Course Description In this course, we will explore the question of the actual and potential connections between democracy and education. Our focus of attention will be placed on a critical examination of democratic theory and its implications for the civic education roles and contributions of teachers, adult educators, community development practitioners, and community organizers. We will survey and deal critically with a range of competing conceptions of democracy, variously described as classical, republican, liberal, radical, marxist, neomarxist, pragmatist, feminist, populist, pluralist, postmodern, and/or participatory. Using narrative inquiry as a means for illuminating and interpreting contemporary practice, we will analyze the implications of different conceptions of democracy for the practical work of civic education.

Democracy and education.

Meanwhile, the authors' antidote to the American sicknessa quest for democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditionshas contributed to a vigorous scholarly and popular debate. Attention has been focused on forms of social organization, be it civil society, democratic communitarianism, or associative democracy, that can humanize the market and the administrative state. In their new Introduction the authors relate the argument of their book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.\

Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

Reflection in teacher education: Towards definition and implementation

Conventional teacher education programs follow an apprenticeship model and, in so doing, aspire to provide student teachers with pedagogical skills and techniques derived from a preexisting body of...

Teaching Student Teachers to Reflect

Studies of teachers’ use of mathematics curriculum materials are particularly timely given the current availability of reform-inspired curriculum materials and the increasingly widespread practice of mandating the use of a single curriculum to regulate mathematics teaching. A review of the research on mathematics curriculum use over the last 25 years reveals significant variation in findings and in theoretical foundations. The aim of this review is to examine the ways that central constructs of this body of research—such as curriculum use, teaching, and curriculum materials—are conceptualized and to consider the impact of various conceptualizations on knowledge in the field. Drawing on the literature, the author offers a framework for characterizing and studying teachers’ interactions with curriculum materials.

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Examining Key Concepts in Research on Teachers’ Use of Mathematics Curricula

The curriculum : problems, politics, and possibilities

A paradox currently exists for many programs of teacher preparation because of two apparently oppositional tendencies. First, within programs which prepare future teachers, there is an increasing amount of attention being given to field work of various types, as appropriate training for those about to enter the profession of teaching; second, there has been a growing commitment to provide more than a vocational training experience for prospective teachers, so that students in teacher preparation programs may be encouraged to examine educational issues, ideas, and practices from a critical, foundational perspective (Beyer & Zeichner, 1982). We will explore in this paper: a) how these tendencies conflict; b) the educational and ideological parameters of such conflicts and why these are important ; and c) how the tendencies which form the basis for this paradox may be realigned so that a critically oriented, reflective approach to teacher preparation may be enhanced.

Field Experience, Ideology, and the Development of Critical Reflectivity:

The Historical Legacy The New Right - Individualism, Free Markets and Character Modern Liberalism and the Welfare State Dominating Dynamics - Radical Critiques of Class, Gender and Race Postmodernism Our Social and Democratic Vision - Toward a New Progressivism One Progressive Agenda.

Curriculum in Conflict: Social Visions, Educational Agendas, and Progressive School Reform

Discourse or moral action? a critique of postmodernism

(2002). The Politics of Standardization: Teacher education in the USA. Journal of Education for Teaching: Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 239-245.

Landon E. Beyer

Papers

The curriculum : problems, politics, and possibilities

Field Experience, Ideology, and the Development of Critical Reflectivity:

Curriculum in Conflict: Social Visions, Educational Agendas, and Progressive School Reform

Discourse or moral action? a critique of postmodernism

The Politics of Standardization: Teacher education in the USA