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
___________________________________________________________

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.
___________________________________________________________

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.
___________________________________________________________

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
___________________________________________________________

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