Finding what sustains you professionally and personally: a response to the election of Donald Trump

Abstract

For many US citizens, the election of Donald Trump was an event that will be etched into our collective psyche. As educational researchers, the challenge is how to prevent it from becoming an Event with a capital E. That almost 63 million US voters, many of whom have attended or graduated from public schools, supported Donald Trump makes the problem OUR problem. Thus, how to conduct more inclusive and expansive research is the first step followed by maintaining a sense of urgency so that we recommit to the ideals of public education without being distracted by noise of tweets and Executive orders. The essay offers professional and personal insights into promoting reflective dialogues.

Keywords:

• Inclusive research designs
• educational narratives
• unintended consequences
• social justice
• pluralism

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Maysaa Barakat, Mounir Bourkiza, Jeffrey Brooks, Dilys Schoorman, and Carolyn Shields for their comments to an earlier draft.

Notes

See also http://aeradivisiona.org/invited-commentary.html.

1. There is no one work of the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard to cite. His analyses of reality, hyper-reality and events which depart from the on-going globalized world order influenced my conceptual framework here.