Saturday, November 12, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
CALL for submissions: Speaking Truth to Power (EJ)
Speaking Truth to Power (English Journal)
Column Editor: P. L. Thomas
“If education cannot do everything, there is something fundamental that it can do. In other words, if education is not the key to social transformation, neither is it simply meant to reproduce the dominant ideology. . . .The freedom that moves us, that makes us take risks, is being subjugated to a process of standardization of formulas, models against which we are evaluated. . . .We are speaking of that invisible power of alienating domestication, which attains a degree of extraordinary efficiency in what I have been calling the bureaucratizing of the mind.” (Freire, 1998, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, pp. 110, 111)
Twenty-first century education in the U.S. has included a bureaucratic muting of teacher professionalism, autonomy, and voice. Additional features of current reforms involve scripting the ideas and expression of students through external accountability measures, standards, and high-stakes testing.
This column seeks to explore the experiences and possibilities that arise when educators speak Truth to power. It is also intended to be an avenue for teachers to speak Truth to power through teacher narratives about the “the bureaucratizing of the mind,” about best practice in critical literacy against scripted and tested literacy, and about creating classrooms that invite students to discover, embrace, and develop their own voices and empowerment.
Submit an electronic Word file attached to your email to the column editor, P. L. Thomas, at paul.thomas@furman.edu. Contributors are encouraged to query the column editor and share drafts of column ideas as part of the submission process.
DUE DATES
1/15/13
3/15/13
5/15/13
7/15/13
9/15/13
11/15/13
Column Editor: P. L. Thomas
“If education cannot do everything, there is something fundamental that it can do. In other words, if education is not the key to social transformation, neither is it simply meant to reproduce the dominant ideology. . . .The freedom that moves us, that makes us take risks, is being subjugated to a process of standardization of formulas, models against which we are evaluated. . . .We are speaking of that invisible power of alienating domestication, which attains a degree of extraordinary efficiency in what I have been calling the bureaucratizing of the mind.” (Freire, 1998, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage, pp. 110, 111)
Twenty-first century education in the U.S. has included a bureaucratic muting of teacher professionalism, autonomy, and voice. Additional features of current reforms involve scripting the ideas and expression of students through external accountability measures, standards, and high-stakes testing.
This column seeks to explore the experiences and possibilities that arise when educators speak Truth to power. It is also intended to be an avenue for teachers to speak Truth to power through teacher narratives about the “the bureaucratizing of the mind,” about best practice in critical literacy against scripted and tested literacy, and about creating classrooms that invite students to discover, embrace, and develop their own voices and empowerment.
Submit an electronic Word file attached to your email to the column editor, P. L. Thomas, at paul.thomas@furman.edu. Contributors are encouraged to query the column editor and share drafts of column ideas as part of the submission process.
DUE DATES
1/15/13
3/15/13
5/15/13
7/15/13
9/15/13
11/15/13
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
Call For Manuscript Proposals: Critical Literacy Teaching Series
Call For Manuscripts
Series Editor: P. L. Thomas, EdD, Furman University
Publisher: Sense
Kincheloe (2005) offers a foundational argument about the role of critical pedagogy in our classrooms:
This series will explore major authors and genres through a critical literacy lens that seeks to offer students opportunities as readers and writers to embrace and act upon their own empowerment. Further, the volumes in this series are guided by Freire (2005) as well:
Volume proposals may include (but are not limited to) the following:
Authors:
Sandra Cisneros (being drafted)
Louise Erdrich
Rachel Carson (in press)
Alice Walker
James Baldwin (under consideration)
Genres:
Comics/ graphic novels (published)
Young adult literature (being drafted)
Science fiction (in process)
Children’s literature
Poetry
Novels
Nonfiction
Send proposal ideas or questions about potential volumes to the series editor, P. L. Thomas, by email
(paul.thomas[at]furman.edu).
Series Editorial Board:
Karen Stein, PhD, University of Rhode Island
Shirley Steinberg, PhD, McGill University
Jeanne Gerlach, EdD, University of Texas-Arlington
Leila Christenbury, PhD, Virginia Commonwealth University
Renita Schmidt, PhD, University of Iowa
Ken Lindblom, PhD, Stony Brook University
Series Editor: P. L. Thomas, EdD, Furman University
Publisher: Sense
Kincheloe (2005) offers a foundational argument about the role of critical pedagogy in our classrooms:
[P]roponents of critical pedagogy understand that every dimension of schooling and every form of educational practice are politically contested spaces. Shaped by history and challenged by a wide range of interest groups, educational practice is a fuzzy concept as it takes place in numerous settings, is shaped by a plethora of often-invisible forces, and can operate even in the name of democracy and justice to be totalitarian and oppressive. (p. 2)
This series will explore major authors and genres through a critical literacy lens that seeks to offer students opportunities as readers and writers to embrace and act upon their own empowerment. Further, the volumes in this series are guided by Freire (2005) as well:
One of the violences perpetuated by illiteracy is the suffocation of the consciousness and the expressiveness of men and women who are forbidden from reading and writing, thus limiting their capacity to write about their reading of the world so they can rethink about their original reading of it. (p. 2)We are seeking book-length manuscript proposals for volumes in this new series. Volumes may address individual authors or genres/media/modes of literature/texts; and may be either edited or single-author volumes.
Volume proposals may include (but are not limited to) the following:
Authors:
Sandra Cisneros (being drafted)
Louise Erdrich
Rachel Carson (in press)
Alice Walker
James Baldwin (under consideration)
Genres:
Comics/ graphic novels (published)
Young adult literature (being drafted)
Science fiction (in process)
Children’s literature
Poetry
Novels
Nonfiction
Send proposal ideas or questions about potential volumes to the series editor, P. L. Thomas, by email
(paul.thomas[at]furman.edu).
Series Editorial Board:
Karen Stein, PhD, University of Rhode Island
Shirley Steinberg, PhD, McGill University
Jeanne Gerlach, EdD, University of Texas-Arlington
Leila Christenbury, PhD, Virginia Commonwealth University
Renita Schmidt, PhD, University of Iowa
Ken Lindblom, PhD, Stony Brook University
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Thursday, November 3, 2011
De-Testing and De-Grading Schools (Peter Lang USA)
De-Testing and De-Grading Schools: Authentic Alternatives to Accountability and Standardization
Joe Bower and P. L. Thomas, editors
Peter Lang USA
Counterpoints Series
Joe Bower and P. L. Thomas, editors
Peter Lang USA
Counterpoints Series
Author(s)
|
Title
| |
Alfie Kohn
|
Introduction: “The Roots of Grades-and-Tests”
| |
Part I: Degrading Learning, Detesting Education: The Failure of High-Stake Accountability in Education
| ||
Lisa Guisbond, Monty Neill, and Bob Schaeffer
(FairTest.org)
|
Chapter One
“NCLB’s Lost Decade for Educational Progress: What Can We Learn from this Policy Failure?”
| |
Fernando F. Padró
|
Chapter Two
“High-stakes Testing Assessment: The Deus Ex Machina of Quality in Education”
| |
Anthony Cody
|
Chapter Three
“Technocratic Groupthink Inflates the Testing Bubble”
| |
Lawrence Baines and Rhonda Goolsby
|
Chapter Four
“Mean Scores in a Mean World”
| |
Julie Gorlewski and David Gorlewski
|
Chapter Five
“Degrading Literacy: How New York State Tests Knowledge, Culture, and Critical Thinking”
| |
Morna McDermott
|
Chapter Six
“The aesthetics of social engineering: How high stakes testing dehumanizes/desensitizes education”
| |
Richard Mora
|
Chapter Seven
| |
Brian Beabout and Andre Perry
|
Chapter Eight
“Reconciling Student Outcomes and Community Self-Reliance in Modern School Reform Contexts”
| |
David Bolton and John Elmore
|
Chapter Nine
“The Role of Assessment in Empowering/ Disempowering Students in the Critical Pedagogy Classroom”
| |
Part II: De-Grading and De-Testing in a Time of High-Stakes Education Reform
| ||
Alfie Kohn
|
Chapter Ten
“The Case Against Grade”
| |
Joe Bower
|
Chapter Eleven
“Reduced to Numbers: From Concealing to Revealing Learning”
| |
John Hoben
|
Chapter Twelve
“Assessment Technologies as Wounding Machines: Abjection, the Imagination and Grading”
| |
Peter DeWitt
|
Chapter Thirteen
“No Testing Week: Focusing on Creativity in the Classroom”
| |
Hadley Ferguson
|
Chapter Fourteen
“Creating an Ungraded Classroom”
| |
James Webber and Maja Wilson
|
Chapter Fifteen
“Parents Just Want to Know the Grade”: Or Do They?
| |
P. L. Thomas
|
Chapter Sixteen
“De-grading Writing Instruction in a Time of High-stakes Testing: The Power of Feedback in Workshop”
| |
Brian Rhode
|
Chapter Seventeen
“Demoralizing, Disengaging, Non-Actualizing Education”
| |
Lisa William-White
|
Conclusion:
“Striving Towards Authentic Teaching for Social Justice”
|
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