Article Abstracts:
K. Tsianina Lomawaima
The inherent power dynamic between academic researchers and those they study is the focus of this article. Author K. Tsianina Lomawaima analyzes the shift in the balance of power between scholars and American Indian tribes that has occurred over the last four decades. She argues that issues such as access to subjects, data ownership, analysis and interpretation, and control over dissemination of findings all reflect what amounts to a struggle for power and tribal sovereignty. Lomawaima maintains that understanding the historical relationship between Native communities and academia, as well as the relatively new research protocols developed by various tribes, is necessary for responsible and respectful scholarship. (pp. 1-21)
George Spindler and Lorie HammondThe Use of Anthropological Methods in Educational Research: Two
Perspectives
This article presents a debate between a practitioner and a researcher over the potential uses and purposes of ethnographic methods. George Spindler, a trained anthropologist, contends that ethnography is a discipline that seeks to describe and understand the cultural experiences of others. Lorie Hammond, a teacher educator, maintains that practitioners can adapt the tools of ethnography to solve problems related to their own classroom practices. (pp. 39-48)
In this article, Shirley Brice Heath examines what we know about linguistics and its contributions to qualitative research about language in education. She highlights seminal studies in classroom discourse and social patterns of language behavior that address the question, What exactly are the functions of language in the classroom or in any situation where we claim that learning is (or should be) taking place? In reflecting on the future of linguistics research in education, Heath calls upon those with a strong grounding in linguistics and one or more of the other disciplines most related to understanding the context of language in use. She also argues, however, that advancements in theory will come through work that stays tightly connected to the central concern in education - learning. (pp. 49-59)
In this article, Mary Haywood Metz traces the development of qualitative methodology in sociology from its early roots in the Chicago School, through its status as a marginalized tradition within sociology, and to its current widespread use in educational research. She makes important distinctions between qualitative methods and qualitative methodology, and distinguishes between anthropological and sociological approaches to ethnography. Metz also discusses how qualitative sociology, in focusing on the internal processes of schools, has contributed to the study of both teaching and schools as organizations. Finally, in discussing the future of qualitative research in education, Metz expresses concern that certain types of research may "overwhelm and replace ethnographic methodology by co-opting the label of qualitative research," and proposes a "methodological détente." (pp. 60-74)
In this article, developmental psychologist Annie Rogers uncovers the strong qualitative roots of psychological inquiry. She observes that, despite current positivistic academic gatekeepers, psychologists have continued to engage in qualitative approaches to research, pushing the boundaries of what we know as qualitative research. Rogers tracks the contributions of psychologists through the century, names the obstacles presented by the current gatekeepers, and then offers a brief view of her own method of "interpretive poetics" as a peek into the future of the field. (pp. 75-85)
In this article, Magdalene Lampert argues that teachers can be both initiators and active participants in a research agenda, adding valuable insider knowledge. She considers three points: "the potential for teacher research to change ideas about who is responsible for producing professional knowledge, the benefits and dangers of inserting the self into social science, and the challenges of presenting the problems of a practice from inside that practice." (pp. 86-99)
Imagining to Learn: Inquiry, Ethics, and Integration through Drama
by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm and Brian Edmiston.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998. 163 pp. $24.00 (paper).
What is “drama” in the educational context?
Drama is creating meaning and visible mental models of our understanding together, in imaginative contexts and situations. It is not about performance, but exploration. And the teacher in drama becomes a learner among learners, a participant, and a guide, who lends expertise to the students. (p. xx)
So writes Jeffrey Wilhelm in the introduction to Imagining to Learn: Inquiry, Ethics, and Integration through Drama, a fascinating and enthusiastic book coauthored with Brian Edmiston. The goal of these authors is to make drama a more integral part of teaching and learning in classrooms; in this book they present their experiences as teachers, their analyses, and their research in an attempt to make drama an attractive and realistic methodology for teachers.
In schools that have any kind of arts program, the arts are usually presented as subjects separate and apart from the rest of the curriculum. Consequently, the arts can be removed or cut from a school’s program without affecting the curricular foundation of the school. In the specific case of drama, schools most often include drama as an extracurricular activity (e.g., the creation of a drama club or the production of a play after school hours). Schools have generally not understood or accepted the value of drama as a central part of curriculum and pedagogy, leading to the proliferation of drama “specialists” and programs that bring guest artists into schools. Where drama enters classrooms, it is usually through these outside “specialists” and “guests,” reinforcing the notion that drama is something different from the work of teachers. Wilhelm and Edmiston work to change this mentality in Imagining to Learn, providing compelling evidence that drama, when used as a teaching methodology, can have a powerful impact on student learning.
In each chapter, the authors tackle a different aspect of how drama can be an integral part of a school curriculum. In chapter one, “Exploring Castles: Authentic Teaching and Learning through Drama,” Wilhelm and Edmiston carefully articulate their understanding of what drama is. They then demonstrate how using drama leads to “authentic teaching and learning” by presenting a classroom example from a unit they did with sixth graders in Maine on castles. Students and teachers made discoveries together, rather than the teacher telling the students what they must know:
We did not just study history — the students’ (and the teachers’) questions about the past were examined and explored in rich integrated contexts that connected the past with the present. . . . This all became possible through the use of drama. Not the performance of plays or the acting out of stories, but the sort of drama in which students together imagine in order to learn. Students imagined that they were the sort of people who cared about castles — historians, archaeologists, preservationists — and for four days they saw the world through other eyes and wondered about the sorts of questions such professionals ask. As they wondered, they inquired, read, wrote, argued, thought, moved, and dramatized their ideas. (p. 3)
The authors here make a distinction between “education” and “instruction.” Drama encouraged and allowed these students to learn within the context of the history they were studying and to deepen their understanding of the history well beyond what they might have gotten from solely reading a textbook. Through drama, students became a part of the learning process rather than mere observers or inactive receptacles of the rich experience of learning; in this way, their learning was deeper, more sustained, and infinitely more complex.
Each of the other chapters combines analysis and experience to highlight the different ways in which teachers and students can use drama as a teaching and learning methodology. Chapter two, “Drama and Reading: Experiencing and Learning from Text,” extends the work in the history classroom to reading and the language arts. Chapter three, “Ethical Imagination: Choosing an Ethical Self in Drama,” explores how teachers and learners can use drama to understand who we are in an ethical sense, “uncovering the moral complexities of situations” (p. 59) by moving beyond talk about hypotheticals into action through role-playing. The integration of drama into specific curricula to achieve a set of learning objectives is the focus of chapter four, “Drama and Curriculum: It Takes Two to Integrate.” The authors examine drama as research in chapter five, “Drama as Inquiry: Students and Teachers as Coresearchers,” making the argument that “drama as inquiry” leads to a more complex way of looking at research questions, the creation of innovative methodologies, and the ability to read and analyze data from multiple perspectives. Finally, in chapter six, “Drama Across the Curriculum,” Wilhelm and Edmiston describe how drama can be used throughout various subject areas — for example, in the teaching of science, second languages, and literacy — in which students “develop a critical literacy,” a way of making meaning of the world by learning “to look inward to define the self; to imagine and enter the selfhood and perspectives of others; and . . . to look outward to critically read and converse with the world, open always to change and transformation and to working toward these transformations” (p. 149).
Imagining to Learn is an important book for teachers and teacher educators, particularly those who work in elementary and middle schools. The ideas are accessible, the examples cogent, and the analysis innovative. In a field that desperately needs more research and more writing, Wilhelm and Edmiston have made a valuable contribution. The authors assert that “action is inherent in drama” (p. 126); indeed, what they advocate is a teaching and learning process that is active and action-filled. Their work is dynamic and creative, and will help teachers and students create new, more complex, and enriching kinds of learning experiences in their classrooms.
E.M.
New Perspectives on the Holocaust: A Guide for Teachers and Scholars
edited by Rochelle L. Millen, with Timothy A. Bennett, Jack D. Mann, Joseph
E. O’Connor, and Robert P. Welker.
New York: New York University Press, 1996. 382 pp. $55.00, $19.95
(paper).
More than five decades after the end of World War II and the defeat of Hitler’s Nazi forces, educators continue to struggle with how to responsibly teach the complexities of the Holocaust. Public monuments and memorials to the victims of the Holocaust have been built in various cities throughout the world, museums (the largest and best-known of which is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC) have been constructed to house both permanent exhibits and education programs, and curricula (such as Facing History and Ourselves) have been developed both to educate students in the elementary through high school grades about the causes, events, and effects of the Holocaust and to stimulate discussion of these topics among students and teachers today.
Films have been a means for the populace to learn about the Holocaust, and Hollywood has long struggled with how to present and represent the Holocaust on screen. In 1993, Schindler’s List presented, with stark intensity, the story of Oskar Schindler, a businessman who saved thousands of Jews from death at the hands of the Nazis by employing them in his factory. More recently, Hollywood took a step backward with its production and celebration of Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful. Benigni relegated the Holocaust and those suffering through it to the background as he played the comic fool in the foreground. While Benigni claimed he was trying to find hope and optimism within the most desperate of circumstances, his ahistorical buffoonery teaches exactly the wrong lesson. The Holocaust is no laughing matter, and mass dehumanization should not be seen as a comedic challenge.
Against this backdrop of continued efforts to teach the Holocaust responsibly to succeeding generations, New Perspectives on the Holocaust: A Guide for Teachers and Scholars is a welcome addition to the educational literature. Edited by Rochelle L. Millen, along with Timothy A. Bennett, Jack D. Mann, Joseph E. O’Connor, and Robert P. Welker, this collection was developed from a series of papers presented at a conference at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, in 1993, titled “Teaching the Holocaust: Issues and Dilemmas.” The editors are all faculty at Wittenberg University, and the conference was cosponsored by Yad Vashem, the memorial to the Holocaust located in Jerusalem, Israel.
This collection is valuable in at least two important ways: first, for its attention to the complexities of both the Holocaust and the teaching and learning of the Holocaust, and second, for its inclusion of papers that approach the teaching and learning of the Holocaust from multiple perspectives and with varied points of focus. The chapters in this volume are controversial, risk-taking, thoughtful, and thought provoking.
For example, Franklin Bialystok, in “Americanizing the Holocaust: Beyond the Limit of the Universal,” indicts curricula and museums, such as the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, that try to “Americanize the Holocaust” by making simplistic analogies between the Holocaust and rampant racism in the United States. Bialystok argues that this kind of “Americanization” ignores the complexities of the Holocaust, as well as the multiple events and ideologies that led to it. It is not a simple jump from racism to extermination. Bialystok (citing Emil Fackenheim) points out that the Nazis did not see Jews as members of the human race; therefore, an understanding of the Holocaust as an act of racism is far too simple. Carlos C. Huerta and Dafna Shiffman-Huerta argue in “Holocaust Denial Literature: Its Place in Teaching the Holocaust” for the inclusion of revisionist historical pieces — the Holocaust denial literature — in the teaching of the Holocaust. Their argument centers on the controversial point that it is important to expose students to the Holocaust denial literature for two reasons: first, this literature has become extremely widespread on an international scale, and second, students should read this literature and analyze it so that they can reject it cohesively and comprehensively. Elisabeth I. Kalau writes in “Teaching the Holocaust: Helping Students Confront Their Own Biases” of her efforts — as the daughter of a Nazi army colonel — to teach the Holocaust responsibly. Other chapters provoke thought on how to teach the Holocaust: Jacqueline Berke and Ann L. Saltzman provide a framework and argument for teaching the Holocaust in an interdisciplinary way; Michael F. Bassman writes about his experience in teaching the Holocaust to non-Jewish students; in “Education after Auschwitz: Teaching the Holocaust in Germany,” Matthias Heyl struggles with teaching the Holocaust at the geographical center of the atrocities.
The editors divide the book into three sections: “Viewing the Holocaust in Context,” “Considering Issues of Teaching and Curriculum,” and “Teaching toward Dialogue: Spiritual and Moral Issues.” In this way, they effectively present the Holocaust from a number of perspectives — historical, pedagogical, intellectual, spiritual, and moral. The editors and authors do not settle for easy or simple paths, tackling the complexities of both the Holocaust and the teaching of the Holocaust.
Robert P. Welker, in his introduction to the second section of this volume, asserts that “in the study of the Holocaust, knowledge cannot be separated from being; what one knows and learns has implications for who one is as a person” (p. 92). In this statement, Welker captures both the power of and the struggles inherent in educating about the Holocaust: who one is and what one knows are unavoidably and inseparably linked.
E.M.
Natives and Academics Researching and Writing about American Indians
edited by Devon A. Mihesuah.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. 213 pp. $15.00 (paper).
Much of what we know about American Indians has been largely informed by the work of non-Indian historians and anthropologists. In Natives and Academics Researching and Writing about American Indians, Devon Mihesuah and other prominent American Indian intellectuals argue that research about American Indians requires critical examination from multiple Native perspectives. In her introduction, Mihesuah writes, “The most common argument expressed by the contributors to this anthology is that works on American Indian history and culture should not give only one perspective; the analyses must include Indians’ versions of events” (p. 1).
Historically, non-Indian academics have monopolized the study of American Indians and their cultures. There is no doubt that American Indians — often treated as objects in studies — are well researched. However, authors in this book suggest that much of this research and many researchers’ cultural interpretations have informed and mis-informed both the academic study of Native Americans and the body of knowledge used to educate the general population about American Indians.
Mihesuah successfully brings together ten Native scholars to engage in an intellectual discussion and critical review of research methodology, ethics, theory, and pedagogy as they relate to studying American Indians. The reader will find that the authors in this anthology share certain goals, but that they also often challenge one another’s theories and perspectives. Each essay reveals personal struggles and experiences within the academy. Although the authors locate themselves in their respective disciplines, each of their essays raises questions that are relevant to educators researching and teaching in communities other than their own.
Historians Angela Wilson, Devon Mihesuah, Donald Fixico, and Vine Deloria Jr. demonstrate why it is important to have Native writers contributing their interpretations to the field. Wilson speaks to the significant contributions Indian voices have made to research about Indian cultures. She argues for long-term research with Native communities: “This kind of work is not something that can be accomplished on a six-month research grant. Rather it means years of involvement, building trusting relationships with Native people” (p. 26). Mihesuah’s essay, “Commonality of Difference,” cautions that even among researchers, both Native women and women of color, there is difference. Her examination of race, class, and power provide a powerful and engaging argument for why feminist theory may not apply to the study and appropriate interpretation of American Indian women’s motivations and subcultures. Fixico adds to Wilson’s and Mihesuah’s views as he discusses ethics and responsibility. Deloria’s essay brings to bear certain issues in Indian studies scholarship: power, politics, and discussion of objectivity. He states, “The first point which we must consider in reviewing any set of essays that pretends to offer an objective view of Indian affairs is that there never has been an objective point of view regarding Indians and there never will be” (p. 66). Each scholar’s writing is informed by experience from “the field,” and is presented with careful attention to scholarship.
Also contributing to this book are Native scholars Paula Gunn Allen and Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, and professors Duane Champagne, Susan Miller, Theodore Jojola, and Karen Gayton Swisher. Gunn Allen writes of her personal struggle to engage in the study of data deemed by tribes to be private or sacred in Native literature. She uses Leslie Marmon Silko’s book Ceremony as the impetus for an in-depth discussion of why Native oral histories and common stories may not be proper objects of study. In “American Indian Intellectualism and the New Indian Story,” Cook-Lynn continues to fight the belief that the American Indian intellectual does not exist. Swisher, an educator and educational researcher, speaks directly to her colleagues conducting research in Indian communities. Like the other authors in this volume, Swisher conveys the importance of sharing intellectual scholarship with Native people, providing examples of educational research projects that involve Native communities in making appropriate and valid interpretations of research findings.
Taken together, the essays in this book clearly mark the complexities involved in doing research in American Indian communities. Readers will enjoy the internal debates about research methodology, ethics, theory, and responsibility. The authors share a strong commitment to quality research and pursuit of knowledge in Indian communities. Most importantly, however, they challenge researchers in all fields to question our own motives, methods, and interpretations, for research in any community, we learn, is a highly complex undertaking, politically, emotionally, and personally. This collection of essays would be a great addition to readings in courses dealing with topics such as race, class, identity, and gender.
T.Y.
The Struggle of Latino/Latina University Students: In Search of a Liberating Education
by Felix M. Padilla.
New York: Routledge, 1997. 256 pp. $23.99 (paper).
Over the past three decades, higher education has become increasingly racially and ethnically diverse. Although the demographics of colleges and universities are still predominantly White, increased access by students of color has had a significant impact on college and university classrooms. Since these demographic shifts have occurred, much of the research on students of color in higher education has focused on access and general campus adaptation and experiences. Researchers have paid scant attention to the experience of students of color in the classroom, and we know even less of the classroom experiences of Latino/a students. How do Latino/a students negotiate the classroom environment? What happens when Latino/a students take a course with Latino faculty?
The Struggle of Latino/Latina University Students by Felix M. Padilla is based on a three-year ethnographic study of Padilla’s own course in Latino Studies, which explores these critically important questions. Padilla begins the book by reflecting on his own educational and life experiences and outlines the major influences that guide his work as a critical educator. In so doing, Padilla emphasizes the need for educators to do the same in the classroom with their students: “If my pedagogical practice calls for students to share their personal stories so as to make them central to the ‘relearning’ process, then it is only appropriate that I take the lead to talk to them about my own personal experiences” (p. 22). Padilla describes his own pedagogical philosophies as having been influenced by various critical educators such as Freire, Giroux, Shor, Weiler, McClaren, hooks, West, Fraser, Macedo, and others, but pays special tribute to the influences of the music of Willie Colon, “as a reminder to always approach teaching as a medium of struggle and possibility. When I listen to the music of Willie Colon, my belief in pedagogy as the practice of freedom is confirmed” (p. 3). In fact, the first chapter of the book — “That’s Why I Teach: It’s My Duty to Be Critical” — is titled after Ricardo Vizuete’s “Por Eso Canto” (“That’s Why I Sing”) sung by Willie Colon, and includes the lyrics to the song.
By introducing the book in this manner, Padilla positions the reader to understand more fully his experiences and those of his students. Through student journal entries, student work, and his own written reflections, observations, and general reflections, Padilla describes the painstaking process he and students underwent in creating a space for themselves within the larger institution. Each chapter in the book focuses on the actions, reactions, reflections, and overall experiences of Padilla and the students in his course, with the titles of each vividly capturing the difficult and rigorous process they went through in their search of a liberatory education: “That’s Why I Teach: It’s My Duty to Be Critical”; “Despierta Boricua, Defiende Lo Tuyo: The Cultural Roots of My Intellectual Empowerment”; “Ecstasy and Fear: Working Together to Create Our Own Curriculum”; “What Do We Know as Latino/a Students Anyway?”; “We Know a Lot: Hey, Let’s Kick That Knowledge”; and “What’s All This Theoretical Stuff You’re Giving Us? We Want Something Practical.”
In these six chapters, Padilla describes his own and his students’ experiences as they worked to coconstruct the course syllabus/curriculum. The book is a fascinating and resonant insight into students’ first experiences with taking ownership of a course and brings forth the frustration and joy accompanying the process of self-discovery and critical reflection. Lastly, in thought-provoking fashion, Padilla’s book vividly presents the fear and exhilaration of students learning to challenge and being challenged:
Latino/a students gained confidence in their ability to counter ideas and opinions by others. They began to see themselves as capable of “teaching” others about their cultural practices — indeed for many this was their moment of empowerment and liberation. . . . Their guards against academic engagements had come down. From this moment on, they set out to “kick that knowledge.” (p. 131)
What makes this book a must read is that it is comprised primarily of students’ work, which pulls the reader into the classroom with Padilla. Along with the students’ voices and work, Padilla’s writing and analyses provide an important and informative framework. Padilla has skillfully shared with us what a transformative space could look like for Latino/a students in universities, and in classrooms in particular.
J.F.M.
Inside a Head Start Center: Developing Policies from Practice
by Deborah Ceglowski.
New York: Teachers College Press, 1998. 165 pp. $19.95 (paper).
Head Start, the intervention program designed to prepare underprivileged children for schooling, presents practitioners and policymakers with some troublesome paradoxes. First, few U.S. government programs have drawn such bipartisan support as Head Start, yet it has been chronically underfunded since its inception in 1965. Second, part of the support that it does receive is due to the fact that Head Start centers are locally staffed and run, and yet, in recent years, the centers have come under increasing federal bureaucracy. These incongruities set the stage for Deborah Ceglowski’s examination of policy and practice in one Head Start center in rural Minnesota. Over the span of two years, Ceglowski volunteered to work in the classrooms at Wood River Head Start in order to examine the definition, interpretation, and implementation of policy from the perspective of the experiences of this Head Start staff. Inside a Head Start Center provides a thorough description of the everyday workings of Wood River, largely through the words of the staff itself. Based on her experience at the center, Ceglowski argues that “policies, although seemingly invisible, formed the underlying structure of the program and are manifest in the staff’s stories” (p. 37).
The book is divided into two parts. In Part One, Policy and Practice, the author recounts the policy history of the national Head Start initiative, as well as the social, economic, and political context surrounding the establishment of Wood River Head Start. Part Two, Windows on Policy, traces the Wood River program through a critical moment in its history — moving from a self-contained area in a church to a shared space in a community educational center. It is at this tense time of moving that the relationship between the center’s staff and Head Start policy becomes clear. Ceglowski argues that instead of allowing policy mandates to determine curriculum, the Wood River staff “develops policies from practice” (p. 79).
The most clear instance of this phenomenon is told in detail in chapter six, “Developing Policies from Practice: The Case of Mark, the Finicky Eater.” It had long been a Head Start policy to require children to have portions of all foods put onto their plates, regardless of whether they tasted them or not. As a result, centers threw away plates of untouched food daily. The Wood River staff, however, decided to try a new approach with Mark, a student who was eating little during lunch. The staff developed their own new policy, referred to as “bite-of-protein,” whereby children had to digest at least a mouthful of substantial food at lunchtime. Mark reluctantly agreed to this new requirement and, in time, gradually began to try different types of food.
This small victory, however, came after much frustration and confusion between the Wood River teachers and administration regarding the origin and implementation of the food policy. Ceglowski argues that “even had [the administrator] sat beside Mark, she would not have understood what it was like to sit beside him day after day and listen to him complain about the food” (p. 83). The constant attention that the teachers gave to this problem was instrumental for its resolution. In this case, developing policies from practice succeeded because “as teachers watch, observe, and interact with children, they determine how they can best interact with groups of children and individuals” (p. 81).
Inside a Head Start Center contains many such stories, and in all cases, several voices are heard, those of the teachers, administrators, parents, and children. It is this multidimensionality that is the greatest asset of this book. Between the historical summary offered in Part One and the detailed account of everyday life at Wood River in Part Two, Ceglowski presents a thorough portrait of the negotiation of policy and practice at a local Head Start center. The concluding chapter reexamines Head Start policy from three different perspectives — federal, community, and center — and proposes two changes to the current Head Start structure. This volume is highly recommended for those involved in early childhood education and policy formation.
L.K.N.
Students as Researchers: Creating Classrooms That Matter
edited by Shirley R. Steinberg and Joe L. Kincheloe.
Bristol, PA: Falmer Press, 1998. 253 pp. $79.00.
What is the purpose of education? What is the purpose of schooling? What role should students play in the teaching and learning process? These questions are deeply rooted in educational debates and are fundamental to educational philosophy and practice. In Students as Researchers: Creating Classrooms that Matter, Shirley R. Steinberg and Joe L. Kincheloe have assembled a collection of essays that take these questions head-on, falling squarely on the side that students — at all ages and stages of their schooling — must play a central role in the creation and implementation of their own education.
Steinberg and Kincheloe define “students as researchers” as those who “possess a vision of ‘what could be,’ and a set of skills to uncover ‘what actually is’” (p. 2). Education, in the view of Steinberg, Kincheloe, and the other authors in this collection, is not about teachers passing on knowledge and students merely receiving and accepting that knowledge. Their conception of education is one in which students question the generally accepted bodies of knowledge and produce “alternate bodies of knowledge” (p. 4). The purpose of this kind of education is to produce students who are able to critique mainstream knowledge and institutions, understand the effects of power relations and privilege on themselves and other members of society, and work toward a more just society.
Many of the authors in this book describe projects they have undertaken in their own classrooms to create or encourage “students as researchers.” For example, Nancy Fichtman Dana, in “Social Studies Teaching and Learning: A Descriptive Analysis of Concept Mapping,” describes how she led prospective social studies teachers in a teacher education program to reflect on both how knowledge is created in a social studies classroom and how these teachers plan to teach their elementary school students. Joe Kincheloe, in “Getting Beyond the Limits in Social Studies: Reconceptualizing the Methods Class,” details his work with pre-service social studies teachers in a teacher education program on a research project on the water problem in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1982. The students explored this issue from multiple perspectives — historical, physical, political, and economic — and presented their findings in an open meeting in the city. Through this project, Kincheloe asserts that the students attained a greater understanding about the relationship of research and schooling to issues in the society in which they live, and discovered the strength and power of their own inquiry in contrast to the knowledge given to them by the mainstream institutions. Penny J. Gilmer and Paulette Alli, in “Action Experiments: Are Students Learning Physical Science?” explore teacher-student collaborations to produce knowledge through experimentation and research in a science classroom.
The authors in Students as Researchers argue that students must be at the center of the creation of knowledge in classrooms throughout their schooling, gaining the critical understandings and skills to work toward a more socially, politically, and economically equitable society. As such, this book could be particularly valuable for classroom teachers, teacher educators, and students. One drawback to the utility of this collection is the extensive use of educational jargon (post-formal thinking, critical communitarianism, and hermeneutics, for a few examples). For those who do not transact in the abstract, academic, university-based language of postmodernism, critical pedagogy, and cultural studies, sections of this book may be difficult to follow. This is unfortunate for those who might otherwise find this collection most useful — teachers and students who align themselves with the ideas in this book but who are not familiar with some of the language. The larger point of this book is important for all educators to contemplate; the details, however, may be lost to all but those few who are familiar with this “post-formal” conversation.
E.M.
Arts and Learning: An Integrated Approach to Teaching and Learning in Multicultural and Multilingual Settings
by Merryl Goldberg.
New York: Longman, 1997. 201 pp. $30.00.
The relationship between the arts and education in the United States has long been tenuous and controversial. There are those who believe that the arts play a vital role in the education of young people. Others believe that the arts are extras, secondary to the “basics” that students must be taught. Educational policy and financing within the United States tend to reflect the views of the latter. Where the arts are given a place in schools, they are often taught as separate subjects and are relegated to a low slot on the priority hierarchy; when budgets must be cut, the arts are usually the casualties.
Merryl Goldberg, by the title of her book, Arts and Learning: An Integrated Approach to Teaching and Learning in Multicultural and Multilingual Settings, makes clear where she stands in terms of the relationship between the arts and education. Goldberg accords equal weight — in her title and in her book — to the arts and to learning, bringing the two together in a way that makes them compatible, congruous, and healthfully codependent in a multitude of educational environments. As a professional musician, an elementary and middle school music educator, and now a university professor exploring the evolving relationship between the arts and learning, Goldberg, who comes from a family of artists, brings both personal and professional expertise to her work.
Arts and Learning is an excellent introduction to the field of arts and education, particularly for teachers who want to make the arts — drama, dance, music, visual arts, and poetry, for example — a part of teaching and learning in their classrooms. First, Goldberg sets a framework for understanding the relationship between arts and learning, making a distinction among three different manifestations of this relationship: “learning about the arts” (i.e., the arts are taught as subjects separate and apart from the other academic subjects), “learning with the arts” (e.g., students study the songs of a particular time to learn about that period in history), and “learning through the arts,” in which students use art forms to both communicate and deepen what they know about a particular content area. In succeeding chapters, Goldberg explores specifically how learning can take place with and through the arts in various subject areas: literacy, history and social studies, geography, science, and math. The final chapter focuses on ways that teachers can connect with and develop the arts in their local communities.
At the end of each chapter, Goldberg provides several “Questions to Ponder,” pushing the reader to think more deeply about the ideas in the chapter, and a few “Explorations to Try,” activities intended to help the reader clarify and actively expand on the key concepts in the chapter. Through these questions and activities, Goldberg models the ways that teachers might use the ideas in this book with their students. This format also allows teachers and teacher educators to use the book as a text for a course on arts and education.
Teachers across the country who integrate arts and learning in their classrooms continually provide testimony to the importance of the arts in the teaching and learning process. Unfortunately, policy and funding have not kept pace with the experiences of teachers and students. As a result, most teachers are not trained to use the arts in their classrooms. Merryl Goldberg’s Arts and Learning provides a strong foundation for teachers who want to make the arts an integral aspect of their teaching and learning.
E.M.
edited by Sarah Levine.
Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development,
1999. 209 pp. $23.95.
In this anthology of teachers’ poems, short stories, dramatic readings, and photographs, editor Sarah Levine captures common themes in teaching, while also reflecting the individual voices and experiences of veteran teachers. Levine drew the written and constructed pieces included in this book from a national audience of teachers who responded to a question posed in advertisements in educational journals: “What ideas and experiences have kept you vital and alive to teaching and learning?”
The varied media and messages that teachers used in answering this question reflect the complex dimensions of teaching that are sometimes difficult to express in written language. These artistic forms draw the reader into these teachers’ classrooms, interactions, and thoughts. As one submissions reviewer commented, “Reading the submissions has been both exhilarating and humbling, far more than I can express. I am renewed by the incredible spirit, creativity, and love expressed in these offerings” (p. ix). Photographs of each teacher, taken by Kit Frost, provide additional layers to this text.
The authors in this volume are diverse with respect to gender, ethnicity, and grade level taught, and each writes about equally diverse topics. Fausto Sevila, a middle school art teacher from New Jersey, poetically contemplates “the mystery that every person is” (p. 87); Diane H. Close, a high school classics teacher from Boston, compares classroom discipline to a baseball game; and Margaret M. Wong, a high school Chinese teacher from Minneapolis, traces some of the paths her former students have chosen, “peaches and plums all over the world” (p. 90). Yet while these teachers uniquely express their own perspectives on teaching through varied media, their collective depictions of teaching and learning create an impressionistic image of teaching with multiple, overlapping layers and intertwining themes. The idea of teaching as a relational interchange in which students and teacher have an impact on one another’s thinking and learning emerges as one particularly strong theme in many of the pieces. Bettye T. Spinner, in “Sustaining the Wonder of Teaching,” asserts that teaching requires reciprocity between teacher and student, “each role creating re-visions of the other” (p. 7). In “Transparencies,” Robin Alexandra Beach describes a curriculum developed around the concept of light, one that “sprang from the children, not me” (p. 37). And Ronald Newburgh, in “A Shared Approach to Teaching: Education as Dialogue,” observes, “Teaching, to be effective, must be a dialogue, not a monologue. The reward is that we all learn” (p. 114). For many of these teacher writers, there seems to be little difference between the acts of learning and teaching.
This collection, in which teachers’ words remain unfiltered by a researcher’s analytical lens, allows the teachers to speak for themselves and, just as importantly, allows the reader to connect directly with the teachers’ words and images. This artistic presentation of teachers’ varied ideas of learning and teaching is both refreshing and inspirational. While the absence of any analytical interpretation frees the reader to construct meaning among the stories, a short self-analysis detailing the criteria for selecting the pieces would have enhanced the depth of this rich and descriptive text.
This tiny flaw aside, the strength of A Passion for Teaching lies within the resounding voices of teachers, important voices that don’t often carry beyond classroom doors. Speaking passionately and introspectively, these teachers express, inspire — and teach — about what it means to teach.
C.L.M.
The House of Joshua: Meditations on Family and Place
by Mindy Thompson Fullilove.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. 160 pp. $20.00.
Thoughtful educators are naturally interested in identifying and recognizing the myriad forces that have shaped their students’ experiences. It is important to know the place from which each student has come. After all, without some understanding of students’ emotional, psychological, and environmental histories, teachers and schools cannot teach them effectively. The tenor and structure of the learning environment also play an essential role in student development because the place in which a student is educated invariably shapes not only the quality or type of educational experience, but also the child’s identity to some extent.
Place is equally fundamental outside the classroom, as most historical clashes have painfully demonstrated. Having access to, or being exiled from, certain areas — countries, towns, neighborhoods, houses, schools, universities, or classrooms — can immutably determine a person’s fortune and fate. Wars are not waged over mere dirt and stones; at issue is the safety of place that land provides.
In her new book, The House of Joshua, Mindy Thompson Fullilove explores and explains what she calls the “psychology of place” through a series of vignettes focused on her family’s experiences. Each chapter tells a single story, reconstructed from Fullilove’s personal memories, conversations with other participants, and family papers. Organized more or less chronologically, readers are regaled with nine complex and wise tales that address love and laughter, racism and bigotry, displacement and homesteading, ostracism and acceptance, politics and empowerment, and learning and teaching.
In one chapter we accompany a timid and disconcerted seven-year-old Fullilove through the halls of her newly desegregated elementary school, “a new school on the hill, where the white people lived. It was not in our neighborhood. It was high and big, not our kind of place” (p. 48). In another, we experience her pain and disillusionment as a student at Columbia Medical School, where she realizes that, “as a black student, I was caught in the net of association that went something like this: black patients were drunkards and should be segregated in certain parts of the hospital; black students were inferior, and therefore black doctors had no place in the hierarchy” (p. 82). And in another chapter, Fullilove recounts the challenges of parenting an adopted son who mourns the separation from his long-term foster family:
We commiserated nightly about the horrors of losing the only home he had ever known . . . this strange turn of events in which his wonderful foster parents had let some yokels take him away from the swimming pool where he really belonged. (p. 113)
The thread that ties together all of the pieces in this tapestry of narratives is the theme of dislocation: families are uprooted and children misplaced, classrooms and libraries prove to be chilly and hostile sites, ideas are summarily dismissed, and rooms seem inevitably too small. Fullilove’s writing is beautiful and her voice temperate; while it is clear that she is urging readers to think and care more deeply about the politics and meaning of “place” — especially its denial — she manages to avoid indulging in overt exhortations. This is a lovely and thought-provoking work that should be read by anyone interested in effective education and student learning.
L.N.N.
Charter Schools: Another Flawed Educational Reform?
by Seymour B. Sarason.
New York: Teachers College Press, 1998. 115 pp. $17.95 (paper).
In Charter Schools: Another Flawed Educational Reform? Seymour Sarason applies over a half-century’s worth of professional experience and writing to a modern educational phenomenon, charter schools. While Sarason asserts that charter schools are “the most radical challenge ever to the existing system” (p. 52), he points out numerous flaws in their design and implementation.
Drawing particularly on his 1972 book, The Creation of Settings and the Future Societies, Sarason discusses the potential pitfalls that stand in the way of those who establish new settings such as charter schools. To Sarason, the process of “creating a setting” is shaped and dominated by “socio-interpersonal factors” (p. 66), rather than practical factors such as securing facilities. Given this, in chapter four, Sarason delineates six “predictable features and problems” that will likely afflict charter schools and lead most of them to fall short of their goals. These pitfalls include: 1) feelings of superiority and uniqueness on the part of the creators; 2) potential external constraints; 3) “time as enemy” — too much to do with too little time to do it, often compounded by poor choices regarding what tasks should be attended to first; 4) a lack of consensus among “The Core Group” regarding the organization’s goals; 5) unresolved issues of power and authority among leaders; and 6) inability of many creators to estimate accurately the setting’s needs and gather the resources necessary to meet them. Sarason attributes these factors to most new educational settings, including charter schools.
Sarason concludes that most charter schools — though by no means all, he is careful to point out — are destined to fall prey to these problems due primarily to the ineffectual legislation that has made such schools possible. Furthermore, Sarason admits that we will likely never know how or why certain schools and not others succeed, because legislation has not provided sufficient funds to observe and record their stories.
Sarason neglects to make a further point that could extend his argument. The upcoming “baby echo” (the population explosion echoing the baby boom) will require that a large number of schools (6,000 by one estimate) be built in the United States over the coming decade to accommodate the burgeoning numbers of children in this country. Though many of these schools will likely be incorporated within traditional districts, they too will be new settings and will likely face challenges similar to those of charter schools. If appropriate research had been completed in their early stages, charter schools could have served as laboratories and models for these new schools, as well as guided the legislation governing them. Unfortunately, we seem doomed to repeat the mistakes foretold by Sarason in 1972 and reiterated in this volume.
Charter Schools: Another Flawed Educational Reform? is an important book for those interested in starting schools. Though Sarason delineates the misguided legislation that has beset charter schools from the beginning, his research also offers powerful guidance for those who seek to build innovative schools.
A.H.C.
by Octavio Ruiz, Amy Sanders, and Meredith Sommers.
Minneapolis: Resource Center of the Americas, 1998, 2nd edition. 348 pp.
$39.99.
Many Faces of Mexico is a teacher resource that supports the construction of learning environments for those who are interested in the social, cultural, economic, and political realities of Mexico in the context of the Americas. The book covers Mexico’s historical past — the pre-Columbian and colonial eras (pre-1521 through 1810), the independence movement, the Mexican-American War, and the Revolution (1810–1920) — in addition to important aspects of the country’s historic present.
Some of the individual chapters on contemporary Mexico focus on the pressures for political reform following the student massacre at Tlatelolco in 1968 and the Zapatista uprising in 1994. Other chapters deal with the expected themes of immigration, art, and cross-cultural understanding, while still others explore the often unaddressed realities of political economy (“A Simulation of Mexican Economic Culture” and “Food Pathways in North America”). By providing students the opportunity to explore the dilemmas, hopes, and frustrations of Mexicans then and now, Many Faces of Mexico puts flesh and bone to the cultural, ideological, class, and gender differences that animate Mexico and its complex relationship with the United States.
This second edition includes two new chapters of special relevance for the global classroom. A previous chapter on the Zapatista movement has been revised to focus on media analysis (“Uprising in Chiapas: Analyzing the Media”), and a completely new chapter on tourism (“Mutually Beneficial Tourism”) connects environmental and economic awareness to the most common way students encounter Mexican culture and society. This is no small task, given that a typical “tour” of Mexico often involves an unexamined experience of the “other” culture as little more than a landscape of consumer objects and exotic spectacle.
The importance of the new chapters resides not solely in their topical relevance or the issues they raise, but rather in the way that they use the mainstream news media and entertainment industry, which have already framed “Mexico” for U.S. students of the region. If there is a weakness in this approach, it is that other current topics, like the war on drugs, gangs, and racial stereotyping, could also be addressed in the context of the media coverage that defines them. A third edition of Many Faces of Mexico could take these into account and, at the same time, incorporate a few layout and design revisions that would increase the feeling of authenticity in the narratives, articles, and testimonial accounts that are presented as resources. For example, preserving or replicating the original forms of newspaper articles, web pages, and wire service reports would be positive developments in that direction.
In sum, Many Faces of Mexico equips educators with critical tools, texts, and suggestions for helping students begin to locate Mexico not simply geographically, but also in historical, cultural, and economic terms. Though designed for high school teachers, Many Faces of Mexico would also be a valuable supplement to college-level semester-abroad programs and to any global education project that requires student orientation for study in Mexico.
W.M.S.
Debatable Diversity: Critical Dialogues on Change in American Universities
by Raymond V. Padilla and Miguel Montiel.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. 316 pp. $55.00, $19.95
(paper).
Debatable Diversity: Critical Dialogues on Change in American Universities by Raymond Padilla and Manuel Montiel is a must read for anyone concerned about change in U.S. higher education. After three decades of affirmative action and other socially progressive policies, we are witnessing retrenchment and digression with regard to policies that influence access to higher education for people of color. This “talking book” is a series of transcribed “critical dialogues” between Padilla and Montiel, two significant figures in the fight for access and equity for Chicanos/as in higher education. Situating their dialogues within the historical development of U.S. higher education over the past two centuries, Padilla and Montiel provide an honest, direct, and critical reflection of their struggles for social justice and equity in the academy.
As a Chicano student of higher education, I found this book extremely informative, thought provoking, and inspirational. Padilla and Montiel’s open, frank, and lively exchange (which includes disagreements as well as agreements) focuses on the following: internal and external power dynamics of the university, the strategies they used to engage those dynamics, their successes and failures, and insightful analyses of the interests served and not served by the current structures of the university. These discussions are certain to serve as a guide for the next generation of academics and administrators who seek to engage the university as a place that should model the ideals of social justice and equity. As the authors state in the preface, “Unquestionably, this book encompasses an ethnic, and particularly Chicano, angle of vision, but the problems, issues, contradictions, dilemmas, and possibilities discussed in this book implicate everyone” (p. xxiii).
While some who read this book may be turned away by the frankness and directness of Padilla and Montiel’s reflections, in particular the act of naming the actors in the political worlds they describe, the reflective tone of the authors and the critical importance of the subject matter they address mitigate any perceived bad intent. As Ruben Martinez states in his foreword, “Its primary aim is collective self-reflection, and, as such, intends to clarify rather than to blame or denigrate. We live in a time of great challenges and great opportunities. Let us join the conversation in the hope that through it we can overwhelm the former and perceive the latter” (p. xv).
J.F.M.