Jacques Rancière’s Lesson on the Lesson

Abstract

This article examines the significance of Jacques Rancière’s work on pedagogy, and argues that to make sense of Rancière’s ‘lesson on the lesson’ one must do more but also less than merely explicate Rancière’s texts. It steadfastly refuses to draw out the lessons of Rancière’s writings in the manner of a series of morals, precepts or rules. Rather, it is committed to thinking through the ‘lessons’ of Rancière in another sense. Above all, Rancière wants to ‘teach’ his readers something absolutely crucial about teaching. In making this claim the article emphasizes the extent to which Rancière advocates an utterly radical pedagogy, one that completely reconceives all the central elements of ‘schooling’, including teacher, student, intelligence and knowledge. Rancière thinks it possible to teach without knowing; he believes that the best schoolmasters can operate not on the assumption of their expertise, but on the equality of intelligence; and this means ultimately that Rancière contends that we can ‘teach what we do not know’. The best schoolmasters are ignorant schoolmasters. Rancière’s radical pedagogy depends upon, just as it consistently advances, a thoroughgoing resistance to a certain form of epistemological and ontological mastery. The rejection of mastery—of schoolmasters who would know it all, and convey this knowing to their students—forms the very backbone of all of Rancière’s writings and critical investigations. This is the chief reason why Rancière is, in a way, always talking about pedagogy, even when his subject matter appears to be something else entirely.     

Teachers' views of teenage sexual morality

This paper examines the discourses of morality drawn on by secondary school teachers in England to describe their attitudes to pupils' developing sexual identities. Although teachers recognized their own formative role in the sexual socialization of pupils and identified homophobic attitudes among boys, they were ambivalent about how far they could intervene in homophobic bulling in school. However, they failed even to recognize the widespread misogynistic bullying of girls by boys as a problem. Teachers expressed anxieties about girls' ownership of sexual knowledge and sexual agency while perceiving boys to be sexually immature and less ‘responsible’. We explore possible reasons for teachers' neglect of misogynistic bullying and their labelling of girls as sexually precocious. We argue that the discourses shaping teachers' attitudes to sexual morality and sex education were largely embedded in a form of liberal individualism that impeded them from confronting the structurally reproduced relations of gender domination.     

The difference of literature: Writing now for the future of young readers

CLIE is pleased to print the 1992 Sidney Robbins Lecture, given at the Annual Conference of The International Association of School Libraries at The Queen's University, Belfast. Sidney Robbins founded this journal in 1970, arising from the series of Children's Literature Conferences which be had initiated at St. Luke's College, Exeter, where be worked. He died in 1971.Aidan Chambers began his career as a secondary school teacher of English and drama. For the last twenty-seven years he has been an author of fiction for young readers and a part-time tutor of pre-and inservice teachers. In 1969, with his wife Nancy, he founded Thimble Press, publisher of the magazineSignal and various guides to and monographs on children's books. He is a visiting lecturer in literature for children at Westminster College, Oxford.     

The American University in Bulgaria as an Entrepreneurial University

Entrepreneurship in an educational institution is not strictly commercial. It is also defined in terms of educational objectives. The author, who is the Provost and Dean of Faculty at the American University of Bulgaria at Blagoevgrad, describes the setting up of this university in 1990‐1991 as a case study in educational entrepreneurship. This American‐style liberal arts university has become very successful through offering a curriculum that is unique to the Bulgarian higher education environment and employing faculty and staff who have a very strong professional and personal commitment to the institution and its mission. The university operates according to democratic principles of shared governance with an emphasis upon Total Quality Management and state‐of‐the‐art facilities in such areas as Internet access, computerization, and library automation. The university has made a successful adaptation to the Bulgarian cultural, linguistic, and material environment, and has won the respect of the traditional Bulgarian academic establishment. Success in this case is illustrative of entrepreneurship defined as taking an exciting idea and making it work in spite of difficulties.     

Reassessing RCTs as the ‘gold standard’: synergy not separatism in evaluation designs

ABSTRACT

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are increasingly used to evaluate educational interventions in the UK. However, RCTs remain controversial for some elements of the research community. This paper argues that the widespread use of the term ‘gold standard’ to describe RCTs is problematic, as it implies that other research methods are inferior. The usefulness of RCTs can be greatly enhanced when used in conjunction with implementation-specific measures (e.g. observation tools, attitude/engagement surveys and interviews). The proposal is advanced through case studies of two evaluations. One relates to the development of science subject leader skills and expertise at primary school level and the other to co-operative learning of primary maths. Both evaluations randomised schools to the intervention or the business-as-usual control, and compared impact using subject knowledge tests. Integral to each study was a process evaluation which looked at evidence from classroom practice along with feedback from the teachers and pupils themselves. We contend that this enabled much more holistic and richly interpretative pieces of research. The paper concludes that privilege for particular paradigms should be set aside when designing effective evaluations of educational interventions, and that it is insufficient to ask ‘what works?’ without also asking ‘why?’, ‘where?’ and ‘how?’.     

Interactive learning and technology in the US science and mathematics reform movement

This article presents an overview of the science/mathematics reform movement in the secondary/elementary schools and higher education institutions of the United States. It describes the research and views of educational practitioners regarding the need for change, as well as the particular changes which appear to be required. Emphasis is placed on the roles of interactive learning and technology in meeting reform goals.
Details of a recently completed curricular innovation project in science and mathematics are provided. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project brought five faculty in the natural sciences together with a learning theorist at Florida Community College at Jacksonville, a large, multi-campus, public institution. The group developed and taught two basic integrated science/mathematics courses in which cooperative and discovery learning, supported by multimedia technology and distance learning, were major components. Details of results are provided as they relate to meeting the goals of the reform movement.