Showing papers in "Harvard Educational Review in 2022"

Amazon and the New Global Connective Architectures of Education Governance

Abstract: In this analytical essay, part of Harvard Educational Review’s symposium on Platform Studies in Education, Ben Williamson, Kalervo N. Gulson, Carlo Perrotta, and Kevin Witzenberger argue that global technology companies have begun acting as governance organizations in education. Their analysis focuses on the global technology company Amazon, which has begun penetrating education through a connective architecture of digital infrastructure and platform services. Looking at Amazon technical documentation and publicly available materials, the authors identify and examine five interlocking governance operations and their effects: inscribing commercial business models on the education sector, habituating educational users to Amazon technologies, creating new interfaces with educational institutions, platforming third-party education providers on the cloud, and seeking market dominance over provision and control of key information infrastructures of education. In showing how Amazon is potentially developing infrastructural dominance in the education sector as part of its transformation into a statelike corporation with significant social, technical, economic, and political power to govern and control state and public services, this article highlights the broader implications of increasing technological governance in education.

Governed by Edtech? Valuing Pedagogical Autonomy in a Platform Society

Abstract: In this essay, Niels Kerssens and José van Dijck discuss the implications of platformization on the key public value of pedagogical autonomy in K–12 education. They focus on two interconnected concerns: how the integration of education into a global digital infrastructure contests the institutional pedagogical autonomy of schools and how the integration of digital platforms with educational practices in classrooms challenges the professional pedagogical autonomy of teachers. The authors engage with the symposium contributions by Williamson, Gulson, Perrotta & Witzenberger on the Amazon infrastructure and by Pangrazio, Stornaiuolo, Nichols, Garcia & Philip on platform practices at the classroom level. With this dual focus, Kerssens and van Dijck explore how critical research in the emerging field of platform studies in education pertains to both the political-economic level of building educational platform infrastructures and the social-technical level of how teaching and learning are (re)shaped by digital platforms. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of recommendations for the future governance of edtech to serve the pedagogical interest of schools and teachers.

Curricular Countermovements: How White Parents Mounted a Popular Challenge to Ethnic Studies

Abstract: In this critical ethnography, Ethan Chang investigates how white parent-activists organized an oppositional movement to ethnic studies. Drawing on critical whiteness studies, cultural studies, and studies of countermovements, he argues that these parents crafted an oppositional narrative that positioned white, Christian, American boys as victims of ethnic studies curricula. Chang then traces how the parents leveraged this narrative to forge a coalition with disability advocates and to “digitally suture,” or bind, their local ethnic studies countermovement to broader right-wing populist activism. Data includes eleven months of participant observation, 146 public school board testimonies, and twenty ethnographic interviews. The article concludes with a discussion of how studies of curricular countermovements might inform scholarly and activist attempts to divest from whiteness and make ethnic studies available to all students.

Platform Studies in Education

Abstract: In this introductory essay in the “Platform Studies in Education” symposium, T. Philip Nichols and Antero Garcia consider the expanding role of platform technologies in teaching, learning, and administration and the contributions of education research to the emerging multidisciplinary literature of platform studies. Their essay outlines theoretical lineages that identify platforms not as standalone tools but as multisided markets linking their users to competing social, technical, and political-economic imperatives. It also highlights connections to related education research that demonstrates the impact of these conflicting imperatives for equitable student learning, teacher education, and policy making. The authors conclude by reflecting on the critical interventions that greater attention to platform relations in education might offer and the forms of coalitional work, across disciplinary and geographic borders, needed to realize these potentials.

Teacher Evaluation for Growth and Accountability: Under What Conditions Does It Improve Student Outcomes?

Abstract: Most teacher evaluation policies in the United States seek to improve student outcomes by providing developmental supports to grow teachers’ skills and by imposing accountability pressures to increase their effort. In this research synthesis and analytic essay, David D. Liebowitz argues that proper policy design has been understood as successfully balancing the accountability and growth dimensions of teacher evaluation. He details six conditions that determine whether joint-aim teacher evaluation policies will improve student outcomes and assesses the extent to which they are likely to be met given the causal evidence from the education, economics, social psychology, and management research literatures. The article concludes with recommendations to more clearly delineate the accountability and growth aims of teacher evaluation.

White Ignorance in Global Education

Abstract: In this qualitative research essay, Francine Menashy and Zeena Zakharia advance Charles Mills’s concept of White ignorance for understanding racial power hierarchies in global education governance. They reveal how global education organizations “sanitize racial inequities and silence conversations on race” and how in global education racism has been largely considered a US-based problem, which denies the fact that White supremacy is a global system. The authors argue that White ignorance has inhibited structural change in global education policies and practices. And while the Black Lives Matter movement has called for a global reckoning with entrenched racism and White supremacy, limited attention has been paid to racial inequities in global education circles.

Datafication Meets Platformization: Materializing Data Processes in Teaching and Learning

Abstract: In this contribution to the Platform Studies in Education symposium, Luci Pangrazio, Amy Stornaiuolo, T. Philip Nichols, Antero Garcia, and Thomas M. Philip explore how digital platforms can be used to build knowledge and understanding of datafication processes among teachers and students. The essay responds to the turn toward data-driven teaching and learning in education and argues that digital data is not only generated through national, state, and classroom-level assessments but also produced through the platform technologies that increasingly support all kinds of school operations. While much has been written about the promise of such technologies for schools, less is known about the role digital platforms play in constituting this data and how the platforms can be critically engaged to build knowledge and understanding of datafication processes in classrooms. This article explores these dynamics through three vignettes that investigate platforms as an interface for teaching and learning about data. In doing so, the essay speaks back to three interrelated properties of datafication—reduction, abstraction, and individualization— in ways that can be made visible for analysis, critique, and resistance in schools.

Muslim Educators’ Pedagogies: Tools for Self, Social, and Spiritual Transformation

Abstract: In this interpretive research study, Claire Alkouatli inquires into the pedagogical activities Sunni Muslim educators employ in sites of Islamic education that are often marginalized by stereotypes, misperceptions, and charges of anachronism and indoctrination. She invited thirty-five Muslim Canadian educators to share their perspectives on their pedagogies around teaching Islam to children and youth. Her thematic analysis of participants’ variegated descriptions coalesced into a three-theme pedagogical typology. Distinct from mainstream secular pedagogies at the levels of ontology, epistemology, and developmental psychology, Islamic pedagogies are situated within a wider conceptual paradigm. Recognizing their qualities of holism and “double cultural relevance,” they are functionally significant in teachers’ repertoires for helping young Muslims think across paradigms and may contribute to both sociocultural continuity and more equal inter-epistemic interaction in heterogeneous societies.

“I Wouldn’t Invite Them to the Cookout”: How Black Male Special Education Teachers Feel About Socializing with Their White Colleagues

Abstract: In this research article, Christopher J. Cormier analyzes interviews he conducted with five Black male US special education teachers to understand how they experienced social ties in the workplace. The interviews reveal the raced and gendered dynamics that complicated the interviewees’ relationships with their predominantly White and female colleagues and how these Black male teachers chose to forgo social activities with their White colleagues even while knowing that this avoidance could limit their opportunities for broader career advancement.

You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience

Abstract: Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009) warned that the danger of a single story is that it strips people of their humanity and reduces them to stereotypes. Headlines during the ongoing global health and racial pandemics have described disproportionately high rates of illness and death in Black communities. The hyperconnected world frequently broadcasts these stories on a loop, yet a deep well of untold Black experience narratives also exists, and they deserve to be shared widely. Our present times demand that we go beyond the highlight reel to understand people not through their statistics but through their stories. “What do you do when you are all too aware that Blackness makes you uniquely vulnerable in this world?” probes Austin Channing Brown (18).You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience is a collection of essays edited by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown, two friends whose areas of expertise intersect to illuminate the criticality of truth telling. Burke, a lifelong activist who coined the phrase “Me Too,” is known for her advocacy and leadership within a worldwide movement that exists in solidarity with victims of sexual harassment and assault. Brown is a renowned researcher who has spent decades sharing insights into her studies on shame, vulnerability, and courage. You Are Your Best Thing derives its title from a scene in Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved where the main character is assured that despite her harrowing past, she is her own gift to her brighter future. The collection pulls together contributors who are eager to expose their truth and tension in navigating America in Black skin and thereby creates a space to prompt readers to reflect on their own fight for self-love.The editors introduce the volume with a collaborative origin story that models their intent to create something that is unapologetically intimate. Burke describes her experience as a Black woman frustrated with consuming overwhelming images of Black pain during the height of 2020’s social justice unrest. Self-doubt enters, and she hesitates to pitch her idea to elevate stories of Black humanity and disrupt the single-story narrative. Meanwhile, Brown grapples with feedback from Black audiences that her research feels inaccessible, which she attributes to her tendency to share examples through her lens as a white woman. The editors lead with their own vulnerabilities and together invite readers to explore their own interior worlds where shame resides.Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging” (44). One theme that flows through the essays is that shame is at the root of humanity’s suffering, and if unchecked it can grow wild enough to stifle risktaking and infect relationships and will span decades. Another theme names the antidote to shame as self-love and compassion; belief in one’s inherent value requires exposing and confronting painful, private fears. Engaging with examples that reflect familiar cultural experiences is critical for communities of people who have not historically been afforded the ability to equate emotional or physical vulnerability with safety. The power and pull of You Are Your Best Thing lies in the simple truth that bearing witness to others’ stories of shame and resilience emboldens each of us to address our own.The coeditors are very clear that this book is aimed at a Black audience who, like Burke, want to explore the multidimensionality that belies a projected collective Black experience. They elevate distinct stories from Black writers, organizers, academics, and cultural figures that complement and overlap with each other to honor Burke’s vision to “give our humanity breathing room” (xxi). Burke offers a challenge for readers to peel back the veneer of solidarity and enter into a space of activation when she writes, “I do not believe in your antiracist work if you have not engaged in Black humanity” (xviii). Those who profess to being aspiring antiracists or to work in allyship with Black communities, including education professionals grounded in the pursuit of equity, would greatly benefit from this book because it serves as a reminder that every person has deeply personal, untold stories that deserve and demand to be heard.The twenty autobiographical essays evoke a confessional experience through their detailed anecdotes. They cover topics like the trauma of assault, depths of grief, negative self-talk stemming from feeling unloved, and consequence of being silenced by authority. The authors share unflinchingly honest accounts of how they navigate universal experiences while Black. Prentis Hemphill calls for brutal truth when she writes that it is time for all of us to finally acknowledge and address the existence of Black pain and trauma (47). Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts asks, “What does one do when the shame is wrapped in love?” as she describes the thread of protection in the knowing looks and hushed conversation from mothers who teach Black church girls to restrain their sexuality, repress their emotional pain, and save their tears for worship (37). Yolo Akili Robinson shares how hiding and lying are adopted as survival tactics of Black queer trans men who are taught early and often that their patterns of loving are not what their loved ones want (161). Multiple authors describe a daily ritual of donning “armor” to contain their true emotions, project an air of respectability, and dream of a societal reward in the form of psychosocial safety. They expose hypervigilance and lack of trust as generational self-protective measures that double as barriers to emotional connection. Through stories, these authors spotlight how the cultural obsession with survival and resiliency impedes the trajectory toward thriving and abundance. Each essay shows that a commitment to vulnerability requires a determination to unearth mistakes and the courage to fully display them for learning.While ample space is given to acknowledging trauma, these stories are ultimately about hope and becoming. According to Brown, while no one wants to share their insecurities, talking about shame is the only way to diminish its power, because once you know that you’re not alone, shame loses its leverage. In one of the final essays, Aiko D. Bethea outlines practical tools of shame resilience. Some of the suggestions include tapping into one’s spirituality and purpose, intentionally forming community and connection, and learning the language of shame and white supremacy from social justice scholars. All of the authors in the volume provide gentle encouragement—love offerings—for readers to share stories, practice empathy, and deconstruct shame-inducing beliefs as essential steps toward healing.You Are Your Best Thing gives credence to the data of lived experience. The well-curated stories detail the challenges and joys faced by these Black authors as they have confronted shame and its intersection with their identities as women, men, queer, disabled, immigrant, multiracial, and more. The beauty of these different narratives lies in how each author describes how they worked to free themselves from the shackles of shame. The cumulative effect is a diverse set of people insisting that the work of (un)learning and healing centers on the ability to see oneself as worthy. Educators will recognize that we need these narratives to counteract the danger of single-story statistics about Black children that permeate school at every level. Charts that document comparatively low academic rates and high discipline numbers are abundant, yet the field needs more models of love as an antidote. After gifting us multiple, dynamic narratives that do just this, Burke and Brown prime educators who work with Black youth and adults to reflect learning back into their own acts of courage, advocacy, and love. This is not a book to rush through; it’s a book to feel through. In a world where Blackness equates to vulnerability, giving in to feeling more opens us all to appreciate the fullness of Black humanity.

How Did the Post-9/11 GI Bill Affect Vet eran Students’ Undergraduate College Choices? An Application of Propensity Scores in Difference-in-Differences Models

Abstract: The Post-9/11 GI Bill represents significant public investment in and commitment to veterans who have served in the armed forces and those who will serve in the future. Recent studies have examined its effect on veterans’ college participation. In this study, Liang Zhang uses data from four waves of the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study between 2004 and 2016 to examine the effect of the Post-9/11 GI Bill on veterans’ college choices. This analysis finds, most notably, that veterans who received federal education benefits attended colleges in more expensive locations after the implementation of the bill. Moreover, a greater proportion of veterans attended private for-profit institutions instead of public institutions. Also, the bill had no significant impact on choices in terms of institution level as measured by four-year versus two-year colleges, Carnegie Classification, or program type (online versus in-person).

“Reinventing Ourselves” and Reimagining Education: Everyday Learning and Life Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract: In this “ethnographically-oriented” study, authors Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Lu Liu, and Sophia L. Ángeles examine the learning experiences expressed in the diaries of thirty-five families from diverse ethnicities/races, cultures, national origins, and social classes living in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploring participants’ reflections on the learning they engaged in during this time and attending to what families prioritized as they reorganized their daily lives, the authors identify several common themes that emerged as participants figured out new ways of “reinventing themselves” during this unprecedented time by centering their cultural heritage, creativity, health, well-being, and connections to nature and to others and by using technology in creative and innovative ways. In offering the life lessons and richness of learning the families experienced as a counter to the current focus on pandemic learning loss, this study has implications for reimagining education in culturally sustaining ways.

Multilingual International Students’ Communicative Practices in US University Classrooms: Rethinking Appropriate Englishes Through English as a Lingua Franca Perspectives

Abstract: In this critical essay, Yumi Matsumoto uses the concept of English as a lingua franca to understand multilinguals’ communicative practices and to support an alternative understanding of English language use among international students in US university classrooms. The essay draws on two examples of university classroom interactions involving non-native international students’ English use and considers them through both more traditional perspectives on second language acquisition and an English as lingua franca approach, which analyzes communicative practices without making assumptions about students’ status as either native or non-native English speakers. These cases suggest that multilingual international student English use is transforming the notion of “Englishes,” specifically multiple English language norms and communicative practices in US university classrooms. By understanding international students’ communicative practices and valuing how they communicate and achieve understanding through different Englishes, Matsumoto asserts, we can provide better educational support for multilingual international students and empower them.

Reading Identities, Mobilities, and Reading Futures: Critical Spatial Perspectives on Adolescent Access to Literacy Resources

Abstract: In this article, Chin Ee Loh, Baoqi Sun, and Chan-Hoong Leong utilize a critical spatial perspective to examine how students from different socioeconomic statuses access reading resources at home, in school, and in the community. Using Geographic Information System (GIS) data, they evaluate the distribution of reading resources in Singapore by mapping out students’ physical distances to libraries and bookstores. They juxtapose the data against case studies of students and survey data from more than six thousand participants from six secondary schools in Singapore to understand their use of resources for reading. Findings show that while students may have equal access to reading resources in terms of access to public resources for books, home backgrounds significantly affect students’ actual access. The critical spatial approach of this study provides a new way to evaluate the efficacy and equity of resource distribution and access for twenty-first-century learning.

Relative Racialization and Asian American College Student Activism

Abstract: In this qualitative study, Samuel D. Museus analyzes how relative racialization processes and their dynamics shape Asian American college students’ racial justice activism. The findings from his qualitative interviews with activist Asian American undergraduates reveal how these students perceived relative racialization processes as raising barriers to their racial justice efforts. Specifically, they saw these forms of racialization as promoting racialized comparisons and competition among communities of color involved in racial justice activism and as leading to the marginalization of Asian Americans in racial justice agendas—which reinforced internalized racism that inhibited racial justice work within this population.

The Economic, Social, and Political Dimensions of Platform Studies in Education

Abstract: Over the last several decades, we have witnessed the potential for educational technology, or edtech, to bring digital learning and media to learners around the globe and to support students in learning, activism, and identity development. Alongside these innovations, scholars have examined the pitfalls and injustices of various educational technologies, including the racism built into school surveillance technology, the tendency to pursue technological solutions to education's social and political problems, and the inequalities of virtual schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, scholars of edtech have turned their attention to studying digital platforms, or infrastructures that enable multiple interactions between data, software code and a range of heterogenous actors.

Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools

Abstract: What does it mean to be a good parent? Natasha Warikoo’s Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools invites readers—parents and those without children—to grapple with the anxieties and judgments that this question inspires. Based on three years of research in Woodcrest, a pseudonym for a high-income suburb in the northeastern United States, this accessible, engaging, and thought-provoking book examines divergences in how privileged Asian Americans (of Chinese and Indian origin) and whites approach parenting and explores how tensions arising from these divergences shape prospects of immigrant incorporation.Once a predominantly white town, Woodcrest is one of a growing number of wealthy suburbs that have received a steady influx of Asians over the past three decades. Asians now account for about 30 percent of its population (compared to 6 percent of the US population as a whole). Woodcrest’s white and Asian residents have similar class profiles—college educated, high-earning professionals—and appear to want the same outcomes for their children. Both are preoccupied by securing their children’s admission to selective colleges, and the town’s well-regarded public schools are an important reason why both groups choose to call Woodcrest home.Alongside these strikingly similar motivations and goals, the book examines important differences in parenting practices. Asian parents tend to focus more on academic achievement (chapter 2). They enroll their children in supplementary math enrichment classes, unlike white parents who typically access out-of-school academic services only if their children need remedial support. Asians encourage their children to take multiple Advanced Placement (AP) and honors courses. White parents tend to invest more time and resources in enabling their children to excel in extracurricular activities, particularly sports (chapter 3).These divergent parenting practices are, perhaps unsurprisingly, associated with differences in children’s outcomes. While white and Asian American students both excel in Woodcrest’s schools, Asians shine just a little bit brighter in academics. They spend more hours doing homework than their white peers, score higher on standardized and state tests, and are better represented in rigorous academic tracks and at the school science fair.And as white students become relegated to second place, their parents worry about their children’s diminishing sense of self-worth in comparison to academically superior Asian American peers as well as the burden that all of Woodcrest’s students bear in their pursuit of academic excellence. In response to shared concerns about children’s mental and emotional health, white parents advocate for reducing students’ academic load (chapter 4). The more vocal among them successfully lobby school authorities to impose restrictions on homework. Asians, who view homework as crucial for attaining the highest levels of academic achievement, oppose such restrictions, albeit quietly. A few white parents even relocate their children to expensive private schools, which offer less academically intensive routes to elite colleges.By changing the rules of academic competition in school, or exiting this competition altogether, white parents effectively, even if unintentionally, seek to shore up their children’s educational and life advantages. And as chapter 5 shows, white parents assert their moral superiority by defining “good” parenting in ways that are most familiar and favorable to themselves. In interviews, they blame other parents for holding unreasonably high academic expectations and giving their children an “unfair” advantage (by, say, paying for supplementary math classes), while giving themselves a free pass for investing substantial amounts of time, energy, and money in their children’s extracurricular pursuits. These other supposedly pushy, academics-obsessed parents are often explicitly identified as Asian. Keenly aware of such criticisms, Asians in Woodcrest seemingly uphold white norms of good parenting by distancing themselves from the intensive child-rearing practices of other immigrants or likening their emphasis on academics to white parents’ push for excellence in sports.While white parents claim the parenting moral high ground and Asians defend themselves against the charge of being ’bad” parents, Warikoo reminds readers that both groups are unwitting beneficiaries of structures that perpetuate racial and class inequality. Very few of Woodcrest’s residents (less than 5 percent) may be classified as poor or Black, Latinx, or some other race—an artifact of discriminatory housing laws and other policies that continue to limit access to the town’s celebrated schools. The debate on good parenting between whites and Asians obscures the tremendous advantages that most children in Woodcrest already enjoy and ignores children from whom these privileges are withheld.For a reader who knows little about life in elite suburban enclaves, Race at the Top makes the parenting anxieties and racial tensions in “Woodcrests” across the US visible and clear. This is in large part because Warikoo lets readers in on her own thinking about what she saw and heard during her study. At various occasions, she reflects on how her identity as a scholar of racial and ethnic inequality in education, a child of Indian immigrants, and a parent shaped her approach to this research, her interactions with parents, and her reactions to what they shared. Warikoo is candid, for instance, about how being around Woodcrest’s achievement-oriented parents made her question whether she herself is making the grade as a caregiver. She also describes how white parents’ judgments have made her feel defensive about her own parents’ emphasis on academics. These personal reflections, together with clear and detailed research methods appendixes, helped me understand both the Woodcrest parents’ thinking and Warikoo’s data collection and analysis. I particularly appreciated how Warikoo unpacked generalizations and moral judgments about Asian parenting practices and clearly signaled the dissonance between these subtle manifestations of racial prejudice and white parents’ verbal commitments to diversity and liberal values.Discussions on racial and ethnic differences in parenting are tricky. Given the impressive performance of Asian American students on conventional measures of academic achievement (Hsin & Xie, 2014), it is tempting to laud their parents for prioritizing education and to fault other racial groups for failing to. Race at the Top steers readers clear of such simplistic conclusions about Asian educational values and beliefs by focusing instead on the strategies and resources that immigrant professionals mobilize in support of their children’s achievements. Through generous use of participant quotes, Warikoo illustrates that wealthy Asians in Woodcrest are simply chasing the American Dream by leaning into their own tried and tested strategies for success.For instance, Saumya, an immigrant Indian mother, feels that the standards of math education in her children’s school are lower than what she experienced growing up. Her search for more challenging math classes is “normal” given that well-resourced Indians in India and the US do so routinely. Warikoo conceptualizes this strategy as arising from Saumya’s “cultural repertoire,” or toolkit, for success. As she notes, most Asians who make it to Woodcrest are products of highly competitive and hierarchical higher education systems in their countries of origin, where academic achievement is the primary criterion for admission to elite colleges. Their emphasis on academic excellence is shaped by these firsthand experiences and by those of family, friends, and acquaintances. White parents’ toolkit, however, is influenced by the admissions processes of selective US colleges that reward both academic and extracurricular achievement.While Warikoo provides much evidence of dynamism and heterogeneity in Asian American approaches to parenting, the book’s primary focus on fault lines between Asians and whites leaves less room for discussions of how cultural repertoires evolve and vary within the town’s immigrant communities. Given that the majority of Warikoo’s parent interviewees are mothers, I missed some discussion of how the work of child-rearing and drawing moral boundaries about what constitutes “good” parenting is distributed within white and Asian households.Race at the Top rightly emphasizes the need for continued examination of how racial divisions and hierarchies shape immigrants’ experiences, including for those wealthy professionals who can access the best education money can buy and then surge ahead in American meritocracy. And while Warikoo’s primary focus is not educational practice or policy, she closes with an appeal to parents in towns like Woodcrest to understand each other’s parenting approaches and advocate for communities that are excluded from their race at the top. This made me think about the ways I, too, as an upper-class, uppercaste, English-speaking product of highly selective colleges in India, benefit from systems of meritocracy that exclude vast numbers of Black, Latinx, and Native American students from elite US universities and consider what I can do to uncover and dismantle these inequities. I hope it does the same for many readers.

Book Notes

Abstract: Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Alyssa Napier, Tara P. Nicola, Abigail Orrick; Book Notes. Harvard Educational Review 1 March 2022; 92 (1): 134–144. doi: https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-92.1.134 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest Search

Beyond the Bus: Reconceptualizing School Transportation for Mobility Justice

Abstract: This essay combines an ecological perspective with a mobility justice theoretical framework to reconceptualize the relationship between school transportation and educational access. Authors Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Jeremy Singer, Kimberly Stokes, James Bear Mahowald, and Sahar Khawaja document the problem of “getting to school” that is at the intersection of students’ family, community, and social contexts and how it goes beyond whether there is a reliable mode of physical transportation. Bringing together a historical analysis of the policy landscape and interview data from parents and students in Detroit, they find that school transportation problems reflect the unequal political, social, and economic context in which families navigate enrollment and attendance. They discuss how policy makers can advance mobility justice in school policy by equitably distributing transportation resources, engaging students and parents as experts in developing and communicating transportation policy, and using institutional power to remedy structural barriers to educational access.

Book Notes

Abstract: Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation ALYSHA BANERJI, ABHINAV GHOSH, ALYSSA NAPIER, SANTIAGO PULIDO-GÓMEZ, MEKKA A. SMITH; Book Notes. Harvard Educational Review 1 September 2022; 92 (3): 437–454. doi: https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-92.3.437 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest Search

Thinking Like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy

Abstract: “The institution is run by an administration that prefers tranquility to equality, resisting the transformative changes necessary to address these critical issues” (Beyene et al., 2019). Three Master of Public Policy students at the Harvard Kennedy School made this bold declaration in the fall of 2019. Dismayed by a dearth of curricular focus on systemic racism and a lack of faculty and administrative commitment to “racial literacy,” they called for the school to “require a course on the history of racialized policy” in order “to prepare graduates for leadership in a 21st century democracy” (Beyene et al., 2019). A year later and halfway across the country, critics spoke against the approach of the UChicago Urban Labs, arguing that the prominent policy think tank’s approach to program development and evaluation creates a “neglect of structural analysis [that] contributes to problems it purports to solve” (Vargas, 2020). And at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, students have been organizing to require a course on the history of policy since the early 2010s.Each of these cases questions the dominant “economic style of reasoning,” or what Elizabeth Popp Berman defines in Thinking Like an Economist as an approach to policy making that uses economic models to simplify, weigh costs and benefits, and generate causal relationships in pursuit of developing the most cost-effective and efficient policy solutions” (5). In this ambitious text, at once a work of history and sociology, Berman recounts in impressive detail how this economic style advanced from universities, to policy think tanks, and throughout Washington DC, subtlety shifting both Democrats’ and Republicans’ thinking toward adopting neoliberal perspectives on an array of social policy agendas.The story begins in the 1960s, when academic economists and the RAND Corporation (established in 1948 to conduct analysis for defense initiatives) began to work closely with the federal government to develop and apply more scientific, neutral, and efficient approaches to policy making. As Department of Defense spending grew during the Cold War era, the field of economics’ focus on costs, benefits, and resources seemed like a natural solution. Soon, RAND systems analysts arrived in Washington, DC, to develop the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS), rooted in microeconomics, for identifying the most cost-effective defense goals. By the late 1960s, thousands of government employees had undergone training in systems and cost-benefit analyses, and PPBS expanded throughout departments as a path forward in the face of increasing Cold War spending. In response, government offices hired new economics PhDs who were ready to lend their training to this analytic approach; economic think tanks sprung up to offer policy research to the government; universities created the first public policy degrees to train future bureaucrats; and Congress established the Congressional Budget Office. Ultimately, implementation of PPBS varied, but the economic mindset persisted, supported by this range of new institutions.Throughout Thinking Like an Economist, Berman explores how politicians, researchers, and practitioners across political lines “allowed the economic style to define the boundaries of legitimate policy debate,” to dictate what they considered worthy and efficient goals and expenditures (217). She takes a critical yet judicious stance; her argument is neither a partisan critique nor a complete dismissal of economics as a useful tool. In fact, she often gives credit to economists, noting, for example, institutional economists’ tendencies toward progressive social reforms (27) and empathetically outlining the motivations of those who sought data as a proof point to expand welfare reforms (111). However, she is also careful to advise that considering various values “in the language of economics often comes at the cost of some violence to the originals” (10). In other words, what we gain from assessing occurrences like environmental pollution or school closings in terms of their costs and benefits can obscure arguments that rest on more abstract values of universalism and equality.Thinking Like an Economist will be at home on the bookshelves of social scientists from a range of disciplines, with examples ranging from health care (119) to transportation markets (141). However, of most interest to readers of HER will be the dual stories of the relationship between education and the economic style of reasoning. Most practitioners and scholars of education are likely familiar with policy approaches and debates that center on the efficacy or missteps of market-based and accountability reforms, such as high-stakes testing, grant programs like Race to the Top, and the rise of charter schools. What they might gain from Thinking Like an Economist is a deep understanding of the mindsets, values, and organizations that laid the foundation for these reforms.The first and most apparent of these stories is told in chapter 5, where Berman details how an economic style of reasoning arrived in social policy circles in the 1960s. She begins with the expansion of government through President Johnson’s Great Society programs, a time when government agencies—including the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare—were required to implement PPBS to determine the most cost-effective social policy goals.Simultaneously, the government allocated greater resources to research and evaluation to measure funding for initiatives like Title I schools. The combination of these two developments not only created a landscape in which “commitments to universality, rights, and equality [were] sidelined by an emphasis on efficiency, incentives, and choice” (99), but also funded numerous roles for academic economists in these agencies and think tanks. These scholars saw education not necessarily as an inherent good or a requisite for democratic participation but as an individual, human investment where the money spent educating an individual would show its worth later through their economic productivity in the workforce (107). Berman articulates how this manifested in student loan policy and the shift from institutional to individual aid: from a particular economic perspective, students should bear the cost of education as an investment in their own human capital and economic productivity, and individual aid would spur schools to compete for attendees (107–108).The more nuanced second story, woven into each page of the book, explains how scholars and their academic institutions generated, cultivated, and ultimately disseminated the economic style of reasoning throughout the policy world. Berman looks at the creation and growth of the public policy discipline throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, allowing us to see the origins of a field in which students are now objecting to a curriculum grounded in the economic style of reasoning. We learn how academic economists created organizations like the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Brookings Institution, which would go on to play an outsized role in policy making (29). With the rollout of the PPBS, seven universities created the first graduate programs to train government employees in the economic techniques and rationales of the system. These programs grew in number and soon solidified as a new discipline—public policy—to “produc[e] a new breed of analyst . . . comfortable with an economic style of reasoning; focused on choice among alternatives, cost effectiveness, and quantitative analysis (62–63). When covering the role of academic institutions, Berman’s scope is comprehensive, touching on law school faculty (83), the competing positions of various institutions (93), and a need to build “organizational homes for different perspectives” (227). She also shows how these institutions evolved to primarily train students in economic cost-benefit analyses, often forsaking the aforementioned racial literacy, structural analysis of inequality, and policy history.In her writing, Berman achieves both depth and breadth. If I could ask for any addition to the book, though, it would be greater exploration of the role philanthropic foundations have played in the proliferation of the economic mindset. The intersections of philanthropy, economic reasoning, evaluation, and federal policy are far-reaching, particularly within the realms of education and social policy. As one example, the Ford Foundation’s Gray Areas program in the 1960s sought to reform welfare service delivery in urban areas through a range of experimental economic development and evaluation programs like youth employment, preschool education, and community recreation (O’Connor, 1996). Despite limited success, this model was incorporated into the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (Tompkins-Stange, 2016). Including more discussion of these kinds of programs might have allowed the book to explore questions about the role of private wealth and power in advancing economic reasoning in public sectors. Still, Thinking Like and Economist stands as a powerful text for understanding the historical dynamics of policy making and will empower researchers and scholars of education to pinpoint the causes and effects that have lead us to a world of policy making in which the cost-benefit analysis reigns supreme.A seemingly innocuous line has stayed with me long after reading the book. In chapter 3’s discussion of how, in 1968, one thousand government employees from a wide range of agencies enrolled in a three-week course on PPBS and quantitative economic decision-making, Berman notes that a majority of these trainees reported that learning economic concepts had been the “greatest professional benefit of the course” (63). Berman uses this example to demonstrate the early proliferation of economic concepts across government departments and in the professionalization of public policy. But it also prompts the question, Just what immediately drew this deep admiration from individuals?While Thinking Like an Economist does not provide any simple answer, I wonder whether the appeal stems from the ability of economic analysis to reduce decisions to a straightforward calculation rather than to embrace their complex and uncertain reality. The extent of educational inequality or the consequences of climate change will never be neatly definable or calculable, but it may be that a very human fear of the unknown has led us to govern our world by these delineations, blocking our ability to envision other paths forward. The subtle power of Thinking Like an Economist might be its prompt for us to try.

Challenges to Academic Freedom

Abstract: It’s a tough time to be an academic. Colleges and universities have spent the last decades shifting toward an adjunct teaching force marked by little job security and low pay, with 73 percent of all faculty at US institutions being off the tenure track as of 2016 (AAUP, 2018). Meanwhile, campuses have seen a considerable uptick in intense ideological conflicts that have often involved campaigns to have faculty disciplined and fired for ideas and behaviors students, administrators, or interest groups have deemed harmful, offensive, or otherwise contrary to prevailing thinking or the interests of powerful groups (German & Stevens, 2021). Challenges to Academic Freedom, a volume of essays edited by Joseph C. Hermanowicz, makes a case that these two phenomena are closely linked.In the volume’s introduction, Hermanowicz defines academic freedom in contrast to freedom of speech, with which it is sometimes confused: while freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution and covers the expressive liberties guaranteed to an individual by the government, academic freedom, a less robustly protected ideal, is tied to faculty’s ability to teach and conduct research in consonance with the professional pursuit of knowledge. This quasi-right of academics to pursue rigorous scholarship “constrained by professional norms” (4) is mediated by the contractual relationship between the individual academic and their employer and enjoys no constitutional protection equivalent to First Amendment free speech guarantees. So while academic freedom is held to be something of a “right” by academics and its protection is widely believed to be central to the truth-seeking mission of higher education, it is primarily protected only insofar as employment contracts guarantee that faculty cannot be sanctioned for unpopular opinions. While some of the threats to academic freedom are likely apparent on the mere basis of this distinction, the essays in this volume unpack the relationship between the rise in nontenured faculty, the protections afforded to academics through law and organizational norms, and additional factors, such as the role of administrative bureaucracies (e.g., Title IX offices, Institutional Review Board [IRB]).Challenges to Academic Freedom features ten essays, ranging from the firsthand account of Patricia Adler, whose job was threatened for a controversial skit she had students perform in her course on deviant behavior, to histories of the laws structuring academic freedom and the organizations involved in interpreting them and advocating for the professorate (the American Association of University Professors’ [AAUP] guidance on academic freedom is a focus across many of the essays).Perhaps surprisingly, the volume is largely concerned with the legal and administrative status of faculty speech and spends little time discussing what, to many, may seem the crux of contemporary conflicts related to freedom of academic expression: namely, the social and cultural conditions that have given rise to intolerance of opposing views among blocs of the politically strident. Given the amount of ink spilled in the popular press about the predilection among ideologues on the Left and Right for “deplatforming” and intimidating disfavored speakers in various arenas, the fact that Challenges to Academic Freedom focuses on the drier concerns of organizational norms, jurisprudence, and the structure of academic labor may feel refreshing and offer novel takes on the issue for those who have only tracked the often-sensationalized coverage of high-profile controversies. Similarly, while issues around individual identity and variation in how vulnerability manifests for faculty of different backgrounds and social positions show up frequently in the essays, the primary focus of the volume is on institutional structure.Among the most illuminating essays early in the volume are Hans-Joerg Tiede’s fastidious history of the American Association of University Professors’ guidance on extramural speech and Stephen Turner’s discussion of academic freedom’s basis in administrative law. The former stands out for its clear and focused analysis of what Tiede effectively argues is a steady position on academic freedom that the AAUP has articulated throughout the years, as well as for its thoughtful framing of the relationship between public passions (which may create pressure to conform even in the absence of administrative coercion) and academics’ extramural speech. And Turner lucidly teases out the sources of legal protection for the academic freedom of individual faculty in employment law and identifies three administrative entities—Title IX offices, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), and research misconduct hearings—where particular attention is warranted regarding the power of administrators to curtail research and teaching. IRBs, for example, are explicitly designed to stop research deemed to be insufficiently safe, and there is evidence that IRB members are susceptible to political biases in determining what types of research get approved and what counts as a potential harm.Later in the volume, two essays on the so-called contingent academy—the large and growing population of vulnerable faculty employed in nontenured positions—by Gary Rhoades, Eve Weinbaum, and Dan Clawson help bring awareness to the many cases of suppressed academic freedom that never become scandals. Thanks to the ease with which administrations can fire or fail to renew the contracts of contingent faculty, administrations that are ruffled by the opinions of adjuncts “can simply claim that such persons are not renewed for totally different reasons” (187). Data on this kind of occurrence are by nature elusive, but the authors speculate that such dismissals happen frequently and that faculty awareness of the possibility for easy pretextual firing almost certainly produces a chilling effect on any scholarship and teaching perceived to be controversial.Despite these strong chapters, however, the absence of a focused discussion of shifting cultural attitudes about the permissibility of expressing controversial opinions and the varied logics underlying attempts to stifle academic freedom from different sources—say, groups of ideologically committed or socially motivated student activists as opposed to state legislatures looking to exert control over curriculum—will feel like an omission to some readers. More theoretical attention to the boundary between defensible and indefensible speech within the confines of professional norms, the epistemic status of scientific and moral authority, and other issues related to the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of attempts to restrict academic freedom might also have helped the volume feel like a fuller treatment of this important issue. For example, at no point does any essay slow down to take up a focused discussion about what kinds of speech or behavior might constitute legitimately sanctionable offenses. The book’s analysis would feel better tuned to the zeitgeist if the nature of the various objections to teaching and research were explored and the coherence of their underlying justifications were juxtaposed against a discussion of the purpose of the university.Despite the absence of these sorts of valuable contributions to a holistic treatment of the issue, however, Challenges to Academic Freedom does draw attention to substantial vulnerabilities endemic to the present structure of higher education and in particular the administrative motives to remove academics whose work is considered offensive to influential constituencies.In the absence of robust protections against retaliation for controversial work for everyone from graduate student lecturers to full professors holding endowed chairs, the intellectual mission of the university—and the intellectual life of society at large—is threatened. Only when controversial ideas and ways of thinking that may upset powerful interests more generally can be entertained and considered on their merits can a marketplace of ideas function sufficiently. Only when students, teachers, and researchers are free to criticize powerful cultural and political ideas can they be said to be participating in education, as opposed to ideological reproduction. In service to these aspirations, Challenges to Academic Freedom presents a useful guide to understanding the legal and institutional vulnerabilities of postsecondary faculty and makes a successful case for attending to those vulnerabilities in the pursuit of a healthier intellectual future.

Bans and Signals: Racial and Ethnic Differences in Applications to Elite Public Colleges in States With and Without Affirmative Action

Abstract: In this research article, Pamela R. Bennett and Amy Lutz offer new hypotheses about how state bans on affirmative action affect application decisions based on students’ beneficiary positions vis-à-vis affirmative action and evaluate them for black, white, Latino, and Asian American students separately. They posit that bans discourage applications to selective colleges from prospective students who benefit from affirmative action (black and Latino) and encourage applications from prospective students who do not benefit from the policy (white and Asian American). Members of nonbeneficiary groups that have strong academic credentials are more responsive to bans because they are best positioned for admission under restrictions on race-conscious admissions policies. Citing results from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002–2006, the authors show how state restrictions on race-conscious admissions have contributed to racial inequality in higher education by further drawing into elite institutions’ application pools racial groups that already account for most of their students while also raising the chances that students from those groups will be admitted.

A Face for My Autobiography: Lucy Grealy and Embodied Vulnerability

Abstract: In this reflective essay, Andrea Avery considers how teaching Lucy Grealy’s 1994 Autobiography of a Face in a memoir class functions to cultivate embodied vulnerability among high school seniors. She discusses her own identity as a disabled/chronically ill teacher and how her positioning of and interaction with Grealy’s text invites her students to “see” her body and to use autobiographical writing to see and claim their own bodies. She reflects on the particular challenges she has faced in pursuit of the goal of liberatory educational practice wherein, as theorized by bell hooks, the empowerment of all people in the space depends on the teacher’s willingness to make herself vulnerable alongside her students.

An (A)Political Education? UNRWA, Humanitarian Governance, and Education for Palestinian Refugees During the First Intifada (1987–1993)

Abstract: For millions of people living in humanitarian crisis, education can confer physical and psychological protection and offer a path to a brighter future. Overshadowing this promise, however, are the unavoidable politics of humanitarianism. In this historical case study of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East during the First Intifada (1987–1993), Jo Kelcey shows how the agency’s ostensibly apolitical humanitarian education program was in fact shaped by competing political interests. This case highlights both the impossibility of apolitical education programs and the unforeseen consequences of humanitarian framings for education, ultimately underscoring the need to critically reflect on the value of aligning education to humanitarian discourse and practice.

Managing Illegality on Campus: Undocumented Mismatch Between Students and Staff

Abstract: Contributing to the literature on the institutional experiences of undocumented youth, this article by Holly E. Reed, Sofya Aptekar, and Amy Hsin explores undocumented and “DACAmented” students’ experiences managing their illegality on campus and how college staff and faculty manage that illegality while organizing programs and support. Their analysis of in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with more than one hundred undocumented college students and former students and thirty-five faculty and staff members at the City University of New York identifies multiple points of tension. The “undocumented mismatch” between campus management of illegality and student experiences was evident in the exclusion and alienation of non-Latinx undocumented students, stress around legal status disclosure, and challenges around the issue of data confidentiality.

Book Notes

Abstract: Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Abigail Orrick, Swati Puri, Mekka A. Smith, Eric Torres; Book Notes. Harvard Educational Review 1 December 2022; 92 (4): 566–578. doi: https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-92.4.566 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest Search

At the Root of Their Stories: Black and Latinx Students’ Experiences with Academic Microaggressions

Abstract: In this narrative study, Rosalie Rolón-Dow explores the nature of academic microaggressions that racially minoritized undergraduate students experience at predominantly white institutions. She illustrates microaggression incidents related to (in) visibility, intellect or academic contributions, and curriculum relevant to students’ racial identities, communities, or histories. Using a critical race theory microaggression framework, she analyzes academic microaggressions in the broader context of institutional racism and white supremacy to show how white supremacy tools like othering, monoculturalism, nativism, white ascendancy, normativity, and ignorance are deployed. Rolón-Dow calls for colleges and universities to deepen their understanding of the effects of microaggressions on students’ academic lives and contends that institutions seeking to become more racially inclusive must address the ways that ideologies inherent in white supremacy continue to be expressed through racial microaggressions.