-profit, a significant portion of which comes from U.S. taxpayers. In light of questionable results and practices (such as using non-certified TFA recruits to work with special education students in direct violation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) organizations are working to end TFA’s “highly qualified teacher” provision in 2013, an effort TFA is aggressively trying to thwart.

In an effort to provide assistance to those organizations working to maintain the integrity of the teaching profession, Critical Education is publishing a series of articles on TFA’s practices, procedures, outcomes, and impacts.

Articles in the series will be published across three issues of the journal:

“Problematizing Teach for America” (October, 2013)
“Life as a Corps Member” (November, 2013)
“Altering TFA’s Trajectory” (December 2013)

Guest Editors of the special series are Philip E. Kovacs, (University of Alabama, Huntsville) and Kathleen deMarrais, (The University of Georgia).

1. Problematizing Teach for America
Bringing Teach for America into the Forefront of Teacher Education: Philanthropy Meets Spin
Kathleen P. deMarrais, The University of Georgia
Julianne Wenner, University of Connecticut
Jamie B. Lewis, Georgia Gwinnett College

Teach for America and the Dangers of Deficit Thinking
Ashlee Anderson, University of Tennessee

Teach For America and the Political Spectacle of Recruiting the “Best and the Brightest”
Kara M. Kavanagh, Georgia State University
Alyssa Hadley Dunn, Georgia State University

An Analysis of Teach for America’s Research Page
Philip E. Kovacs, University of Alabama, Huntsville
Erica Slate-Young, University of Alabama, Huntsville

2. Life as A Corps Member
From the Trenches: A Teach For America Corps Member’s Perspective
T. Jameson Brewer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Are Teach For America Corps Members Highly Qualified to Teach English Learners?: An Analysis of Teacher Preparation for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations
Megan Hopkins, Northwestern University
Amy J. Heineke, Loyola University Chicago

Infinite Jurisdiction: Managing Student Achievement In and Out of School
Katherine Crawford-Garrett, University of New Mexico

Personal Responsibility: The Effects of Becoming a Teach For America Teacher
Patricia Maloney, Texas Tech University

3. Altering TFA’s Trajectory
“I want to do Teach For America, not become a teacher.”
Mark Stern, Colgate University
D. Kay Johnston, Colgate University

An Issue of Equity: Assessing the Cultural Knowledge of Preservice Teachers in Teach for America
Eric Ruiz Bybee, The University of Texas at Austin

The Outsized Effects of Equating Teaching with Leadership: Implications of Teach for America’s Vision for Engaging Teachers in Reform
Laura Gutmann, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Refashioning the Master’s Tools: Imagining a Teach for America that Really is for America
Erinn Brooks, North Carolina State University
Kathleen Greene, Beloit College

Would BC Libs send Port Mann Bridge drivers to Europe to research professional education of engineers? Or, why teacher education matters

In what is perhaps the most bizarre government sponsored “research” project ever in the history of British Columbia, the Ministry of Education has given two contracts to a 19 year old high grad to research teacher education in Finland and disseminate her findings to university deans in British Columbia, with the intent of transforming the professional preparation of teachers. Read the original news report here.

The reporter wrote the story in the genre of “young person with passion providing a unique perspective to spark change” without irony, without critical perspective on the workings of government, or any consideration of what it means to conduct social research.

But many in the chattering class who take education issues seriously, myself included, responded with criticism of the Rick Davis, a BC Superintendent of Achievement, who gave government contracts to support the teen’s “research” in Finland.

What I find particularly interesting is the mini-backlash in the Twittersphere against folks who are critical of giving under the table contracts to unqualified teenagers to travel to Europe to conduct “research” on the professional preparation of teachers.

The critics of the critics make an argument that goes something like this, “Everybody knows something about education, schooling, (and thus teacher education) so why are you trying to silence this young woman?” (Which, by the way, no one is trying to do, the criticism has been directed at government, not the young “researcher” in question.)

Yes, people have perspectives on their experiences, but as heartfelt (or extensive) as they may be they are not inherently informative for research, policy, or practice. I celebrate and encourage a complicated conversation on social issues. Broad public dialogue on social issues is a key measure of the health of a democracy. But all perspectives are not equal.

Participation in a public dialogue is important. Engage in the conversation. Share your ideas. The twist in this particular circumstance is that government has endorsed and financially backed a person with no distinctive qualifications (save having been a student in school) not to engage in a conversation, but to influence public policy on professional preparation of teachers.

Would the critics of the critics support having random patients sent to Europe to research the professional preparation of physicians? A random selection of drivers who cross the Port Mann Bridge everyday sent to Europe to research professional preparation of engineers?

No doubt that the years spent in a classroom give people a particular perspective on what teaching, education, and schooling are about. And I don’t deny the personally meaningful understandings that result from those long days and years. But, a student perspective is only a partial perspective on the complexity of what it means to teach. And, I would add that even the practice of classroom teaching itself is only a partial perspective on what is needed for effective professional preparation of teachers.

Despite what some characterize as a “Mickey Mouse” discipline, teacher education is not merely 50 Nifty Ways to teach algebra, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or Pride and Prejudice.

Professional teachers are not merely competent in disciplinary knowledge, but understand the epistemological structures of their disciplines and the contested nature of what is or isn’t taught in school. Professional teachers don’t merely have a caring attitude toward their students they understand human development and the ways in which social and economic inequalities impact on the daily experiences of their students.

As in any professional practice, novice teachers begin their careers with an understanding of what it means to teach, and teach well, that is heavily influenced by their own experiences as students (as well as the popular “image” of what it means to be a good teacher). It takes time in the classroom, often years, before the full complexity of the job is understood even by those who are in the classroom every single day …

And, British Columbia Ministry of Education contracts with a high school grad to “research” teacher education in an effort to “spark change”?

Rick Davis and the Ministry are either woefully ignorant of what it means to teach and what it means to prepare teachers or they just don’t care. And this has nothing to do with the teenage victim of their ignorance or indifference.

BC Ministry of Education looks to 19 year old to revolutionize teacher education (not a joke)

Yes, apparently it has come to this. The brilliant folks in the British Columbia Ministry of Education have contracted with a 19 year old to figure out how to transform teaching and teacher education, according to a story in today’s Vancouver Sun. (This story appeared on September 23, not April 1.)

Anjali Vyas, former DJ and graduate of Stelly’s Secondary on Vancouver Island, was contracted by the BC Ministry of Eduction to research teacher education practices in Finland for six months last year.

According to the Sun, Vyas met Rick Davis, “superintendent of achievement” with BC’s Ministry of Education at a wedding and “instantly hit it off.”

Davis was so impressed by the young DJ’s passion for education, he decided to put the future of teaching and teacher education in the province in her hands. After six months in Finland, Vyas has apparently delivered a “report analyzing several aspects of the teacher training system, including practicums, the structure, content and length of teacher-education programs and the admissions process, with a view to incorporating positive aspects of the Finnish system into BC’s teacher-training programs.”

Davis likes her report so much he has given Vyas, who is now first year student in at UBC in international economics, an additional contract “to continue that work and to make the general public and the nine deans of education in BC aware of what she has learned.”

Don’t get me wrong, while I’ve not read Vyas report, she seems like a very bright and motivated young woman and am sure that she and many other people who spent 13 years as public school students have perspectives on teacher education and teaching that are worthwhile. But, why would the BC Ministry of Education send a 19 year old high school grad to Finland to conduct research on a topic that many BC educators, teacher educators, and researchers are fully informed about?

Rick Davis could have used Google Scholar to locate 66,400 results on “Finnish teacher education.” And spent a little time reading.

Or perhaps he could have tapped some of the experienced teachers in the province to go over to Finland. Or push come to shove maybe he could have asked some of the researchers at any of BC’s several Faculties of Education to weigh in. Does he know that SFU has an Institute for Studies in Teacher Education that partners with University of Tampere, in Finland? Is he aware of any of several projects funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council to study education in Finland?

Public education is a serious endeavour. There are thousands of professional educators working in classrooms and schools across BC who dedicated their professional lives to making public schools work for students, families, and communities across the province. And, there are hundreds of skilled and knowledgeable instructors and researchers working in BC’s teacher education institutions who are similarly dedicated and informed.

Does Rick Davis and the BC Ministry of Education really believe a good-hearted, bright, but completely naive and inexperienced 19 year old high school grad can conduct research that provides insights into the transformation of teacher education in the province?

If this is indicative of the approach government is using to construct the BC Education Plan, there’s little hope for the future of BC schools.