States of Insecurity: Cold War memory, “global citizenship” and its discontents

This article situates the dominant discourses of “global citizenship” employed in North American universities to internationalize the curricula, drawing in part on evidence from one Pacific northwestern Canadian university in the post-September-11 context of recent restrictive immigration policies, anti-terrorist measures and evocative Cold War memories. Far from weakening the Canadian nation-state or jettisoning neoliberalism, it argues that authoritarian post-Fordism constitutes a supra-juridical state that offers fewer social services but governs with more entrepreneurship through its globalization, immigration and “national security” policies. The article shows how the post-September-11 changes to Canada's immigration and refugee legislation from 1978 to 2001, write evocative fears about “terrorists” and “invading immigrants” on the national body politic. These changes provide literal and metaphorical transnational, economic and socio-legal mobility with substantive and specific human rights to those prospective immigrants deemed “highly skilled global citizens”. Yet, such policy efforts and legislation also reproduce the exclusions and differential hierarchies of gendered, classed, ableist and racialized notions of skill, flexible work and vulnerable or unobtuinuble citizenship for those it deems “non-immigrants”, migrants or non-citizens. The conclusion asks: Is “global citizenship” an oxymoronic slogan; a well-meaning but naïve equation of transnational mobility or “belonging” with formal legal substantive citizenship and human rights; or an opportunity to claim democratic praxis through a decolonized curricular, pedagogical and educational policy?     

War,education and state formation: problems of territorial and political integration in the United States, 1848–1912

Abstract

After the Civil War (1861–1865), the United States faced a problem of “reconstruction” similar to that confronted by other nations at the time and familiar to the US since at least the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). The problem was one of territorial and political (re)integration: how to take territories that had only recently been operating under “foreign” governance and integrate them into an expanded nation-state on common structural terms. This paper considers the significance of education in that process of state (re)formation after the Civil War, with particular attention to its role in federal territories of the US West. Specifically, this paper analyses the role that education-based restrictions on citizenship, voting rights and office-holding played in constructing formal state power in the cases of five western territories: Hawaii, Indian Territory, Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico. A focus on the significance of education in these cases both advances and challenges literature on the “hidden” and decentralised structure of national policy-making in the US. It adds to that literature by illuminating how education served as an indirect tool of national policy in the West, effectively shaping the structure of power in other policy domains. At the same time, by focusing on the US West, the present analysis challenges the idea that national governance in the US was particularly “decentralised” or “hidden”. It highlights instead: (1) the role of colonial racialism in shaping national responsibility and authority for education in the US; and (2) the significance of education as both an alternative and a corollary to war in establishing US colonial power.     

LINKING MARXISM, GLOBALIZATION, AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION: TOWARD A COMPARATIVE AND CRITICAL PEDAGOGY POST 9/11

Abstract In a post‐9/11 world, where the politics of “us” versus “them” has reemerged under the umbrella of “terrorism,” especially in the United States, can we still envision an éducation sans frontières: a globalized and critical praxis of citizenship education in which there are no borders? If it is possible to conceive it, what might it look like? In this review essay, Awad Ibrahim looks at how these multilayered and complex questions have been addressed in three books: Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur’s Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism, Nel Noddings’s Educating Citizens for Global Awareness, and Gita Steiner‐Khamsi’s The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending. Ibrahim concludes that, through creating a liminal, dialogical space between humanism, environmentalism, materialism, philosophy, and comparative education, the authors in these books offer a critical pedagogy in which éducation sans frontières is possible — a project that is as visionary as it is hopeful.     

Mexican and Mexican-American children’s funds of knowledge as interventions into deficit thinking: opportunities for praxis in science education

In this case study, I use an ethnographic-style approach to understand the funds of knowledge of immigrant families living in colonias on both sides of the US/Mexico border. I focus on how these “knowledges” and concomitant experiences impact the ways we perceive and treat immigrant students who have all too often been viewed through deficit lenses that relegate them to the lowest expectations and outcomes in the classroom. I find that Mexican and Mexican-American families hold unusually sophisticated and relevant “knowledges” to mitigate their everyday lives. In this paper, I will refer to citizens of Mexico, whether they reside in Mexico or have crossed to the United States legally or without documentation for purposes of work, as Mexican. People who have crossed the border and are living in the US as legal residents or have gained citizenship are referred to as Mexican-Americans. They live a hybrid identity that is varied and dynamic, an issue that adds to the complexity of the content and contexts of this study. These families know and use these “knowledges” on a daily basis, yet they are not recognized by teachers in the US as a starting point to affirm and support immigrant children. Instead, immigrant children are relegated to the non-gifted and lower track classes where science is taught from an abstract and non-contextual and therefore less engaged basis. The approach I outline here, based on insights from my case study, can greatly improve teachers’ abilities to prepare their curricula for diversity in science education and science literacy as well as for broad expectations for student success.     

Semi-Cosmopolitan Transnational Students: The Identity Work of Transnational Students at an Elite Dominican School

The Dominican Republic has a substantial history of transnational movement to the US that affects more than one generation of transnationals, whose lives, as described by Smith (1994), are ‘neither “here” nor “there” but at one both “here” and “there”’(p. 17). While the Dominican transnational narrative has often been described as transnationalism from below (Smith and Guarnizo, 1998), the following case studies of transnational, but relatively privileged, youth require rethinking that framework. Participants describe a semi-cosmopolitan identity that has been shaped by their comparative experiences in more than one locale.     

Slippin’ in and out of frame: An Afrafuturist feminist orientation to Black women and American citizenship

ABSTRACT

Heeding Karma Chavez’s (2015) call to imagine rhetoric as “something entirely different,” I introduce what I call an Afrafuturist Feminist (AFF) rhetorical approach with the aim of offering one means by which rhetorical studies can move beyond normative white constructions of citizenship. In this piece, I flesh out a theoretical framework that explores the ways Black women’s truthtelling engineers rival conceptions of Blackness, creating spaces for us to reimagine what citizenship can look like in the lived experiences of Black Americans. I invoke the phrase, “in and out of frame,” to preliminarily consider how Black women like Assata Shakur and Cardi B employ rhetoric as threat to negotiate citizenship in the 20th and 21st centuries.     

From “Boy-Government” and “Student-Government” to “Learner-Government”: The Best of Both Worlds?

In the history of South African education there have been three contrasting attempts to incorporate learners into the authority structures of schools, namely: “boy-government” (prefect system), “student-government” (Student Representative Councils (SRCs)) and “learner-government” (Representative Councils of Learners (RCLs)). This article traces the historical development of these traditions in governance in South African schools. Against this background, it proffers a historical analysis of these traditions to show that the phrase “learner representative council” is at a crossroads, that is, it is being stretched and pulled in different directions in post-apartheid South Africa. It points out that “student-government” was born out of the rejection of the unpopular “boy-government”. It also provides a critical analysis of the attempt of the national Guides for Representative Councils of Learners (Guides for RCLs) (DoE 1999) to blend the “prefect” and “SRC” traditions in order to strengthen democracy at school level. In doing so, it argues that the Guides for RCLs undermine democratic SRCs developed in the anti-apartheid education struggle. In the end, the article defends the “student-government” tradition because of its potential to educate for democratic citizenship in post-apartheid South African schools.     

Improved medical student perception of ultrasound using a paired anatomy teaching assistant and clinician teaching model

This study describes a new teaching model for ultrasound (US) training, and evaluates its effect on medical student attitudes toward US. First year medical students participated in hands‐on US during human gross anatomy (2014 N = 183; 2015 N = 182). The sessions were facilitated by clinicians alone in 2014, and by anatomy teaching assistant (TA)‐clinician pairs in 2015. Both cohorts completed course evaluations which included five US‐related items on a four‐point scale; cohort responses were compared using Mann‐Whitney U tests with significance threshold set at 0.05. The 2015 survey also evaluated the TAs (three items, five‐point scale). With the adoption of the TA‐clinician teaching model, student ratings increased significantly for four out of five US‐items: “US advanced my ability to learn anatomy” increased from 2.91 ± 0.77 to 3.35 ± 0.68 (P < 0.0001), “Incorporating US increased my interest in anatomy” from 3.05 ± 0.84 to 3.50 ± 0.71 (P < 0.0001), “US is relevant to my current educational needs” from 3.36 ± 0.63 to 3.54 ± 0.53 (P = 0.015), and “US training should start in Phase I” from 3.36 ± 0.71 to 3.56 ± 0.59 (P = 0.010). Moreover, more than 84% of students reported that TAs enhanced their understanding of anatomy (mean 4.18 ± 0.86), were a valuable part of US training (mean 4.23 ± 0.89), and deemed the TAs proficient in US (mean 4.24 ± 0.86). By using an anatomy TA‐clinician teaching team, this study demonstrated significant improvements in student perceptions of the impact of US on anatomy education and the relevancy of US training to the early stages of medical education. Anat Sci Educ 11: 175–184. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

Performativity,well‐being,social class and citizenship in English schools

A range of initiatives to promote well‐being and empowerment have been introduced into English schools. These ostensibly support the citizenship curriculum that seeks to foster a more active and engaged populace. Whilst children are being encouraged to view their own well‐being as a personal project (and as a badge of successful citizenship), this process is being undermined by an informal curriculum of citizenship, embedded within the culture of performativity, that is promoting a climate of misrecognition within schools. This form of “symbolic violence” (that affects working‐class families disproportionately) is encroaching into the private sphere, traditionally a potential refuge providing opportunities for the development of forms of well‐being that were not dependent on institutional endorsement. It is suggested that some of the counter‐hegemonic values developed in the face of marginalisation might usefully inform issues of citizenship and well‐being in schools in ways that would encourage genuinely empowered forms of citizenship.     

“OUR SHARED VALUES” IN SINGAPORE: A CONFUCIAN PERSPECTIVE

In this essay Charlene Tan offers a philosophical analysis of the Singapore state's vision of shared citizenship by examining it from a Confucian perspective. The state's vision, known formally as “Our Shared Values,” consists of communitarian values that reflect the official ideology of multiculturalism. This initiative included a White Paper, entitled Shared Values, which presented pejorative assessments of the ideals of “individual rights” and “individual interests” as antithetical to national interests. Rejecting this characterization, Tan argues that a dominant Confucian perspective recognizes the correlative rights of all human beings that are premised on the inherent right to human dignity, worth, and equality. Furthermore, Confucianism posits that it is in everyone's interest to attain the Confucian ethical ideal of becoming a noble person in society through self‐cultivation. Tan concludes by highlighting two key implications for Singapore from a Confucian perspective on the Shared Values: first, schools in Singapore should place greater emphasis on individual moral development of their students, and second, more avenues should be provided for residents to contribute actively to the development of the vision of shared citizenship.     

Collaboration: The Politics of Working Together

“Collaboration” is frequently urged on students, who are praised for being “good collaborators.” Yet collaboration has two senses: a positive sense of autonomously undertaken joint endeavor, but also a sinister implication of treacherous cooperation with enemies. In this article, Amy Shuffelton probes the uses and misuses of collaboration as an educational aim. She engages Josiah Royce's Philosophy of Loyalty and John Dewey's The Public and Its Problems, as well as contemporary critiques of neoliberal workplace structures, to explore the loyalties that shape what we do and who we are. Education for democratic citizenship, Shuffelton concludes, demands that children be provided opportunities to undertake conjoint activities that go beyond the limitations of conventional school collaborations.     

The Sovereign as Educator: Thomas Hobbes's National Curriculum

The German concept of “Bildung “ has an early Utopian tradition. This article features and discusses arguments and notions of one of its originators, Wilhelm von Humboldt. “Vermenschlichung” of culture and society was the aim of the normative idea which he conceptualized within a feudal situation that, in fact, only admitted “citizenship without a city”. Two models of such immaterial forms of citizenship are inherent to von Humboldt's concept of “Bildung”: 1. the topos of the exclusive “Gelehrtenrepublik” and 2. the universal cosmopolitan idea of mankind. According to Rang, these concepts later became substitutes for real citizenship, but they sometimes paved the way to a liberal, broader‐minded political engagement.     

Mixed messages: discourses of education in policy speeches to the Japanese Diet

This paper will examine how Japanese education policy was articulated discursively from 1996 to 2010 in the semi-annual speeches of prime ministers to the Diet. It will identify three distinct discourses within these policy statements: a progressive discourse emphasizing the rights of individuals; a neo-liberal discourse of social independence and multi-tracked schooling; and a moral conservative discourse of patriotism and social conformism. In the 1990s, progressive and neo-liberal discourses held sway. Discursively, they were centred on key phrases such as kosei jūshi (“respect for individuality”) and sōzōsei (creativity), which were employed in a strategically ambiguous way to satisfy both progressive and neo-liberal demands. In the 2000s, however, right-wing politicians began to push a moral conservative agenda, which emphasized not the rights of individuals but their subservience to the wider needs of society and state. With neo-liberalism backed by powerful business interests, policymakers had to find a way to reconcile these two conflicting viewpoints discursively. They did this by binding the concept of individuality to traditional notions of Japanese identity and national citizenship, creating a hybrid discourse that attempted to blur the fundamental difference in ideologies.     

Dolores Huerta,the United Farm Workers,and people power: Rhetorical participation in Latina/o/x suffrage and social movements

ABSTRACT

Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union, was and still is involved in a number of social justice causes, including voter participation. Since her days working at the Community Service Organization in the 1950s, she has long advocated for registering and organizing voters as part of a broader strategy to enfranchise Mexican, Mexican American, and other historically marginalized groups. This essay explores a few brief examples of her calls to get out the vote and participate in social movements more broadly to address the deep-seated problems of “citizenship excess” that face Mexican, Mexican American, and other immigrant communities (as well as many others) in the United States. In addition, Huerta has strongly advocated for “people power” as a way to get marginalized people into activism, especially those with intersectional identities related to race, ethnicity, gender, class standing, sexuality, and political orientations.     

Education for future-oriented citizenship: implications for the education of twenty-first century competencies

Globalization and the knowledge economy have opened up worldwide agendas for national development. Following this is the emphasis on the social dimension, otherwise known as social capital. Much of social capital includes “soft skills” and “twenty-first century skills”, which broadly cover critical, creative and inventive thinking; information, interactive and communication skills; civic literacy, global awareness and cross-cultural skills. Proactively, the Singapore government is preparing for Curriculum 2015, a new curriculum that would develop student attributes, embedded in the “confident person”, “self-directed learner”, “active contributor”, and “concerned citizen”. Significantly, a new curricular initiative, Character and Citizenship Education, emphasizes the integrative nature of citizenship and twenty-first century competencies and has been implemented in all schools in Singapore from 2011. This future-oriented approach to citizenship education emphasizes the significance of individual initiatives and the intellectual capital of citizens. This paper analyses features of this particular approach to citizenship education, and its strengths and significance, which may be viewed as an integrative “total curriculum approach” with a “whole-society” perspective. In addition, the challenges of teaching twenty-first century skills will also be highlighted. This departs from the conventional paradigm of socialization, but to help students develop attributes for a future society to come.     

Learning to teach,learning to act: becoming a critical literacy teacher

Critical literacy requires an exploration of privilege and social justice. This includes an exploration of power and action in one’s “inner” and “outer” lives. This qualitative case study illustrates the ways in which Jonah, a preservice teacher, navigates social practices and actions in his roles as a student, activist, and literacy teacher. Through critical discourse analysis, we conceptualize social action in relation to critical literacy teaching, using a framework of discourses of, discourses as, and discourses in action to construct a nuanced understanding of social action in relation to critical literacy. Given the demands of a standardized curriculum on teachers’ autonomy, this is an important illustration of how social action can be enacted and embodied through the act of teaching.     

El currículo de ciencias en la educación secundaria obligatoria: ¿área o disciplinas? ¡Ni lo uno ni lo otro sino todo lo contrario!

Resumen

Lapregunta ¿àrea o disciplinas? Recubre, en nuestra opinión, diferentes cuestiones, por lo que no es posible contestar nítidamente a favor de una de las opciones. Nuestra contribución intenta clarificar algunas de las cuestiones relacionadascon este debate, como son, entre otras: ? Las propuestas curriculares de “ciencias para todos”.

? La consideración de la unidad de la materia (como punto de partida o como resultado del desarrollo científico).

? El poder integrador de conceptos “transversales” como energyía, interación, sistema…

? Los peligros de la “fragmentación de conocimientos”.

     

The effect of primary education teachers on the formation of pupil citizenship

Decreasing levels of civic participation and political engagement are generating an interest in citizenship and citizenship education. New forms of citizenship education which go beyond traditional instruction on political institutions are being sought, such as “democratic citizenship education”, “education of, for and through democracy” and “teaching democracy”. One area which has been little investigated is primary school teachers and citizenship education. This article reports on questionnaire‐based research among Slovak teachers that shows great variety in the focus of citizenship education. Teachers emphasised national pride as well as multicultural, global, regional and human rights aspects and the common good of an entity. The connections between teacher focus on citizenship education, the curricular framework, models of citizenship education and generational differences are all discussed.     

Narrating Lives,Narrating Faith: “Organic Hybridity” for Contemporary Christian Religious Education

This article proposes that Christian Religious Education (CRE) today requires the practice of “organic hybridity” in fluid and shifting “diasporic spaces,” the prerequisite for which is the recognition that “hybrid subjectivities” is characteristic of our current postmodern, postcolonial, transnational, globalized world. Toward this aim, CRE must strive to understand how contemporary hybrid subjects negotiate identities and faith in the way they narrate situationally, improvisationally, and organically about the inter-activity between human and Divine for everyday living.