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Dowdy-Kilgour, J. (2008). PhD Stories:
Conversations with My Sisters. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton
Press, Inc.
Pp. ix + 134 ISBN 1-5727-3796-4 Reviewed by Ezella McPherson January 9, 2009 Ph.D. Stories: Conversations with My Sisters, by Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, uses storytelling to reveal nine African American women professors and scholars’ stories of survival in the educational institutions from early childhood to graduate school. The book also explores their “strategies to survive and thrive” (p. xi) in a predominantly white institution. While originally from Trinidad, an Afro-Caribbean, Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, has been in the United States for 23 years. The author’s early learning experiences at Julliard School in New York, teaching in Harlem, engaging in research at Atlanta’s Center for the Study of Adult Literacy have allowed her to become “educated in a way to be a black, literate female” (p. 3). She is currently a professor at a predominantly white institution, who is passionate about understanding the experiences of educated Black women. This book is well organized from the beginning by introducing the subjects, black women in the academy, to showing how they have supportive networks while in graduate school and during the tenure process, and ending by discussing how they cool down after reaching their highest potential in their academic careers. The first chapter, Conversations with My Sisters, begins by the author questioning why she is a professor at a predominantly white institution, “alone, in a department, in a school that [is] committed to a Eurocentric educational enterprise” (p. 1). The fact that one Black woman, Mary Jane Patterson earned a bachelor’s degree in 1862, suggested the low educational attainment of Black women in this era. By 1999, Black women faculty members comprised 2.2% of the 4.7% of Black faculty members at predominantly white institutions. This showed the shortage of Black women faculty members in the academy. In prior decades, while in the academy, Black women faculty felt isolated, mismatched for the institution, lacked of support from the institution, and were placed in the position to be the only speaker of color in the department. By desegregating departments, Black women faculty members found themselves to be the only scholar publishing in their area of research and being the only faculty member of color in the building. Currently, Black women represent 1.9% earned doctorates, which further hints at the limited number of black women professors in the academy. The absence of role models, who are Black women, and senior faculty members who earned the doctorate and/or have gone through the tenure process, led the author to engage in this research study. The purpose of the study is to learn more about the ways in which Black women faculty members have been successful by using strategies to navigate through predominantly white institutions. She also wanted to engage in this study to show other Black women that that “it was alright to be Black, female, and literate” (p. 1). In the current study is conducted on a large campus, King University with the participants (e.g. Black women professors, including the author) consisted of nine participants, seven are full-time professors who are married with two children, one business consultant, and one Black woman who is a dean and vice president. Although the Black women in the study worked at the same institution, they did not know each other. They come from different disciplines including, higher education administration (Dee), adult literacy (Kaye), leadership in Arts education (Pat), French language and Caribbean literature in French (Bess), anthropology (Ann), literature (Barbara), political science (Hailey), public health (Kim), and business (Wendy). While they have different disciplines, they share a common philosophy of community service. Since Black faculty members teach in different departments, new Black women faculty members have challenges connecting to the social networks with other Black faculty and staff members at the university. So, Black women faculty members have to personally reach out to other Black faculty members to be considered “connected and valued while earning a living” (p. 2). It is interesting to note that through being a part of the research study, the Black women professors started to “refer to each other as their sister scholars” (p. 7). The author lays out the storytelling research method as a historical and contemporary way to engage in the oral tradition among people of African descent preserving history through telling stories of their lived experiences. The research method of storytelling has the effect of allowing Black women to engage in the meaning of the events through retelling their lived experiences. The oral tradition permits black women to not only tell but interpret their stories in a given historical time period. Storytelling also allows black women to obtain validation, affirmation, and educate others about their experiences while simultaneously engaging in catharsis and refusing to accept oppression. The research methods, including data collection (e.g. audio taped interviews in four different sessions), peer debriefing, member checking, and data analysis (e.g. reviewing transcripts, coding, triangulation) As the name of the title suggests, the next chapter, Character Traits of the Women describes the character traits of black women faculty members in the academy. They are seen as “warriors for social justice, equality for women, student advocacy, and fairness in the workplace” (p. 16). Beginning with early childhood experiences, Black women faculty members aspired to become teachers given their prior training in a nurturing educational environment. They also received encouragement from family members to achieve their highest potential. Characteristics of confidence, integrity, being fair, and serving an advocate allowed these women to maintain a vision towards pursuing their ultimate goals. By taking risks, yearning for knowledge through self-development, being self aware, and overcoming obstacles (e.g., self doubt, medical issues, and grieving over loved ones) and challenges (e.g. negotiating work and raising the family at home, resistance to being leaders in traditionally white positions), these Black women reached the their highest potential and achieve their dreams. Chapter 3, The Ties that Save Us, focuses on the sources of support for the Black women faculty members from early schooling to serving as professors as they navigate through the academic settings. As children, they lived in supportive family environments, with parents, siblings, and relatives who valued education. This support continues throughout college, graduate school, and even in academia. Black women’s support networks include spouses, “family, friends, faculty members, community members, and the students who work with them” (p. 37). There is a need for faculty members to “reach out to new academics and helping them build their support base” (p. 39). The author observes that community members support Black women going through the doctoral process and Black women faculty members in academy. While being an academic for the participants means that they have less time to spend with their husbands, going on sabbatical gives them additional time to devote to their families. Black mothers have to negotiate work and family life. This suggests that they may have to care for a sick child instead of handing out graded papers. Challenges to raising children include spending quality time with the children, changing schools to be near children, being an advocate for their children’s education. This chapter effectively showed how Black women academics’ ties to social networks kept them sane in isolating environments at their predominately white institution. In Chapter 4, Teaching as a calling, the author describes how black women professors are called to teach early, due to a family history of teachers, teaching adult students, working the community, yearning to teach in graduate school, and/or teaching through holding workshops. As teachers, they have aspirations for their students including becoming educators, being responsible and persistent instead of giving up. While in the classroom, they learn from their students, remember to be responsible and caring teachers. By serving as mentors, they guide graduate students through the research process to gain hands on experience, while personally investing in students by being a support system and making sure that students graduate despite familial or personal issues. In serving dual roles as mentors and professors, time management becomes a challenge for these black women, because they have to juggle teaching (e.g. teaching preparation and grading), mentoring, engaging in research, and publishing. These Black women’s stories of going through the journey of teaching show how they have “learn[Ed] from difficult experiences, turn[ed] pain into passion, or [took] out the time to reflect on the importance of failure as a stepping stone” (p. 54). In the next chapter, The writing journey, the author focuses on Black women academics overcoming obstacles in the publication process. Some participants cite one barrier when trying to publish from their dissertation work is that the format for the dissertation misaligned with the format for publication in journal articles. After the dissertation defense, some black women, like Wendy have challenges engaging in the publication process and this leads to them devoting more time to other projects outside of academic publishing, like refining teaching practices, serving on committees, or volunteering in the local community. Black women professors should move from a negative attitude about how their work will be perceived by others and know that everyone’s book or articles get rejected in the beginning of the publication process. Because of this, black women academics should take risks to put their ideas on paper and get reviewed by editors. Managing time becomes an issue for black women professors who publish, due to having to engage multiple projects as teachers, researchers, reviewers of dissertations, writing books, reviews, or journal articles. Some black women professors like Kaye have mastered multitasking through personal motivation as a part of engaging in work in academia. Other professors, like Pat acknowledge the need to set aside some hours to just engage in writing for publication. The writing process for journals consists of “drafting, receiving, and resubmitting their papers for review by journal editors” (p. 65), in addition to revising the paper. By not knowing the publication process, some participants sent their articles to journals, in which the editor rejected their papers. Then they submitted the same paper to a different journal, in which the article was rejected again. During this process, some black women felt as though it would take a longer time to get their work published. The author stressed that it was okay to be defensive upon getting rejected from an editor, due to the fact of the personal investment in the work. One strategy that the participants used upon being rejected from an editor was revisiting the reviewer’s comments some time after the initial rejection and taking their feedback into consideration in a revised version of the article. In the publishing game, it is important to understand “that particular journals suit some writers and their subjects better than others” (p. 66). Another strategy to get published is to “[match] the writing voice with supportive editors and their review board’s vision for that journal” (p. 66). Being rejected multiple times allowed these Black women to acknowledge that their article was actually a mismatch for a journal and journal reviewers. They also realized the need to obtain feedback from others prior to submitting the article, having “a special writing space” (p. 67), a mentor to guide them through the publication process, peers who provide support in them engaging in their “scholar[ly] ideas for research” (p. 67) so that their voices can be heard in wider academic spaces. They also learned that their work did not have to be perfect at the time of submission, but be a good fit for the journal audience and editor. By being patient and keeping the vision, they learned the publication process and disseminated their work for the public to use. Some suggestions that these Black women have for young scholars include; (1) having discussions about their ideas with others in a supportive network; (2) disseminate the work from the research project in the form of an article; (3) having someone review and edit articles before submission; (4) get a mentor to teach them the ropes of publishing; (5) be persistent get the article published; (6) learn how to multitask (e.g., teach, research, attend committee meetings, presenting at conferences); (7) know what is expected for the tenure process (e.g. publications) after accepting the position at a new institution. The participants also suggest that young scholars find supportive networks outside of the academy, including family members and friends. Continuing the conversation about doing work in the academy, the next chapter, Scholarship of the scholars focuses on engaging in scholarship, also referred to as research, teaching, and service in the academy. By completing research projects, black women professors honed their skills in data analysis and reporting the findings to audiences inside and outside of the academy. This scholarship is disseminated to the wider academic world through conference presentations and/or publications (e.g. reports, books, articles) that contribute to the field of her choice and educate others with new perspectives on the issues with voices from participants who are people of color. These Black women professors have learned how to successfully obtain research grants to conduct research and publish, despite obstacles including journal editors who devalue the research done by academics of color using people of color as subjects. Besides research, the author discusses the importance of teaching in the academy. As teachers, they have made it their “mission to challenge their students as thinkers and agents in building a quality of life” (p. 81). In the classroom, they used different pedagogies (e.g. hands on learning, workshops) to present the course materials in a clear and understandable way for students to fully grasp the materials and push the students to the next level via critical thinking. They understand their role as professors to disseminate research to academic audiences while simultaneously having high standards of teaching to students in the classroom. Being advocates for students, they made sure to obtain better services (e.g., access to technology, equipment) for their students to utilize in the classroom. The success of these Black women scholars can be attributed to them holding a philosophy centered on community, “family, caring for others, and embracing their role as leaders/mothers on the campus” (p. 86). They also shared a desire to mentor students through the publication process and distribute the scholarship to younger academics, sharing their experiences with students. The author ends this chapter with a discussion of the service component of scholarship, which involves giving back (e.g. editing journals, organizing conferences, serving on committees, mentoring students) to the academic community. The final chapter, “Cool Under Fire”, sums up the main finding from the study. The author explains that Black women faculty’s character traits support from family and calling to teaching early inspired them to finish the PhD and continue into faculty and administrative positions in the academy and in the business world for Wendy. Some Black women faculty felt disconnected from family members during the doctoral and tenure process, because they were separated from family members by devoting a substantial amount of time to their work in the academy. During these journeys, they received support from family, community members, and mentors which enabled them to persist through the fire when times were rough both inside and outside of the academy. By being Black, female, and philosophers, these Black women committed to educating students and academics, balancing work and family life, and serving the community. Some of the participants learned to cool off after reaching their highest potential by successfully completing the doctorate and navigating through academia to reach tenure as professors. Ph.D. Stories: Conversations with My Sisters contributes to the understanding of the historic and contemporary concerns of Black women in the academy at the graduate level and as professors. It begs the question of how to challenge and even change current practices that isolate Black women in the academy. This body of literature will be of interest to academics who aspire to make the academy more welcoming to Black women faculty members. Black women graduate students navigating through the doctoral programs who intend to become professors and Black women faculty members going through the tenure process will benefit from reading this text as well. Tenured Black women faculty may also gain affirmation of their experiences in the tenure process through reading about the stories told by the participants in the study. Lastly, the text can help academics engage in larger debates and discussions about the doctoral and publication process for people of color and first generation doctoral students and professors in the academy. About the Reviewer Ezella McPherson is a doctoral student in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is interested in issues of equity and access in K-20 schools. She holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a Master's degree in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. |
Friday, August 1, 2025
Dowdy-Kilgour, J. (2008). PhD Stories: Conversations with My Sisters. Reviewed by Ezella McPherson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Sternberg, Robert J.; Kaufman, James C.; & Grigorenko, Elena L. (2008) Applied Intelligence. Reviewed by Catherine Scott, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
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Sternberg, Robert J.; Kaufman, James C.; & Grigorenko,
Elena L. (2008) Applied Intelligence. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Pp. 432 ISBN 978-0-521-71121-0 Reviewed by Catherine Scott January 9, 2009 A new book by Robert Sternberg is an event to look forward to. The latest, Applied Intelligence, written with James C. Kaufman and Elena L. Grigorenko, is a text intended for undergraduate and graduate students, and as such it is written in a style that is exceptionally accessible. Moreover, the book is thorough in its coverage, well structured, and potentially very useful for anyone looking for a good source of up-to-date information on the state of the science of theorising about and measuring cognitive capacity.Intelligence as a topic of interest seems an obvious focus to those of us reared in the Western cultural tradition. A vast industry exists in developing, testing, and refining measures of cognitive ability, and publishing about related issues. However, while for many, devising ways to assess an individual’s cognitive capacity is essential, to other interested observers the whole notion of intelligence seems a tyrannical imposition. For a considerable number of classroom practitioners and those who teach and advise them, for example, the use of standardised tests of student ability is to be resisted. The "bad name" that intelligence tests have can be better understood by looking a little closer at dominant models of human capacity. Carol Dweck (to whom Robert Sternberg and his co-authors refer in the book reviewed here) and her colleagues propose that people conceptualise human attributes, intelligence included, as either entities (fixed traits probably present from birth and biologically based) or processes (malleable qualities that can be influenced and shaped by effort and experience). English-speaking cultures are dominated by entity theories of intelligence, which imply that children are born with a fixed quantum of ability that is resistant to environmental influences. The whole notion of a test to measure intelligence implies a bounded "thing" rather than dynamic process. The model of attributes as entities seems to be particularly dominant in individualist cultures, such as our own, which undoubtedly goes a long way to explain the success of the "IQ industry" in Anglophone countries. For many educators, whose work is concerned with nurturing the individual development of their students, this "theory of limits" is most unpalatable. This is particularly so in those cases where theories of intelligence have been used to "write off" whole groups as "less able" than others, with the most notorious being attempts to rank ability by "race." In contrast those who subscribe to process models of human attributes emphasise the importance of hard work and good teaching in the development of human capacity and in this many educators find a more congenial model, one of human possibilities rather than limits. Sternberg has spent his eminent career researching and advocating for alternative conceptions of intelligence to the mainstream psychometric (entity) model. The first conceptually sound measures of "IQ" were developed in France by Binet and Simon with a specific purpose in mind, that of screening children to see which would not benefit from ordinary classroom instruction but would need special educational provision. Intelligence tests started out as reliable predictors of performance in school and remain that to this day. Sternberg has always recognised this limitation of the original tests and their later derivatives and so his theories stress the importance of conceptions of intelligence that are more than measures of "school savviness" and instead relate to life beyond the classroom. After a brief but comprehensive summary of the major traditions in intelligence theory, Sternberg and his co-authors devote the remainder of the book to their own theory of and research into intelligence "beyond the classroom." Sternberg’s theorising and research have centred on three aspects of human performance: first, mental components; second, performance of real world tasks, especially as this relates to handling novelty and achieving automaticity of performance, and third, the individual’s capacity to adapt to, shape, or select environments. The theory also goes beyond emphasis on the individual person and explores the contribution of culture to intelligent performance, via exploring which aspects of intelligence are universal and which aspects are culturally relative. The book, however, does not merely explicate the theory but features chapters on key components of the theory that include information on how to use this knowledge to make one’s own behaviour more intelligent; how, for instance, to improve meta-cognitive aspects of decision-making, such as problem definition, strategy selection, and performance monitoring to improve the quality of one’s daily life. Sternberg’s inclusion of these sorts of examples and the related practice problems has always made his writing on intelligence particularly engaging. Certainly doing the exercises leads to the definite sensation of "getting smarter," something that can not always be said of wading through the average psychology text! And the discernible improvement in problem solving also provides powerful support for the fluidity of intelligence, that is, the validity of process models of human capacity. For those schooled in Vygotskyan models of human cognition, Sternberg’s theory does not go far enough in acknowledging the role of culture in the development of the human mind. "Aspects" of intelligence such as discussed by Sternberg can be conceptualised as being the mental tools/processes that form a central part of Vygotsky’s theory. Vygotsky proposed that the higher mental functions, for example focused attention, develop out of the biologically based lower or elementary mental functions. The process of development is shaped via what Rogoff (1990) refers to as "apprenticeships in thinking," that is, via learners’ participation in interactions with more experienced and knowledgeable members of one’s culture, which result in the learner’s internalising the culture’s mental toolkit. The end products of this apprenticeship are inevitably cultural in character, rather than biological, universal, and invariant. Work by Rogoff (2003) and her collaborators has demonstrated that mental functions such as attention, which seem universal in structure and function—and are portrayed as such by cognitive processing models—vary in form and function between cultures. Referring, as Sternberg does, to components of intelligence, could be seen to regress to the cultural tendency to resort to entities to explain human behaviour, where processes might be a better, more flexible, and inclusive model. Language, regrettably, becomes a prison when we try to deal with the very abstract, the "matter" of mind included. One small criticism I could make arises from the nature of textbooks generally. Those who write them are constrained by the necessity to mention everything relevant to the topic being covered and to assume a stance of fairness or impartiality towards all sides of the inevitable conflicts or debates. Sternberg and his coauthors avoid some of the worst excesses, for example in their coverage of the immensely popular theories of Howard Gardner. The theories are well-summarised and the important observation not omitted from discussion of them that there is little evidence for the existence of the modular structure of the brain predicted by the theory. Getting the materialist monkey off one’s back proves a little harder, however. It is simultaneously absolutely and undeniably true and profoundly contentious that the brain forms the substrate for human mentality. Absolutely true because without a brain there is no mental activity and the substrates of that activity can increasingly be located and identified. However, what is contentious is whether the characteristics of the neurological substrate are the cause or the correlates of mental activity, that is, on the basis of the current evidence it is possible to argue that learning, experience and practice shape the brain at least as much as they are shaped by it (Heilman, 2002). From my perspective, Sternberg, Kaufman and Grigorenko give maybe more credit to biological theories of intelligence than the evidence warrants. As an example, they cite without comment Matarazzo’s assertion that clinically useful psycho-physiological measures of intelligence will be available "very soon." The prediction was, however, made in 1992 and 16 years is a long time in physiology: many major advances in other areas of physiological research have been made in the interim. Similarly, work reported on metabolic efficiency theories dates to the early 1990s and failure to find more recent research in the area would suggest that too was a theoretical dead end. Another important piece of evidence against materialist models of intelligence not covered in depth by the book is the failure to find the "gene for" intelligence, despite the mapping of the human genome. Careful searching has found a large number of genes that all appear to contribute a very small part of the variance in individual IQ. Given our passion for entities, especially the ultimate entity of the gene, the search will undoubtedly continue in the face of these—discouraging or encouraging depending on one’s perspective—results. Criticism of Sternberg, Kaufman and Grigorenko’s book is in one sense too easy, given the breadth of its coverage. It remains a very worthwhile addition to the armory of those who seek to educate their students properly—as opposed to letting platitudes and clichés do the talking—about the concept of intelligence, its history and the applicability to daily life of many of the research findings it has generated. References Heilman, Kenneth M. (2002) Matter of Mind: A Neurologist's
View of Brain-Behavior Relationships Oxford University Press
(OUP) Rogoff, B., (1990) Apprenticeships in thinking: Cognitive development in social context. New York, Oxford University Press. Rogoff, B. (2003) The cultural nature of human development. New York: Oxford University Press. About the Reviewer Dr Catherine Scott, Swinburne Professional Learning, Swinburne University of Technology, Po Box 218, Hawthorn Vic. 3122 Australia E-mail: clscott@swin.edu.au |
Bjork, C., Johnston, D. K., and Ross, H. (Eds.) (2007). Taking teaching seriously: How liberal arts colleges prepare teachers to meet today’s educational challenges in schools. Reviewed by Kimberly A. Eversman, Arizona State University
Reviewed by Kimberly A. Eversman
Arizona State University
January 23, 2009
Taking Teaching Seriously is a collection of essays edited by Christopher Bjork, D. Kay Johnston, and Heidi Ross that examine the role liberal arts colleges play in teacher preparation. The book is broken into three parts, each examining a different aspect of the role liberal arts institutions play in current teacher education reform.
In the foreword to the book, Kenneth M. Zeichner writes, “more and more teachers are being prepared to teach in the United States outside of the higher education system that has been responsible for the bulk of pre-service teacher education in the U.S. for over 150 years” (p. ix). No Child Left Behind has raised the call “for a teacher education system that prepares teachers who are ‘good enough’ to follow a scripted curriculum aligned with standards and standardized tests” (Zeichner in Bjork, et al., 2007, p. ix). However, if we, as a society, believe that student learning should extend beyond the meeting of standards and the acquisition of high scores on standardized tests, the teacher who is simply “good enough” isn’t “good enough.” In Taking Teaching Seriously, the authors contend that liberal arts institutions are preparing educators to participate in our ever-changing education system by:
…educating teachers to be able to reflect upon and learn from their experience and to be able to exercise their judgment in the classroom to adapt their teaching to meet the diverse and ever changing needs of their students (p. x).
The authors of Taking Teaching Seriously ask that the reader examine the fundamental purposes of education in a democracy and consider how liberal arts institutions prepare teachers who will encourage young learners to be critically thinking, active participants in a democratic society. They argue that liberal arts colleges have long been unappreciated for the role they play in preparing future teachers. By encouraging new conversations about teacher education programs at liberal arts institutions, the authors try to rectify this situation.
In part one, the authors discuss various views of effectiveness and professionalism in liberal arts undergraduate institutions. Authors contributing to this section include Christopher Bjork, D. Kay Johnston, Heidi Ross, and Irving Epstein. They raise several questions:
What types of professional knowledge should be emphasized during pre- professional preparation? Which factors support and impede an institution’s ability to cultivate effective teachers? What kind of an impact is the current political environment having on education departments and programs in liberal arts institutions? (p. 5).
All three essays in part one address the current need for pre-service teachers who are able to look at the world beyond their immediate institutional contexts; are able to think critically; are flexible in their instructional practices; have experience in the field that, while grounded in theory, is also backed by practice; and have developed attitudes that drive them to improve the schools they are working in. Many of the authors claim that the national debate about education has managed to reduce education down to a narrow focus on testable standards. Johnston and Ross write,
…standards discourse obscures what in fact should be out primary conversation-the purposes of education. Separated from sustained debate about the ends of education, our public conversation about high standards has been narrow, instrumentally conceived, and isolated from the diverse needs and resources of communities. (p.7)
This narrow view, they argue, is moving focus away from educating everyone to be members of a democratic community. The current standards movement, they argue, favors a neoliberal view of learners as future laborers for global capitalism. The authors suggest that conversations about the purpose of education and who should benefit from said education remain central to the debate about education reform.
Christopher Bjork addresses intellectual dispositions of those who chose to enter the field of teaching. In the current climate of teacher education reform, many have argued that the most important attribute of a new teacher is intelligence. This conjecture fuels the call to relax certification standards for new teachers and promotes the push for alternative certification programs such as Teach for America. Others take the opposite view, calling for teacher education to be confined to the graduate level. Bjork argues that effective teachers should be “both intellectually capable of handling the challenges of teaching and pedagogically prepared to translate their goals into effective classroom practice” (p.12).
Students who graduate from liberal arts teacher education programs are likely to fit the descriptions of effective instructors put forward by proponents of a range of reform proposals. With rigorous academic preparation and extensive classroom experience, they meet the qualifications endorsed by both the “professionalization” and “deregulation” proponents. (p. 28)
The essays in part two examine the distinctive approaches of liberal arts institutions. This section commands the larger part of the book and is made up of essays by Alice Lesnick, Jody Cohen, Alison Cook-Sather, Lisa Smulyan, D. Kay Johnston, Vicki Kubler LaBoskey, Linda R. Kroll, and Heidi Ross. These authors shift their focus to the structures and basic foundations of liberal arts teacher education programs. They also examine the impact these programs have had on teachers who graduate from such institutions. They look at how liberal arts teacher training programs “influence their interactions with students, the principles that guide the teacher education programs they oversee, and the types of teachers they hope to produce” (p. 51). The authors contend that liberal arts institutions are educating future teachers to be flexible, critical thinking human beings who are dedicated to social justice. These teachers are risk takers who are prepared to challenge their future students also to be risk takers. In their chapter, Lesnick, Cohen, and Cook-Sather write:
Adherence to transmission based pedagogy, increasing standardization of curricula and assessments…stand as features of the current educational landscape that we strongly oppose, while culturally relevant pedagogy, differentiated instruction, and community-based research all stand as contemporary models informing our work. Ongoing negotiation of these uncomfortable and productive tensions provides us a nexus for the preparation of strong, thoughtful educators (p. 58).
Finally, in part three, Christopher Roelke, Jennifer King Rice, Susan Riemer Sacks, and Charlotte Mendoza address recruiting and retention challenges facing schools around the country. The authors propose that liberal arts institutions are uniquely positioned to help overcome these challenges. In their chapter, Christopher Roellke and Jennifer King Rice (2007) write:
The key curricular challenge for teacher educators in liberal arts institutions, it seems, is to develop intellectually rigorous courses that integrate broader content and critical thinking skills with practical, hands-on pedagogical training…it would make sense for administrators working in urban schools to include liberal arts schools among the institutions they regularly rely on/turn to when searching for new teachers (p.171).
Based on the studies presented in part three, a recurring theme is that teachers who come from liberal arts institutions exhibit certain dispositions that are highly valued in the field. These graduates are intelligent, dedicated, critical thinking individuals who are able to navigate in constantly changing and challenging environments.
[O]utstanding teachers do more than simply carry out their work according to the specifications of their superiors or evaluators. Rather, they make the process of closely observing, assessing, and improving their actions an integral part of their daily lives in classrooms (p. 218).
My opinions about the thesis of Taking Teaching Seriously may be influenced by the fact that I completed a teacher education program at a small, private, Lutheran, liberal arts college in a small town in Iowa. My particular experience echoes the experiences shared by the teachers in this book. I, too, was encouraged to be a critical thinker and to question everything. I worked outside of the college community and was able to meld the theories I had studied with actual practice. I was encouraged to reflect on my practice and grow and develop as a future teacher.
Liberal arts institutions do indeed produce spectacular teacher candidates. However, public universities produce wonderful teachers as well. The problem with this study is that the authors only looked at a few liberal arts programs. The question remains whether these experiences truly are limited to liberal arts programs or are even more prominent there. The authors of this book are on the right track in encouraging more conversations about what education in a democratic society should look like. They provide the reader with much to consider. However, more liberal arts institutions need to be studied before any claims are made about their unique contributions to teacher education.
About the Reviewer
Kimberly A. Eversman is a PhD student in the Educational Leadership and Policy program at Arizona State University. She holds an MA in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She also has six years of classroom experience. Her general areas of interest include democratic learning communities, critical pedagogy, and social justice education.Noddings, Nel. (2007). Critical Lessons: What Our Schools Should Teach. Reviewed by Emily Ackman, Arizona State University
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Noddings, Nel. (2007). Critical Lessons: What Our Schools
Should Teach. NY: Cambridge University Press
Pp. 319 ISBN 978-0521851886 Reviewed by Emily Ackman February 6, 2009 In her newest book, Critical Lessons: What Our Schools
Should Teach, Nel Noddings takes a critical look at critical
thinking and it’s lack of a role in public schools.
Straight from the beginning of the book she chastises the current
system for, “the neglect of topics that call forth critical
and reflective thinking.” (p.2) The basis of her critique
is that our current system of education does not help students
prepare for the world they are entering because they are not
taught necessary critical thinking skills in school. She argues
both that what students are learning and the way in which
they are expected to learn information in school is inadequate
and outdated. “The contemporary school curriculum in
America is obsolete – very near useless for current
life.” (p. 205) Noddings begins in the Introduction by asking the reader to
turn a critical eye on learning, education and the role each
play, or should play, in self-understanding. “In an
important sense, this entire book is about self-understanding and
an examination of how external and internal forces affect out
[sic] lives.” (p. 10) While traveling through each
subsequent discussion topic, she makes sure to return to
self-understanding, how this issue relates, and how it could
potentially be incorporated into a public high school
curriculum. After self-understanding, the reader is asked to look
outward. The psychology of war is examined. This includes the
havoc it wreaks on the psyche of young America in a variety of
ways. Noddings then jumps to the topic of relations with other
people by exploring homemaking, family, relationships,
socialization, and how our interactions matter in each of these
contexts. The book then turns to more general human
interactions. Nature, advertising, gender, wage earning and
religion are all explored in separate chapters, with their
interrelation shown throughout. She finishes the book with a
strong critique of the current K-12 curriculum as well as the way
in which teachers are educated in this country, arguing,
“not only should the curriculum be changed, but the ways of
learning it should also change.” (p. 284) As someone who was always more motivated in school to learn
than to get good grades, the first chapter spoke to me on a
personal level and provides me with an explanation for my desire
to continue my education beyond the point where many people
stop. She asks the question, what does motivate us and what
should motivate us when it comes to learning? One answer
is that it is basic to human nature that there are things we must
concentrate on that hold more interest to us than others.
“My advice to students: Don’t ‘do your best in
everything.’ Do an adequate job on what is required and
save your energy for that about which you are passionate.”
(p. 22) Noddings deserves respect for the honesty with which she
approaches this subject. Few educators at any level would be
brave enough to make such a statement. In the second chapter, Noddings examines the psychology of
war. The basis of her critique is that war as a topic is always
broached in schools in a historical social studies context, but
rarely are students challenged to think critically about war and
the psychological toll it takes on combatants. Her stance aside,
this chapter seems out of place in this book. There is a flow
throughout the general topics that begins with self, leading to
immediate relationships, and expanding out into more general
human interactions. This topic, while riveting, does not truly
fit into any of these three broad categories and thus may throw
the reader off-course. In the following chapter, the reader must make the jump to
everyday life – discussing the people encountered on a
daily basis and their roles they play in the reader’s
life. These chapters seem most in-line with Noddings’
previous works. Still, she brings a critical eye to them, which
I have not experienced in her writing previously. She makes the
point that, “few of us use academic mathematics as adults,
but most of us become parents. Yet our schools… rarely
offer serious courses on parenting.” (p. 119) Acknowledging
there are potential class discrimination issues associated with
the possibility of teaching parenting in school, she argues that
if it is examined critically as a topic, these problems are much
less likely. This particular section is reminiscent of the Harlem
Children’s Zone – a non-profit in New York City. One
of the programs there is called the Baby College where one of the
stated intentions is to teach middle-class parenting skills to
inner-city parents; (Barnes, 2002) not values but skills.
Barack Obama has lauded this program as a model he hopes to
implement nation-wide. This is a concrete example that ideas can
be translated into practice, but it must be done
thoughtfully. The chapter on advertising and propaganda is reason enough for
anyone to purchase this book. Noddings is critical of “the
rise of a consumers’ republic – one that defines
citizenship more in terms of consumption than of civic
action.” (p. 170) She speaks of SUV’s air pollution,
advertisers harnessing peer-pressure, and planned obsolescence
– topics of which most thoughtful consumer are aware. But
it is the subsection on health & advertising that is most
enlightening. Reading intently with Adderall-induced
concentration, I looked through Noddings’ critical eye at
the pharmaceutical industry and the toll its systematic
misrepresentation has taken on this country. The problem is the
pervasiveness of influence. Once it became legal for
prescription drugs to be advertised on television, the
advertising budgets skyrocketed for these companies –
resulting in an increase in demand for name-brand medication. In
examining some of the reasons people turn to prescription drugs,
it is pointed out that turning to illicit drugs for these exact
same reasons is considered illegal. She argues that one of the
biggest con-jobs the pharmaceutical industry has managed to pull
on U.S. citizens is convincing them that improvements in drugs
have played a major role in longevity, whereas the reality has
more to do with improvements in sanitation. To expand on this
point, she states: “The single most important move we could
make globally to increase health would be to ensure a safe water
supply for all of the world’s people.” (p. 184) U.S.
citizens are also under the impression that the scientists who
create these drugs are wise critical thinkers immune to political
and social pressures. This is a blatant falsehood. Noddings
points out that the extent to which our collective thinking has
been warped by this industry is dangerous to the nation as
individuals and as a society. Noddings uses advertising and propaganda as a doorway into
looking at the self in a larger context. Gender, religion and
making a living are examined and interwoven as topics that are
often critically examined at the collegiate level, but basically
ignored in high school curricula. She argues that this does
great harm to students by allowing stereotypes to fester and the
inappropriate influence of business interests to be maintained in
public schools. The book ends by examining teacher education in this country.
The accusation is made that “most teachers are not critical
thinkers because they have not been asked to think
critically” (p. 9) in their own education. As is reiterated
throughout the book, sweeping changes need to be made to the K-12
curriculum, but this will be putting the cart before the horse if
teacher education is not also revamped. This might be where
Noddings’s arguments are weakest. She readily acknowledges
that for high school students to be able to critically
interrelate many of the topics discussed in the book, their
teachers need to have a solid grasp not just of the curriculum
that they are teaching, but also of every academic topic that
might relate. Even for those who agree with the position that
teacher education needs to change, this idea seems unrealistic.
Throughout the book, Noddings makes it quite clear that the
current academic curriculum is irrelevant to society today and
must be changed dramatically to successfully prepare students for
the world into which they are entering. “To neglect
critical thinking on topics central to everyday life is to make
the word education virtually meaningless.” (p. 4)
She offers questions teachers can pose to their students that
might inspire critical thinking on a given topic. Unfortunately,
she does not offer tangible suggestions for how education
policy-makers might go about creating the changes that are so
necessary. Overall, this book made a lot of good points. I was excited to
see that there are still
opportunities to look at these issues in a fresh light. Although
I agree that major change needs to be made in public school
curricula, I was disappointed that no suggestions were made about
how to go about doing this. Understandably, Noddings is
an educator and not a policy-maker. But when dramatic change is
called for, potential paths to this change should be examined in
addition to learning why. Reference Barnes, K. (2002) The Baby College. Harlem
Children’s Zone: A Look Inside, 1 (1).
Retrieved October 10, 2008, from
http://www.hcz.org/programs/the-hcz-project#baby_college About the Reviewer Emily Ackman is currently working on her Ph.D. in Educational
Leadership and Policy Studies at Arizona State University’s
Mary-Lou Fulton College of Education. She holds two Master of
Education degrees – one from the University of Georgia in
Administration & Policy and the second from Teachers College
at Columbia University in Politics & Education. She is
fascinated by politics and the law and the role each plays in
public education. |
Sternberg, Robert J. and Sternberg, Karin. (2008) The Nature of Hate. Reviewed by Catherine Scott , Swinburne University of Technology
|
Sternberg, Robert J. and Sternberg, Karin. (2008)
The Nature of Hate. NY:
Cambridge University Press
Pp. 246 ISBN 978-0-521-72179-0 Reviewed by Catherine Scott February 6, 2009 In the annals of human civilisation our own era
will probably go down as one of the bloodiest and most vicious.
The sheer number of ‘genocides’ that have been
committed since the turn of the nineteenth century and the
associated body count beggar belief. The most notorious, the
Holocaust, spawned a spate of psychological research into the
causes of that terrible event, in the hope of preventing its
repetition. This included the research by Adorno and his
colleagues into the authoritarian personality; Kohlberg’s
work on moral development; Milgram’s research into
obedience and, most recently, the research by Robert Sternberg
into hate. Sternberg and Sternberg’s book provides a good summary
of the research and theory on hate to date, before presenting and
elaborating on Robert Sternberg’s duplex theory of hate and
summarising the research evidence for it. The book also covers
many of the best-known collective degenerations into hate and
their apparent causes, including some of the most notorious
recent genocides in Rwanda, Sudan and the Balkans. There is a sense in the book, however, that, the demon being
wrestled with has still not been entirely subdued, or at least,
understood. The many and varied examples of people’s
sometimes violent aversion to one or even many of the members own
species are not in the end resolved into a convincing
whole. Wittgenstein’s observation about the sources of
‘philosophical bewilderment’ is of potential use for
understanding the unresolved complexities revealed by Sternberg
and Sternberg’s discussion of hate: ‘We are up
against one of the great sources of philosophical bewilderment: a
substantive makes us look for a thing that corresponds to
it’ (cited in Lazerowitz, 2004, p. 162). The word
‘hate’ does suggest the existence of a unitary
phenomenon, as does our experience of our own strong ill-feeling
towards others, either as individuals or groups. Sternberg and
Sternberg are on to something when they observe that people say
they hate everything from homework to individuals who have
grievously wronged them in some way to abstract entities, like
members of some category of person, but that surely these diverse
experiences can not be identical in content and
intensity. ‘Hate’ like most or all concepts, is
‘fuzzy’, that is, there are no clear cut boundaries
around it nor a set of attributes that are all present in every
case of it: as with all concepts, membership is determined by
‘family resemblances’ (Rosch, 1999). There are, in
other words, a collection of attributes that are characteristic
of people’s experiences of hate but no experience of hate,
whether of homework or members of some despised ethnic group,
necessarily includes all or even most characteristics.
Sternberg’s duplex theory of hate, with its three
components, could be styled as an investigation of the fuzzy
concept of ‘hate’. It is, in other words, a study of
how people think and talk about hate. As such it is of value and
interest. In the end, however, the experience of strong personal
enmity by one individual to another is substantially different to
mass hatred and murder. It may have been desirable to explore
these phenomena separately rather than as manifestations of one
human tendency. The ultimate purpose of the book is search for a way to
‘cure hate’. Because such a wide variety of phenomena
is covered it is unlikely that there exists one panacea that will
cure them all. Certainly therapy may help those individuals who
are afflicted with a propensity to hate or so maimed by
experience that they descend into hate but hate that comes from
collective causes may be much harder to stifle. As an example, the strong temptation for leaders to cook up an
external threat to distract followers from problems on the home
front will not be cured by therapy of any sort: only the
development of a polity sufficiently well-fed and secure, as well
as too sophisticated to fall for such tricks, will eradicate that
source of manufactured hate. Certainly the eradication of
injustice and inequality in all their guises would remove a
powerful incentive to loathing one’s fellows, especially
those who seem to be better off than oneself. The apparently
universal narrative of ‘pure evil’ besetting
‘blameless victims’ that Baumeister so thoroughly
explores (1996) will always be available as a means to explain
why the other is bestial and fit only for extermination.
Collective approaches that address the root causes of division
between peoples may ultimately the best cure for mass hate but we
are still drawn towards explanations and interventions that begin
at the individual level. Indeed, Western psychology as an enterprise is strongly
individualist in its emphasis, not surprising, given that
individualism is the dominant belief system/model of the person
in Western cultures. Psychology starts with the individual as an
explanatory variable and sometimes adds other aspects of the
situation in its attempts to account for human behaviour. Such a
‘bottom up’ model constantly runs into problems,
however, as Sternberg and Sternberg’s analysis
reveals. More convincing explanations for human behaviour become
possible when the bias towards starting with the individual is
put aside and ‘top down’ influences are investigated
as primary causes instead of add-ons, with one, one top down
variable particularly implicated in the bloody nature of our
age. Anthropologist Mary Douglas has explored the key role of
culture in human conduct and has written about the catastrophic
effects of cultural failure, when the usual vibrant conversation
between the four cultural tendencies that she describes in her
grid/group theory falls silent, ordinary life ceases and human
society degenerates into the sort of nightmare Hobbes envisioned
(Douglas, 2004). The key cause over the last century and more of cultural
failure – the disintegration of everyday life - has been
war. Wars have gone from events that affected mostly military
personnel to being an assault upon whole populations. Starting in
the mid-nineteenth century, each subsequent war saw civilian
deaths accounting for higher and higher percentages of the
casualty figures. The ‘evolution’ of weapons from
devices used at close or relatively close quarters and capable of
inflicting injury on one or a few persons to implements able to
destroy a great number of people from a considerable distance
undoubtedly contributed to war’s breaking out of the battle
fields and into the realm of ordinary life, a development
Sternberg and Sternberg comment upon. The disruption or total destruction on of normal existence by
the intrusion of death and horror on a massive scale is
sufficient to explain the degeneration of human behaviour into
viciousness. There is nothing special lurking in our genes or our
natures that explains hatred on a grand scale and the murder that
follows it nearly so well as the reactions of ordinary people to
extraordinary circumstances. When horror becomes the norm it is
not surprising that it is reflected in the conduct of those
afflicted by horrible situations. What would need explaining is a
circumstance where people could see their cities destroyed, their
homes, businesses and farms ruined, their loved ones and
neighbours murdered and mutilated and simply go about their
ordinary business. Sternberg and Sternberg provide evidence for this in their
book when they report on how the war to remove Saddam Hussein
resulted in an upsurge of sectarian hatred between Sunni and
Shiite and of both groups towards the invading forces. Brutality
in the form of suicide bombings and attacks on civilians
increased. Without the experience of a war conducted at close
quarters it highly unlikely that ordinary Iraqis, or indeed
anyone, would voluntarily descend into slaughtering their
fellows. Our age is the age of genocide because our age is the era of
total war. Remove war or at least remove it from the cities and
villages in which people reside, I would contend, and the wave of
mass murder would also decline. This is one powerful method to
cure hate, but one, unfortunately, that lies well beyond the
capacity of any individual, therapist or
otherwise. Sternberg and Sternberg are to be commended for staring horror
in the face and attempting to understand with the laudable
purpose of ridding the world of hate and its
consequences. References Douglas, M. ‘Traditional Culture–Let’s Hear
No More About It’ inRao, V. and M. Walton(Ed.)Culture
and Public Action, Stanford University
Press Heilman, Kenneth M. (2002) Matter of Mind: A Neurologist's
View of Brain-Behavior Relationships Oxford University Press
(OUP)
Lazerowitz, Morris (2004) Philosophy and Illusion London:
Routledge. Rosch, E. (1999). What are concepts? Contemporary
Psychology, 44, 416-417. Dr Catherine Scott, Swinburne Professional Learning, Swinburne University of Technology, PO Box 218, Hawthorn Vic. 3122 Australia |
Shaffer, David W. (2006). How Computer Games Help Children Learn. Reviewed by Curtis Lee, University of Colorado at Denver
|
Shaffer, David W. (2006). How Computer
Games Help Children Learn. Palgrave
Macmillan
Pp. 242 ISBN 978-0-230-60252-6 Reviewed by Curtis Lee February 6, 2009 There has been a constant buzz in both education and business circles about the urgent need to prepare our students for this century’s coming challenges and the increasingly global nature of our economies and future professions. Despite the repeated calls for “re-inventing” schools to prepare students for these eventualities, the nature of schooling, curriculum, and assessment has remained essentially unchanged over the last decade. Society at large, however, has seen dramatic changes occur over that time, especially in the area of technological innovation and its adoption by the younger generations. It is within this context that David Williams Shaffer wades
into the conversation with a well-researched and compelling
argument about the powerful learning potential of computer
games. Shaffer is both an academic and a game scientist who has
spent many years examining the deeper nature of games and the way
humans interact with them. A colleague of James Paul Gee,
authored of “What video games have to teach us about
learning”(Gee, 2003), Shaffer takes the analysis even
further by examining how computer games with specific attributes
can achieve learning goals that would not be attainable without
them. Shaffer opens the book with some background information about himself and some insights about experiential learning that came from his time spent in Vermont as a teacher in a school that was also a working organic farm. The students spent their mornings engaged in the difficult labor of running a farm and then transitioned to schoolwork in the afternoons. The curriculum was organized as much as possible to reflect the nature of the farm experience, e.g., including readings from Thoreau and a focus on environmental concerns. The students learned to solve real problems by working on real problems that mattered to them (p.6). And while this kind of “authentic” schooling may be nostalgic, the larger lessons of the farm contain components that still have real currency for educating kids in digital age. For Shaffer, this type of knowledge building is centered on
gaining an epistemological understanding of an area of practical
expertise. Absent living on a farm or interning at the UN, this
type of deep understanding is very difficult for students to
achieve in their youth. With the aid of computer games, however,
students can journey through these knowledge domains and do
meaningful work that requires active problem-solving with
legitimate outcomes that learners care about. The use of these
epistemic gaming environments allow students to perform
daily tasks, solve authentic problems, and “walk a
mile” in the shoes of people from a variety of professional
domains. Shaffer uses the term epistemic to refer to the
underlying knowledge domains, or epistemologies, that inform the
thinking of experts in different communities of practice. More
importantly, these are domains that would be impossible, or
certainly impractical, to emulate without the use of computers to
scaffold the experience. Through each of the following chapters,
Shaffer examines how a particular computer game helps to create
an authentically modeled learning experience for the game’s
participants. The primary goal of these epistemic games is to
literally change the thinking processes of the players to
resemble more closely those of the actual professionals who work
in these domains. What is particularly impressive about Shaffer’s book is his extensive use of learning theory to support his central assertions. Throughout the book, he identifies the work of leading theorists like Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky and Papert to support the types of cognitive activities that these epistemic games are developing in participants. These theorists emphasized the importance of embedding learning activities within authentic situations and the social milieus of the world outside the confines of the classroom. In many instances, he sees these games as actually extending and expanding the potential of these theories beyond what could have been envisioned by theorists and practitioners before the dawn of computing. In Shaffer’s eyes, the ability of the computer to model and scaffold participation in the authentic activities of various professional environments is a paradigmatic advancement in how we can teach students to be better thinkers and more thoughtful citizens. The key attribute of these games, which differentiates them from typical computer games, is that they must place the student thoroughly within the unique activities, the special language or terms of art (p.59) of that practice, and the mental processes that would occur within these professions in the “real” world. Each of the game vignettes within the book is described within the context of an actual research project that used a number of ethnographic techniques to measure the efficacy of the games according to the pedagogical objectives of traditional content areas and the thinking traits of the professional domains being emulated. For instance, the game Escher’s World is modeled directly from an existing professional design community, Oxford Studio, and takes students through the various stages of becoming a graphic designer. It utilizes existing software in Geometer’s Sketchpad to help students create and manipulate 2D and 3D designs within space, and then extends the process through critique sessions (a desk crit) with other designers to improve their work and a general cultivation and clarification of design goals throughout the whole project (p.76-80). A desk crit is a critical review process utilized within the design community that seeks continuous feedback by peers and mentors on the overall intentions and quality of the work being produced. By the time students are done with this four-week game, their ability to articulate, using design language, the nature of their own work and that of others has been completely transformed. Shaffer references Donald Schön’s work on “reflective practice” to support the types of iterative improvements that define the nature of design work and how those reflective skills transfer to other areas of a student’s intellectual world. Within every chapter of this book, Shaffer takes similar care to frame the game within the context of a supportive learning theory, to demonstrate the learning that has occurred with excerpts from real students, and to provide suggestions for teachers and parents for follow-up. The game analysis chapters are impressive for both their depth and breadth and really challenge the reader to look more closely at how poorly we currently support this type of explorative thinking and problem-solving within schools. Shaffer has some real reservations, however, about the immediate applicability of these types of games within existing school environments. Shaffer borrows the term “third place” from sociologist Ray Oldenburg, to describe places like coffee shops or recreation centers that are neither home nor school, where people can “hang out” and talk and explore ideas freely. It is in these places that Shaffer first envisions epistemic gaming having the freedom to grow. Unfortunately, the nature of schooling today puts such a premium on content coverage and standardized recall that it tends to diffuse or abbreviate the types of immersive activities that can only occur over time in real communities of practice. My current work as an instructional technologist within K-12 systems confirms Shaffer’s hesitancy. The time-sensitive and prescriptive nature of existing K-12 curriculum structures makes it very difficult for teachers to infuse lengthier, loosely-targeted projects whose outcomes are more global and conceptual in nature. The fact that these role-playing vignettes are also video game-based only adds to the “marketing” challenge teachers would face when trying to sell its merits to colleagues and administrators. Shaffer clearly demonstrates the powerful learning potential of epistemic games and their promise for helping to develop deeper thinking skills for a digital age. The motivational appeal of immersive gaming for the younger generation is undeniable and consumer gaming titles of a similar genre continue to be enormously popular. Massive online role-playing games such as World of Warcraft™, and the virtual spaces of Second Life™, provide concrete examples of the power of computer simulations to both engage and inform players about the identities, verbiage, and behaviors of participants that are unique to each environment. The potential of vicariously-rich computer-simulated learning environments should be researched further as the need for broader and more adaptive thinkers increase as globalization and multiple-career lives await today’s students. Perhaps soon, a hybrid-model of traditional schooling will arise, similar to many online learning models, which will allow for the inclusion of epistemic games as part of the preparation of students for the century ahead of them, not the one behind them. Shaffer’s book does an excellent job of framing the potential contributions of video-games within that larger conversation. References Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. NY: Palgrave. About the ReviewerCurtis Lee is a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership and Innovation (EDLI) program at the University of Colorado at Denver. He is the currently employed as the Director of Information and Technology Services for Mapleton Public Schools in Denver. |
Amin, N., & Dei, S.G. (Eds). 2007. The Poetics of Anti-Racism. Reviewed by Laurelle Jno Baptiste, University of Toronto
|
Amin, N., & Dei, S.G. (Eds). 2007. The Poetics of
Anti-Racism. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Fenwood Publishing
Pp. 174 ISBN 9781552662083 Reviewed by Laurelle Jno Baptiste February 6, 2009 Poetics of Anti-Racism was inspired by a panel
discussion conducted at an American Educational Research
Association (AERA) conference; this panel discussion was entitled
‘Inclusive Schooling in Canadian Contexts: Challenges and
Possibilities’. Encouraged by positive audience responses
and follow-up discussions, the authors produced an edited volume
based on papers presented at the conference. The end product is
an anthology with a focus on linguistic racism and its ability to
perpetuate racist thinking and racist educational practice.
The book’s title implies a treatise on anti-racism that
is somewhat light in nature. However, an examination of the
research interests of the contributors as well as the
editor’s introductory comments reveals a very informed and
experienced perspective on linguistic racism and anti-racism
practices within the context of schools and educational routine.
Framework for Reading As part of the introduction, Dei sets the stage for the book
by first identifying what he terms “the productive
functions of power” (p. 14). Specifically, he draws a
connection between dominant groups in society and the challenges
they pose for anti-racist and social justice work. Dei contends
that the book’s poetic approach to anti-racist education
“provides linguistic form through which to express
anti-racist education” (p. 14). And, by examining
schooling and education, the authors do not deny the successes of
some minority students nor do they seek to implicate all
educators. He pays homage to educators who are “doing their
outmost to promote the cause of education for diverse
communities” (p. 14). Nevertheless, Dei holds the view
that the failure of many minority students in contemporary
education systems provides evidence of the need for alternative
educational outlets that engage students spiritually and
emotionally. Each author’s submission is presented as a separate chapter and Dei provides a synopsis of each chapter in the introduction. He begins the introduction by situating linguistic racism and the centralization of language in the discourse of anti- racism and identifies language as the entry point of discussion for many of the contributors. Dei writes that due to the engagement of some of the authors in linguistic work, “they show, through pedagogical implications, the impact of race and racism in the everyday discussion of language and power” (p. 18). Assessing the Content Chapter 1, ‘Language, Race And Anti-Racism Making
Important Connections’ establishes a relationship between
language, race and social oppression. Dei states that the main
goal in writing this piece is “to situate language-based
racism and exclusion in anti-racist education” (p. 24). He
identifies language as an “important medium of cultural,
ideological, political, colonial and imperial domination in
society” (p. 24). This author contends that, along with
race, language is used to stereotype immigrants and he asserts
throughout the chapter that linguistic racism works to promote
assumptions of White racial dominance in society. Dei touches on
many important topics throughout the chapter although at times
his ideas appear to lack association with his central theme. That
said, Dei clearly demonstrates that our school systems use
cultural assumptions about language to stereotype and
discriminate linguistically. He shows how race and language are
interrelated and effectively makes a case for the inclusion of
language possibilities in anti-racist education. Chapter 2, ‘Language, Linguistic Discrimination And
Polyvocality’ is comprised mainly of a dialogue between
George J. Sefa Dei and one of his doctoral students, Meredith
Lordan. This chapter is a continuation on the topic of language
based racism. In their introduction to the dialogue, the authors
capture the essence of the discussion by stating, “The
accent – how we are heard to speak, our inflection of place
and identity through speech – is used as a “durable
marker” in the process of social division and
differentiation” (p. 31). During the dialogue, Dei
recounts his experiences as a recent immigrant student with an
accent and demonstrates language as capital in our communities.
Because of its personal nature, this chapter presents a very
human perspective on the struggles in Western English speaking
societies of immigrants with an accent. In addition, questions
posed by Lordan to Dei allow Dei to share some practical examples
and life lessons on how educators can accommodate different
accents in the classroom. Chapter 3, ‘Rethinking Displacement, Language And
Culture Shock’ explores the cultural translation and
negotiation process of Black immigrants to North America. The
chapter includes parts of a larger ethnographic study that looked
at the lives of African immigrant youths attending a
French-language high school in Ontario and the formation of their
social identity. Based on results from the study, the author
observes that though each student has individual identities such
as Sudanese and Somali they all adopt certain behaviors in
language and culture that are characteristic of
‘Blackness’. The author astutely captures the
transition to Blackness and the translation, negotiation and
often times confusion that can accompany such a transition.
However, he misses an opportunity to connect the literature
review to the study’s outcomes because a conclusion is not
part of the chapter. Chapter 4, ‘Apprehension And Antagonism’ examines
teacher education programs and the preparation provided to
teacher candidates for dealing with multicultural and anti-racist
education. In this chapter, the authors present some of their
findings from a questionnaire administered to teacher candidates.
The questionnaire was designed to capture the teacher
candidates’ impressions of their multicultural and
anti-racism education. The authors conclude that teacher
education programs do not prepare teachers to deal with a diverse
ethnic student body. This chapter provides the most significant
learning opportunities thus far. First of all, the authors
present a conceptual framework which allows for an in depth
understanding of the concepts being explored. Secondly, they
provide a summary of the findings from the questionnaire. Most
important is the inclusion of a discussion of the results which
brings to light some of the reasons why the teacher candidates
were dissatisfied with their multicultural and anti-racist
teacher education. Chapter 5, ‘Putting Them In Their Place’, is an
examination of language policies for newcomers to Canada. The
authors write that both English and French “have gained
discursive force and legitimacy of being official languages, not
only through a historical dismissal of Aboriginal languages, but
also as the result of marginalizing all other minority
languages” (p. 73). The authors venture into a discussion
on Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) and
conclude that such policies lead to a “denigration of
newcomers” (p. 83) by mandating assistance to cultural
groups, including newcomers, in order for them to participate in
society. This chapter is significant because it provides a
historical perspective of Canada’s language policies and
the implications for newcomers. It helps to connect some missing
pieces from the last four chapters because this is the first
chapter to show how Canada’s language policies fail to
provide newcomers with the language skills required for
integration into Canadian society. Chapter 6, ‘Being International’ examines the
experiences of non-white International students attending
Canadian universities. The chapter’s tone is set in the
introduction with a summarized depiction of the experiences of
Bannerji (1995). Bannerji is portrayed as a non-white
International student whose experiences in a Toronto classroom
during the 1970 encouraged feelings of alienation, confusion and
frustration. The author proposes “the consideration of
International student experiences in the design of pedagogy on
the post secondary campus” (p. 87). To sustain this
viewpoint, he shares the result of a pilot study which explored
the campus experiences of International students. The author
concludes that though Canada’s demographics have changed,
experiences like Bannerji are still quite common today. A very
thorough accounting of some of the challenges faced by
International students on campus and in the classroom is gained
as a consequence of the study. Nevertheless, the author
acknowledges that research in this area is scant. Topics for
future research are presented at the end of this chapter and this
inclusion represents one of this segment’s most valuable
contributions to the overall treatise. Chapter 7 is entitled, ‘Assessing The Puzzles Of
Specific Learning Disability Disorder and Support Services For
African Refugee Students In K-10 Public Schools of British
Columbia’. This chapter, as the title implies, examines the
learning disability processes and services available to African
refugees in British Columbia. The authors contend that a
significant number of African children are misdiagnosed as having
learning disabilities because educators fail to understand the
challenges these children face when integrating into a Canadian
classroom. The strength of this chapter lies with the
author’s connection of classroom practices of the dominant
culture with consequences that lead to misunderstanding, and
ultimately, misdiagnosis of refugee children. The points made as
part of this segment are very well supported with extensive
references imbedded in the discussion. Chapter 8, ‘Encoding Domination’ results from a
research study on classroom oppression. The author draws on
comparative research between Canada and Germany to
“illuminate the mechanism through which attention is
deflected from some of the significant contributions to school
failures of minority students” (p. 123). She argues that
classroom oppression and marginalization of the non-culturally
dominant occurs through cultural exclusion, especially in the
area of language. This is one of the shortest chapters in the
book and for this reason provides only an introduction to a very
complex discussion on the structural frame of racism in the
classroom. The author poses some compelling questions but most
are left unanswered. Chapter 9, ‘Inclusive Education And Anti-Racist
Classroom Practice In Teacher Education Programs’ revisits
some of the issues raised in Chapter 4. Specifically, this author
examines the dynamics of creating an inclusive classroom and
analyzes “teachers approaches to inclusive classroom
practice and impediments to changing the status quo” (p.
130). She opines that Canadian classrooms are not inclusive. The
argument presented makes the case for creating an inclusive
classroom by addressing issues of equity and social justice from
a historical, religious, legal and socio political perspective in
teacher education programs. Since most of the book’s
message centers on the challenges posed by different forms of
racial discrimination in educational practice, the information
shared by this author appears repetitive. A redeeming strength of
this chapter occurs at the end where the author suggests
strategies to promote inclusive schooling. Chapter 10, ‘Language, Race And The Poetics of
Anti-Racism’ begins by making a connection between this
author’s submission and Dei’s introduction on
language and linguistic racism. She describes her contribution
to this treatise as assigning definition and dimension to the
term linguistic racism. The chapter is concerned with the global
hegemony of English and repercussions for non-white people.
Unlike the other submissions, this author takes a more global
approach by looking at linguistic racism for non native English
speakers in third world countries. She attempts to cover a lot of
ground and in so doing looks at language bias in teacher
education programs, touches on the language challenges faced by
International students in English speaking Western societies, and
the difficulties encountered by non-white speakers of English who
seek to teach English as a second language. Because she is trying
to cover so many topics she only manages to reach an introductory
level of treatment. Certain insights are formulated but she fails
to clearly meet the objectives of recognizing, defining and
describing linguistic racism as concepts established in her
introduction. Overall Impressions Many of the authors characterize those affected by racial
discrimination using the term minorities. For example, in his
introduction, Dei writes that “minority students need to
see representation of themselves in their teacher to feel like
justice is being done” (p.16). There are many in this field of research, including the
racialized, who take issue with the term minority. They hold the
view that minority implies minor, and by definition, minor is
associated with words and feelings of inferiority and
unimportance. With that said, the efforts of the editors are commendable
because they were able to take separate papers and combine them
into a format that makes for an easy read. Though at times the
information shared bears a resemblance from one chapter to the
next, the authors are true to the topic and provide insight to a
form of racism that is often underestimated and frequently
misunderstood. I have very little negative criticism of the book. The
contributors were faced with the difficult task of writing about
issues that are not often discussed at Canadian educational
institutions and within Canadian society. The book serves as a
very rich source of information and opens dialogue that hopefully
will stir further research and action. About the Reviewer Laurelle Jno Baptiste is a Doctoral candidate at the Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.
She also works in corporate education in Canada and speaks
extensively on immigrant integration issues in
Canada. |
Sternberg, Robert J. (2003). Wisdom, Intelligence, and Creativity Synthesized. Reviewed by June Schmieder-Ramirez, Pepperdine University
|
Sternberg, Robert J. (2003). Wisdom, Intelligence, and
Creativity Synthesized. NY: Cambridge University Press
Pp. 188 ISBN 978-0521802383 Reviewed by June Schmieder-Ramirez February 6, 2009 Robert Sternberg, the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences
and professor of psychology at Tufts University, has written for
over thirty years about the definition of intelligence and the
tendency in the past to gauge intelligence by overly simplistic
paper and pencil tests. The book would provide a good overview of
the literature on intelligence written in the past thirty
years—especially for students in an undergraduate
psychology class. Sternberg divides the text into four parts: Intelligence,
creativity, wisdom and synthesis. The premise of the text
represents for the reader a discussion of wisdom, creativity and
intelligence and how they are interrelated. It further represents
the work that Professor Sternberg has done in the past thirty
years.
The text would be most useful for a beginning psychology
student or anyone who would like an overview of the most
important themes of successful intelligence synthesized
well. In the introduction, Dr. Sternberg relates several humorous
stories about his own experience with I.Q. tests. Having taken
one at a young age, he was surprised about his low score and set
off on a mission to understand what this score meant. He retells
a story about how he administered I.Q. tests to his fellow
students at a young age, getting into trouble with school
authorities as a result. It is interesting that considering just
I.Q., Sternberg comes to the conclusion that the
“world’s cruelest despots and greediest business
tycoons are successfully intelligent…. It is for this
reason that I have now turned my attention to wisdom.” (p.
xviii). As a young student I had a similar experience with
intelligence tests, as I asked my elementary teachers as an eight
year old child why these tests were being used. I was met with
stony silence. This illustrated to me the emotional responses
that surround intelligence tests and testing in America’s
public schools. As the chapters represent a clear overview of the major parts
of the book, I have organized the review to follow according to
their structure. Intelligence The author begins by illustrating the truism that intelligence
observations are very much the product of the observer. Many
individuals make assumptions about others’ intelligence
level based upon the qualities that they personally value and see
as implicit opinion. For example, I thought that when I
served as a teacher in elementary school, I could easily tell
which students would do well from the first day of class by just
watching how “quick” they responded to my questions.
I knew that I could not be judgmental and withheld any final
evaluation until the end of the term. Past definitions of intelligence have included descriptors
such as: facility and imagination, ability to adapt, and the
capacity to obtain more capacity. Questions posed by the author
are:
After comparing Galton, (1869), Binet, (1916), Vygotsky,
(1978), and Gardner (1993), Sternberg concludes that there is
no correct model that stands above all others and that systems
theory might help but not integrate all we know about
intelligence. The author completes the discussion about intelligence by
going beyond the operationalized definition to address
“successful intelligence.” The author cites the work
of Bloom and Gardner (1993) as both emphasizing successful
intelligence in their work. His concept of encouraging this type
of intelligence is to teach to a students’ strength and
correct for their weaknesses. In teaching for successful
intelligence, Sternberg emphasizes teaching for memory learning,
analytical learning, creative and practical learning. This type
of teaching contrasts directly with much of the teaching which
goes on now in light of No Child Left Behind. As I write this in
December of 2008, there is much discontent in local schools here
in California about the attention to testing and lack of creative
outlets provided for students of all grades. One acquires from
this chapter a feeling that teaching for successful intelligence
can be utilized within an accountability-driven system and that
this would be a promising direction for schools to
take. Creativity Creativity is defined as the “ability to produce work
that is novel, (that is, original, unexpected), high in quality,
and appropriate (that is useful, meets task constraints),
Sternberg, (1988b). The fact that creativity is not a top
research topic is clear after reading this
chapter. In this chapter the author is opinionated regarding the use of
simple “creativity” tests to ascertain divergent
thinking. He points out authors such as DeBono (1971) among
others as popularizing terms such as types of “thinking
hats” which he feels is not based upon
research. He does review the literature on creativity and illustrates
that the thinking on creativity has evolved and that we have no
definitive author on the subject. He does note that an individual
should have an I.Q. of at least 120 before they can begin to
address solutions to problems in a creative way. Sternberg, (p.
110) included several ways to encourage creativity
including:
Another discussion later in this chapter is the importance
that “integration” might play in the concept of
creativity. Sternberg uses the example of Rob Silvers’
photomosaic art in which he uses thousands of tiny pictures to
create a new picture. The artist was able to revisit the work of
George Seurat’s pointillist technique of using many small
dots to form a larger work. To conclude this chapter, it is recognized by Sternberg, that
history, the notion of creativity and culture are intertwined.
The example of Bach is a good one. Here is a musician who was
noted in his time for moving music incrementally forward but who
now is regarded as a genius in redefining Baroque music. In many
ways creativity is in the eye of the beholder and may change over
history and over cultural change. Few would deny that Shakespeare
was a creative genius either in his time or ours, so some
measures are timeless. Wisdom and its Inter-Relationship between Intelligence and
Creativity Sternberg concludes the text with some observations about
wisdom and how this might differ from intelligence and
creativity. He notes that even though there is a rise in IQs, the
rate of global conflict has not abated. He notes that wisdom is
“ the power of judging rightly and following the soundest
course of action, based on knowledge, experience,
understanding,” (Webster’s New World College
Dictionary, 1997, p. 1533). There are many personal observations about wisdom in this
chapter. Again, wisdom is in the eye of the beholder and
Sternberg does make several statements based upon his personal
opinion. For example, he makes the observation that neither
President Clinton nor President Nixon were “wise”
individuals. Also noted in this chapter is the correlation
between the artist, intelligence and creativity. The text concludes with the importance of all the
components—intelligence, creativity and wisdom in being
able to select, adapt and shape the environment. It is clear from
this summarizing section that Sternberg regards intelligence as
the foundation for serving the common good through a balance of
extrapersonal, interpersonal and intrapersonal
application. Use of this Text This text provides a good overview of the literature on
creativity, wisdom, and intelligence. It contains over
six-hundred and fifty references. However, it should be noted
that over two-hundred of these references are Sternberg
references to his work so the reader will acquire a compilation
of his work—other authors are not given the same numeric
consideration. I would recommend this text for those in beginning psychology
classes or for teachers in middle-school through high school.
This book would be excellent for a faculty discussion for a
charter school that would be focused on creativity. There is
little “new” research but an excellent summary of
“what is.” References Bloom, B.S. (1976). Human characteristics and
school learning. New York: McGraw-Hill. Binet, A., & Simon, T. (1916). The development of
intelligence in children.
Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins (originally published in
1905). DeBono, E. (1971). Lateral thinking for management.
New York: McGraw-Hill Galton F. (1869). Hereditary genius: An inquiry into its
laws and
Consequences. London: Macmillan. Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple intelligences: The
theory in practice. New York:
Basic Books. Sternberg, R.J. (Ed.) (1988b). The nature of creativity:
Contemporary
psychological perspectives. New York: Cambridge
University Press. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of
higher
psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. Webster, (1997). Webster’s New World dictionary.
New York: McGraw Hill. About the Reviewer Dr. June Schmieder-Ramirez is the current academic chair of
the Organizational Leadership Doctoral Program at Pepperdine
University. She is a full professor and past interim Associate
Dean who has worked in the Education Division for eighteen years.
She is also the author of several texts with Arthur Townley on
school finance, law and personnel. She is also the co-author with
Dr. Jack McManus of the text: The Accreditors are Coming!, The
Accreditors are Coming! published by Kendall Hunt
Publishing, Dubuque, Iowa. |
Dowdy-Kilgour, J. (2008). <cite>PhD Stories: Conversations with My Sisters</cite>. Reviewed by Ezella McPherson, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Dowdy-Kilgour, J. (2008). PhD Stories : Conversations with My Sisters . Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc. Pp. ...
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