New Issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy Now Online and Upcoming Seminar

The new issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy, on the theme "Who Defines the Public in Public Education?," can be found here. The idea for this issue's theme was sparked by the ruthless and seemingly politically motivated ban on Mexican American Studies in the Tucson, Arizona school district, after years of the MAS curriculum being taught in Tucson without controversy. All of the authors included in this issue speak to the questions, both pedagogical and philosophical, arising in the wake of the Mexican American Studies ban in Tucson. The article in the new issue by former Tucson MAS teacher Curtis Acosta addresses the root of this controversy and Mr. Acosta will be joining the Western Washington University community in a discussion of his article, via webcam, on May 14th, 4-6pm. The upcoming seminar is sponsored by Western's Center for Education, Equity and Diversity, as well as the Journal of Educational Controversy and the Woodring College of Education. (Watch an interview with Curtis Acosta conducted last fall by JEC editor Lorraine Kasprisin and associate editor John Richardson here.)

The article titles, authors, and affiliations of the authors for this volume of the Journal of Educational Controversy are:

"Ask Not Only Who Defines the Curriculum: Rather Ask Too What the Curriculum Aim Should Be"

Walter Feinberg

Charles Hardie Professor, Emeritus

The University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana

"Religious Citizens in a Secular Public: Separate, Equal?"

John F. Covaleskie

University of Oklahoma

"Reading NCLB as a Form of Structural Violence"

Kerry Burch

Northern Illinois University

"Critical Study of the Concept of 'Public Identity' as Manifested in Postmodernist Versions of Critical Pedagogy"

Boaz Tsabar

Hebrew University, Israel

"The Public and Its Problem: Dewey, Habermas, and Levinas"

Guoping Zhao

Oklahoma State University

"Attack of the Cyborgs: 'Economic Imperialism' and the Human Deficit in Educational Policy-Making and Research"

Scott Ellison

University of Tennessee

"Middle School Students, Slam Poetry and the Notion of Citizenship"

Anthony M. Pellegrino, George Mason University

Kristien Zenkov, George Mason Univeristy

Gerardo Aponte-Martinez, Michigan State University

"Dangerous Minds in Tucson: The Banning of Mexican American Studies and Critical Thinking in Arizona"

Curtis Acosta

Former Teacher of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District

Editorial: "Who Defines the Public in Pubic Education"

Lorraine Kasprisin

Editor of the Journal of Educational Controversy

Western Washington University

"Interview with Ari Palos, Film Director of Precious Knowledge" 

Celina Meza

JEC Editorial Staff

Western Washington University

New "Call for Papers" for 10th Anniversary Features an Open Issue

10th YEAR ANNIVERSARY ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL CONTROVERSY FEATURES AN OPEN ISSUE

CALL FOR PAPERS

In previous issues of the Journal of Educational Controversy, we have defined a contemporary controversy and asked our authors to examine the issue. For our 10th year anniversary issue, we have decided to have an open issue where authors can define their own controversy. We ask authors to consider these points in developing their ideas:

1. Define an educational controversy – formal or informal education, K-12, college or university, adult education, secular or religious education, or larger philosophical issues in the educational ethos of a society or a culture. The issue can be a contemporary one or a perennial one that is revisited.

2. Explain the significance of the problem.

3. Provide an historical and philosophical framework for the controversy.

4. Lay out the different arguments surrounding the controversy.

5. Examine the underlying assumptions and resulting implications of the different positions.

6. Provide suggestions to resolve the issues raised and provide supporting arguments.

We remind authors that we publish controversies that are deeply embedded in our conceptual frameworks. The journal tries to distinguish between surface controversies and latent or depth controversies.

For example, schools engage students in controversies all the time and are embedded themselves in controversies. Most of these controversies engage us in disagreements on a surface level. That is not to say that these discussions are unimportant – only that they take place with assumptions that remain unstated and beliefs that remain largely hidden or submerged. And so we talk about learning outcomes, required competencies, and the kind of rubrics we should be using to assess student outcomes. The journal tries to go deeper by examining the very frameworks in which all these surface controversies arose – to get at our underlying assumptions and beliefs.

Here is our statement from the journal's introductory page:

The purpose of this peer reviewed journal is to provide a national and international forum for examining the dilemmas and controversies that arise in teaching and learning in a pluralistic, democratic society. Because many of the tensions in public school and university policies and practices are deeply rooted in the tensions inherent in the philosophy of a liberal democratic state, many of the value conflicts in public schools and universities can only be understood within the context of this larger public philosophy. In effect, the conflicting assumptions underlying our public philosophy frame our questions, define our problems and construct the solutions that shape our practices, policies, and research agendas. This journal will try to help clarify that public debate and deepen an understanding of its moral significance.

PUBLICATION DATE: FALL 2015
DEADLINE FOR MANUSCRIPTS: JANUARY 1, 2015

10th Year Anniversary Issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy will Feature an Open Issue

Since our inaugural issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy, we have been publishing scenarios around controversial issues in education. With the 10th anniversary of the journal coming up in 2015, we thought we would have an open issue. We invite authors to submit their own controversial issue and their response to it. Just remember that we are interested in controversies that are deeply embedded in our conceptual frameworks. The journal tries to distinguish between surface controversies and latent or depth controversies.

Schools engage students in controversies all the time and are embedded themselves in controversies. Most of these controversies engage us in disagreements on a surface level. That is not to say that these discussions are unimportant – only that they take place with assumptions that remain unstated and beliefs that remain largely hidden or submerged. And so we talk about learning outcomes, required competencies, and the kind of rubrics we should be using to assess student outcomes. The journal tries to go deeper by examining the very frameworks in which all these surface controversies arose – to get at our underlying assumptions and beliefs.

Here is our statement from the journal's introductory page:

The purpose of this peer reviewed journal is to provide a national and international forum for examining the dilemmas and controversies that arise in teaching and learning in a pluralistic, democratic society. Because many of the tensions in public school and university policies and practices are deeply rooted in the tensions inherent in the philosophy of a liberal democratic state, many of the value conflicts in public schools and universities can only be understood within the context of this larger public philosophy. In effect, the conflicting assumptions underlying our public philosophy frame our questions, define our problems and construct the solutions that shape our practices, policies, and research agendas. This journal will try to help clarify that public debate and deepen an understanding of its moral significance.

We are announcing this issue early to give time for authors to think about a controversy they would like to write about. We will send out official notices later.

Call for Papers for the Journal of Educational Controversy

We invite authors to contribute to our Volume 9 Number 1 issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy on the theme: "Challenging the Deficit Model and the Pathologizing of Children: Envisioning Alternative Models."  This issue will once again be co-edited with Susan Donnelly, who was guest editor for our issue on "The Education and Schools our Children Deserve."

CALL FOR PAPERS

THEME: Challenging the Deficit Model and the Pathologizing of Children: Envisioning Alternative Models

CONTROVERSY ADDRESSED:


Martin Seligman, founder of the field of positive psychology, has said that, “Modern psychology has been co-opted by the disease model. We've become too preoccupied with repairing damage when our focus should be on building strength and resilience, especially in children.” Is this also true of modern education? Political and pedagogical responses, from the “War on Poverty” through “No Child Left Behind” to address the educational gaps in academic achievement of historically marginalized and neglected groups (the poor, minorities and children with disabilities), were often deeply rooted in a language of cultural deprivation and special needs. Has this deficit model begun to surreptitiously creep into our educational discourse for all children? Have we become too focused on needs and deficiencies and forgotten that children also have capacities and strengths? Does the current emphasis on accountability and standardized testing contribute to the pathologizing of children? We invite authors to respond critically to this argument, envision alternative models, examine historical causes and precedents, analyze political and social ramifications, and share real life stories on the influence these ways of thinking have on the classroom and on the learning as experienced by students.

DEADLINE FOR MANUSCRIPTS: APRIL 1, 2014

PUBLICATION DATE: FALL 2014

School-to-Prison Pipeline Issue Now Online

We are pleased to announce that our special issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy on the School-to-Prison Pipeline and the School-to-Deportation Pipeline is now online at: http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CEP/eJournal/v007n001/


Readers are invited to contribute a rejoinder to any article in this issue.

The School-to-Prison Pipeline: A Civil Rights and a Civil Liberty Issue

The School-to-Prison Pipeline: A Civil Rights and a Civil Liberty Issue


An Editorial Preview of Upcoming Issue



The School-to-Prison Pipeline stands as a direct contradiction to the vision of the public school as an institution for promoting and sustaining a democratic republic. Each year thousands of students are funneled through the public schools into the juvenile justice system as a result of school policies and practices that increasingly criminalize students rather than educate them. Most are students of color, students with disabilities, and students from impoverished neighborhoods. How and why this is happening is the focus of this issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy.



Research indicates that both the number of school suspensions and expulsions have increased dramatically as well as the kind of behaviors and infractions that result in suspensions and expulsions. Data from the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights indicate that over three million students are suspended and over 100,000 students are expelled each year. 1 This rate has almost doubled in the past thirty years. Research also shows a relationship among expulsions, suspensions and school dropouts and subsequent involvement in the juvenile justice system. According to national figures, “high school dropouts are three and one-half times more likely than high school graduates to be arrested, and more than eight times as likely to be incarcerated.”2

Zero-tolerance policies, the overuse of school discipline and juvenile court referrals, exclusionary discipline policies, excessive policing in schools, the criminalization of disability-related behaviors, and pressures and abuse from the high-stakes testing environment are often cited as contributing factors. Together these policies and practices have resulted in the violation of three of our most basic democratic principles:

1. Right to an Education

2. Right to Non-Discrimination

3. Right to Due Process

The disruptions and denial of education as a result of suspensions, expulsions and exclusionary disciplinary policies have threatened the right to an education, especially when students are given indefinite expulsions without recourse to an alternative education route. The disproportionate impact on different student populations, especially on students of color and students with disabilities and emotional problems, has resulted in discriminatory treatment. And the process that often funnels students from the public school into the juvenile justice system often violates fundamental due process procedures. Most important, if the philosopher and educator, John Dewey, was correct in his theory that children learn what they experience, what are these school policies and practices teaching our children about the fundamental principles of our democracy?

A reconstructed example illustrates all three violations. A young student of color in an urban school in an impoverished neighborhood is confronted by a police resource officer in the hallway. Suddenly the young student finds himself in handcuffs and arrested for speaking back and for defiant and disrespectful behavior. Infractions that would have been treated as a school disciplinary incident have now become a criminal act. This often results when the concepts of school discipline and criminal acts are not clearly defined in a school policy, and the role of school administrators and police resource officers are not clearly distinguished. The role of police is to ensure safety and stop criminal acts, not to discipline students for breaking school rules. Are these misunderstandings that result in criminal arrest due to a lack in the training of school resource officers in cultural differences and a failure to understand the special needs of adolescent development? How aware is the student of his or her rights to due process at this point. How will this experience lead to school alienation and future dropout? What has this incident taught the student about our democratic principles? The complexity of any specific incident has led many authors in our issue to talk about a “persistent nexus or a web of intertwined, punitive threads” rather than a simple pipeline that our young people get caught up in.3

The purpose of this issue of the journal is to bring awareness and understanding to this complex nexus of events. The issue is going online at a very opportune moment. The United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights held its first ever hearing on the school-to-prison pipeline on December 12, 2012, an event that brought national attention to the problem. In this issue, our authors complement the testimony that was given at the hearing with a deeper, multidimensional analysis.

The following controversy was posed for authors to address:

The School to Prison Pipeline refers to a national trend in which school policies and practices are increasingly resulting in criminalizing students rather than educating them. Statistics indicate that the number of suspensions, expulsions, dropouts or “pushouts,” and juvenile justice confinements is growing. Moreover, there is a disproportionate impact on students of color and students with disabilities and emotional problems. In this issue, we invite authors to examine the policy implications, the political ramifications, and the causes and possible solutions to this problem. Moreover, what are these policies teaching our children?

There are five different sections.

Section 1 includes authors’ responses to the controversy itself and covers multiple perspectives and dimensions of the problem.

Section 2 looks at other related pipelines like the “School to Deportation” Pipeline.

Section 3, entitled, “From Theory To Activism: Perspectives from Youth Advocacy Groups In Washington State,” brings together a description of the activism and recommendations by groups in the trenches who have been trying to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. The groups include the Center for Children and Youth Justice, Team Child, the League of Education Voters and the Washington State Education Ombudsman, an office that may be the first of its kind in the nation.

Section 4 provides the reader with a video of an interview with one of our authors. Justice Bobbe Bridge, former justice of the Washington State Supreme Court, who started the Center for Children and Youth Justice, discusses a more proactive approach that the courts can use to reach young people who are truant and disengaged from the school before they enter the school-to-prison pipeline. We have also inserted a video from an earlier forum that the journal sponsored in which Rose Spidell, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, talks about the cases that have come to the ACLU and the actions that were taken. In the near future, we will put online other video interviews with our authors. The videos can be accessed by clicking on the “Authors Talk” link on the journal’s menu.

We finally conclude in Section 5 with three book reviews on the subject.

I want to thank my guest co-editor, Daniel Larner, for all his work in helping to conceptualize this issue and select the included papers from our many submissions. Dan is a professor at the Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University and has been a longtime member of the ACLU Board of Directors in Washington State. In addition to his courses in theatre arts, Dan also teaches courses in civil liberties at the college. His editorial reflects his own unique perspective on this topic from a lifetime devoted to promoting civil liberties and teaching young people to understand the meanings and significance of these cornerstones of our democracy. Readers can read an earlier article by Dan that was published in the Winter 2010 issue of the journal, entitled, “Educating Politicians as Playwrights: Toward a Sustainable World in Creative Conflict.”



1Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Civil Rights Data Collection, available at http://ocrdata.ed.gov/.

2Bridge, B.J., Curtis, L.E., Oakley,N., “No Single Source, No Simple Solution: Why We Should Broaden Our Perspective of the School-to-Prison-Pipeline and Look to the Court in Redirecting Youth from It,” Journal of Educational Controversy, Fall 2012/Winter2013.

3Gebhard, A., “Schools, Prisons and Aboriginal Youth: Making Connections,” Journal of Educational Controversy, Fall 2012/Winter2013.

CALL FOR PAPERS -- UPCOMING ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL CONTROVERSY

NEW CALL FOR PAPERS: JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL CONTROVERSY


VOL. 8 NO. 1 Fall 2013

THEME: WHO DEFINES THE PUBLIC IN PUBLIC EDUCATION

CONTROVERSY ADDRESSED:

Our journal published an article recently on the banning of the Mexican-American curriculum in Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District. The incident raises many larger questions about what knowledge is of most worth, whose perspective gains ascendency in the curriculum, and what public is represented in the public schools. Controversies have emerged not only over what should be included in specific areas like the literary canon, historical interpretations, science curriculum, etc., but also in the larger arena of ideological frameworks over what it means to be human, what it means to be an educated person, and what social values should frame a public education in a society that embeds a fundamental tension between its capitalist economic system and its democratic egalitarian ideals. Even the tension between the secular and the religious continues to defy easy answers in a society that values separation between church and state. As Warren Nord says about the typical study of economics, it assumes that “economics is a science, people are essentially self-interested utility-maximizers, the economic realm is one of competition for scarce resources, values are personal preferences and value judgments are matters of cost-benefit analysis.” (Warren A. Nord, “The Relevance of Religion to the Curriculum,” The School Administrator, January 1999.) In effect, the so-called secular study of economics makes a number of assumptions about human nature, society, and values. What is left out of this study of the economic domain of life is the theologian’s questions of social justice, stewardship, poverty and wealth, human dignity and the meaningfulness of work. To what degree do students understand or are even aware of these hidden assumptions in their study of economics and other subjects? To what degree should other perspectives be included? We invite authors to shed some light on these questions.

MANUSCRIPTS DUE: APRIL 1, 2013

PUBLICATION DATE: FALL 2013

Authors can find the journal at: http://www.wce.wwu.edu/eJournal

Journal’s Authors to Speak at our 14th Annual Educational Law and Social Justice Forum on May 2nd

Our 14th Annual Educational Law and Social Justice Forum this year will feature authors from our current issue of the journal on the theme, “The Education and Schools our Children Deserve.”

Panelists:

■Francisco Rios, Dean of Woodring College of Education

■Susan Donnelly, Head of Whatcom Day Academy and Co-editor

■David Carroll, Woodring Elementary Education Faculty

■Annie Parker, 3rd Grade Teacher, Seattle

■Vale Hartley, Teacher, Whatcom Day Academy

■Paul Shaker, Professor Emeritus and former Dean at Simon Fraser University

The Controversy Addressed:

The politicizing of education at the national level has centered on issues of standards, accountability, global competitiveness, national economic growth, low student achievement on worldwide norms, and federally mandated uniformity. 

Without conversation at this deeper level about the fundamental purposes of education, we cannot develop a comprehensive vision of the kinds of schools our children deserve. We invite authors to contribute their conceptions of the kind of education our children deserve and/or the kinds of schools that serve the needs of individuals and of a democratic society.

There has been little discussion of the public purposes of our schools or what kind of education is necessary for an individual’s development and search for a meaningful life. There is a paucity of ideas being discussed at the national level around topics such as: how school practices can be aligned with democratic principles of equity and justice; how school practices can promote the flourishing of individual development as well as academic achievement; what skills and understandings are needed for citizens to play a transformative role in their society.

Date: May 2, 2012

Time: 5:00 - 7:00pm

Location: Western Washington University
               Center for Education, Equity and Diversity (CEED)
               Miller Hall 005

Contact: CEED Phone: (360) 650-3827

Sponsored by the Journal of Educational Controversy and the Center for Education, Equity and Diversity.

JEC Associate Editor, John Richardson, Receives Award for “Comparing Special Education: Origins to Contemporary Paradoxes”

John Richardson, Associate Editor of the Journal of Educational Controversy and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Western Washington University, has received the “Outstanding Book Award” for contemporary issues in curriculum by Division B of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) for his recent book, Comparing Special Education: Origins to Contemporary Paradoxes. The book is coauthored with Justin J.W. Powell . We reviewed Professor Richardson’s book in our current issue. Read Ellen Brantlinger’s review here.



Congratulations John!

Grace Lee Boggs Responds to our Review of her Book, The Next American Revolution

Our current issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy published two reviews of The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by Grace Lee Boggs with Scott Kurashige.  Actually, one is a traditional book review and the other is a personal open letter to Grace Lee Boggs for the influence the book has had on the life of this reviewer.  The reviewers will be responding to each other later on this blog. We are pleased to print Grace's response as part of our effort to engage our readers in an ongoing conversation.

Grace Lee Boggs Responds to her Reviewers from the Journal of Educational Controversy
with Scott Kurashige

It has been a true joy to see so many diverse peoples turn to this little book for help in understanding how and why another world is necessary, possible, and already in the process of being created. The thoughtful responses by Molly and Victor reveal the huge reserves of humanity that have been repressed by our "civilization" and are being unleashed by the movements of 2011 to heal us.

Their book reviews further help us to understand that people are finding inspiration from the book because they are connecting with a set of ideas whose time has come:


• Maybe it’s because it is giving Americans in all walks of life a more people-friendly view of revolution as empowerment rather than struggle for political power.


• Maybe it helps us view Revolutionaries as Solutionaries, working together to solve very practical problems of daily life, growing our souls by growing our own food.


• Maybe it’s giving us the new, more positive view of ourselves that we’ve been hungry for.


• Maybe it helps us envision ourselves as Revolutionaries, moving away from the wrong side of the world revolution where we have seemed stuck since the Vietnam War.


• Maybe it also helps us see ourselves as Evolutionaries, making the radical revolution of values that Dr. King called for during that war, transformimg ourselves from materialists, militarists, and individualists into a people who can be proud of how we are advancing humankind to a new stage of consciousness, creativity, and social and political responsibility.

To link to the book reviews, go to:

1. A Book Review by Victor Nolet

2. A Personal Open Letter to Grace Lee Boggs by Molly Lawrence

Fifth Anniversary Issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy Now Online: The Education and Schools our Children Deserve

We are pleased to announce the publication of our special issue of the Journal of Educational Controversy on the theme, “The Education and Schools our Children Deserve,” co-edited with Susan Donnelly, head of the Whatcom Day Academy. This issue of the journal will also introduce to our readers the new dean of the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University --- the home of the journal. Dean Francisco Rios brings with him a vision of the public mission of schools in a democratic society and the kinds of teachers that can make that education possible. He shares that vision with us in his first published article for our journal, “The Future of Colleges of Education.”


As I mention in my editorial to the issue, it is fitting that an anniversary issue should touch on one of the most fundamental questions in education – the education and schools our children deserve, as well as engage those ideas in an experimental, innovative format. Readers will see some unique use of multi-media in this issue. For example, in addition to our usual printed book reviews, we have developed our first video review. Two college professors and a school teacher were filmed in our studio engaging in a conversation around Paul Shaker’s book, Reclaiming Education for Democracy: Thinking Beyond No Child Left Behind. The author then responded to the video review of his book in a printed article following the video. Likewise, we are trying an experiment to see if we can extend the conversation started in the journal on the blog. Two reviewers were selected to review Grace Lee Boggs book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century. The author, Grace Lee Boggs and the co-author, Scott Kurashige, will also join in on the conversation. We will be posting the response by Grace Lee Boggs shortly on this blog.


And finally, our entire third section gives the reader a look inside a model school with video interspersed throughout the article. The school, the Whatcom Day Academy, is our partner school in the National League of Democratic Schools. Our partnership has enabled us to engage with actual practices and to share them with our readers.


We extend an invitation to our readership to engage the authors and the reviewers on our blog in a continuing, seamless conversation. It again exemplifies our attempt to generate an ongoing dialogue in the journal with scholars, practitioners and the general public.


We are dedicating this issue to Alfie Kohn, whose book, The Schools our Children Deserve, was the inspiration for this issue. In his prologue to this issue, Mr. Kohn reflects on the years since the publication of The Schools our Children Deserve and the need more than ever to be asking what kind of schools our children still deserve.


The issue is divided into three sections.


Section one is a series of articles that were written in response to the controversial scenario posed for the issue. Authors come at it from different perspectives and with different disciplinary tools, but together they form a vital chorus of important voices that look at “the education and schools our children deserve” from outside the dominant discourse that frames today’s political debates.


Section two is an “In the News” section. Here we took a very controversial issue in the news, namely, the Arizona legislation to ban ethnic studies in the schools. Under a copy of the legislation that our readers can read in its entirety, we published an article from the director of the school district that was under attack. Augustine Romero tells his own story about the events that took place in Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District.

Section three is our attempt to give readers an idea of what a “school meant for children” would look like. This section embeds some twenty-three videos of actual school classrooms in an article written by Susan Donnelly, the head of the Whatcom Day Academy. The Educational Institute for Democratic Renewal, which houses the Journal of Educational Controversy, has partnered with the Whatcom Day Academy as part of a network of schools started by John Goodlad called the National League of Democratic Schools.


We believe that the current political dialogue on education omits a discussion of the deepest questions we should be addressing. This issue was an attempt to address those questions.


Here is the controversy that was posed to the authors:

The politicizing of education at the national level has centered on issues of standards, accountability, global competitiveness, national economic growth, low student achievement on worldwide norms, and federally mandated uniformity. There has been little discussion of the public purposes of our schools or what kind of education is necessary for an individual’s development and search for a meaningful life. There is a paucity of ideas being discussed at the national level around topics such as: how school practices can be aligned with democratic principles of equity and justice; how school practices can promote the flourishing of individual development as well as academic achievement; what skills and understandings are needed for citizens to play a transformative role in their society. Without conversation at this deeper level about the fundamental purposes of education, we cannot develop a comprehensive vision of the kinds of schools our children deserve. We invite authors to contribute their conceptions of the kind of education our children deserve and/or the kinds of schools that serve the needs of individuals and of a democratic society.

We invite our readers to enjoy reading the issue and join in the conversation.

Welcoming the New Year with our Fifth Anniversary Edition of the Journal of Educational Controversy

We will soon be welcoming in the new year with the publication of our Fifth Anniversary Edition of the Journal of Educational Controversy.  Our delay was caused by our attempts to experiment with new and innovative approaches in our electronic journal.  For example, one section of our upcoming issue brings the reader inside a model school in the National League of Democratic Schools with a unique combination of print, websites, documents and video.  We have over twenty videos of actual classroom practices that are embedded in the article.  We also tried an experiment with our book review section.  In place of one of the printed reviews, we feature a video with two professors and a school teacher discussing the book with a printed response by the author to the review of his book following the video.  We believe that an electronic journal should not just be a clone of a printed journal, but should take advantage of everything this new medium makes possible. 

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all our readers for their loyal support of our journal.  Send your ideas to us for future issues.  We are also opening up our pool of reviewers.  If you are interested in becoming a reviewer for the Journal of Educational Controversy, send us your vita at: CEP-eJournal@wwu.edu.

School to Prison Pipeline -- Call for Papers from the Journal of Educational Controversy

The Journal of Educational Controversy announces its call for papers for Volume 7 Number 1.

THEME: The School-to-Prison Pipeline


CONTROVERSY ADDRESSED:

The School-to-Prison Pipeline refers to a national trend in which school policies and practices are increasingly resulting in criminalizing students rather than educating them. Statistics indicate that the number of suspensions, expulsions, dropouts or “pushouts,” and juvenile justice confinements is growing. Moreover, there is a disproportionate impact on students of color and students with disabilities and emotional problems. In this issue, we invite authors to examine the policy implications, the political ramifications, and the causes and possible solutions to this problem. Moreover, what are these policies teaching our children?


DEADLINE FOR MANUSCRIPTS: DECEMBER 31, 2011
PUBLICATION DATE: SUMMER 2012

http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CEP/eJournal/