Editorial Statement

In 2008, at one of her last public addresses at an AERA Annual Meeting, Dr. Maxine Greene, in response to a question about how to counter the growing tide of testing, privatization of schools, and institutionalization of education, encouraged her audience of eager listeners to “cultivate appropriate outrage.” A week later, back home in my university office, I took those three simple words, which embodied an empowered response to an encroaching educational bureaucracy, and created a poster for my door.

A few years later, in 2013, at Kappa Delta Pi's Biennial Convocation in Dallas, Carrie Gaffney (then serving as Managing Editor for The Educational Forum) and I stood at the back of a crowded auditorium listening to KDP Laureate Dr. Michael Apple deliver an impassioned speech about what he perceived to be disturbing, emerging, and ongoing trends in education. His stance was simultaneously emotional and professional as well as galvanizing, his words echoing Dr. Greene's gentle but definite mandate of defiance. Carrie and I turned to each other and said, almost simultaneously, “Guest Editor!” This issue of The Educational Forum on The Politics of Educational Reforms brings to life the energizing urgency and “cultivated appropriate outrage,” even anger, we heard that day.

But this issue goes beyond mere anger to offer our readers a multifaceted collection of articles that looks closely and prescriptively at how we can, and maybe should, shape the nature of education as a transformative experience for all school stakeholders, as the demand for educational reform echoes once again.

In any course dealing with the foundations of education or curriculum theory and history that I have taught or attended, one theme has emerged across all settings: Education and other large-scale domains such as curriculum, assessment, or instructional strategies are products of ideology enacted in practice. Contemporary notions of education and the ongoing attempts to educate for liberatory consciousness (as opposed to perpetuating an oppressive status quo) posit that educational experiences and choices are not neutral and that education demands a multitude of decisions that will be lived by millions of school children and other stakeholders. These decisions and the work resulting from them are often deeply rooted in specific and often conscious political ideologies, philosophies, and a sense of life. In a 1995 essay, O'Loughlin used metaphors from L. Frank Baum's iconic The Wizard of Oz to vividly illustrate how power, positionality, and paradigmatic perspectives are embedded into educational experiences. Further, O'Loughlin argued that even though critical pedagogy entails educating to unmask the hidden ideologies in educational constructs, it is naïve to expect the powerful to cede their power simply by being exposed, and that the nature of power is to come back fuller force in retaliation.

In this issue, Schirmer and Apple open their article with a simple but encompassing statement that recalls what O'Loughlin warned us about: “Education is a fundamentally ethical and political act.” This elegant tenet, which says so much with great economy, extends to the often complex and contradictory trends of ongoing educational reforms.

As the group of authors, teachers, researchers, and activists assembled for this issue reminds us, the political influences on education, including those that are well intentioned, warrant continual monitoring and revision so that the work can remain transparent and fluid, rather than commoditized and exclusive. At a time when educational debate, stance, and argument may seem intensely heated and fractionated, the transnational educational community may need to attend more closely to how and why large-scale decisions are being made and what the implications of those decisions might be. Questions again arise about the nature, purpose, and practice of schooling from both theoretical and practical standpoints.

One vital issue is illustrated by an early quote in the article authored by Hursh and Martina, who suggest, “Schools have become places where teachers and students no longer engage in what should be a collaborative process of making sense of the world, but instead are places where teachers and students focus on passing the tests.” In an overarching way, the articles in this issue argue for ways of understanding how the political is present in the practical, in relation to the work of educators at every level. Further, if we intend to encourage a critical consciousness in our growing schoolchildren, we may need to start with applying those concepts to our own commitment to teaching and learning as ways of enacting social justice.

I expect our readers will have a wide range of reactions to the work presented in this issue. My hope is that this guest-edited issue will illuminate the implications of our current political-epistemic landscape, and inspire and cultivate some appropriate outrage, anger, and conversation. We are grateful to Dr. Apple and the contributing authors for their provocative work that questions what some may be willing to accept without questioning.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alan Amtzis

Dr. Alan Amtzis is Director of the Master of Education Program in Educational Leadership: Instruction for The College of New Jersey. A former English teacher, special education teacher, and school principal of a therapeutic school for adolescents in recovery for drug and alcohol problems, he received his doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from Boston College in 2003. Dr. Amtzis served for four years as Chair of the Teacher-as-Researcher Special Interest Group for the American Educational Research Association and currently serves as their Historian and Immediate Past Chair. His research and professional interests include teacher research and practitioner inquiry, creativity development, arts-based education, narrative and other forms of qualitative research methodology and assessment, and new and emerging issues about teaching, learning, and knowledge. He has presented his work on teacher education, therapeutic education, research methodology, reflective practice, and creativity development at more than 40 regional, national, and international professional research conferences.