Projects & Teaching

 

Aspects of the Foundations of Education

YORK UNIVERSITY: FACULTY OF EDUCATION
T.L.Kennedy CONCURRENT PROGRAM
FNDNS 3330.03
ASPECTS OF THE FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION

Fall semester 2006 Course Director: Dr. Celia Haig-Brown
Monday 9 - 12 (& some others) Office: S867 Ross
Keele Campus Phone: 736-2100 ext 88786
e-mail: haigbro@edu.yorku. ca

Please call or e-mail for an appointment whenever needed or desired.

Faculty description: This interdisciplinary course is intended to provide candidates with an historically informed awareness of the social context of schooling at the elementary and secondary levels. Implications for understanding the contemporary Ontario system and for a classroom teacher’s practices and principles are emphasized. The requisite material on Ontario school law and administration as well as consideration of teachers’ professional rights and responsibilities is included.

Purpose of the course:
Through texts, discussions, and lectures:

*To examine critically what foundations of education have meant and might mean to teachers and students in Canadian classrooms and schools;

*To place people and relationships, in all their complexities of languages and cultures, central to the study of foundations of education;

*To peel back layers of assumed historical, colonial, social and political contexts in order to see various dimensions and varied perspectives of foundations of education;

*To explore the limits and possibilities of decolonizing autobiographies as a way to locate oneself in relation to the issues above;

*To ponder together the place of intellectual engagement in teachers’ preservice and professional lives.

*To become familiar with laws pertaining to schools & teaching.

Topics to be addressed include but are not limited to:

The social organization and construction of educational foundations

“The” disciplines (history, sociology and philosophy) and their impact on our understandings of the foundations of education

People as foundations of education: students, teachers, parents, citizens and politicians; ancestors, ourselves and those yet to come

Language: socio-cultural structures, functions and the impact of poststructuralism

The curriculum: overt, hidden and null

The place of people in foundations of education: students, ancestors, teachers, politicians, citizens, academics, parents

The place of pedagogy

The curriculum: hidden, overt and null

Schooling and education: politics and pedagogy

Historical roots
Starting from the land and Aboriginal people
Immigrants, exploiters, refugees, labourers and slaves

The (continuing) colonial context of schooling

Decolonizing autobiographies

Discipline and surveillance: power relations in schools

Social justice in education: who benefits? who is hurt? Possibilities of transnational justice

Self-determination in a context of interdependence (cf. Russell Bishop)

And others....

This class is offered by a materialist feminist with a commitment to decolonizing practices. Racist, sexist, homophobic and other discriminatory language and practices which too often occur in everyday educational contexts will be addressed in class.

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Required texts:

1. Patricia Hinchey. 2006. 2nd Edition. Becoming a Critical Educator: Defining a Classroom Identity, Designing a Critical Pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 0-8204-6149-0.

2. Sandra Schecter and Jim Cummins. 2003. Multilingual Education in Practice: Using Diversity as a Resource. Portsmouth: Heinemann. ISBN 0-325-00430-7.

3. Celia Haig-Brown. 1988. Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School. Vancouver: Tillicum Press.

4. Reading kit: collection of articles and book chapters (See attached list of references.)

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Assignments: These are detailed at the end of the course outline and will be further discussed in class.

1. Reflective seminar 30%

2. Occasional short papers (2 - in class) 10%

3. Triple entry journal 30%

4. Take home exam/essay 30%

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Tenets of the Foundations of Education

Tenet 1: Relationships between and among people are foundational to education and central to all experiences of schooling.

Tenet 2: Land and Aboriginal people are foundational to Canadian education.

Tenet 3: A teacher’s own life is foundational to her/his work in education.

Tenet 4: The socio-historical context of schooling is foundational to education.

Tenet 5: Language constructions and use are foundational to education.

Tenet 6: Reflective practice (praxis) is foundational to making change in education and schools.

Tenet 7: Power and politics are foundational to the analysis of education systems and human relations therein.

Tenet 8: Questioning the null curriculum is foundational to responsible education.

Tenet 9: Considerations of race, gender and social class are foundational to sound teaching.

Tenet 10: Your call…

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CLASS SCHEDULE

September 11, 2006: Introduction to the course

Nevertheless, despite self-determination meaning the right to determine one’s own destiny, to define what that destiny will be and to define and pursue means of attaining that destiny, there is a clear understanding…that the autonomy is relative, not absolute, that it is self-determination in relation to others.

Russell Bishop, Mere Berryman, Tom Cavanagh and Rangiwhakaehu Walker, 2006. (emphasis in the original)

When I do not know myself, I cannot know who my students are. I will see them through a glass darkly, in the shadows of my unexamined life—and when I cannot see them clearly I cannot teach them well.

Parker Palmer, The Heart of a Teacher in Hinchey 2006.

Tenet 1: Relationships between and among people are foundational to education and central to all experiences of schooling.

Lecture: Relationships as foundational

Consensus activity: What do “we” mean by foundations of education?

Activity: The Failure of John Fred

Review of course outline and expectations

September 18. 2006: Beginning with our own stories: …from time immemorial.

Try to be worthy of your foresisters, learn from your history, look for inspiration to your ancestresses. If this history has been poorly taught to you, if you do not know it, then use your educational privilege to learn it....Learn to be worthy of women of every class, culture, and historical age who did otherwise, who spoke boldly when women were jeered and physically harassed for speaking in public, who...broke taboos, who resisted slavery - their own and other people’s.

Adrienne Rich
Blood, Bread and Poetry

Indian education is relentless in its battle for Indian children. We take pride in our warriors, and our teachers are warriors for the life of our children. The war is not between Indian and white but between that which honours life and that which does not. It is fought within ourselves as well as in the world. We are as relentless as seeds breaking through concrete.

Eber Hampton. 1995.
The Circle Unfolds:
First Nations Education in Canada

Tenet 2: Land and Aboriginal people are foundational to Canadian education.

Lecture: Healing a Fractured Circle

Read:Haig-Brown. Pages 11-79

Activity: The place of autobiography in becoming a teacher.

Organization of seminars during this class. Read over the description of the assignments. Review the readings to choose one or two that you would prefer for your seminar. Final choices may require some negotiations amongst group members. Prepare the schedule for each group member indicating days and articles to be addressed.

September 25, 2006: Hidden and null curricula: A history lesson.

The major point I am trying to make here is one of illustrating the fact that schools teach far more than they advertise. Function follows form. Furthermore, it is important to realize that what schools teach is not simply a function of covert intentions; it is largely unintentional. What schools teach, they teach in the fashion that the culture itself teaches because schools are the kinds of places that they are....if we are concerned with the consequences of school programs and the role of the curriculum in shaping those consequences, it seems to me that we are well advised to consider not only the explicit and implicit curricula of schools but also what schools do not teach.

Reading:

Ng, Roxana. 1993. Racism, Sexism and Nation Building in Canada. In Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow, eds. Race, Identity and Representation in Education. New York: Routledge. pps. 50-59

Social Organization of Knowledge

Lecture: Organicism, structural-functionalism, reproduction and the meritocracy - implications for education.

The Educational Imagination.

Elliot Eisner, 1979.

Boys fetched the projector, and girls cleaned the brushes. Girls did projects on seeds, and boys did projects on electric motors. Girls played in the doll corner, while boys played in the block corner. In science classes, boys “hogged” the equipment, while girls hung back, feeling incompetent. In computer classes, boys excluded girls from the informal groups which gathered around the terminals. Claiming an Education: Feminism and Canadian Schools
Jane Gaskell et al.

Tenet 3: A teacher’s own life is foundational to her/his work in education.

Read: Roxana Ng. 1993. Racism, Sexism and Nation Building in Canada. In Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow, eds. Race, Identity and Representation in Education. New York: Routledge. pps. 50-59.
Finish Resistance and Renewal.

Lecture: The three curricula that all schools teach.

Writing: The Vulnerable Observer (Behar): examining a life. In class writing on first three readings assigned.

October 16, 2006: Thinking about our Thinking: Assumptions and Alternatives

While the recognition of individual identities is fundamental to educational transformation, it is argued that for educational change to be meaningful, students’ individual identities ought to be connected to the collective existence of the social group. It also acknowledges the pedagogical need to confront the challenge of diversity and difference in Canadian society and the urgency for an educational system that is more inclusive and capable of responding to minority concerns about public schooling.
George Sefa Dei.
Taking Inclusive Education Seriously. p. 60.

Unless a child learns about the forces which shape him (sic), the history of his people, their values and customs, their language, he will never really know himself or his potential as a human being.
National Indian Brotherhood.
Indian Control of Indian Education. p. 9.

All societies adopt many myths, but the most fundamental myth in Western society has to do with the god of progress. It is very likely a god and not a goddess because the notion was invented by man.
Sandro Contenta. Rituals of Failure. 1993.

Tenet 4: The socio-historical context of schooling is foundational to education.

Lecture: Organicism, structural functionalism, reproduction and the meritocracy — implications for education.

Readings:

Intro and Chapter 1 of Schecter and Cummins.
Chapter 1 of Hinchey

Seminar 1.

October 20, 2006 AM: Developing Critical Consciousness.

When you’re talking to white people they still want it their way. You can try to talk to them and give them examples, but they’re so headstrong, they think they know what’s best for everybody, for everybody’s children. They won’t listen, White folks are going to do what they want to do anyway.
quoted in Lisa Delpit. The Silenced Dialogue. In Facing Racism in Education.

Eddy is white and we know he is because nobody says so. (p. 72)

Writers are among the most sensitive, the most intellectually anarchic, most representative, most probing of artists. The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power. The languages they use and the social and historical context in which these languages signify are indirect and direct revelations of that power and its limitations.
Toni Morrison. 1992.
Playing in the Dark. p. 15.

Video: Babacueria

Tenet 5: Language constructions and use are foundational to education.

Readings:

Audrey Thompson. 2003. Tiffany, Friend of People of Color: White Investments in Antiracism. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Vol. 16 No.1 pps.17-29

Parker, Pat. 1978. Movement in Black: The Collected Poems of Pat Parker 1961-1978. Ithaca, New York: Firebrand Books. p. 68.

Schecter and Cummins Chapter 2
Hinchey Chapter 2

Seminar 2.

October 20 PM: (De)constructing Reality: Assumptions of Privilege.

The basic contentions of the argument of this book are implicit in its title and subtitle, namely, that reality is socially constructed and that the sociology of knowledge must analyze the processes in which this occurs.
Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. 1966.
TheSocial Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge.

Femininity is a fiction “lived as though it were real, felt deeply as though it were a universal truth of the psyche...It is not that we are filled with roles and stereotypes of passive femininity so that we become what society has set out for us. Rather, I am suggesting that femininity and masculinity are fictions linked to fantasies deeply embedded in the social world which can take on the status of fact when inscribed in powerful practices, like schooling, through which we are regulated.”
Valerie Walkerdine. 1990.
Schoolgirl Fictions.

One of the dangers of a privileged education for women is that we may lose the eye of the outsider and come to believe that those patterns hold for humanity, for the universal, and that they include us.
Adrienne Rich. Blood, Bread and Poetry.

Human agency allows that what we have constructed can be deconstructed and, for those so inclined, reconstruction can begin. This is not a freedom without limits of course, but these limits can and must always be questioned.
And I said that.

Tenet 6: Reflective practice (praxis) is foundational to making change in education and schools.

Lecture:Equity and equality: seeking social justice in school and classroom.

Readings:

Chapter 3 of Schecter and Cummins.
Chapter 3 of Hinchey

Seminar 3.

October 23, 2006: Pedagogy: Starting from People’s Experiences

Teachers are not simply part of some mechanism of social reproduction; nor are their lives dictated by the demands of capital, racism, or patriarchy in such a way that they are mere automatons. Teachers are actors and agents in complex social sites where social forces powerfully shape the limits of what is possible.
Kathleen Weiler
Women Teaching for Change: Gender, Class & Power.

Whereas banking education anaesthetises and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion of consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in reality.
Paulo Freire, 1970.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

The training of school children was to be carried out in the same way: few words, no explanation, a total silence interrupted only by signals - bells, clapping of hands, gestures, a mere glance from the teacher, or that little wooden apparatus used by the Brothers of the Christian Schools; it was called par excellence the ‘Signal’ and it contained in its mechanical brevity both the technique of command and the morality of obedience. ‘The first and principal use of the signal is to attract at once the attention of the children....Whenever a good pupil hears the noise of the signal, he (sic) will imagine that he is hearing the voice of the teacher or rather the voice of God himself calling him by his name.’
Michel Foucault. 1979.
Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison.

Tenet 7: Power and politics are foundational to the analysis of education systems and human relations therein.

Lecture: Foucault’s “fictions”: discipline, surveillance, and the examination.

Readings:
Michel Foucault. 1979. On the means of correct training. In Discipline & Punish:
The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, pps. 170-194.

Chapter 4 Schecter and Cummins.

Seminar 4.

October 30, 2006: Lives, sex and desire: foundational needs and wishes.

If we are forced to talk about our lives, our sexuality, and our work only in the language and categories of a society that despises us, eventually we will be unable to speak past our own griefs. We will disappear into those categories.

Dorothy Allison. Skin: Talking About Sex, Class & Literature

The absence of a discourse of desire, combined with the lack of analysis of the language of victimization, may actually retard the development of sexual subjectivity and responsibility in students. Those most “at risk” of victimization through pregnancy, disease, violence, or harassment…are those most likely to be victimized by the absence of critical conversation in public schools.

Video: It’s Elementary

Michelle Fine. The Missing Discourse of Desire.

Tenet 8: Questioning the null curriculum is foundational to responsible education.

Video: First section of It’s Elementary.

Read:

Fine, Michelle. 1988. Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females: The Missing Discourse of Desire. Harvard Educational Review.58:1. pps. 29-53.

Seminar 5.

November 6, 2006: It’s an Issue of Class?

...researchers found social class to be the finest predictor of who drops out of high school, with 22 percent of the lowest quartile and 8.9 percent of the highest quartile dropping out (Rumberger, 1987). Native Americans drop out more often (22.7 percent) than Hispanics (18.7 percent) who drop out more often than African-Americans (16.8 percent), who drop out more often than whites (12.2 percent) who drop out more often than Asians (4.8 percent). Among adolescents in the lowest income quartile, whites drop out more often than African-Americans and Latinos. But in the highest quartile, whites drop out much less often than others. Wealth provides a substantially more efficient educational buffer for whites than for students of color.
....Although the bulk of the dropout literature obsesses on the characteristics of individual students who flee rather than on attributes of the schools from which they flee, some institutional data has been collected....it has been documented that high school dropout rates fall somewhat as teacher-student ratios increase (Barro, 1984), and they rise as the numbers of teacher moves and transfer requests rise (Coombs and Cooley, 1968). Student achievement drops with increases in teacher turnover (Ascher and Flaxman, 1987).
Michelle Fine. 1991.
Framing Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban Public High School.

Canada had styled itself as a haven for the oppressed, those Blacks who had fled the United States because of slavery and virulent racism. But on coming to Canada, many Blacks found that the only difference between the new country and the old was that in the new country the law protected ex-fugitives from re-enslavement. Canada fell short in education, and Black children faced many obstacles in learning the three R’s.
Afua Cooper, 1994.
In “We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History.

Video: Ridley: A Secret Garden

Tenet 9: Considerations of race, gender and social class are foundational to sound teaching.

Read:Jean Anyon. 1981. Social Class and School Knowledge. Chapter 5 of Schecter and Cummins

Lecture: Class, social class, and the labour of teaching

Seminar 6.

November 13, 2006: Who is responsible and what shall we do?

Many well meaning Canadians are increasingly questioning educational practices (curriculum, texts, pedagogies) that do not speak adequately to the variety and richness of human experiences, or to the diverse history of events and intellectual ideas which have shaped human growth and development. Many Canadians see anti-racism education as one way to address the problems associated with the school being a site for reproducing societal inequalities.
George J. Sefa Dei, 1996
Anti-racism Education: Theory and Practice

Constructions are very real. People live by them, after all - and now increasingly, they die from them. You can’t get more real than that. But if homosexuality [read race, sex, class] is a reality, it is a constructed reality, a social and not a natural reality.
David Halperin, 1995
St. Foucault: A Hagiography

Tenet 10: Your call…

Final Lecture: Full circle: Why foundations?

Reading: Chapter 6 Hinchey
Chapter 6 Schecter and Cummins.

In class essay/exam

Please note that six hours of class time will be dedicated to the on-line law tutorial. You will be expected to complete the tutorial including the quizzes. More details on this in class. In order to complete this course you must successfully complete the three quizzes.

Assignments explained

1. Class seminars and papers.

Candidates will form groups of no more than eight people on the first day of class. After perusing the readings and the proposed seminar topics, each person is to choose one set of readings as the focus for presentation and seminar discussion. Please note, each person in the group must choose a different set of articles. By September 18, choice of article and date for presentation must be made. The schedule of reading and presentation for the entire group of six is to be handed in on that day. The first week of presentation is October 16. Presenters will rotate among groups as the term unfolds.

Each week one student will assume responsibility for preparing for the group 1) a creative presentation of key issues in the article(s) and 2) a set of thoughtful discussion questions or other form of engagement with the content which will provide opportunity for critical readings of the article s/he has chosen. Relating the article to your own experiences in education (e.g. practicum experiences, your own time as student at any level of education) may provide a strong position from which to present your thoughts. The presentation should allow for divergent perspectives and allow participants to consider their experiences as teacher candidates in relation to the readings. Other students should read the article, write a journal entry on it and prepare for a respectful discussion by raising their own thoughts and questions as the discussion proceeds. Finally the group leader should allow the participants time to evaluate the quality of their engagement with the article and questions. (You may want to make notes during and immediately after the discussion to inform your analysis. Some people choose to use a simple questionnaire.)

Following the discussion, the student who led the group is to prepare a concise (3 –5 pages [double spaced, typed, 12 font]) written response paper which focuses on her/his own reading of the article (NOT A SUMMARY), the form taken for the seminar and the group’s participation. This paper should do two things: 1) provide a critical analysis of the reading and 2) a pedagogical analysis of the group process. Of particular interest are shifts in understanding of the article which come about through the discussion and the process of the group discussion. (Were the questions useful? Did members engage in your seminar? Did they move beyond stereotypes and unsubstantiated opinion?) Be sure to include your feelings about the group discussion. Were you pleased with the way the discussion developed? Disappointed? Angered? Was your approach pedagogically sound?

At the same time, remember that this assignment is about reading. Extending a metaphor of textuality, one could see this assignment as a series of readings: the literal one; the reading of your own responses to the article; your reading of others’ comments and responses both to the article and to the questions that you raise; and your reactions to that reading.

The papers should be structured in coherent and rigorous form. If you choose a form other than an academic essay, make sure that it is one which demonstrates a deepening understanding of the implications of your readings.

Submit the paper with an outline of the seminar including the discussion questions, names of those who attended the group discussion and list of references as appropriate.

N.B. Triple entry journals are one way to make sure that you keep up on the readings. It is essential to the discussion and the resultant paper that ALL group members read ALL the articles and participate in the discussions. Marks may be deducted for group members who are not co-operating.

Please note that the proposed topics may be refined as you see fit. Be sure that a critical reading of one or more of the articles assigned for that day is the focus of your discussion. You may also want to relate the questions to earlier readings.

Inform the course director of the places you will be working. I will be circulating from time to time and sitting in on selected groups during the seminar time. I need to know where you are in order to get there!!!

30%

2. Occasional Papers

On occasion, in class, you will be asked to write a one or two page paper for immediate submission. These papers will give the professor insights into your thoughts on particular readings and topics. These will be graded out of 5 marks each. (5 marks each).

10%

3. Triple entry Journals.

You are expected to complete one entry for each reading on the syllabus. Each one should be about one page total length. The primary purpose is to encourage you to read deeply, thoroughly and thoughtfully. The secondary purpose is to allow me to be sure that you are reading.

There are three straight main parts to the journal, thus its name, triple entry journal (TEJ): summary, main points with reflections and a persisting question.

1.) Summary: In no more than four or five sentences, prepare a summary of the article. This part should give a person who has never read the article a sense of what it includes. Try to be as “objective” as possible at this stage.

2.) Choose and record three or four points from the article that stand out as significant. These may be quotes if you like. They are not expected to address all of the article but only those parts which you find most interesting and provocative. Reflections: Think again about and respond to each aspect of what you have read and written. E.g. Why did you select the points you chose? How are they meaningful to you? Comment on their relation to foundations of education, to your experiences of education, other readings, etc. How do they make you feel and why?

“Begin by reflecting on the major points made in the reading that you have included in your summary. How do you respond to the content? How does it tie in with your experiences, other readings, expectations? Do you have any questions? Do you agree/disagree with the author? Why? What impressed you/annoyed you about the reading? How does this fit in with your beliefs, philosophy or prior knowledge of [the topic] and appropriate programs for [intermediate/secondary students]? Where have your ideas changed/been confirmed? The REFLECTIONS should be deeper than "I like this idea" or "I've never met a person who could live up to this". It should reflect thoughtful views on the implications of what the author is saying.” (Kanevsky, 1994. Simon Fraser University. Triple Entry Notebook Guidelines.)

3.) Persisting question: Finally, write one persisting question that remain with you after the steps above, giving reasons why the question continues to be significant.

Each seminar day, you are to hand in the TEJ’s for the reading for that day at the beginning of class. No late submissions will be received. Keep a second copy for reference during discussions and the seminar. Keep them most of all for your third year of teaching when you begin to hone your analysis and want some provocative ways to think about your work.

PART B: Reading kit articles

1) Jean Anyon. 1981. Social Class and School Knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry Vol. 11 No.1 pps 3-42.

2) Fine, Michelle. 1988. Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females: The Missing Discourse of Desire. Harvard Educational Review.58:1. pps. 29-53.

3) Michel Foucault. 1979. On the means of correct training. In Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, pps. 170-194.

4) Ng, Roxana. 1993. Racism, Sexism and Nation Building in Canada. In Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow, eds. Race, Identity and Representation in Education. New York: Routledge. pps. 50-59.

5) Parker, Pat. 1978. Movement in Black: The Collected Poems of Pat Parker 1961-1978. Ithaca, New York: Firebrand Books. p. 68.

6) Audrey Thompson. 2003. Tiffany, Friend of People of Color: White Investments in Antiracism. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Vol. 16 No.1 pps.17-29.

Please note the format used for these references and follow a similar format for your references for assignments.

 
Celia Haig-Brown ~ Last updated: 2-Apr-2007