Democracy and Education

It’s More Than Just Music: A Review of Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation

Jose M. Rios — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:28 PST

A review of the book Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation, by Christopher Emdin (Sense Publishing, 2010).

Hearing Voices. A Response to “Case Study of a Participatory Health-Promotion Intervention in School”

Christopher J. Harrist Ph.D. — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:20 PST

Venka Simovska’s article “Case Study of a Participatory Health-Promotion Intervention in School” provides important insights regarding the active involvement of youths in service programs. This response essay extends Simovska’s discussions and frames them within three key areas: positive youth development, youth voice, and meaningful participation. The paper agrees with Simovska’s assertions that more process-centered research is needed to identify and explain what happens within a program that yields positive development. While many youth workers verbally declare that the focus of their programs is the youths they serve, many fail to carry out this claim with their actions. Youth practitioners must seek to create meaningful relationships with program participants and help children become active agents in their own development.

Maternalism as a Viable Alternative to the Risks Imposed by Paternalism. A Response to "Paternalism, Obesity, and Tolerable Levels of Risk"

Barbara A. Peterson Dr. — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:16 PST

In his paper, Michael Merry poses an interesting and important question: How can we navigate between two often opposing interests—that of protecting the welfare of our society’s children and that of protecting their liberties by avoiding paternalism? While Merry lays out his argument with clarity and insight into the risks and harm that state paternalism incurs, his discussion of such risks and his suggestions for possible resolutions are all bound within a paternalistic framework. Taking on a maternalistic, or more specifically, a caring, perspective may allow us to understand the issue more fully—that is, as part of the larger problem of oppression, and to offer alternative solutions that enable a society to care for the health and well-being of its children while avoiding the harms that paternalism imposes.

Childhood Obesity and Restrictions of Parental Liberty. A Response to "Paternalism, Obesity, and Tolerable Levels of Risk"

Kristin Voigt — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:06 PST

This paper responds to Michael Merry’s recent contribution on childhood obesity. Merry’s analysis highlights the difficulties in finding an appropriate balance between children’s and parents’ interests in antiobesity interventions and emphasizes the importance of weight stigma and its effects on the obesity debate. He concludes by recommending both a greater focus on policies that address society's contribution to childhood obesity and a greater involvement of obese individuals in the policy debate. This response focuses on three points. First, a more explicit recognition of parents’ interests can support the case for the kinds of policies Merry has in mind. Second, while the perspective of obese individuals may make an important contribution to the policy debate, more direct interventions may be necessary to reduce weight stigma. Third, I consider possible connections between antiobesity interventions that restrict parental liberty and weight stigma.

Schools/Citizen Science. A Response to "The Future of Citizen Science"

Matthew Weinstein — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:55:03 PST

This paper builds on Mueller, Tippins, and Bryan's paper to ask how neoliberal restructuring impacts the form of appropriate and possible democratic science/education. It examines the compatibilities between antidemocratic tendencies of current schooling and common forms citizen science. It also clarifies several details regarding the street-medic movement. The paper suggests that distinguishing between democracy as participation and democracy as opposition would help clarify the appropriate forms, limits, and possibilities of democratic forms of science in schooling.

Moving Beyond Seeing with Our Eyes Wide Shut. A Response to “There Is No Culturally Responsive Teaching Spoken Here”

Kenneth J. Fasching-Varner et al. — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:54:56 PST

A struggle exists to engage in culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) that authentically represents the voices and interests of all across the K–20 spectrum, from higher education institutions, to teacher preparation programs, and into U.S. classrooms. This article responds to Hayes and Juárez's piece “There Is No Culturally Responsive Teaching Spoken Here” by extending the conversation with the suggestion that one of the major problems in speaking CRP has to do with a disconnect between articulated commitments and actual practices. This response article takes a critical look at the landscape in which educators work to reveal the nature of overrepresentation of privileged identity markers in teacher composition that do not match with student demographics. The response also examines how misunderstandings about CRP's theoretical and empirical frameworks, along with resistance, permeate individual teachers’ discourses and evidence how higher education institutions, teacher preparation programs, and teacher professional-development programs operate. The response ends with suggestions as to the identity work that is necessary if we are to hope for educators across settings to see and speak a CRP.

Case Study of a Participatory Health-Promotion Intervention in School

Venka Simovska — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:54:52 PST

This article discusses the findings from a case study focusing on processes involving pupils to bring about health-promotion changes. The study is related to an EU intervention project aiming to promote health and well-being among children (4–16 years). Qualitative research was carried out in a school in the Netherlands. Data sources include project documents, interviews, and observations. Thematic analysis was carried out combining the different data sources. The case study shows that, if given sufficient guidance, children can act as agents of health-promoting changes. The main arena for youth influence was the pupil council. Pupils were meaningfully involved in two actions, which targeted road safety around the school and a playground for a disadvantaged community near the school. A clear framework was provided, which delineated the participation room for pupils at every stage. The main goal of participation was construed as the development of students' capacities to actualize their ideas. The pupils were positive about their involvement. Their experience with active participation seems to have empowered them, giving them the feeling of ownership, efficacy, and achievement in working with "real-life" problems.

Paternalism, Obesity, and Tolerable Levels of Risk

Michael S. Merry — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:54:47 PST

In this article the author examines the relationship between paternalism and childhood obesity. In particular he examines the risks of paternalistic intervention in order to prevent or curtail the occurrence of obesity among young children.

The Future of Citizen Science

Michael P. Mueller et al. — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:54:44 PST

There is an emerging trend of democratizing science and schooling within science education that can be characterized as citizen science. We explore the roots of this movement and some current projects to underscore the meaning of citizen science in science and schooling. We show that citizen science, as it is currently conceptualized, does not go far enough to resolve the concerns of communities and environments when considered holistically and when compared with more dynamic and multidimensional ideas for characterizing science. We use the examples of colony collapse disorder (CCD) and emerging trends of nanotechnology as cases in point. Then we justify three dialogical spheres of influence for future citizen science. As citizen science becomes more holistic, it embodies the responsibility of youths who are prepared to engage real concerns in their community.

There Is No Culturally Responsive Teaching Spoken Here: A Critical Race Perspective

Cleveland Hayes et al. — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:54:39 PST

In this article, we are concerned with White racial domination as a process that occurs in teacher education and the ways it operates to hinder the preparation of teachers to effectively teach all students. Our purpose is to identify and highlight moments within processes of White racial domination when individuals and groups have and make choices to support rather than to challenge White supremacy. By highlighting and critically examining moments when White racial domination has been instantiated and recreated within our own experiences, we attempt to open up a venue for imagining and re-creating teacher education in ways that are not grounded in and dedicated to perpetuating White supremacy.

Letter from the Editors

Peter J. Nelsen et al. — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:46:25 PDT

An introduction from the editors to volume 19, issue 2 of Democracy & Education.

A Review of Listening to and Learning from Students

Deborah Meier — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:45:52 PDT

A review of the book Listening to and Learning from Students, edited by Brian Schultz (Information Age Publishing, 2011).

A Review of Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities

Laura A. DeSisto — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:44:49 PDT

A review of the book Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, by Martha Nussbaum (Princeton University Press, 2010).

Let a Thousand Teachers Bloom. A Response to "Creating Communities"

David L. Keiser PhD — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:44:16 PDT

Public education in the United States is nominally inclusive and open to all, but is also nuanced and complicated, particularly for students with special learning needs or for English language learners. For refugee students, who may also belong to either or both these two groups, the challenge can be compounded by previous traumas to themselves and their families. Roxas’s description of teacher Patricia Engler illustrates how complicated, but ultimately doable, is the work of educating refugee youth. The key strategy that the article illustrated was the need for attention to connections between school and home life. The students experienced these and other cultural intersections as affirming and consistent, further strengthening the community-school linkages.

Mathematics as Thinking. A Response to “Democracy and School Math”

Kasi C. Allen — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:44:13 PDT

Math education in the United States remains resistant to systemic change, and our country pays the price. Stemhagen's article "Democracy and School Math" further confirms this trend. Despite repeated calls for reform, decades of research on how people learn, millions of dollars invested in teacher professional development, and years of politicized debate, the math wars rage on—between those who believe students have the capacity to construct their own mathematical ideas and others who insist mastery of the traditional canon must come first. Meanwhile, algebra failure among secondary students remains rampant and elementary education majors report the greatest rates of math anxiety of any college major. Adults and children alike joke about being terrible at math, seemingly unaware of the extent to which this innumeracy serves as a barrier to full participation in democracy as well as to the realization of their individual goals, hopes, and dreams. In the math education community itself, there is little discussion of the unique role mathematics can play in preparing students for democracy. In this short paper, I offer a more detailed conceptualization of democratic mathematics education and discuss the role of constructivism in bringing these ideas to fruition. I suggest that a shift in the power dynamic that characterizes most mathematics classrooms will be a key component in moving beyond the gridlock.

Feel Free to Change Your Mind. A Response to "The Potential for Deliberative Democratic Civic Education"

Walter Parker — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:43:40 PDT

Walter Parker responds to Hanson and Howe's article, extending their argument to everyday classroom practice. He focuses on a popular learning activity called Structured Academic Controversy (SAC). SAC is pertinent not only to civic learning objectives but also to traditional academic-content objectives. SAC is at once a discourse structure, a participation structure, and an instructional procedure; and it centers on Hanson and Howe’s autonomy-building fulcrum—exchanging reasons. At a key moment in SAC, students are invited to step out of an assigned role and to form their “own” position on the issue. Parker argues that SAC is one way to mobilize a school’s assets in the direction of democratically enlightened political engagement.

Imagining How to Break the Co-optation of a Consensus. A Response to “Imagining No Child Left Behind Freed from Neoliberal Hijackers”

Herve Varenne — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:43:38 PDT

Given that I share, mostly, Eugene Matusov’s passionate concerns, picking on his vocabulary might appear pedantic. However, the issues involved in labeling political movements and, even more, political practices, can be fundamental and address the very grounds on which social analysis must stand. Briefly, I am concerned with the label neo-liberal, particularly when it is used as an epithet and blinds us to actual processes. I end with some, perhaps optimistic, remarks about the rise of educational activities that are not already marked for measurement on any pass/fail scale.

Accountability to Whom? Testing and Social Justice. A Response to "Imagining No Child Left Behind Freed from Neoliberal Hijackers"

David W. Kritt — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:42:35 PDT

In response to Eugene Matusov’s article in this journal, Kritt addresses assumptions of the large-scale testing central to NCLB. Discussion of studies of urban kindergarten children that examine cognitive variability, including the assertion of ability, focuses on how this affects the student as a learner, as well as as a teacher. In contrast, Matusov questions root assumptions of schooling, casting engagement in socially valued activities as an issue of human rights. This view is criticized as overly socialized. It is argued that surface-level functioning in a cultural context is not sufficient for full participation in a democracy.

Race to the Top: An Example of Belief-Dependent Reality. A Response to "Race to the Top Leaves Children and Future Citizens Behind"

William J. Mathis — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:42:32 PDT

Although the federal government claims otherwise, Race to the Top is not research based. Rather, its foundation is in ideology and belief-based realism. The overall effort is fundamentally antiscientific and distracts valuable and needed attention, resources, and focus from the nation's real problems of social, economic, and educational deprivation.

Creating Communities: Working with Refugee Students in Classrooms

Kevin C. Roxas — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:42:30 PDT

This article critically examines the reality of building community in public schools and specifically identifies the obstacles faced by teachers who try to create community with refugee students. The research in the article focuses on Ms. Patricia Engler, a teacher in a newcomer center for refugee students located in an urban setting. Engler created and fostered a sense of community for middle-school students in her classroom who often felt disconnected to their fellow students, their school, and the neighborhoods in which they lived, and was able to focus on work that she intuitively felt was right for her students based upon their specialized needs. The article also presents multiple ways of thinking about how to build community for all students through a description of different classroom activities and instructional strategies Engler employed in her classroom with newcomer children.