Just Schooling: Explorations in the Cultural Politics of Teaching

"For readers concerned not just with schooling but with just schooling, Trevor Gale and Kathleen Densmore have provided a practical, yet theoretically framed, exploration of how we might move towards its achievement. This is a book that should be read by the educational policy community, including teachers, administrators, policy makers, parents, community activists and politicians." - Bob Lingard, University of Queensland, Australia "....richly textured and finely nuanced ...strikingly original and powerfully rendered... Just Schooling is, above all, a triumph of commonsense, accumulated and collaborative wisdom, and elegantly measured and sober research. The book makes a major contribution to a field marred repeatedly by thoughtless academic invasions and premature pronouncements. It will force teacher educators to reappraise the taken for granted in pedagogical practices in the new millennium in an educational field in which contemporary scholars search around desperately for new signposts of change."- Cameron McCarthy,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,USA "This will be an important and influential book in furthering democratic practices in and through education. It is clearly written, introducing complex issues and ideas to teachers in deceptively simple language. At the same time, it gives a voice to teachers themselves, but not in an uncritical manner. The book's sensitive exploration of the relations between individuals, groups and social structures constitutes an impressive illustration of the 'sociological imagination' at work". - Geoff Whitty, Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education and Dean of Research, Institute of Education, University of London * Why do some students 'succeed' and others 'fail' at school? * How are classroom relations influenced by the language that teachers use and the stories they tell about their students? Just Schooling is an exercise in the cultural politics of teaching. It invites teachers and interested others to rethink what they know about social justice and to rework how they engage in the practices of teaching (what they say and do), particularly in relation to how these influence the lives of students. Informed by a recognitive view of social justice, Just Schooling analyses the various discourses and ideologies mobilized in classrooms that implicitly and explicitly determine what is understood by (i) the nature and centrality of language, (ii) the purposes and meaning of education, and (iii) the diversity of students, particularly with respect to their gender, race and social class but also their learning dis/abilities. Throughout, the authors argue for a democratization of classroom relations, beginning with students' and teachers' personal lives and connecting these with wider contexts, as a way of addressing the advantages and disadvantages traditionally reproduced by schooling.

Politics & Social Sciences

Gale, Trevor

Densmore, Kathleen

Social Sciences

Open Univ Pr

Just Schooling is an exercise in the cultural politics of teaching. It invites teachers and interested others to rethink what they know about social justice and to rework how they engage in the practices of teaching (what they say and do), particularly in relation to how these influence the lives of students. Informed by a recognitive view of social justice, Just Schooling analyses the various discourses and ideologies mobilized in classrooms that implicitly and explicitly determine what is understood by (i) the nature and centrality of language, (ii) the purposes and meaning of education, and (iii) the diversity of students, particularly with respect to their gender, race and social class but also their learning disabilities. Throughout, the authors argue for a democratization of classroom relations, beginning with students' and teachers' personal lives and connecting these with wider contexts, as a way of addressing the advantages and disadvantages traditionally reproduced by schooling.

Open University Pres

Engaging Teachers: Towards a Radical Democratic Agenda for Schooling

“This is a useful, interesting and valuable work. The authors ask the difficult questions and attempt answers which, although complex, are written in an accessible and open manner. It deserves to be widely read.” Educational Review Engaging Teachers makes a deliberate attempt to reclaim the education discourse captured by new right politics and connect it with a radical democratic agenda for schooling. On its agenda are education markets, policy, leadership, professionalism, and communities. Engaging with these is conceived on at least two levels. First, as an invitation to teachers to become involved in reconstructing schooling for socially just purposes and in democratic ways. From this perspective, the politics of engagement is not simply a matter of acquiescence or resistance but is informed by a commitment to generate alternatives: teachers, parents and students making things happen rather than having things done to them. Also signalled is an intent to work collectively, exploring and acting on common interests and across uncommon ground. Second, the book also celebrates teachers engaging in these reconstructive efforts in attractive and meaningful ways. The attraction is decisions about schooling made by those they affect as well as decisions that are meaningful because they engage the interests of all.

Engaging Teachers: Towards a radical democratic agenda for schooling

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

Open University Press

Practice Methodologies in Education Research

Practice Methodologies in Education Research offers a fresh approach to researching practice in education. Addressing a major gap in research methodology scholarship, it highlights how integral practice theory is to the transformational agendas of education research, introducing a theory of activist practice methodologies informed by expansive theories of practice.&#12288; With contributions from leading education researchers drawn from across the world, the book confronts onto-epistemological dilemmas for doing research that arise from taking practice theory seriously, including the theories of Bourdieu, de Certeau, Deleuze, Haraway, Latour, Taylor, and Vygotsky. A defining feature of the chapters is their activist axiologies and their experimental approach to researching practice in education, in fields as diverse as educational leadership, schooling, higher education, adult and workplace education and training, professional practice, and informal learning.&#12288; Practice Methodologies in Education is essential reading for education academics and postgraduates engaged in critical research using practice theory.

Science & Math

Parker, Stephen

Rowlands, Julie

Mathematics

Routledge

Practice Theory and Education challenges how we think about 'practice', examining what it means across different fields and sites. It is organised into four themes: discursive practices; practice, change and organisations; practising subjectivity; and professional practice, public policy and education. Contributors to the collection engage and extend practice theory by drawing on the legacies of diverse social and cultural theorists, including Bourdieu, de Certeau, Deleuze and Guattari, Dewey, Latour, Marx, and Vygotsky, and by building on the theoretical trajectories of contemporary authors such as Karen Barad, Yrjo Engestrom, Andreas Reckwitz, Theodore Schatzki, Dorothy Smith, and Charles Taylor. The proximity of ideas from different fields and theoretical traditions in the book highlight key matters of concern in contemporary practice thinking, including the historicity of practice; the nature of change in professional practices; the place of discursive material in practice; the efficacy of refiguring conventional understandings of subjectivity and agency; and the capacity for theories of practice to disrupt conventional understandings of asymmetries of power and resources. Their juxtaposition also points to areas of contestation and raises important questions for future research. Practice Theory and Education will appeal to postgraduate students, academics and researchers in professional practice and education, and scholars working with social theory. It will be of particular interest to those who wish to move beyond the limiting configurations of practice found in contemporary neoliberal, new managerialist and narrow representationalist discourses.

Practice Theory and Education

Skourdoumbis, Andrew

Sociology

Based on a study of one secondary school located in a disadvantaged community in Australia, this book provides a different perspective on what it means to ‘play the game’ of schooling. Drawing on the perspectives of teachers, parents and students, this book is a window through which to explore the possibilities of schooling in disadvantaged communities. The authors contend that teachers, parents and students themselves are all involved in the game of reproducing disadvantage in schooling, but similarly, they can play a part in opening up opportunities for change to enhance learning for marginalised students. Rather than only attempting to transform students, teachers should be also be concerned to transform schooling; to provide educational opportunities that transform the life experiences of and open up opportunities for all young people, especially those disadvantaged by poverty and marginalised by difference. The book is also designed to stimulate understanding of the work of Bourdieu as well as of a Bourdieuian approach to research. Seeing transformative potential in his theoretical constructs, it airs the possibility that schools can be more than mere reproducers of society.

Schooling in Disadvantaged Communities: Playing the Game from the Back of the Field

Mills, Carmen

Springer

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Books by Gale, Trevor