Rhizocurrere: a Deleuzo-Guattarian approach to curriculum autobiography

This paper introduces rhizocurrere, a curriculum autobiographical concept I created to chart my efforts to develop place-responsive outdoor environmental education. Rhizocurrere brings together rhizome, a Deleuze and Guattari concept, with currere, Pinar’s autobiographical method for curriculum inquiry. Responding to invitations from Deleuze, Guattari and Pinar, to experiment, I have adapted their ideas to create a philosophical~methodological concept that draws attention to relationships between my pedagogical and curriculum research and the contexts that have shaped my life~work. This paper outlines rhizocurrere, its parent concepts and how I have enacted my attempts to think differently about curricula and pedagogy. The central question is not ‘what is rhizocurrere?’ but rather ‘how does/could rhizocurrere work?’ and ‘what does/might rhizocurrere allow me to do?’     

Understanding Candidates’ Learning Relationships with their Cooperating Teachers: A call to Reframe my Pedagogy

Abstract

This self-study frames the influences of cooperating (or mentor) teachers on teacher candidates in my teacher education classroom as an action-at-a-distance on my pedagogy of teacher education; that is, a tacit set of influences and expectations that teacher candidates develop about my course before it even begins. Interviews with teacher candidates enabled me to develop two conceptual metaphors to think about the relationships candidates develop with cooperating teachers on practicum. The first, freedom with foundation, reflects the fact that teacher candidates hope to have considerable autonomy in their practicum placements while simultaneously having the support from their cooperating teacher to receive meaningful, regular, feedback. The second, power and performance, names the tensions teacher candidates feel in experiencing the practicum as a site of performance rather than as a site of learning. I offer some specific pedagogical ways in which I have responded to these issues before making a turn to self. I examined journal entries from my own experiences as a teacher candidate 20 years ago with a view to understanding the ways in which the two metaphors may have played a role in my own development as a teacher. This research compels me to attend explicitly to action-at-at-distance forces in my teacher education classroom, such as candidates’ relationship with cooperating teachers and my relationships with my former cooperating teachers.     

Examining the Double-Deficit Hypothesis in an Orthographically Consistent Language

As many of you know, this is my final issue as editor of Scientific Studies of Reading. The new editor, Charles Hulme, has the work well in hand and has actually completed the editing of two articles which appeared in Issue 3 of this volume. The journal will be in good hands. I want to thank the many board members, reviewers, and authors for their energy, talents, and enthusiasm in the cause of advancing the journal. It's been a great privilege to be able to work with you and to guide the journal for 5 years. The current issue is a special issue, which had its inception in an idea of Mike Pressley's to have authors assess the present and future of key areas of literacy research. The first three articles in this issue are part of the special issue. The fourth article is a rewritten version of Charles Perfetti's Distinguished Scientific Contribution presentation at the July 2006 SSSR meeting. I append comments about Mike Pressley, written by Joanna Williams, who appropriately was the first editor of Scientific Studies of Reading and who had a hand in this special issue.     

What I ‘Know’: Literary Studies and the Teaching of English

This essay unfolds through a series of juxtapositions, involving storytelling and writing of a more analytical nature. In thinking about what I ‘know’ as an English teacher, my aim has been to present my ideas in a form that might do justice to the contradictions and complexities of my professional life, including my continuing efforts to negotiate a pathway between the rich particularities of the educational settings in which I have worked and my knowledge and values as an English teacher. My primary focus is on how my literary education has shaped and been shaped by my work as an English teacher vis-à-vis a devaluing of teachers’ disciplinary knowledge that has occurred through standards-based reforms. I attempt to make the standpoint from which I am writing an object of scrutiny, thus producing an account of what I ‘know’ that arises out of my work as an English teacher and returns to it as a necessary dimension of a politically committed praxis.     

CLASSROOM CLIMATE IN AN ORTHODOX DAY SCHOOL: The Contribution of Emotional Intelligence,Demographics, and Classroom Context

I had completed a long list of wonderful ideas for the Synagogue School of the 21st Century, and was about to sit down and write my paper, when my eye glanced upon the Spring-Summer 1990 issue of Jewish Education. When I noticed the articles of Alvin Schiff and Rela Geffen Monson, I read through them before beginning to write: Lo and behold, everything I had written down and was already there — in Jewish Education under the title, “Toward the Year 2000.”     

German — a Dying Language in Science

In the second May issue of the Deutsche Universitäts-Zeitung [German University Journal] there was an article entitled "Is There Still Any Demand for German?" by Doctor Maas, which deals rather thoroughly with the importance of the German language and generally gives a positive impression, even in the realm of science. I have taken Dr. Maas's article as an opportunity to present my own observations over the years on this topic. The changes I have observed are not positive. In my opinion, their effects are harmful over the long term.     

An Overview of the Environmental Knowledge System for Elementary School Students

Having read the article "Third-Rate Colleges also Have First-Rate Students," carried in the July issue of College Students, I not only extend my deepest sympathies to my contemporaries who have come up against such misfortunes but also express my understanding and support for fellow student Xu Honghai's call for being treated as an equal.     

Towards an understanding of the role of language in the science classroom and its association with cultural identity development in the context of Mozambique

I am reflecting here my struggle to understand the issue of language in the science classroom and in our lives from three different perspectives: before and after Mozambican independence and after completion of my doctoral research. The main method used is auto|ethnographic inquiry in which I use the events in my life to question what is happening in my society. I have used Maria Rivera Maulucci’s paper, Language experience narratives and the role of autobiographical reasoning in becoming an urban science teacher as a reference. This paper helps me to show how isolated and generalized is the Mozambican situation and the value of our struggle in giving value to local languages.     

Developing holistic practice through reflection,action and theorising

This article outlines how I, as a primary teacher engaging with a self-study action research process, have come to a deeper understanding of my practice. It explains how I have also come to an understanding of why I work in the way I do; of how this understanding influences my work, and the significance of this new understanding. My work as a teacher frequently includes doing collaborative digital projects with my class. As I engaged in research on my practice, I initially experienced difficulties problematising this work. I struggled to achieve clarity not only with engaging in critical thinking but also with articulating my educational values. I found Mellor’s idea about ‘the struggle’ helpful as he explains how ‘the struggle’ is at the heart of the research process. My new understanding around these collaborative projects emerged in terms of holistic practice; clarifying my ontological values and learning to think critically. I am now generating an educational theory from my practice as I see my work as a process for developing spiritual and holistic approaches to learning and teaching. I conclude by outlining what I perceive to be the significance of my work and its potential implications for education.     

Rediscovering Post-modern perspectives in IT: Deconstructing Voithofer and Foley

My original paper, “Toward a Post-Modern Agenda in Instructional Technology” (Solomon, 2000), was an interdisciplinary review of the literature and offered multiple perspectives of the subject, a post-modern approach sometimes referred to as multivocality. I found several themes inherent in the literature, which I presented as eight general assumptions about post-modernism for consideration, discussion, and adoption. Then, I concluded the paper with a discussion about the potential contributions of post-modern concepts in instructional technology. In a reaction to my paper, Voithofer and Foley (this issue) misinterpreted some of the purposes and assumptions expressed, by seeing my view as an effort to construct a model of a post-modern agenda, which could not be further from my original purpose. This paper serves to clarify my position as a sequel to their response. David L. Solomon is Creative Director in Training Operations at PentaMark Worldwide. He is also Research Fellow at the Learning Development Institute Author's note: I was introduced to post-modernism during a group project in one of Rita Richey's graduate classes at Wayne State University. My interest in the subject flourished, and post-modernism became the focus of my dissertation research. Clearly, I found a problem to solve: No one I knew could explain post-modernism, and almost everyone I encountered in the field had no idea what it was. Gary Morrison was a member of my doctoral committee and introduced me to the classic works of Morris (1946), Knowlton (1964;1966), Stevens (1969; 1970), and Cassidy (1982). Under his guidance, I submitted my work to the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) and was awarded the 2000 ETR&D Young Scholar Award. Richey and Morrison encouraged me to explore this topic with rigor and clarity and I am grateful for their support.     

I Agree—Well,Mostly!

In this essay, I reply to my five commentators in the October 2017 issue of the Roeper Review to my July 2017 article: “ACCEL: A New Model for Identifying the Gifted.” I respond to each in turn. I end with the question I believe most important for those of us interested in giftedness to confront at the present moment.     

Gambling with Nonsense: Play and the Secondary English Classroom

Dominant and common-sense contemporary conceptions of practice tend to frame the emotional volatility of the classroom – most commonly explored in discussions about student behaviour – as a fundamental obstacle to teaching and learning. The ‘outstanding’ classroom is both orderly and, paradoxically perhaps, characterised by its passionate, and vocal, student engagement. In this piece I draw on D.W. Winnicott’s writing about play and aggression, exploring his ideas in the context of my work with two classes as a secondary English teacher at an inner-city comprehensive; doing so, I attempt to reframe both my own and my students’ affectively charged experience of the classroom as valuable rather than problematic. I posit certain moments of playfulness as a kind of pedagogical patience: less an evasion of, or a disruption to, the business of the curriculum, and more a route to meaningful engagement with it.     

Drugs,discourses and education: a critical discourse analysis of a high school drug education text

This paper examines a high school drug education text using critical discourse analysis (CDA) to discern its underlying ideological commitments and political dispositions. I begin with an overview of CDA and why it is a suitable methodology for my work, and then provide a brief history of drug education in North America. Next, I consider some of the primary discursive features of a Canadian eighth-grade drug education teacher's manual called Making Decisions. I continue with a focused interrogation of a student ‘fact sheet’ on hallucinogens, and conclude with some educational implications of my research. Paying careful attention to features such as genre, syntax, interdiscursivity, and lexicalization, I question core assumptions made by both a drug education text and the broader medical, public health, legal and drug policy discourses from which it draws.     

Behind and Beyond Self-Mastery: Risk,Vulnerability, and Becoming Through Dewey and Heidegger

In the last two decades, a decisive anti-foundationalist turn has emerged in educational philosophy and theory. With such a shift, both the possibility and the desirability to conceive of educational processes and practices in terms of mastery and predictability has been challenged. In this paper, by locating my work on such an anti-foundationalist horizon and by staging a comparison between Dewey and Heidegger, I wish to frame the issue in terms of what is behind and what is beyond the detached and self-assured subject that is supposed to found the kind of managerial frameworks that dominate educational practice worldwide. Specifically, it is my contention that for both Heidegger and Dewey, we are, on the one hand, vulnerable from the very beginning, delivered to an uncanny and uncertain condition; even knowledge is dependent upon a wider, non-discursive context. On the other hand, such an uncanniness and dependency, rather than flowing in some nihilistic defeat of educational purposes, puts radical responsibility on the side of the subject. For both Dewey and Heidegger, being a subject means being-with-others while transcending and advancing one’s boundaries. The notion of education that will emerge through the comparison between Dewey and Heidegger is a type of both subtraction and overstepping, a type of event that we cannot manage, and yet requires our attention, our educational effort in dealing with it, in loading it upon ourselves, thus reconsidering our existence.     

Watching Hamlet’s Mother: Exploring the Relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude with a Year 7 Class

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I draw on the experience of reading Hamlet with a class of 11- and 12-Year-old boys in a London comprehensive school. I explore how a number of comments in my classroom reveal the complexities of my students’ thinking about gender and sexuality in Hamlet. I look at how these thoughts are difficult for the students to fully express, and I argue that it is necessary to attend to the heteroglossic nature of the language used within the classroom.     

Entry-Level Activities in System Consultation

System-level consultation or organizational development in schools is an area in great need of theoretical models and definitions. The three articles in this special issue provide a unique learning opportunity not only for consultation across borders but also for consultation within the same nation. In my commentary, I limit my remarks to a few general principles about school-based system-level consultation with particular attention to entry processes to consultation. Specifically, I attempt to answer the following questions: (a) Are the principles guiding system-level consultation different from those guiding case consultation? (b) Are there specific principles that guide consultation when working in another country? and (c) Can what we see in these articles to a large extent be described as entry processes to system consultation?     

Back to the Future: We Listened and We Learned

Being asked to give the 39^th Amy Morris Homans Commemorative Lecture at NAKPEHE is a tremendous honor. While certainly aware of Miss Homans' legacy related to the promotion of women, physical education, and the training of teachers, I admit it has been many years since revisiting details of her life and her work. In order to prepare my comments for this lecture, it seemed critical that I do so, and what a remarkable journey it has been these past months. It allowed me to come to know my own background more thoroughly, recognize where my own beliefs were developed, and understand what I hope is the impact of my work on prospective teachers and subsequently their pupils. Born 100 years almost to the day after Miss Homans, I too am a teacher educator. With this in mind, teaching and teacher education seemed an appropriate focus for this lecture today.     

Pedagogical Border Crossings: Testimonio y Reflexiones de una Mexicana Académica

I am an assistant professor at New Mexico State University; however, the path to getting to this position has been about crossing borders, about learning in and from the borderlands. The borderlands that my body has had to cross, physically and figuratively, have left many heridas abiertas (open wounds) but have also provided me with knowledge. The pain and struggles are constant reminders of the collisions that happen between el primer y tercer mundo and how these experiences leave open wounds. The inextricable relationship between Mexico and the US is deepened as Mexicanos like me are forced to come to El Norte, whether by choice or brought by parents. At almost 11 years old, my life changed—I crossed, with the help of a coyote, into Los Angeles, California. In the US, xenophobic spaces and actions have influenced and shaped my epistemologies and my awareness/conocimiento about navigating anti-immigrant spaces. This conocimiento was affirmed by and informs my teaching and research. This acute awareness, facultad (Anzaldúa, 1987), and use of these teaching tools are what I term pedagogical border crossings.