Article Abstracts:
In this article, Part I of Cultural Action for Freedom, Paulo Freire rejects mechanistic conceptions of the adult literacy process, advocating instead a theory and practice based upon authentic dialogue between teachers and learners. Such dialogue, in Freire’s approach, centers upon the learners’ existential situations and leads not only to their acquisition of literacy skills, but also, and more importantly, to their awareness of their right as human beings to transform reality. Becoming literate, then, means far more than learning to decode the written representation of a sound system. It is truly an act of knowing, through which a person is able to look critically at the world he/she lives in, and to reflect and act upon it.
Cultural Action and Conscientization
In this article, Part II of Cultural Action for Freedom, Paulo Freire explains the process of conscientization as an intrinsic part of cultural action for freedom. He rejects the mechanistic and behaviorist understanding of consciousness as a passive copy of reality. Instead, he proposes the critical dimension of consciousness that recognizes human beings as active agents who transform their world. He makes specific reference to the political and social situation in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, discussing the need for cultural action in order to break the existing “culture of silence.”
Not the Color Purple: Black Feminist Lessons for Educational Caring
In this article, Audrey Thompson offers a critique of the “colorblindness” found both in the psychological literature on caring and in theories of caring in education. Thompson argues that, insofar as theories of care fail to acknowledge and address the Whiteness of their political and cultural assumptions, they are in effect colorblind. She calls for a reexamination of the Whiteness embedded in these colorblind theories, which have been universally framed and have thus sidestepped the issues of racial imbalance implicit in colorblindness. She adds to the critique of these theories by showing how differently some of the themes that have proved generative for theories of care might have been interpreted if a Black feminist perspective rather than a liberal White feminist perspective had been assumed. Following her critique of four key themes—the moral relevance of the situation, the primacy of survival, the significance of the standpoint from which values are understood, and the moral power of narrative—Thompson calls our attention to how we think about, develop, and implement an anti-racist curriculum and practice in classrooms. Her point is that colorblindness in teaching and learning situations limits us from benefiting from other perspectives that may inform educational practice. To overcome these limitations, Thompson suggests that theorists and teachers reexamine their approaches and ideologies, and include perspectives of caring that are based in non-White and/or poor cultures in their work.
Using a Chicana Feminist Epistemology in Educational Research
In this article, Dolores Delgado Bernal outlines a Chicana feminist epistemological framework that is new to the field of educational research. This framework, which draws from the existing work of Chicana feminists, questions the notions of objectivity and a universal foundation of knowledge. A Chicana feminist epistemology is also grounded in the life experiences of Chicanas and involves Chicana research participants in analyzing how their lives are being interpreted, documented, and reported, while acknowledging that many Chicanas lead lives with significantly different opportunity structures than men or White women. As part of this framework, Delgado Bernal also introduces the concept of cultural intuition to name a complex process that acknowledges the unique viewpoints that many Chicana scholars bring to the research process. In the latter half of the article, she illustrates the importance of this framework in educational research by describing an oral history project on Chicana student resistance and activism as seen from this framework. Her conceptual discussion and research example together demonstrate that employing a Chicana feminist epistemology in educational research is one means of resisting traditional paradigms that often distort or omit the experiences and knowledge of Chicanas.
Middle-Age Teaching: A Time of Vitality
In this article, Abigail Erdmann reflects on her career as a classroom teacher. She shares her delight in discovering that middle age isn’t, as she had once thought, a time of boredom or complacency. Instead, she finds it to be a time of growing vitality as her relationship to teaching deepens and changes. She realizes that her students have educated her as much as she has educated them, and reveals that this reciprocity is a primary reason why she continues to find teaching to be a vital and rewarding career.
by Lilia I. Bartolomé.
Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. 153 pp. $59.00.
The Misteaching of Academic Discourses by Lilia Bartolomé provides a critical approach to the education of working-class minority children that is largely missing in the conventional literature on language learning. Through the analysis of a case study and solid theoretical argumentation, Bartolomé points out the problems with generalized assumptions about teaching that educators should face in order to avoid, as the title suggests, a “misteaching.” In this book, the author challenges researchers and practitioners to reflect—and consequently to take a stance—on how best to provide working-class and language-minority children with a high-quality education.
The first chapter questions the notion of decontextualized language in the way it has often been identified—as the school language, abstract and disconnected from daily life contexts. Bartolomé proposes that academic language should instead be treated as the language contextualized in school settings, procedures, and conventions—where one feature of academic discourse, for instance, is to provide information by taking distance from the audience. The author therefore refers to all academic discourse as contextualized, and this clarification becomes the principal basis for her argument.
Bartolomé strongly argues that many minority children do not have adequate knowledge about academic discourses because the language contextualized in schools is more similar to mainstream, middle-class primary discourse than to their own primary discourses. To improve academic achievement, therefore, these students need to be introduced to the language conventions used in school. She advocates for the importance of teaching these skills as part of a process of analysis and reflection, and contends that “mastery of powerful discourses would enable students to develop metacognitive and analytic skills so they can become critical thinkers, rather than blindly and complacently accepting secondary discourses and their underlying ideologies and values” (p. 26). Bartolomé thus challenges the commonly held idea that language-minority children’s underachievement is a result of their lack of English-language proficiency. She posits instead that this underachievement may be a result of their exclusion in so many classrooms from the keys to academic success.
To show her theory in practice, Bartolomé takes us into Amy Cortland’s bilingual fifth-grade classroom in which the majority of the students are Mexican American. She introduces us to eight target students—both high and low achievers—who, together with Cortland, their mainstream teacher, become the focus of Bartolomé’s study. After describing “A Potentially Ideal Classroom” in chapter three, the author analyzes a “potentially ideal” teacher’s work. Although filled with caring and good intentions, that work ends up “misteaching” her students the needed academic skills. Bartolomé’s critical analysis leads the reader to reflect and realize how deeply we have internalized deficit approaches associated with minority students, and how superficially we tend to question our own practice as educators. To illustrate our biases, Bartolomé makes an interesting analogy to first-year graduate students in sociology who have not yet mastered sociological discourse. She argues that minority children do not need any special programs; instead, they need the same kind of mentoring that the sociology freshman requires when entering this new field:
For example, in a graduate school setting, an ideal adviser will support and assist a student in becoming a full-fledged member of a particular discourse or discipline, such as sociology. . . . Ultimately, what is important is that the student has been provided with the necessary “insider” cultural information. Similarly, in an elementary classroom setting, teachers can both implicitly model new communicative strategies, thinking processes, and worldviews. (p. 25)
In her closing comments, Bartolomé calls into question a pedagogy of care by arguing that caring is important, but not enough. By the end of this book, she has portrayed the case of a teacher full of good intentions, very caring and supportive of her students; she has also shown us how “all her good intentions led her to become a victim of a pedagogy that miseducates” (p. 121). By rescuing Paulo Freire’s words, she comments on the mission of teachers as caring people with a responsibility to educate that requires intellectual rigor and stimulation of epistemological curiosity. Elaborating on these thoughts, she ends the book by noting that:
Teachers working toward political clarity understand that . . . while it is important to authentically care for their students, love alone is insufficient for improving the academic opportunities and life chances of subordinated students. (p. 121)
Ultimately, one of Bartolomé’s important contributions with this volume is the grounding of her arguments in language proficiency research and sociolinguistics theory—both of which she brilliantly embeds, together with her own study, within the paradigm of critical pedagogy. Bartolomé defends good research that takes a political stance and, by doing so, she demystifies the lack of research-based arguments or lack of plain language that is often attributed to critical pedagogy. The Misteaching of Academic Discourses provides an interesting read that will definitely make many practitioners and researchers reflect about what good teaching practice means.
M.S.G.
produced and directed by Gail Pellett and Stanley Nelson.
San Francisco: California Newsreel, 1997. 86 minutes. $195.00 (video).
Shattering the Silences is one of the first films to look at campus
life through the eyes of faculty of color. The film introduces us to the
stories and experiences of eight scholars who speak truthfully and boldly
of their experiences as faculty of color in predominantly White institutions
of higher education. These eight men and women, from departments of history,
English, political science, and ethnic studies, are professors at various
universities around the country. Thanks to their honest and compelling stories,
Shattering the Silences establishes itself as an important film in
the dialogue regarding multiculturalism and higher education. Although the
film has been out for almost two years, its themes continue to be relevant
today.
The themes presented run the gamut from issues of personal and professional sacrifices to institutional intransigence. For instance, on the issue of personal sacrifice, Gloria Cuadraz, assistant professor of American Studies at Arizona State University West, states, “I have the tenure clock ticking the same time that I have the biological clock ticking. I may be forced to choose and I think I know which one I’m going to choose: the tenure clock.” Robin Kelley, professor of history at New York University, speaks of the professional demands of being a faculty member of color at a predominantly White institution: “A lot of students of color come to us for assistance. . . . The burden of being a Black presence falls on a handful of people. At NYU I’m chairing the Latin American search committee. I’m on the American Studies search committee. I’m on the graduate admissions and fellowship committee. I’m on the third-year review committee. I’m on the graduate exam committee.” Through Kelley’s eyes, we clearly see the burden on faculty members of color to serve as “representatives,” to the potential detriment of their own development as scholars.
Several themes are raised at the institutional level as well, which are related to the manner in which these faculty members, and in many cases the disciplines they have chosen to pursue, are perceived. For instance, Alex Saragoza, associate professor of political science at the University of Arizona, comments, “I’m associated with Chicano Studies, where people assume we do second-rate scholarship and third-rate research and fourth-rate teaching.” The only weak part of the film was John Searle, a White faculty member who is not one of the professors profiled but appears unintroduced in the film on various occasions. Searle seems to serve more as a foil and a caricature of the ignorant White male than a legitimate voice in the conversation. However, it may be that he articulates some views that many people adhere to but few would admit. Unfortunately, in contrast to the thoughtfulness and care taken in developing the stories of the eight faculty of color, Searle’s occasional comments come across as vitriolic, out of touch, and anti-intellectual—if not downright ignorant.
The eight faculty members profiled in this film make it worth viewing. In addition, this film is extremely useful as a pedagogical tool. The themes mentioned above are only a sampling of the possible discussions that could emerge from a viewing of the film. It has enormous potential as a tool for discussing faculty diversity in institutions of higher education, or simply as a means of opening the conversation regarding the experiences of people of color at predominantly White institutions. In addition to illuminating the struggles of faculty of color at predominantly White institutions, this film makes a compelling argument for the value that these faculty members add to the institution. Higher education faculty and students interested in these topics would find this film a useful tool for either beginning or continuing a conversation on diversity on their campuses.
R.D.
by Holly Holland.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1998. 209 pp. $24.95.
Making Change by Holly Holland offers a rare inside look into the complex, painful, and occasionally exhilarating work of major school reform. The book looks at the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA), a sweeping re-imagining of public education. Holland writes that KERA came about after the “state’s highest court . . . said the poor quality of the state’s classrooms violated the constitutional requirement for an adequate and equal education for all children. The court told the state legislature to wipe the slate clean” (p. x). Instead of focusing on the mandate itself or on the process of its creation, Holland gets inside the reform by focusing on the people trying to make it work. In her words, “A court required it, legislators created it, and state bureaucrats regulated it. But it is the individual teacher who is responsible for making reform work” (p. 3). She follows her characters—a superintendent, a principal, and a classroom teacher—in their lives and careers from 1994 through 1996, and paints a picture of school reform without any simple solutions. There are no heroes here, and no villains—only good people working hard to do the best jobs they can. She keeps central the hard and individual nature of reform: “Change is not just about policies, or programs, or promises. It is an intensely personal decision to try something new. And to work, change depends on a broad belief that doing something differently will make it better” (p. 26).
The three central people in this book are all unabashedly in favor of school reform, and all devote themselves tirelessly to improving the education of all children lucky enough to be their charges. These characters are not saints, however, and their efforts at reform are neither smooth nor always well-executed. Holland shows us the missed opportunities, strained meetings, and bad decisions along with the shining examples of success. Many of the missteps are around the central tension of those who are trying to implement KERA and those who are working to keep the old system intact. While Holland herself is clearly a proponent of KERA, she does not condemn those who are not. Instead, she shows the reason and honor of both sides of the KERA issue—those who value the old system and those who welcome the new changes. With this balance, as with so many other elements of this book, Holland offers the many shades of gray instead of the usual black and white. She points out that “one of the ironies of KERA is that people who enjoyed school so much they decided to make a career of it were in charge of changing the very system that made them feel safe and valued” (p. 55).
Holland weaves a compelling story despite—or perhaps because of—the imperfections in the main characters. Although Holland is not a researcher by profession (she is a journalist), this is an extensive piece of research. Holland provides background into everything from Kentucky’s educational history to the personal histories of the main characters, interviewing colleagues, spouses, and childhood friends. Readers are given an inside look into the KERA reforms, and we are left, at the end, wiser but not necessarily more hopeful about the work of major school change. Towards the end of her time in the schools, Holland asks, “Were the results worth the struggle? As a society, we have to ask ourselves if comprehensive school reform is realistic when some of the best educators in the land struggle to make gains against such staggering odds. Do we really deserve better schools?” (p. 182). It is a powerful question that we would all do well to ask ourselves. Holland helps us ask it well.
J.G.B.
edited by Nancy Nelson and Robert C. Calfee.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 304 pp. $29.00.
Nancy Nelson and Robert Calfee’s The Reading-Writing Connection is a collection of essays and research-based articles on the theoretical and practical relationships between reading and writing. This volume, which is Part Two of the Ninety-Seventh Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, brings together the perspectives of esteemed scholars in such fields as reading research, rhetoric, communication, and language arts/English education. The overall purpose of this volume is to challenge and to scrutinize the established tradition of separating reading and writing instruction across all grade levels. Chapter authors approach this purpose by exploring such issues as the relationship between reading and writing processes, the effect of both reading and writing on thinking, and the similar roles of audience awareness in writing and author awareness in reading. Several contributions—such as James Murphy’s “What Is Rhetoric and What Does It Do for Writers and Readers?” and Paul Prior’s “Contextualizing Teachers’ Responses to Writing in the College Classroom”—illuminate ways that reading and writing are related not only to each other but also to spoken language.
Much of the work in this volume finds its theoretical foundation in social constructivism, a theory that emphasizes the influence of social context, collaboration, and discussion in the learning process. As such, this theory represents a response—some might say a reaction—to the formalistic, text-based approaches to reading and writing instruction that originated, respectively, in the school of literary theory known as New Criticism and in the tradition of classical rhetoric.
Several chapters that strongly reflect the social constructivist orientation include two conceptual pieces—Nancy Nelson’s “Reading and Writing Contextualized” and Richard Beach’s “Writing about Literature: A Dialogic Approach”—along with George Newell’s review of research literature, “‘How Much Are We the Wiser?’: Continuity and Change in Writing and Learning.” These chapters in particular reflect the current interest in social constructivist theoretical perspectives in the field of reading and writing research.
While most of the pieces in this collection are focused on theoretical concepts and results of research, the book nevertheless has much to offer practitioners. Melanie Sperling’s “Teachers as Readers of Student Writing”—a sketch of one teacher’s instructional practice situated in a discussion of the research on responses to student writing—should prompt writing teachers to reflect in new ways on the impact their oral and written comments have on students’ writing and learning. Similarly, teachers of writing and literature may find Beach’s chapter on the “Dialogic Approach” especially helpful in that it suggests strategies for implementing dialogically based responses to literature that encourage students to “adopt perspectives and stances relative to the context in which they are responding” (p. 233). Also promising in its implications for practice is Margaret McKeown and Isabel Beck’s “Talking to an Author: Readers Taking Charge of the Reading Process,” which reports on an intervention that the authors designed to increase students’ engagement with text and to process text more effectively.
What I found most compelling about this collection was its appeal to integrate reading and writing instruction more thoroughly in our schools and the convincing evidence it offers in support of this appeal. Literary researchers and practitioners with an interest in theory will be especially interested in this book, for it makes a strong case about why we should be concerned about the fact that U.S. students experience such a limited amount and variety of writing. If reading and writing are as strongly related as this volume shows them to be, then to shortchange students on one is to undermine their progress in both.
S.W.B.
edited by Marsha Levine and Roberta Trachtman.
New York: Teachers College Press, 1997. 273 pp. $22.95.
Teacher education and professional development are complex and divisive topics in the current conversation about improving the quality of education in schools. Professional Development Schools (PDSs) are one way of dealing with both issues simultaneously, but the PDS model itself is still emerging. As a result, the literature thus far has been sketchy, occasionally reading more like propaganda than research. In Making Professional Development Schools Work: Politics, Practice, and Policy, editors Marsha Levine and Roberta Trachtman expand the discourse about PDSs to include practical articles about the complex and difficult work of university-school partnerships. As the editors write in the introduction, “We want to move beyond the rhetoric about what PDSs should be like, to see what it is really like trying to make changes at the core, sometimes with great success and sometimes not” (p. 6).
The book’s three sections reflect the editors’ interest in a balanced examination of the many forms the PDS takes in practice and of the seemingly endless complexities involved in creating and sustaining these partnerships between public schools and universities. Part One, “Making Changes at the Core,” highlights the deep changes in organizational and power structures necessary for PDSs to be successful and offers some analysis of the multiple benefits of these partnerships. Chapters on teacher leadership, pre-service teacher education, and teacher professional development, among others, each presents a different vision of new roles for educators and students. In addition to the insight from authors who are intimately involved with these PDSs, this section also raises important questions about the implementation of the various PDSs.
Part Two, “Building Professional Development Schools in the Context of Education Reform,” gives nuts-and-bolts advice about such topics as funding and governance issues, and raises the question of standards for the emerging PDS. These chapters are useful for anyone who is thinking about the details of creating a Professional Development School. Part Three, “Stories from the Field,” is a collection of three case studies that clearly show the wide range of possibilities within the PDS model and put human faces on the challenges and benefits of school-university partnerships.
Making Professional Development Schools Work does not provide a recipe for the creation of PDSs. Indeed, one of the points made apparent here is that PDSs take many forms and have greatly varying levels of success. This book does, however, give clear and thoughtful examples and analysis from people who have been immersed in these schools and know them well. Anyone thinking about undertaking the complex and difficult work of a Professional Development School could benefit greatly from reading this book.
J.G.B.
by Jean Anyon.
New York: Teachers College Press, 1997. 217 pp. $18.95 (paper).
In Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform, Jean Anyon presents a compelling case for considering “how economic and political decisions by others—over many decades—have made the positions of current actors in central city schools almost unbearable”(p. xix). Anyon, who is chairperson of the education department at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, argues convincingly that current urban education reform ignores the long history of “economic and political devastation” in most major cities. The author presents Newark as a useful case study for examining this devastation of cities (e.g., high poverty, crime, and high school dropout rates) and begins the discussion with a look at the challenges and difficulties of current school reform efforts. The first part of the book looks at reform efforts underway in Newark. It illustrates clearly the often unexamined racial and class dimensions of urban school reform and the marginalization of the urban poor, and those who teach them, from the wider economic and political spectrum.
In the second part of the book, Anyon demonstrates that this marginalization began with national economic and political trends that commenced at the turn of the century. Beginning with the well-documented rise of industrialism in the mid-nineteenth century, the author traces economic changes in Newark—the withdrawal of corporate leaders from involvement in municipal affairs, the impact of poverty and race on school success, and the political isolation of city politicians from state and national affairs—which contributed to the current crisis in Newark’s educational system. Anyon argues that any reform effort that does not address the wider economic and political isolation of America’s inner cities is bound to fail. The book ends with recommendations for useful educational and social change, as well as a note of optimism, based on past social movements in U.S. history, that such change is indeed possible.
Though at times framed in the black-and-white dichotomy that seems to pervade many otherwise critical scholars—an unfortunate simplification of a complex racial and ethnic reality in America’s inner cities—Anyon’s book is nevertheless a powerful call to action. Ghetto Schooling would prove quite useful for educational reformers from the classroom to the national level. As Anyon argues articulately, educational administrators and policymakers have ignored the history of political and economic exploitation in U.S. inner cities for far too long. She makes it clear that it is only through recognizing and making reparations for this systematic abuse and neglect of the inner city that reform efforts will actually have a positive impact on the lives of inner-city children.
R.D.
by Robert M. O’Neil.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. 280 pp. $24.95.
In Free Speech in the College Community, Robert O’Neil, founding director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, addresses the subject of freedom of speech and other forms of expression as they arise in higher education. O’Neil examines specific higher education contexts in which highly publicized controversies have arisen around the freedom of expression. As he notes in his introduction, when comparing situations on and off campus, some forms of speech are freer than others for reasons associated with the educational mission of higher education institutions.
In Free Speech, which is written as a guide for the university administrator, O’Neil synthesizes relevant legal history and widely publicized cases that did not necessarily go to the courts for resolution. He analyzes the essence of court cases that deal with speech codes, academic freedom, technology, off-campus speakers, fraternity and sorority activities, student press, art on campus, research, religious expression, and free speech on private campuses. In individual chapters he examines competing interests and politics, and suggests ways that college administrators can handle real dilemmas they may face regarding campus expression.
For college administrators—college presidents, student service personnel, and general counsels—this book is a handy, readable reference. For students of campus speech issues, it suggests a reasonable perspective on balancing the value of freedom of speech with other student, faculty, and community values and interests within the law. O’Neil is less consistent in his discussion of extra-legal resolutions to cases that may never reach the courts. Nevertheless, this volume remains the most comprehensive and thorough examination of campus speech available today.
B.T.