Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue最新文献

{"title":"Curriculum and Community","authors":"Amy L. Masko","doi":"10.4324/9780203424575-16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203424575-16","url":null,"abstract":"When I first began my career as a professor, I was disenchanted. So much of the work we did was isolated. As I walked down the hallway to my office, I would pass many closed doors. Professors had different teaching schedules, worked at home or at coffee shops, or labored over their books, computers, and student grading with their doors tightly closed. I had moved to academia from a career first in urban public school teaching, and then in urban community work. Urban education demands collaboration. Everyone is working toward the same, shared goal: educating children with the limited resources that are available. Yet in higher education, everyone is working toward their individual goals: publishing their research and standing out as a good teacher, all for the prizes of tenure, promotion, and prestige. This past year, my English department implemented a new curriculum, including a new capstone class, changing the class from one in critical theory to one in which the students reflect on their learning as English majors and craft a nearly 40-page senior thesis. English majors take courses in literature, linguistics, and, if they plan to be teachers, English teaching methods. In their English capstone class, they craft a final thesis paper exploring any topic in English that is both an outgrowth of the major and a reflection of their particular interests in the wide and varied field of English. Students write their theses in any one of the three emphasis areas: literature, linguistics, or English education. I was one of four professors who taught the class for the first time it was offered, teaching a section alongside three literature professors. As it was a new class, we were creating assignment descriptions, handouts to scaffold the thesis, and our teaching plans for the first time, and because our areas of expertise did not necessarily match our students' areas of interest, we collaborated in our efforts to create a supportive curriculum for and with our students to engage in independent research. When I had a student propose his thesis to write about the book of Esther in the bible, I turned to a colleague whose expertise is in biblical literature to help inform his thesis. Conversely, when my colleagues had students propose a topic in the high poverty rates in urban schools or progressive education in the reading curriculum, they turned to me. We had to work in community in order to learn how to best guide our students disparate topics. Furthermore, when it came time to craft their essays, my literature colleagues and I worked together to learn the difference between literary writing and writing in education. Together we created curriculum for us to teach them the two genres. While I work with my colleagues regularly on departmental committees, this work in the enacted curriculum has been the most rewarding work I have done since becoming a professor. We didn't work in isolation; we crafted curriculum in community. Because the work was not done","PeriodicalId":430275,"journal":{"name":"Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue","volume":"151 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114423644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession","authors":"K. Kusiak","doi":"10.5860/choice.188580","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.188580","url":null,"abstract":"In 1918 Mary McDowell, an outstanding teacher by all accounts, was fired after 13 years of teaching for her private views regarding U.S. government policy. As a war-resister, McDowell had refused to pledge loyalty to the \"President and Congress of the United States\" and to agree that her role as a NYC teacher was to \"inculcate in our pupils by work and deed love of flag and unquestioning loyalty to the political policy of the government ...\" (Goldstein, 2014, p. 93). At a public Department of Education meeting, a trial examiner found McDowell \"guilty of 'conduct unbecoming a teacher' \" (p. 94). This vignette about McDowell along with many other details of teachers and teacher movements in the last 180 years make Goldstein's book a wonderful complement to academic scholarship on the history of teaching and teacher education, as well as a helpful companion to educators who strive to reshape policy in the United States. McDowell's vignette resonates in today's political climate characterized by culture wars that unavoidably overlap with teacher wars. The vignette also provides an example of how Goldstein writes the story of American public school teachers from the time of the Common School movement until today. Goldstein is an insightful writer who contributes to current education policy discussions for Slate and publishes articles and book reviews related to education for periodicals such as The Nation and New York Times. For The Teacher Wars, Goldstein researched specific stories, or vignettes, about both familiar and unfamiliar American educators to present the recursive narrative of teachers and teaching. While NYC teacher Mary McDowell is likely unknown to most readers of Goldstein's book, other former teachers whose classroom experiences--or whose activism against established educational practices--Goldstein uses to unfold her narrative are more familiar: Henry David Thoreau, Catherine Beecher--sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan B. Anthony, W.E.B Du Bois, Lyndon Johnson, Amiri Baraka, and Michelle Rhee. The Teacher Wars is a fascinating result of Goldstein's careful research and her knitting of vignettes of the famous and not so famous to the backdrop of ongoing social concerns around immigration, poverty, racial inequality, and accountability for public services. As Goldstein pieces together her history of teacher wars, readers quickly notice parallels between historical and contemporary debates about qualities teachers should possess, about teacher evaluation, about roles of teacher unions, and about teacher accountability. The Teacher Wars offers insight into why debates about teacher quality and accountability continue. Goldstein finds little agreement among policymakers and education leaders about the purpose of public education in the United States; nor is there agreement about established approaches, or methods, for teaching children and for organizing classrooms. A very brief anecdote, or vignette, from the book illustrates the ten","PeriodicalId":430275,"journal":{"name":"Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124012069","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Peace Education: How We Come to Love and Hate War","authors":"Gulistan Gursel Bilgin","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-5814","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-5814","url":null,"abstract":"PEACE EDUCATION: HOW WE COME TO LOVE AND HATE WAR N. Noddings Cambridge University Press, 2012 Unlike hundreds of books giving considerable space to the meaning of peace and what it means to live in peace, Noddings' newest book explores the psychological factors that support war. Her aim is to find an answer to the salient question: \"Despite the huge volume of work on peace, why do we so often choose to go enthusiastically to war?\" Addressing such a question, Noddings' book successfully sheds light on the \"centrality of war\" in human life and provides helpful insights towards educating students on the psychology of war and peace. For this reason, Peace Education should be required reading for peace advocates and educators, for it offers a broad perspective on peace. Noddings' primary emphases are on nationalistic biases, masculinity, patriotism, hatred, religion's frequent support of war, women's opposition to war, and war as an arena for the discovery of many existential meanings which are otherwise neglected. Rightly believing that, despite the efforts of individuals and organizations devoted to peace, little has been done to change the culture of war. Noddings begins her discussion with the centrality of war in history. As the author describes, beyond armed conflict between nations, war is a form of organized violence. As violence has always been part of human life, she suggests that understanding the biological legacy of violence is vital if one aims to create educational theories and practices to counteract it. In an effort to explain why war has been so central in human history, Noddings purports that both philosophy and religion have supported war, showing war to be the \"engine of a state's or nation's success\" (p. 10) further encouraging the attitude that peace can be achieved by particular sorts of wars. Given the common view that the \"manliness\" of a society is judged by the courage and stamina of its military, it is natural that cultural expectations and socialization have promoted pride in fighting. Addressing the possibility of changing this view, Noddings suggests that war might be displaced from its cultural center by encouraging critical thinking on patriotism, masculinity (and femininity), religion, the psychology of war, and love of place and home. Furthermore, emphasizing the connection between language and war, Noddings illustrates how war, for all of its horrors, takes on a positive connotation when it is conducted against some perceived evil (e.g., the war on drugs, on poverty, and on terrorism). Considering that birth is the original violence that all human beings go through, Noddings gives credit to Walzer (1997) for the argument that nonviolent resistance to aggression will rarely reduce the violence of aggressors. Rather, Noddings states that in writing Peace Education her aim is to explore how to \"help young people to understand the psychology of war, how easily they can be swept into it, and what sustains the war menta","PeriodicalId":430275,"journal":{"name":"Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133335982","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}