Consider Your Man Card Reissued: Masculine Honor and Gun Violence

In this article, Amy Shuffelton addresses school shootings through an investigation of honor and masculinity. Drawing on recent scholarship on honor, including Bernard Williams's Shame and Necessity and Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Honor Code, Shuffelton points out that honor has been misconstrued as exclusively a matter of hierarchical, competitive relationships. A second kind of honor, which exists within relationships of mutual respect between equals, she suggests, merits theorists' further consideration. In its hierarchical mode, honor is often a source of violent action, but honor in its egalitarian mode can play an important role in peacemaking. Shuffelton turns to Homer's Iliad and Adrienne Rich's “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying” to explore honor's potential. Linking both kinds of honor to masculinity and the issue of gun violence, this article contends that to address gun violence in and outside of schools, masculine honor needs to be “reissued” as a matter of egalitarian relationships based on honest communication.     

Liberal Attachments: Cultivating Civic Identifications

In the immediate aftermath of the November 2016 election, Mark Lilla argued in the New York Times that in order to win, the Democratic party would need to replace identity politics with a unifying vision of citizenship. In this essay, Derek Gottlieb and Amy Shuffelton explore Lilla's use of the two major terms — identity and citizenship — revealing them to be equally susceptible to expansion, extension, and antipolitical corruption. Using the work of Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Iris Marion Young, and Rita Felski, Gottlieb and Shuffelton amend the dichotomy that Lilla draws, showing that the project of fostering a national imaginary capable of unifying publics across differences will require a process of what Felski calls “identification.” The authors conclude by noting and describing civics courses as the ideal settings for the cultivation of a willingness and ability to identify across differences.     

Opting Out or Opting In? Test Boycott and Parental Engagement in American Public Education

This article provides a “thick” understanding of how public school parents understand their decision to opt their children out of standardized tests. In it, Amy Shuffelton draws from qualitative research interviews with Chicago parents to explore how three mothers connected opting out of standardized testing to their broader commitments to public schools. In probing the democratic potential of their logic, Shuffelton points to avenues of hope for democratic and equitable public schooling. As scholars have argued on multiple grounds, public schools have generally preserved inequitable power relations and resource allocations rather than changed them, and this happens in part because of parental resistance to reforms they believe to be detrimental to the interests of their children. Precisely because privileged parents have and implement the power to use schooling to pass advantages to their own children, however, it is important to consider when and why some of these parents instead see reason to build a public school system that shares those advantages widely. Putting these parents' explanations for opting out of testing into conversation with ideas about the democratic public in texts by John Dewey and Bonnie Honig, Shuffelton finds potential pathways, as well as hurdles, to reviving commitment to public schooling.     

A Matter of Friendship: Educational Interventions into Culture and Poverty

Contemporary educational reformers have claimed that research on social class differences in child raising justifies programs that aim to lift children out of poverty by means of cultural interventions. Focusing on the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), Ruby Payne's “aha! Process,” and the Harlem Children's Zone as examples, Amy Shuffelton argues that such programs, besides overstepping the social science research, are ethically illegitimate insofar as they undermine the equitable development of civic agency. Shuffelton invokes Aristotelian civic friendship, particularly as interpreted by Danielle Allen and Sibyl Schwarzenbach, as key to a politics that avoids relations of domination and subordination. She concludes that social justice requires that educators involved with culturally interventionist programs recognize the workings of power within schooling and society, that they accept the limits of their own perspectives, and that they remain open to what is of value in child‐raising practices other than those associated with the contemporary middle class.     

The rhetoric of oratory and how to teach it

Campbell's reputation has suffered from modem conceptions that assume Aristotle's Rhetoric as the paradigm for rhetorical theory and from modern commitments to epistemic and dialogic rhetorics. A focus on the place of the passions and emotional appeal in Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric (POR) brings his achievement more clearly into view. The “sentiments, passions, dispositions,” three key terms in Campbell's definition of the “grand art of communication,” are an index to his consideration of non‐rational response, a consideration informed by a discussion of “the passions” in the moral psychology of the period and that culminates in Book II of Hume's Treatise on Human Nature. What emerges when POR is seen from this perspective has significance for our understanding of the relationship between reason and passion in persuasion and for our appreciation of POR, which is arguably the most coherent conception of rhetoric that we have.     

Democratizing Children's Computation: Learning Computational Science as Aesthetic Experience

In this essay, Amy Voss Farris and Pratim Sengupta argue that a democratic approach to children's computing education in a science class must focus on the aesthetics of children's experience. In Democracy and Education, Dewey links “democracy” with a distinctive understanding of “experience.” For Dewey, the value of educational experiences lies in “the unity or integrity of experience.” In Art as Experience, Dewey presents aesthetic experience as the fundamental form of human experience that undergirds all other forms of experiences and that can bring together multiple forms of experiences, locating this form of experience in the work of artists. Particularly relevant to the focus of this essay, computational literacy, Dewey calls the process through which a person transforms a material into an expressive medium an aesthetic experience. Farris and Sengupta argue that the kind of experience that is appropriate for a democratic education in the context of children's computational science is essentially aesthetic in nature. Given that aesthetics has received relatively little attention in STEM education research, the authors' purpose here is to highlight the power of Deweyan aesthetic experience in making computational thinking available and attractive to all children, including those who are disinterested in computing, and especially those who are likely to be discounted by virtue of location, gender, or race.     

Teacher educators’ collaboration in subject departments: collaborative activities and social relations

Teacher educators’ collaboration plays an important role in the improvement of teacher education. Many studies in educational research focus on collaboration from 1 particular perspective. A focus on 2 perspectives, a qualitative (focusing on collaborative activities) as well as a quantitative (focusing on relations) perspective, and relating both perspectives, can add to our knowledge. Data were collected in 3 subject departments of a teacher education institute. Findings indicated that educators’ collaborative networks inside the departments could gain from more coherent and dense relations, and that key players were important to support and sustain collaboration. Both perspectives were mildly related, correlations were found for “degree” and “information” (r = .31, p < .05), “degree” and “joint work” (r = .38, p < .01), and “reciprocity” and “joint work” (r = .33, p < .05), no correlations were found for “degree” or “reciprocity” and “discussing”. At the department level, only mathematics showed significant correlations. Results indicated that, in further research, qualitative aspects as well as quantitative aspects should be included.     

Following One's Nose in Reading W. G. Sebald Allegorically: Currere and Invisible Subjects

In education, we are concerned with the teaching and learning of subjects, but the word “subject” can refer to the discipline being studied as well as the individual who is studying. In this essay, Teresa Strong‐Wilson explores this “double entendre” (which William Pinar refers to as the “double consciousness”) of curriculum studies through the analogy afforded by German author‐in‐exile W. G. Sebald's working through of difficult subjects by way of semi‐autobiographical writing that takes the form of an “invisible subject”: a preoccupation with an unnamed injustice entangled with his own upbringing. Curriculum theory, as currere, has foregrounded the autobiographical. While the place of autobiography in curriculum studies has often been taken to mean writing (especially of a confessional sort), currere is more an allegorical method of study, of intellectual engagement, of learning through reading and writing, and of teaching so as to open spaces for agency. Strong‐Wilson suggests that Sebald can provide a strong example for us in curriculum studies of how to ethically bring into being an allegorical, autobiographical practice focused on “invisible” subjects of deep concern.     

Learning to Write: Plowing and Hoeing,Labor and Essaying

In this paper Amanda Fulford addresses the issue of student writing in the university, and explores how the increasing dominance of outcome‐driven modes of learning and assessment is changing the understanding of what it is to write, what is expected of students in their writing, and how academic writing should best be supported. The starting point is the increasing use of what are termed “technologies” of writing — “handbooks” for students that address issues of academic writing — that systematize, and smooth the work of writing in, Fulford argues, an unhelpful way. This leads to a reconsideration of what it means to write in the university, and what it is to be a student who writes. Fulford explores etymologically the concept of “writing” and suggests that it might be seen metaphorically as physical labor. Writing as physical labor is explored further through the agricultural metaphors in Henry David Thoreau's Walden and through Stanley Cavell's reading of that text. In making a distinction between writing‐as‐plowing and writing‐as‐hoeing, Fulford argues that some technologies of writing deny voice rather than facilitate it, and she concludes by offering a number of suggestions for the teaching and learning of writing in the university that emphasize the value of being lost (in one's subject and one's work) and finding one's own way out. These “lessons” are illustrated with reference to Thoreau's text Walden and to American literature and film.     

Persuasive communication: A theoretical model for changing the attitude of preservice elementary teachers toward metric conversion

This study was based on Hovland's four-part statement, “Who says what to whom with what effect,” the rationale for persuasive communication, a theoretical model for modifying attitudes. Part I was a survey of 139 perservice elementary teachers from which were generated the more credible characteristics of metric instructors, a central element in the “who” component of Hovland's model. They were: (1) background in mathematics and science, (2) fluency in metrics, (3) capability of thinking metrically, (4) a record of excellent teaching, (5) previous teaching of metric measurement to children, (6) responsibility for teaching metric content in methods courses and (7) an open enthusiasm for metric conversion. Part II was a survey of 45 mathematics educators where belief statements were synthesized for the “what” component of Hovland's model. It found that math educators support metric measurement because: (1) it is consistent with our monetary system; (2) the conversion of units is easier into metric than English; (3) it is easier to teach and easier to learn than English measurement; there is less need for common fractions; (4) most nations use metric measurement; scientists have used it for decades; (5) American industry has begun to use it; (6) metric measurement will facilitate world trade and communication; and (7) American children will need it as adults; educational agencies are mandating it. With the “who” and “what” of Hovland's four-part statement defined, educational researchers now have baseline data to use in testing experimentally the effect of persuasive communication on the attitude of preservice teachers toward metrication.     

THE BASIS OF JAMES W. FOWLER'S UNDERSTANDING OF FAITH IN THE RESEARCH OF WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH: AN EXAMINATION FROM AN EVANGELICAL PERSPECTIVE

This article focuses on the influence of Wilfred Cantwell Smith's presentation of the nature of faith on James W. Fowler's faith-development paradigm. Smith contended that, in the pre-modern era, terms translated by the English words “faith” and “believe” denoted a personal allegiance that did not require assent to any objective assertions. Two difficulties with Smith's research are highlighted: 1) In the premodern era, the terms translated as “faith” and “believe” denoted both personal allegiance and objective assent. 2) Although “faith” and “believe” primarily indicated personal allegiance in the premodern era, the primacy of personal allegiance within faith does not preclude the presence or the necessity of objective assent. The author suggests that, although Christian faith and Fowlerian stage-development are two distinct phenomena, the reality to which Fowler referred as “faith” describes the psychical context for Christian faith. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of this concept, suggesting that Christian faith emerges from Fowlerian stage-development, but that the content and development of both phenomena remain essentially distinct.     

A SYSTEMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF PUBLICATIONS RELATIVE TO THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION

“The accent in cultural history is on close examin‐ ation — of texts, of pictures, and of actions — and an open‐mindedness to what those examinations will reveal, rather than on elaboration of new master narratives.”

Lynn Hunt (Ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), p. 22.

“[Films] are a legitimate way ... of representing, interpreting, thinking about and making meaning from the traces of the past ... that seriously deals with the relationship of past and present.”

Robert A. Rosenstone (Ed.), Revisioning History (Princeton, N.J., 1995), p. 3.

One of postmodernism's major lines of development collapses the boundaries and hierarchical distinctions between elite or academic culture and popular culture, giving us new opportunities to cross boundaries separating history from literature and the arts, the “academic” from the “popular”, the archival from the imaginative. I embrace the freedom that postmodernism offers to entertain new ideas, play different kinds of language games, challenge established “ways of seeing”.

I propose here that we extend the range of what we regard as historical “source” to include film, and that film be accepted by historians of education as a legitimate form of textual representation and important evidentiary “source” for our exploration and interpre‐ tation of culture and of education. What follows is an attempt at integrating film into the historiography of education. For illustrative purposes, I've chosen Peter Weir's “Dead Poets Society” ("DPS”, 1989) for my text. I don't presume to give “the” meaning of “DPS” for understanding recent American educational history, but to suggest some of its possible meanings, which, given the problematic nature of “meaning” in our postmodern epoch, is about all we can hope for, but which may be enough to continue the conversation about movies after the movie is over.     

Instructional Tools in Educational Measurement and Statistics (ITEMS) for School Personnel: Evaluation of Three Web-Based Training Modules

In the current No Child Left Behind era, K‐12 teachers and principals are expected to have a sophisticated understanding of standardized test results, use them to improve instruction, and communicate them to others. The goal of our project, funded by the National Science Foundation, was to develop and evaluate three Web‐based instructional modules in educational measurement and statistics to help school personnel acquire the “assessment literacy” required for these roles. Our first module, “What's the Score?” was administered in 2005 to 113 educators who also completed an assessment literacy quiz. Viewing the module had a small but statistically significant positive effect on quiz scores. Our second module, “What Test Scores Do and Don't Tell Us,” administered in 2006 to 104 educators, was even more effective, primarily among teacher education students. In evaluating our third module, “What's the Difference?” we were able to recruit only 33 participants. Although those who saw the module before taking the quiz outperformed those who did not, results were not statistically significant. Now that the research phase is complete, all ITEMS instructional materials are freely available on our Website.     

Embracing the Risk of Teaching Literature

Contemporary Western educational systems have been described as a landscape of control and assessment meant to make education, in Gert J. J. Biesta's words, “strong, secure, and predictable,” and ultimately “risk-free.” Against this desire for strength, Biesta argues for weakness, focusing on the risks of the unpredictable and the unknown as primary features of an education worthy of the name. In this article, Ingrid Lindell promotes this weaker attitude specifically in the context of teaching literature. Guiding her analysis is the question, How might we create a practical approach to make the unmeasurable more accessible and assessible? In applying some of Biesta's concepts to the practical considerations of teaching literature and assessing student outcomes, Lindell identifies a tension that arises when demands for educational transparency and measurable outcomes are imposed on teachers of literature: in literary education, it is very often not desirable to know outcomes in advance. Against this background, Lindell introduces the methodological idea of teaching in the gap, an attempt to apply some of Biesta's concepts and ideas in the literature classroom in order to explore how we might embrace and teach “The Risk.” Lindell aims to strengthen the case for reading and assessing literature as a metacognitive activity rather than submitting to a ratio-based approach to literary education that focuses narrowly on reproductive knowledge that is measurable.     

Asking difficult questions: exploring research methods with children on painful issues

Assumptions about a child's competence to voice an opinion often inhibit efforts to find effective methods for participation. Answers to questions are sought from the significant adults who surround a child [Morris, J. 2003. “Including All Children: Finding Out about the Experiences of Children with Communication and/or Cognitive Impairments.” Children and Society 17: 337–348.]. Indeed, methods that ask adults rather than children about children's lives have often been justified as the only way in which a ‘truth’ [Westcott, H. L., and K. S. Littleton. 2005. “Exploring Meaning in Interviews with Children.” In Researching Children's Experience: Approaches and Methods. London: Sage] may be established as to how it feels to be that child, whatever their age. This stance has been increasingly challenged [Clark, A., and P. Moss 2001. Listening to Young Children the Mosaic Approach. Norwich: National Children's Bureau] with the argument that only by ‘giving them a direct and unfettered voice’ [Winter, K. 2006. “Widening Our Knowledge Concerning Young Looked After Children: The Case for Research Using Sociological Models of Childhood.” Child and Family Social Work 11: 55–64; Winter, K. 2010. “Ascertaining the Perspectives of Young Children in Care: Case Studies using Reality Boxes.” Children and Society: The International Journal of Childhood and Children's Services 61] can children's views be properly sought and represented. Research looking at the experiences of children when they were taken into the care of the local authority meant that some difficult, complex, sometimes painful questions may be asked. In this paper, I explore the development and use of creative, interactive methods with children aged 4–13 that facilitated their participation and avoided causing undue distress. I also debate the importance of engaging with children where their circumstances and past experiences are distressful arguing that a relationship where listening carefully is paramount enables the child's voice to be heard.     

Traveling Chaucer: Comparative Translation and Cosmopolitan Humanism

Through the comparative study of non‐Anglophone translations of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, we can achieve the progressive goals of Emily Apter's “translational transnationalism” and Edward Said's “cosmopolitan humanism.” Both translation and humanism were intrinsic to Chaucer's initial composition of the Tales, and in turn, both shaped Chaucer's later reception, often in ways that did a disservice to his reputation and his verse. In this essay, Candace Barrington argues that comparative translation provides a means whereby new modes of translation, like Apter's, can promote a different version of humanism, like Said's; she demonstrates this process in a brief philological study of Nazmi A??l's Turkish translation of The Squire's Tale. While we can see the infusion of Turkish values and perspectives in the new text, we can also see that the Turkish reveals new insights into Chaucer's subtle and nuanced use of language.     

Can “Some College” Help Reduce Future Earnings Inequality?

This article addresses the policy debate over “college for all” versus “college for some” in the United States and analyzes the relationship between “some college” (as a formal education attainment category) and earnings. Our evidence confirms—using data from the American Community Survey (ACS), the Panel Study on Income Dynamics (PSID), and the Survey on Income and Program Participation (SIPP)—that more (postsecondary) education, on average, is associated with higher median earnings. However, there is emerging evidence that a proportion of workers who have attained lower levels of education (i.e., “some college”) earn more than those who have attained higher levels of education (bachelor's degree).

We focus particular attention on the subset of Americans who fall into the U.S. Census official category entitled “some college.” This is a heterogeneous group who have alternate educational credentials but who have not acquired a formal associate or bachelor's degree. Instead of an unequivocal focus on “college for all” or even “community college for all,” we argue that educators and policymakers should consider “some college” as a viable pathway to future labor market success. In sum, we conclude that some types of “some college” could lead to a reduction in earnings inequality.     

ROUSSEAU'S IMAGINARY FRIEND: CHILDHOOD,PLAY, AND SUSPICION OF THE IMAGINATION IN EMILE

In this essay Amy Shuffelton considers Jean‐Jacques Rousseau's suspicion of imagination, which is, paradoxically, offered in the context of an imaginative construction of a child's upbringing. First, Shuffelton articulates Rousseau's reasons for opposing children's development of imagination and their engagement in the sort of imaginative play that is nowadays considered a hallmark of early and middle childhood. Second, she weighs the merits of Rousseau's opposition, which runs against the consensus of contemporary social science research on childhood imaginative play. Ultimately, Shuffelton argues that Rousseau's work offers an important cautionary note to enthusiasts of children's imaginative play, due to the potentially disruptive influence of consumer capitalism, though she also notes that imagination may play a more redemptive role than Rousseau granted it.     

Waist‐High and Knee‐Deep: Humane Learning Beyond Polemics and Precincts

In this essay, Chris Higgins sets out to disentangle the tradition of humane learning from contemporary distinctions and debates. The first section demonstrates how a bloated and incoherent “humanism” now functions primarily as a talisman or a target, that is, as a prompt to choose sides. It closes with the image of Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, suggesting that humanism is more like the uncertain footing of Salcedo's fissure than the footholds on either side. The second section suggests that this “alien humanism” is hiding in plain sight, requiring us only to read an inch beyond the poster‐ready copy fueling the polemics. Even a cursory glance at the texts from which these epitomes are drawn — from Terence's “Nothing human is foreign to me,” through Shakespeare's “What a piece of work is a man,” to Arnold's “The best of what has been thought and said” — is enough to reconnect us with a tradition stranger and more dynamic than that portrayed by boosters and knockers alike. The third section explores the tensions between the research university and the tradition of humane letters it has come to house, arguing that it will not do to escape this rancor by hiding behind the functionalist, and ultimately circular, term “humanist,” defined as one who does research in the humanities. The final section shows that if this older tradition pulls away, to some extent, from the modern humanities, it simultaneously embraces scientific and professional fields, as demonstrated by the long tradition of the physician‐humanist.     

The effect of authentic m-learning activities on student engagement and motivation

Authentic collaborative m-learning activities were designed, developed and implemented for a computer networking course. The effect of the activities on student engagement and motivation were analyzed using a mixed method research design. Moreover, the effect of the iterative design of the content and instructional process of authentic m-learning activities on students' engagement and motivation were analyzed in the study. The activities were implemented for two consecutive semesters and were modified based on the findings from the first semester. Student engagement survey and motivation questionnaire were used to collect quantitative data, student interview protocol was used to collect qualitative data for further investigation. The findings from the first semester indicated that the engagement categories “personal development” and “satisfaction from the course” had the highest mean scores. In the second semester, the highest mean score belonged to the “personal development” category, followed by “collaborative learning.” Comparison of the results from two semesters revealed that the improvements in the content of the activities and instructional process increased the “collaboration” among students as well as their “interaction with instructor.” Paired sample t-tests revealed a difference in indicators of student motivation within groups in both semesters. Analysis of the interview data showed that students perceived the authentic activities as an appropriate tool for enhancement in “communication” and “collaboration” opportunities.