Researching race/ethnicity and educational inequality in the Netherlands: A critical review of the research literature between 1980 and 2008

This article describes and critically analyzes how educational sociologists in the Netherlands have studied the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality between 1980 and 2008. Five major research traditions are identified: (1) political arithmetic; (2) racism and ethnic discrimination; (3) school characteristics; (4) school choice; and (5) family background. The development of particular research traditions is explained by pointing to more general developments in terms of social policy and intellectual climate in the Netherlands. This study builds on a similar, recently published literature review that focuses on the UK context by critically comparing the development and findings from these different bodies of research literature. The conclusions suggest that the Netherlands, like England, developed strong research traditions in this area of research since the 1980s and that both countries can learn from each other and advance future research in this area by developing more comprehensive research agendas. More generally, this review illustrates the usefulness of conducting nationally comparative literature reviews in assessing the development of particular bodies of research and in bringing together knowledge produced in different national settings.     

Surpassing Our Own Histories: autobiographical methods for environmental education research

In this article I appraise selected examples of the research on significant life experiences reported and discussed in a recent special issue of this journal by comparing the ways in which these studies use (and justify the use of) retrospective accounts of experience with autobiographical approaches to curriculum inquiry that have been informed by phenomenology and hermeneutics. I argue that the conservative and socially reproductive logic of significant life experiences research invites environmental educators to repeat rather than to improve upon their own histories and that, if we are to use autobiographical methods in environmental education research, we should try to do so in a way that generates new possibilities for educational experience, rather than merely replicates the experiences of a previous generation.     

Daily activities of school psychologists: A national survey

A national survey of 335 school psychologists, asking them to record their activities on a specific school day, found that assessment activities comprised nearly 40% of the work time, and consultative activities another one-third of the day. Data were collected on a number of other work activities, as well as characteristics of the respondents: age, ethnic status, graduate degrees held, languages spoken, and characteristics of district served.     

Phronesis and Phantasia: Teaching with Wisdom and Imagination

Critics of Aristotelian accounts of practical reasoning, in teaching and in other contexts, criticise phronesis for its rigidity and lack of imagination. This paper argues that phantasia , or imagination, helps us to develop a richer account of Aristotle's phronesis . Two senses of phantasia , as producing images and as an interpretive faculty, are proposed here to be importantly involved in phronesis . By producing images that help in the selection of an end goal, and by having an interpretive faculty that helps to compare competing possibilities, phantasia plays a crucial role in the practical reasoning process of phronesis .     

Contested childhoods across borders and boundaries: Insights from curriculum provisions in Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State in the 1920s

Conceptualisations and constructs of children and childhood are temporally and contextually grounded. Historical documents are rich sources of insight and understanding regarding how children were understood, valued and treated at various times by particular societies. This article explores the conceptualisation of children and childhood in the 26-county Irish Free State (South) and the 6-county Northern Ireland (North) in the 1920s following the partition of Ireland, through the lens of educational documentation, primarily national primary school curricula. The focus on both jurisdictions is interesting in the context of partition, exploring the sometimes divergent and often convergent ways in which children were conceptualised across borders and boundaries. This article reveals, using Sorin and Galloway’s framework as a conceptual and analytical tool, that conceptualisations of children were broadly similar in the North and South but differed in their focus and enactment in both fledgling states. These disparities are largely attributable to the very different political, social and religious orientations of both jurisdictions and the use of education as a vehicle for nation-building, as well as identity and gender formation. The article also explores alternative conceptualisations of children in education policy in the North and South by presenting case study ‘outliers’ of educational provision. A century since partition, conclusions and implications are noted that resonate with contemporary elements of convergence and divergence on educational policy and the conceptualisation of children across the island of Ireland.     

Communication's quest for whiteness: the racial politics of disciplinary legitimacy

ABSTRACT

This essay examines communication's historical anxieties regarding disciplinary legitimacy as an investment in whiteness. We argue that such anxieties are predicated upon a normative ideal of citizenship. As such, rhetorics of disciplinary legitimacy enact white civil society's originary exclusion, which is antiblackness. To illuminate the ways antiblackness finds expression in these anxieties, we engage the field's lengthy archive of public musings regarding legitimacy to trace the rhetorical workings of antiblackness therein.