Tag Archives: call for manuscripts

Critical Education Special Issue – Call for Submissions – CRITICAL HUMANISM AND PROBLEMS OF CHANGE

Critical Education Special Issue – Call for Submissions

CRITICAL HUMANISM AND PROBLEMS OF CHANGE

Deadline for Submissions: December 15, 2023

Submission Types: Empirical and theoretical papers; interviews; practitioner field reports, experiential descriptions, or teaching examples

Review Process: All submissions of scholarly articles will be peer-reviewed. Interviews and field reports will be reviewed “in-house.”

Philosophical Overview/Perspective: Institutions once designed to ensure democratic participation by limiting governing power are instead used to manipulate the commons while attacking group solidarity marginalizing the most vulnerable in societies. Capitalist austerity measures and identity politics built into bad-faith legislation ensure antagonisms distract from democratic educational possibility (Ross & Vinson, 2013; Sondel, 2015). The results are populations divided, which secures worker subservience to existing structures of power or domination. Resultant social tensions keep society distracted, precluding democratizing agency. Schooling and schooling experiences reflect the acceptance of cultural narratives where societies live out the capitalist status quo and a vertically aligned social hierarchy (Rodriguez, 2008). The miseducation of students becomes a means to, at best, maintain hierarchy, but more insidiously, becomes an ideological lever for actively legitimizing dehumanization. However, critical educators fight against these alienating conditions as students and teachers direct knowledge, exchanges, and personal agency toward more democratic civic participation to secure human freedom and dignity (Freire, 2018; hooks, 2014; West, 2004).

In this special issue, we seek empirical and theoretical papers, interviews (with organic intellectuals, activist students or teachers, education workers committed to their community, and community members striving for more equitable schools and societies), practitioner field reports, and book reviews that take a critical humanist approach to education and the social world. By critical humanism, we are referring to ideas, research, and approaches that can help students and educators take pragmatic approaches toward promoting human liberation from conditions that enslave individuals and ensure the conditions for democracy. This may mean demonstrating more complex connections between the classroom to society, or ways critical educators create the conditions for a more just world. We are interested in scholarship that describes teacher and student agency within the current political climate and perspectives that serve as a counterpoint to vertical social hierarchies. Examples may include, but are not limited to social, historical, and political analyses; class relations in society, conflict resolution, dismantling censorship mechanisms that regulate human possibility and experience; teacher work within and as part of their communities; student, teacher, and community solidarity responding to oppressive conditions and/or legislation; analysis of artifacts, discourse, and culture; or research on, transformational civic practices or engagement; applications of critical or cultural frameworks to educational phenomena; anti-fascist, decolonial, and anti-oppressive approaches; innovations that help facilitate opportunities for emancipatory social transformation through critical education and praxis. Contributions related to activist communities transforming ideology, social conditions, and teaching conditions, among LGBTQ+, Indigenous, feminist, racialized, and other minorized groups are encouraged.

Submission may also relate to the different aspects of schooling as a historical activity system or the greater educational ecology which might include reimagining classroom mediation; use of disciplinary tools; equitable divisions of classroom labor; and/or classroom labor directed toward social transformation (Engeström, 2015; Sanino et. al, 2009). We would like to illuminate the many ways teachers, students, and educational and other community stakeholders work in solidarity to transform the oppressive social conditions that situate education and society (Magill & Rodriguez, 2021).

Manuscripts due: December 15, 2023

For details on manuscript submission see: Critical Education Information for Authors.

When submitting your manuscript please choose the journal section “Critical Analysis and the Problems of Change” from the drop-down menu.

Additional questions can be directed to: Kevin R. Magill (Kevin_Magill@Baylor.edu)

References

Engeström, Y. (2015). Learning by expanding. Cambridge University Press.

Evans, M. (2009). Citizenship education, pedagogy and school contexts. Education for citizenship and democracy, 519-532.

Freire, P. (2018). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury USA.

hooks, B. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge.

Magill & Rodriguez. (Forthcoming) Structures of American Education. Roman & Littlefield.

Magill, K. R. & Rodriguez, A. (2021). Teaching as intellectual solidarity. Critical Education, 12(1), 1-21. http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/186451

Ross, E. W. (2015). Teaching for change: Social education and critical knowledge of everyday life. The importance of teaching social issues: Our pedagogical creeds, 141-147.

Ross, E. W., & Vinson, K. D. (2013). Resisting neoliberal education reform: Insurrectionist pedagogies and the pursuit of dangerous citizenship. Cultural Logic: A Journal of Marxist Theory & Practice, 20, 17-45.

Sannino, A. E., Daniels, H. E., & Gutiérrez, K. D. (2009). Learning and expanding with activity theory. Cambridge University Press.

Sondel, B. (2015). Raising citizens or raising test scores? Teach for America, “no excuses” charters, and the development of the neoliberal citizen. Theory & Research in Social Education, 43(3), 289-313.

West, C. (2004). Democracy matters, winning the fight against imperialism. New York: Penguin.

Call for Papers: The Labour of COVID section of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labour

Call for Papers: The Labour of COVID section of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labour

As instructors and students brace for a fall semester taught on-line, the effects of COVID on the labour of post-secondary learning continue to set in. Course outlines and assessment criteria are being reworked. Students wrestle with rising tuition and the prospects of prolonged periods of unemployment. As recent Canadian Association of University Teachers survey results suggest, the pandemic is making higher education even less tenable for current and prospective students. International students stuck in their home countries will be forced to participate in classes across time zones. Research programs are being put on hold. Making matters worse, the gutting of teaching and learning resources at some universities have forced administrators to piece together support for instructors and staff ill-equipped to make the transition on-line. Workloads have increased. But in the midst of this crisis, some post-secondary institutions seek opportunity to advance particular agendas. It was only after significant backlash from students and lecturers that the UK’s Durham University halted its attempt at providing online-only degrees in its effort to significantly cut in-person teaching. In Alberta, the government has merely delayed a performance-based funding model as a result of COVID, signaling that austerity, not improving the quality of education, is driving policy decisions. Meaningful interventions by faculty associations have been limited as the collegial governance process is sidelined for the sake of emergency pandemic measures. And what of academic and support staff who face increase workloads and the prospects of limited child care when the fall semester resumes? To this concern, what are the gendered effects of COVID? What do these circumstances mean for precariously employed sessional and term instructors? This special edition of Workplace invites all academic workers to make sense of COVID through a work and employment lens. Possible themes include:

Faculty association responses to a shift towards on-line education
“Mission creep” and the lure of distant learning for post-secondary institutions: opportunities and threats
The gendered and racialized implications of COVID in the classroom and on campus
Implications for sessionals, adjuncts and the precariously employed
COVID and workplace accommodations: from child care to work refusals
Student experiences and responses
COVID and performance-based funding policies
COVID and the collective bargaining process
Internationalization and the COVID campus

Aim and Scope: Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor is a refereed, electronic, open access journal published by a collective of scholars in critical higher education promoting a new dignity in academic work. Contributions are aimed primarily at higher education workplace activism and dialogue on all issues of academic labour.

Invitations: Contributions from all ranks of academic workers – from tenured and tenure stream to graduate students, sessional instructors, contract faculty, and administrative support staff – are encouraged to submit.

Deadlines: Submissions will be considered for peer review and publications on a rolling basis. The final deadline is February 28, 2021. A complete volume of The Labour of COVID will be complete and made available in the spring of 2021. Formatting and submission guidelines can be found here

https://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace/information/authors

Please direct questions about the special issue to Dr. Andrew Stevens at Andrew.stevens@uregina.ca

Call for a special issue of the Northwest Journal of Teacher Education, around the theme of “A Critical Reimagination of Teacher Education for Sustainable Social Justice in a Time of Crisis.”

Special Issue Editors: Maika J. Yeigh, Portland State University and Richard D. Sawyer, Washington State University Vancouver.

The Northwest Journal of Teacher Education invites manuscripts for a special issue focused on critical responses to and reflections of teacher educators and students in the northwest United States and southwest Canada to the current COVID-19 crisis facing education. At a time when education is increasingly mediated by technology and online platforms and when the use of such platforms is perceived by many as a remedy if not a panacea for the crisis in education, many of us are deeply troubled by either real or potential issues facing teacher education and preparation programs. However, as a broad and diverse community of teacher educators, many of us are currently engaged in thoughts and actions to lessen threats to social justice or even reimagine and strengthen social justice foundations and dynamics in education. In this issue, we seek to present a collective yet pluralistic response to this crisis.

We invite 1,500 to 3,000 word manuscripts (although there may be exceptions to the length) in a range of genres and formats, including empirical studies, reflection pieces, position papers, auto/duoethnographies, dialogic essays, and/or arts-based (e.g. PhotoVoice) inquiries. The only specific requirement is that the manuscripts take a critical, social justice stance to teacher education at this time of the COVID-19 crisis.

Additional possible topics may include the following:

Indigenous pedagogies and teacher education/preparation

Identity more generally (K-12 student, teacher candidate, faculty members) and crisis education (e.g., isolation, reclaiming self, privileging/erasing identity, technology regulation of identity, various identity markers)

Culturally Sustainable Pedagogy

Truama (K-12 students, teacher candidates, faculty members)

Anti-trauma education

English Language Learners

EcoJustice Education

Neoliberalism and education (e.g., regulatory discourses, the role of ideology, the privatization of education)

Ability, access, and equity issues

The reimagination of education

The above topics are suggestions and we invite you to be creative with the manuscript call. The call is open to faculty members as well as graduate students.

Submission date: July 1, 2020, via the website for the Northwest Journal of Teacher Education: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/nwjte/. The projected publication date is late fall, 2020.

Call for Manuscripts: Contemporary Educator Movements: Transforming Unions, Schools, and Society in North America

Call for Manuscripts: Contemporary Educator Movements: Transforming Unions, Schools, and Society in North America (Deadline extended to Aug 1, 2020)

Critical Education

Special Series Editors:

Lauren Ware Stark, University of Virginia
Rhiannon Maton, State University of New York College at Cortland
Erin Dyke, Oklahoma State University

Call for Manuscripts:

Throughout the past two years, educators have led the most significant U.S. labor uprisings in over a quarter century, organizing alongside parents and community members for such common good demands as affordable health care, equitable school funding, and green space on school campuses (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019a; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019b). These uprisings can be seen as evidence of the growth of a new form of unionism, alternately called social justice or social movement unionism (Fletcher & Gapasin, 2008; Peterson, 1999; Rottmann, 2013; Weiner, 2012). They can also be understood as evidence of contemporary educator movements: collective struggles that have developed throughout the past decade with the goal of transforming educators’ unions, schools, and broader society (Stark, 2019; Stern, Brown, & Hussain, 2016).

These struggles share much in common with other contemporary “movements of movements” (Sen, 2017) in that they develop in networks, utilize new technologies alongside traditional organizing tools, integrate diverse groups and demands, and often organize through horizontal, democratic processes (Juris, 2008; Wolfson, Treré, Gerbaudo, & Funke, 2017). They have been led by rank-and-file educators, who in many cases have organized in solidarity with parents and community members. While some recent scholarship on contemporary educator movements has conceptualized these movements as a unified class struggle (Blanc, 2019), other scholarship has emphasized heterogeneity, intersectionality, knowledge production, learning, and tensions within these movements (Maton, 2018; Stark, 2019).

This Critical Education special series builds on the latter tradition to offer “movement-relevant” scholarship written from within contemporary educator movements (Bevington & Dixon, 2005). Our aim for the series is to offer resources for contemporary educator movement organizers and scholars to:

understand the links between contemporary educator labor organizing and earlier struggles,
study tensions within this organizing,
explore how educator unionists are learning from each other’s work,
highlight urban and statewide education labor struggles in the U.S., as well as major struggles in Canada and Mexico, and
connect local education labor struggles to broader power structures.

Types of Submissions:

Specifically, we seek to include interviews with organizers, movement art, and empirical studies that engage critical and engaged qualitative methodologies (for example, autoethnographic, ethnographic, oral history, and/or participatory methodologies). We especially encourage submissions with and/or from rank-and-file education organizers.

Empirical research (4,000-8,000 words)
Interviews or dialogues with organizers (2,000-4,000 words)
Creative writing, including poems or short prose essays (<2,000 words; maximum three poems or one essay)
Art, including images of banner art and photographs (minimum 300dpi for images in .jpeg file format)

Examples of Possible Topics:

The significance of caucuses and/or labor-community organizing within a specific local context,
Challenges and possibilities for radical democratic or horizontal decision-making in contemporary educator movements,
Possibilities and challenges in transforming teacher unions to more radical entities,
Political education with and for rank-and-file educators,
Rank-and-file educator organizing to engage issues of race, indigeneity, language, and culture in education,
Issues of gender and/or sexuality in contemporary educator movements,
In-depth studies of rank-and-file educator-led campaigns and organizing experiences,
Tensions and possibilities between contemporary educator movements and specific North American social movements (i.e., climate justice movements, movements for decolonization, queer and trans liberation movements, prison abolition movements),
Critical whiteness studies and education labor organizing/movements,
Among others.

Timeline:

August 1, 2020 – Manuscript submissions due. (Note: Manuscripts will undergo a double blind peer review process. Invitation to submit a manuscript does not ensure publication.)
December 1, 2020 – Authors receive reviewer feedback and notification of publication decision (accept, accept with revisions, or reject for this particular series.)
January 1, 2020 – Manuscript revisions due.

Submission Instructions:

All submissions must follow the guidelines described here. Submissions should be maximum 8,000 words and use APA format (6th edition). All work must be submitted via the Critical Education submission platform.

Use this link to submit papers: http://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions)

References:

Bevington, D., & Dixon, C. (2005). Movement-relevant theory. Social Movement Studies, 4(3), 185-208.Bureau of Labor Statistics (2019a, February 15). Major Work Stoppages (Annual) News Release. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/wkstp_02082019.htm

Blanc, E. (2019b). Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics. London & New York: Verso Books.

Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2019b, March 07). Eight major work stoppages in educational services in 2018. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2019/eight-major-work-stoppages-in-educational-services-in-2018.htm

Fletcher, B., & Gapasin, F. (2008). Solidarity divided: The crisis in organized labor and a new path toward social justice. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Juris, J. (2008). Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalisation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Maton, R. (2018.) From Neoliberalism to Structural Racism: Problem Framing in a Teacher Activist Organization. Curriculum Inquiry, 48 (3): 1–23.

Peterson, B. (1999). Survival and justice: Rethinking teacher union strategy. In B. Peterson & M. Charney (Eds.) Transforming teacher unions: Fighting for better schools and social justice (pp. 11-19). Milwaukie, WI: Rethinking Schools.

Rottmann, C. (2013, Fall). Social justice teacher activism. Our Schools / Our Selves, 23 (1), 73-81.

Sen, J. (2017). The movements of movements: Part 1. Oakland, CA: PM Press; New Delhi: Open Word.

Stark, L. (2019). “We’re trying to create a different world”: Educator organizing in social justice caucuses (Doctoral dissertation).

Stern, M., Brown, A. E. & Hussain, K. (2016). Educate. Agitate. Organize: New and Not-So-New Teacher Movements. Workplace, 26, 1-4.

Weiner, L. (2012). The future of our schools: Teachers unions and social justice. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books.

Wolfson, T., Treré, E., Gerbaudo, P., & Funke, P. N. (2017). From Global Justice to Occupy and Podemos: Mapping Three Stages of Contemporary Activism. TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, 15(2), 390 – 542.

Call for Manuscripts: Radical Departures: Ruminations on the Purposes of Higher Education in Prison

Call for Manuscripts:
Critical Education

Radical Departures: Ruminations on the Purposes of Higher Education in Prison

Series Editors:
Erin L. Castro, University of Utah
Mary Rachel Gould, Saint Louis University

Higher education in prison is experiencing a moment of increased attention throughout the United States. The Second Chance Pell Program, an Experimental Sites Initiative facilitated by the U.S. Department of Education, has helped to propel access to education inside prisons into mainstream discourse. The commonsense justification provided for increasing access to higher education in prison, a bipartisan language spoken across the political landscape, hinges on a compelling rationale: access to higher education in prison reduces recidivism, lowers cost, and increases safety and security. Departing from conventional logic regarding the rationale for higher education in prison, this special edition considers possibilities and futurities regarding postsecondary educational opportunity made available inside prisons.

The series aims to explore how various educational theories and theorists can inform understandings of and desires for higher education in prison. We invite manuscripts that provide imaginative and theoretically grounded visions for postsecondary education inside prisons that are disentangled from the logics of the carceral state and the afore mentioned commonsense rationales for higher education in prison. Authors are invited to put on hold narrow discourses of recidivism to explore higher education inside prison through conceptual, empirical, theoretical, pedagogical, narrative, and poetic articles that approach this topic from a variety of perspectives, frameworks, and positionalities.

In considering higher education in prison, we especially seek manuscripts authored and/or co-authored by currently incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, co-written essays among diverse stakeholders, and other creative configurations.

Manuscripts may examine, but are not limited to, the following questions:

What does it mean to teach and/or learn on inside prisons?
How can educational theory inform possibility inside prison classrooms?
What does/should education mean inside prisons during hyperincarceration?
What should be the purposes of higher education in prison?
How can/do various educational theories take root inside prison classrooms?
Which theoretical bodies are useful in (re)imagining and (re)engaging higher education in prison?
How do examples in practice provide potential for re-theorization?

Manuscripts due: May 1, 2017.

For details on manuscript submission see: Critical Education Information for Authors

Additional questions can be directed to Erin L. Castro: erin.castro@utah.edu

Call for Manuscripts: “Marxism and Education: International Perspectives on Education for Revolution”

CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS

Special Issue of Cultural Logic

http://clogic.eserver.org/

“Marxism and Education: International Perspectives on Education for Revolution”

Issue Editors: Rich Gibson & E. Wayne Ross

FOCUS OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE

The core issue of our time is the reality of the promise of perpetual war and escalating color-coded inequality met by the potential of a mass, activist, class-conscious movement to transform both daily life and the system of capitalism itself. In this context, schools in the empires of the world are the centripetal organizing points of much of life. While the claim of capitalist schooling is, in the classics, education, “leading out,” the reality is that schools are segregated illusion factories, in some cases human munition factories. Rather than leading out, they encapsulate.

Mainstream educational and social research typically ignores, disconnects, the ineluctable relationships of what is in fact capitalist schooling, class war, imperialist war, and the development of varying forms of corporate states around the world.

At issue, of course, is: What to do?

The long view, either in philosophy or social practice is revolution as things must change, and they will.

Connecting the long view to what must also be a long slog necessarily involves a careful look at existing local, national, and international conditions; working out tactics and strategies that all can understand, none taken apart from a grand strategy of equality and justice.

GUIDELINES

The editors are seeking manuscripts that explore education for revolution and are informed by Marxist perspectives. We are particularly interested in manuscripts that explore and examine:

local/regional contexts and educational activism linked to global anti-capitalist movements;
broad foundational and historical themes related to education and revolution (e.g., philosophy, social movements, community organizing, literacy, popular education, etc.); and
organizational and practitioner perspectives.

The editors are also interested in reviews of books, film, and other media related to education for revolution.

Article manuscripts should be approximately 5,000-10,000 words in length (20-40 pages), although we will consider manuscripts of varying lengths. The editors prefer that manuscripts be prepared using either APA or Chicago styles. Manuscripts should be submitted as email attachments (Microsoft Word or RTF) to the both editors: rgibson@pipeline.com and wayne.ross@ubc.ca.

Authors interested in submitting manuscripts should email manuscript title and a brief description to the editors by December 1, 2011. Final manuscripts are due April 1, 2012.

ABOUT CULTURAL LOGIC

Cultural Logic, which has been online since 1997, is a non-profit, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal that publishes essays, interviews, poetry, and reviews (books, films, and other media) by writers working in the Marxist tradition.

Educating for Peace in a Time of Permanent War: Call for proposals:

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS

FOR A BOOK ENTITLED

EDUCATING FOR PEACE IN A TIME OF PERMANENT WAR:
ARE SCHOOLS PART OF THE SOLUTION OR THE PROBLEM?

Under Contract
Routledge / Taylor & Francis

Co-editors Paul R. Carr (Lakehead University, Orillia) & Brad J. Porfilio (Lewis University)

Afterword Zvi Bekerman (Hebrew University)

SCHEDULE

1. Chapter proposals due: February 28, 2011
2. Feedback and decisions from editors to contributors: April 4, 2011
3. First drafts due to editors: July 15, 2011
4. Feedback on first drafts from editors to contributors: September 5, 2011
5. Final drafts by contributors due to editors: October 14, 2011
6. Manuscript to publisher: December 1, 2011
7. It is our expectation that the book will be publisher in early 2012

Statement of aims
This project responds to a defined need to add to the literature in a critical manner, providing scholars, educators and others interested in peace and peace education with a nuanced, complexifed analysis and, importantly, strategies to better understand how schools engage with the notion of war and peace, and, moreover, what they can do to become part of the solution related to creating societies that strive to establish peace as a foundational component to socio-cultural, economic and political manifestations framing relations and experiences.

This CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS seeks critical contributions from scholars who are concerned with the unchecked infiltration of the military within schools, whether it be through the curriculum, through pedagogy, through policy, through experiential learning, or through military recruitment. As Paulo Freire and other critical theorists, including Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren, bell hooks, Joe Kincheloe, Antonia Darder and others have acknowledged, education is a political process, and it should, necessarily, address human suffering and oppression. The willful neglect, combined with our individual and collective complicity within the military enterprise, sometimes referred to as the military-industrial complex, takes place at many levels, including ignorance of militarization at home and abroad, tacit support for military conflict in spite of alternatives for peace that exist, an uncritical reading of history that glorifies war and patriotism, a lack of critical engagement to promote peace over war, and a general reluctance to infuse a more critical pedagogical experience interwoven into education that would allow for deliberative democracy and engagement that seeks to contextualize and bring to life diverse epistemologies, value-sets, disciplines, theories, concepts, and experiences.

Little is done in schools at the formal and informal levels to address war and peace, especially in relation to what can and should be done to bring about peace, and this volume seeks to provide a range of policy, pedagogical, curriculum and institutional analyses aimed at facilitating meaningful engagement toward a more robust and critical examination of the role that schools play (and can play) in framing war, militarization and armed conflict.

We are particularly interested in the connection between war and peace. Many excellent texts deal specifically with peace and peace education, and we are hoping that this volume will make a more explicit connection between war/conflict/militarization and peace in and through education. We are also interested in nuanced, alternative, critical interdisciplinary studies that bring to light how we know, understand, engage with, and problematize war within our societies, and, particularly, within our schools. This manuscript is intended for an international audience, and we welcome proposals from scholars in diverse contexts, geographical locations and disciplines.

ONE LINE DESCIPTION OF THE BOOK

Ignorance is no defense, and may even be construed as complicity in the quest for what Peter McLaren calls “permanent war”.

If education is not about peace, then is it about war?

Can a society have education that willfully avoids considering peace as its central objective?

FOCUS

This book intends to better articulate how schools are part of the war industry, and, importantly, how schools can do peace education by examining war.

War is not a nebulous, far-away, mysterious venture; we are involved in perpetrating and perpetuating it, and education about and against war can be as liberating as it is necessary.

If war equates killing, can our schools avoid engaging in the examination of what war is all about?

This book shines a light on the pivotal role played by schools and education in ending or continuing war.

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS

1. Submit the following by February 28, 2011, to Paul R. Carr and Brad J. Porfilio: prcarr@gmail.com & Porfilio16@aol.com
2.
a. Title of proposed chapter
b. Author(s) and complete institutional titles and contact information
c. A 150-word biography for each author
d. A 300-word abstract of the proposed chapter, including what research methods are being used, theoretical and conceptual framework used, focus, and findings (or expected findings), and how the chapter is directly connected to the focus of the book.

Co-editor biographies

Paul R. Carr is originally from Toronto, and now resides in Montreal. He was recently an associate professor at Youngstown State University, where he taught courses in multicultural education, the sociology of education, diversity and leadership, and qualitative methodology, and is now an Associate Professor at Lakehead University (Orillia) in the Departments of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Studies. His current research is broadly concerned with social justice, with specific threads related to critical pedagogy, democracy, media literacy, and intercultural education. In 2007, he co-edited The Great White North? Exploring Whiteness, Privilege and Identity in Education (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers), which won two national awards, and, in 2008, co-edited another book, entitled Doing Democracy: Striving for Political Literacy and Social Justice (New York: Peter Lang). He recently finalized two other edited books: the first in French entitled Les faces caches de l’intercultural (Paris: L’Harmattan), and the second, with Brad Porfilio, entitled Youth Culture, education and resistance: Subverting the commercial ordering of life (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers). He has recently authored book entitled Democracy and critical pedagogy: Does your vote count? (New York: Peter Lang). Paul is the co-founder and co-director of the Global Doing Democracy Research Project, which aims to produce a range of studies on the international level, leading to critical, comparative analysis of how democracy and education can be more effectively connected.

Dr. Brad J. Porfilio is Assistant Professor of Education at Lewis University in Romeoville, IL. He teaches courses on critical pedagogy, qualitative research, globalization and education, multicultural education, foundations of education, and curriculum theory in the Educational Leadership for Teaching and Learning Doctoral Program. The Educational Leadership Program at Lewis University is unique in its critical and transformative focus where students are prepared to become transformative educational leaders who are deeply discerning, knowledgeable and approach the educational system as a potential avenue for challenging and transforming the status quo. Dr. Porfilio received his PhD in Sociology of Education in 2005 at the University at Buffalo. During his doctoral studies, he served as an Assistant Professor of Education at Medaille College and D’Youville College, where he taught courses across the teacher education spectrum and supervised pre-service and in-service teachers from Canada and the US. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, edited volumes, and conference papers on the topics of urban education, critical social studies education, neoliberalism and schooling, transformative education, teacher education, gender and technology, and cultural studies. He recently published three co- edited volumes: The first, co-edited with Curry Malott, The Destructive Path of Neoliberalism (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers), the second, co-edited with Paul R. Carr, Youth Culture, Education and Resistance: Subverting the Commercial Ordering of Life (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers), and the third, co-edited with Curry Malott, Critical Pedagogy in the 21st Century: A New Generation of Scholars (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing).

Paul R. Carr Brad J. Porfilio
Lakehead University (Orillia) Lewis University
prcarr@gmail.edu porfilio16@aol.com

Call for Manuscripts: A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation

A Return to Educational Apartheid? Critical Examinations of Race, Schools, and Segregation

A Critical Education Series

The editors of Critical Education are pleased to announce our second editorial series. This current series will focus on the articulation of race, schools, and segregation, and will analyze the extent to which schooling may or may not be returning to a state of educational apartheid.

On June 28, 2007, the Supreme Court of the US by a 5-4 margin voted to overturn Jefferson County’s four decade old desegregation plan. The Meredith case from Jefferson County was conjoined with the Parents Involved in Community Schools case from Seattle, WA, for which a group comprised primarily of white parents from two neighborhoods alleged some 200 students were not admitted to schools of their choice, based on “integration tie-breakers,” which prevented many from attending facilities nearest to their homes.

In Justice Roberts plurality opinion, he argued, “The parties and their amici debate which side is more faithful to the heritage of Brown [v. Board of Education, 1954] , but the position of the plaintiffs in Brown was spelled out in their brief and could not have been clearer: ‘The Fourteenth Amendment prevents states from according differential treatment to American children on the basis of their color or race’. What do racial classifications at issue here do, if not accord differential treatment on the basis of race?” And, later, “The way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race.”

Aside from the fact that the plaintiff in the Louisville case ultimately won her appeal in the Jefferson County system, placing her white child into precisely the school she wanted based on her appeal to the district, demonstrating that the system worked, it is the goal of this series to investigate the extent to which Justice Roberts and the other concurring justices have taken steps to erode the civil rights of the racially marginalized in order to serve the interests of the dominant racial group. It took just a little over 50 years (of monumental effort) to get a case to the Supreme Court to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson. Now, has it taken just a little over 50 years to scale that decision back with the overturning of voluntary desegregation plans in Jefferson County and Seattle School District 1?

In 2003, with a different make-up, the Supreme Court foreshadowed this 2007 verdict by rendering a ‘split decision’ regarding the University of Michigan admission policies. In the Gratz v. Bollinger case, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the University of Michigan needed to modify their admission criteria, which assigned points based on race. However, in the Grutter v. Bollinger case, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to uphold the University of Michigan Law School’s ruling that race could be one of several factors when selecting students because it furthers “a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”

In Jonathan Kozol’s 2005 sobering profile of American education, Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, a lamenting follow-up to his earlier work, Savage Inequalities, he already began to illustrate the retrograde process many public school systems have undergone related to racial balance. His critique of these pre-Brown-like-segregation systems was balanced, ironically, by rather effusive praise of the Jefferson County system, which attempted to keep this balance in check. Does the 2007 decision remove this one shining example?

Though the course toward educational apartheid may not be pre-destined, what is the likelihood that the “path of least resistance” will lead toward racial separation? How does the lingering legacy of residential segregation complicate this issue? What connections can we draw to and/or how might further racial segregation exacerbate issues of poverty or unemployment? Further, where do race and class collide? And, where is a more distinct analysis necessary? Finally, what can we surmise about the ongoing achievement gap if, in fact, apartheid schooling is afoot?

Undoubtedly, at worst, this decision could prove to be a harbinger for the death of a waning democracy. Without a compelling public education that helps all our children become critical consumers and citizens, what kind of society might we imagine for ourselves? At best, though, this decision could marshal the sensibilities of a critical cadre of educators, social workers, health care workers, activists, attorneys, business leaders, etc. to stand in resistance to the injustice that is becoming our nation’s public school system.

In an LA Times opinion piece a few days before this 2007 decision, Edward Lazarus argued, “Although they may have disagreed about Brown’s parameters, most Americans coalesced around the decision as a national symbol for our belated rejection of racism and bigotry. Using Brown as a sword to outlaw affirmative action of any kind would destroy that worthy consensus and transform it into just another mirror reflecting a legal and political culture still deeply fractured over race.” As Allan Johnson (2006), in Privilege, Power, and Difference, claims, there can be no healing until the wounding stops. Likewise, paraphrasing Malcolm X’s provocation about so-called progress, he reminded us that although the knife in the back of African-Americans may once have been nine inches deep, that it has only been removed a few inches does not indicate progress. Will this decision plunge the knife further?

Series editors Adam Renner (from Louisville, KY) and Doug Selwyn (formerly of Seattle, WA) invite essays that treat any of the above questions and/or other questions that seek clarity regarding race, education, schooling, and social justice. We seek essays that explore the history of segregation, desegregation, and affirmative action in the US and abroad. While we certainly invite empirical/quantitative research regarding these issues, we also welcome more qualitative studies, as well as philosophical/theoretical work, which provide deep explorations of these phenomena. We especially invite narratives from parents or students who have front line experience of segregation and/or educational apartheid. Additionally, and importantly, we seek essays of resistance, which document the struggle for racial justice in particular locales and/or suggestions for how we might wrestle toward more equitable schooling for all children.

Please visit Critical Education for information on submitting manuscripts.

Also feel free to contact the series editors, Adam Renner (arenner@bellarmine.edu) or Doug Selwyn (dselw001@plattsburgh.edu) with any questions.

Rouge Forum Update: Strike March 4th To Transform Education

Read the full update here: Strike March 4th To Transform Education

Educate! Agitate! Organize Freedom Schools on March 4th’s School Strike!

On the Little Rouge School Front This Week:

DPS Teachers Sue Union and Boss: “Washington claims the loan violates Michigan’s Payment of Wages and Fringe Benefits Act, which forbids an employer from demanding a gift from an employee as a condition of employment. “Bobb does not have the right to extort loans from district employees, and the DFT does not have the right to authorize Bobb to waive the minimum protections of the law,” Washington said.

The Rouge Forum News Latest Edition is Now Available

The Call For Papers for the Next Edition of the Rouge Forum News:

Teaching Resources on the History of Haiti

Martin Luther King Speech: Vietnam, A Time to Break the Silence

A Surprising List From the CIA: Nations’ Percentage Education Expenditures per GDP (US is 57th)

Chicago Trib Discovers What Substance News Reported for Years: The Duncan Miracle was a Fraud: “ Scores from the elementary schools created under Renaissance 2010 are nearly identical to the city average, and scores at the remade high schools are below the already abysmal city average, the analysis found. The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010 — that displaced students ended up mostly in other low-performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasn’t lived up to its promise by this, its target year.”

Stephen Krashen on the LEARN Act: “I do not support the LEARN Act. As described in the Senate Bill, the LEARN Act is Reading First expanded to all levels. It is Reading First on steroids.”

Alfie, “Have They Lost Their Minds?”: “ If you read the FAQ page on the common core standards website, don’t bother looking for words like “exploration,” “intrinsic motivation,” “developmentally appropriate,” or “democracy.” Instead, the very first sentence contains the phrase “success in the global economy,” followed immediately by “America’s competitive edge.”

If these bright new digitally enhanced national standards are more economic than educational in their inspiration, more about winning than learning, devoted more to serving the interests of business than to meeting the needs of kids, then we’ve merely painted a 21st-century façade on a hoary, dreary model of school as employee training. Anyone who recoils from that vision should be doing everything possible to resist a proposal for national standards that embodies it.

Grassroots Education Movement in NYC Protest Jan 21: “We are picketing Bloomberg’s residence because he is in charge of these wrongful closings. We need to bring our opposition to his doorstep.”

Randi Weingarten (AFT) Proposes to Abolish Tenure (as in Detroit)

Joan Roelofs Analysis of the Relationship of Schools and the Military (Click under pages, it’s several pdf files well worth the candle)

AFL-CIO Goons Open a College: “the online college would charge about $200 a credit, competitive with community colleges and far cheaper than most four-year colleges and for-profit schools.”

The Rouge Forum News, Issue 16 — Call for papers

Rouge Forum News, Issue 16—Call for papers—Deadline: April 1

The Rouge Forum News is an outlet for working papers, critical analysis, and grassroots news. Issue 16 feature articles will be focused on experiences with, pictures of, research regarding, and stories on PROTEST and RESISTANCE. Given the upcoming march in California on March 4, 2010 and the occupation of businesses (Republic Window) and schools (the New School in NY and several in the California system) over the last year plus, we invite your essays, poetry, photos and art that surrounds the theme of protest and resistance.

Along with these feature articles, we invite, as usual, other essays that treat the links between runaway capital, the rabid and rapid standardization of curriculum, the co-optation of our unions, the militarization of our youth, and the creep of irrationalism in our schools.

Review a book, talk about what lessons have worked in your school lately, play with theory, critique theory, give us some highlights on your research, write a poem, etc.

We are interested in work from academics, parents, teachers, and students: teachers at all levels, students in ANY grade, parents of children of any age.

We publish material from k-12 students, parents, teachers, academics, and community people struggling for equality and democracy in schools — writing (intended to inform/educate, or stories from your classroom, etc.), art, cartoons, photos, poetry.

You can submit material for the RF News via email (text attachment, if possible) to Adam Renner at arenner@bellarmine.edu.

Download The Rouge Forum News Issue 15 here.

PLEASE SUBMIT BY APRIL1, 2010.

Call for Manuscripts: Contemporary Educator Movements: Transforming Unions, Schools, and Society in North America (Deadline extended to Aug 1, 2020)

Special Series Editors:

Lauren Ware Stark, University of Virginia Rhiannon Maton, State University of New York College at Cortland Erin Dyke, Oklahoma State University

Lauren Ware Stark, University of Virginia
Rhiannon Maton, State University of New York College at Cortland
Erin Dyke, Oklahoma State University