Tag Archives: Critical Education

CFP: “Teach for America and the Future of Education in the US”

Call for Submissions
Critical Education Special Series

“Teach for America and the Future of Education in the US”
Guest Editor: Philip E. Kovacs, University of Alabama, Huntsville

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, the Critical Education seeks research on TFA’s practices, procedures, outcomes, and impacts. We are looking for empirical and theoretical pieces written in a style that congressional staffers can easily access and understand. We are not interested in pieces that sacrifice intellectual rigor for ease of reading, but we are also wary of overly theorized pieces that alienate readers outside of the academy.

In addition to full-length manuscripts (5,000-8,000 words), we are also soliciting short accounts of TFA’s impact in specific cities to be presented as “field reports.”

Proposals of no more than 200 words due by September 15, 2012.

Notice of acceptance of proposal by October 1, 2012

Final Submission due by February 1, 2013.

For more information on submission contact Philip Kovacs at: pk0001@uah.edu

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.

Critical Education CFP: Liberalism in Educational Policy, Practice, and Discourse

Call for Papers

Special Theme Issue of Critical Education
Theme: Liberalism in Educational Policy, Practice, and Discourse

Guest Editors:
Angelina E. Castagno & Sabina Vaught

Despite current scholarly attention to the ways neoliberalism characterizes much of our contemporary socio-political context, liberalism still profoundly informs power dynamics within schools, community organizations, and other educational contexts. While neoliberalism focuses on markets, choice, and efficiency, classical liberalism centers notions of the individual, equality, democracy, and meritocracy. These are enduring notions with significant ideological attachments, as well as institutional and policy-based manifestations within school settings. Although the concept of liberalism has somewhat shifting boundaries in response to larger social, political, and economic changes, there remain these powerful central elements (see, for example, Cochran, 1999; Dawson, 2003; Locke, 1690; Mill, 1869; Olson, 2004; Starr, 2008). This special issue seeks to examine how these liberal tenets shape power dynamics around race, gender, class, and sexuality in school policy, practice, and law.

We suggest that liberalism’s power in schooling operates from its axis of individualism. At the heart of liberalism is the notion of the individual and individual rights. In liberal thought, individuals provide the foundation for laws and societal norms, and institutions exist primarily to further the goals, desires, and needs of individuals. An individual’s rights are of utmost importance under a liberal framework, so rights such as freedom of speech, thought, conscience, and lifestyle are viewed as fundamental and worth protecting at almost any cost. Equality of opportunity is another liberal mainstay. Value is placed on ensuring that individuals have equal access to various opportunities in society. However, liberalism is not concerned with ensuring equality of outcome since it is assumed that individuals can reasonably decide if and how to capitalize on opportunities presented to them. Moreover, liberalism generally opposes too much government regulation, but this can be a point of contention since government involvement is sometimes required to ensure the stability of other core liberal values. These tenets allow liberalism to both mask and reproduce power imbalances. As such, liberalism informs power mechanisms by which educational policies, practices, and discourses are shaped.

With liberalism as an analytic construct through which to view schooling, we seek papers for this special issue that might address the following broad questions:

How is liberalism taken up, engaged, and employed in various educational contexts to reproduce power along axes of race, gender, sexuality, and class?
To what extent does the liberal identity and agenda drive educational efforts and movements, and to what effect?
What are the implications of liberalism on schools? On youth? On policy? On curriculum? On pedagogy? On activism? On reform efforts?

Through these analyses, we hope to map the multiple ways liberalism impacts schooling in order to disrupt power inequities that remain pervasive and elusive when viewed strictly through a neoliberal framework. Drawing on critical theory, Critical Race Theory, Tribal Critical Theory, Red Pedagogies, gender and feminist studies, and other related theoretical traditions, this special issue will bring together articles that advance a critical conversation about liberalism, individualism, and power within U.S. schools.

To submit a manuscript for consideration in this special issue of Critical Education, and for author submission guidelines, please visit (www.criticaleducation.org). For any inquiries related to this special issue, please e-mail the guest editors at liberalismineducation@gmail.com. For full consideration, complete manuscripts of no more than 5,000 words, including references, should be submitted by January 15, 2013. We strongly encourage submissions from advanced doctoral students and junior scholars.

New issue of Critical Education: Consumers or Critical Citizens? Financial Literacy Education and Freedom

Critical Education
Vol 3 No 6
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/182350

Consumers or Critical Citizens? Financial Literacy Education and Freedom
Chris Arthur
Toronto District School Board
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Abstract

Given the recent and ongoing economic crisis and high levels of consumer debt, the teaching of financial literacy in elementary and secondary schools has received widespread support. Too often, however, financial literacy education policy documents promote the individualization of economic risk and privilege the autonomy of the consumer or consumer-citizen over that of the critical citizen. This article argues for the necessity of a critical financial literacy education aimed at supporting critical citizens by providing a Marxist critique of the dominant liberal and neoliberal notions of freedom and responsibility reproduced in financial literacy education policy documents. The choice highlighted here is not between financial illiteracy and financial literacy but between accommodating oneself to neoliberal capitalism’s needs so as to remain in perpetual competition with others or understanding and collectively altering an economic system that promotes alienation, insecurity and exploitation.

Critical Education: ‘Critical Thinking’ And State Mandated Testing: The Collision Of State Rhetoric And Teacher Beliefs

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

We invite you to review the Table of Contents below and then visit our web site to read articles and items of interest.

Critical Education
Vol 3, No 5 (2012)
Table of Contents
http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/182244

Articles
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‘Critical Thinking’ And State Mandated Testing: The Collision Of State Rhetoric And Teacher Beliefs
Melissa Freeman, University of Georgia
Sandra Mathison, University of British Columbia
Kristen Wilcox, University at Albany, SUNY

Abstract

Based on case studies of two school districts in New York State, the authors analyze the contradictory and hegemonic discourse of critical thinking proffered in State curriculum standards and as manifest in state mandated student assessments. Using Gramsci’s (1971) notion of hegemony, the analysis illustrates that dominant groups (such as state administrators or federal policy makers) gain and maintain dominance by projecting their own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it (such as teachers) accept it as ‘common sense’ and ‘natural.’ The ways in which this hegemonic relationship is created and sustained, and it’s consequences, are illustrated in the way teachers make sense of fundamentally contradictory rhetoric and lived practice.

Keywords
Hegemony; Accountability; Critical Thinking

New issue of Critical Education: Educating Future Generations of Community Gardeners

Critical Education
Volume 3 Number 3
Educating Future Generations of Community Gardeners
Shane Jesse Ralston
Penn State University, Hazleton

Abstract

In this paper, I formulate a Deweyan argument for school gardening that prepares students for a specific type of gardening activism: community gardening, or the political activity of collectively organizing, planting and tending gardens for the purposes of food security, education and community development. Though not identical, a related type of gardening activism, guerrilla gardening, or the political activity of reclaiming unused urban land, sometimes illegally, for purposes of cultivation and beautification, is also implicated. Historically, community gardening in the U.S. has been associated with relief projects during periods of economic downturn and crisis, urban blight and gentrification, as well as nationalism, nativism and racism. Despite these last few unfortunate associations, the American philosopher John Dewey detached school gardening from the nativist’s tool-kit, portraying it as a gateway to more enriching adult experiences, not as a technique for assimilating immigrant children to a distinctly American way of life. One of those experiences that school gardening can prepare children for is environmental political activism, particularly involvement in gardening movements. Dewey did not mention this collateral benefit. Nevertheless, an argument can be made that garden advocacy—or, more specifically, participation in politically-motivated gardening movements—is an acceptable interpretation, or elaboration, of what Dewey meant by “a civic turn” to school gardening.

Critical Education & Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor move to new site.

The Institute for Critical Education Studies is pleased to announce a new cyber-home for both Critical Education and Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor.

Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace

Critical Education: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled

Please bookmark and circulate these new links.

Thank you for your extremely important, continued scholar-activism and support.

Institute for Critical Education Studies

New issue of Critical Education: Ecologically and Culturally Informed Educational Reforms in Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at. We invite you to review the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to review
articles and items of interest.

Critical Education
Vol 2, No 14 (2011)
Table of Contents
http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/criticaled/issue/view/40

Articles
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Ecologically and Culturally Informed Educational Reforms in Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies
C. A. Bowers

Critical Education: Federal Initiatives and Sex Education: The Impact on Rural United States

Critical Education has just published its latest issue at http://www.criticaleducation.org. We invite you to
examine the Table of Contents here and then visit our web site to read articles and items of interest.

Critical Education
Vol 2, No 13 (2011)
Table of Contents

Articles
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Federal Initiatives and Sex Education: The Impact on Rural United States
Jennifer Michelle de Coste

Abstract
Overall, there is much that is yet unknown in rural sex education initiatives. Federal programs connected with NCLB attempt to measure AYP in numerous areas, but sex education is not among them. However, sex education is defined quite narrowly within existing legislation, including AFLA, Title V, and CBAE, as “abstinence-only-until-marriage” and fiscal incentives are given to school districts for following these guidelines. In rural areas, where issues of size, poverty, financial distress, geography, local control, enrollment decline, and rapid ethnic diversification are at the forefront, it should come as no surprise that rural districts often require this money for survival. From there, however, the path becomes less clear in relation to sex education. It is unclear what is being taught and who is doing the teaching. In addition, the narrow definition of abstinence-only-until-marriage ignores sexual agency in students and involves a heteronormative metanarrative that often associates queer with disease. Due to the lack of research in this area, it begs further questions of the field of rural sex education, such as: Who is teaching? What is being taught? Is there a curriculum? How are queer issues handled? How do students and teachers make sense of abstinence-only-until-marriage in a way that is inclusive (or not)?

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Critical Education