On Sense and Nonsense: Looking Beyond the Literacy Wars

This essay argues that sense depends on the circulation of nonsense. A realisation of the reciprocal relation can result in a micro-level praxis that helps us, as educators, to free ourselves from the polarisations that have occurred in the field of literacy, such as the phonics/whole language debate, replacing the antagonism with a more generative pragmatics.     

Sense,Nonsense, and Violence: Levinas and the Internal Logic of School Shootings

Utilizing a broadly Levinasian framework, specifically the interplay among his ideas of possession, violence, and negation, Gabriel Keehn and Deron Boyles illustrate how the relatively recent sharp turn toward the hypercorporatized school and the concomitant transition of the student from simple (potential) customer to a type of hybrid consumer/consumable has rendered it more difficult for students to see themselves as engaged in any type of serious ethical relationship with those around them. To be unable to see their peers as Others, in other words, makes it easier for students to perpetrate a specific type of violence against them. Keehn and Boyles suggest that current popular policy responses to gun violence in schools (such as increased security, zero‐tolerance policies, antibullying initiatives, and mental‐health policy revisions) are approaches that, at best, fail to address the root cause of gun violence in schools and, at worst, are themselves branches of that root: namely, a homogenizing corporatism that creates an ethical vacuum in the schoolhouse.     

Seeding HPT in the High Desert

A passing comment at a chance meeting led to students from the University of New Mexico's (UNM) Organization, Information, and Learning Sciences (OILS) program participating in the University Case Study Competition (CSC) at the 2013 ISPI international conference. The teams’ involvement in the contest resulted in many lessons learned and in the transformation of an academic program. This article discusses the benefits accrued from CSC participation by a student team, one of the team's professors, and the OILS program. The article also illustrates the impact that a single individual can have on others, a program, and a community.