Nov. 7...Dewey's Democratic Education (This is optional)

Post a question or thought that you have related to Chapter 7 of Democracy and Education. We agreed that there would be no required blog this week so this is entirely optional. I have posted it so that if you want to ask a question or make a comment, I (and everyone else) can see it and think about it prior to class...

MacLaren's take on critical theory/pedagogy...October 24

“Critical educators argue that any worthwhile theory of schooling must be partisan. That is, it must be fundamentally tied to a struggle for a qualitatively better life for all by constructing a society based on nonexploitative relations and social justice.” –MacLaren, p. 132

Please think about the quotation above and the reading in general and comment on how/whether this thinking fits with the kind of work you want to do with your PhD and beyond. Feel free to talk about what is inspiring, challenging, intimidating, unreasonable, etc. about the critical perspective in social science research. 

Note: if you get the chance to post prior to class, that's great, but since I put this up far too late, I will give the first ten minutes of class for folks to jot down some thoughts prior to our discussion.

October 10...The Beyond Critique Readings

I want to keep this as open-ended as possible, so please post about the reading (some possible directions you might go: what sort of emotional/affective reaction do you have to what you are learning about critical theory? how do you like Levinson's approach? has/how has his discussion and diagram about theory helped you to think about critical theory and theory in general?). Please post twice and make at least the second post primarily a reaction to or dialogue with other posts.

October 3...Finding Readings for Each Group

Thanks very much for your efforts thus far...I think that our problem/inquiry-based approach to theory is going to be interesting and, hopefully, useful! Please use this space to dialogue with your group (or between groups, if you see something of interest in another group) about what reading you'd like to do as a group for our next class meeting. When you post, please make suggestions for a good reading and provide some sort of explanation as to why it might be a good choice. I will interact, too, and once the dust has settled (on or around Monday the 3rd) I will post the assigned readings (and a pdf, if possible).

September 26 (please try to post by Friday morning, the 23nd)...Finalizing our Problems/Areas of Interest

Thanks for working hard to forge a meaningful class experience. I really liked what I heard in your small group discussions. I think that the easiest way to think about what we will do moving forward is, once we have settle everyone into a group based on what kind of educational/social problem is of interest, we will put some time in  examining each problem from a  philosophical perspective. The four groups that convened yesterday were:

1.     Teacher voice/empowerment/activism

2.     Student experiences, particularly students from marginalized groups 

3.   School-to-prison pipeline

4.   Ed Technology

In this blog post, please continue the discussions from yesterday being sure to weigh in about any thoughts on how to fine tune the problem/topic. As I said last night, my idea is that we can read some common philosophy/theory as a class in the hopes that it'll help everyone in their work with their particular problem. I will schedule some whole class and group meeting time so that we have some continuity/cohesiveness as a class, all get access to some important philosophy given our commitments to social change (e.g., Dewey and Freire), but still get the time and space to explore an area of interest. What I need to know here, in addition to your ideas about the problems/topics is any ideas you have about this plan in general and also whether we want to try anything more ambitious regarding social action as part of this class. Please keep in ind that I want to have things set by next class, so this is the time to get your ideas out there. Also, feel free to get in touch if you ant to talk through any of this...

September 19...Continuing to Chart our Course (More on Problems)

Here are the list of potential problems, taken from last week's blogs:

1.    technology/maker movement

2.    teacher empowerment (pedagogical/curricular/activist?)

3.    critical study of accountability movement

4.    school-to-prison pipeline (Pushout)

5.    immigrants, families and schooling

6.    schooling for democracy (within or beyond current structures?)

7.    comparative democratic education

8.    culturally/linguistically diverse populations and opportunity/equity

9.    theory practice gap (maybe specifically in math ed)

In this blog, please discuss the list and work to develop clear problems (as opposed to topics). Discuss which ones seem likely to garner interest and which will lend themselves to study of their philosophical/theoretical roots. Ideally, we will whittle the list down to four or so problems that will be focussed enough to be worth studying but broad enough to interest everyone!

While you are only required to post once, this is an important moment for the class, and it'd be great for folks to weigh in two or three times to help the discussion progress.