For Thursday, February 24
        Please read and bring these items to class:
            ( 897s05_Feb_24.pdf -- This 472K PDF file contains all of the readings linked below.
                        [ The links below are html versions for most of them.] )

1. Curriculum, the Culture Wars, Intellectual Freedom and Political Control

   1. School curriculum fights increasingly put children in culture war crossfire

   2. Cases in U.S. federal courts
      (note: I have abridged the court opinions to remove material [on legal process issues, etc.] that could distract attention from the curriculum questions that are more important for purposes of our course. Don't worry about the legal process in these cases (but ask me if there's something you are wondering about): We are just focusing on the ideas about curriculum that are explicit or implicit in these opinions.

   note: either a series of *** or \\\\\\\\\\\\ will indicate places where I have deleted text from these opinions. Where a section of footnotes has been deleted, it may look like this:

   - - - - - -Footnotes- - - - - - - - - -End Footnotes- - - - -

   • Boring v. Buncombe, US Ct App (NC, 1998) -- abridged for EDUC 897
   • "Virgil"- US Dist Ct in Fla-1988 (abridged for EDUC 897)
   • PICO -- US Sup Ct (1982) -- abridged for EDUC 897
     With seven Supreme Court Justices writing separate opinions in the Pico case, the combined text from those opinions is still a bit lengthy, even after my abridgments, so I have highlighted passages expounding the key points for our discussion. It's OK if you only read the highlighted passages in Pico, but the context of those highlighted passages is retained, so you can see the Justices' own explication of their meaning.)
   •  Hafen: Hazelwood Reaffirms First Amendment Values
2. Professionalization vs. Deregulation
   1. Cochran-Smith & Fries. Sticks, Stones, and Ideology: The Discourse of Reform in Teacher Education (pdf)
   2. Ravitch: A Brief History of Teacher Professionalism
   3. Raudenbush - Scientifically Based Research

miniproject

        For Week 3: Professionalization / Science-Based Research

For this mini project, please select one of these two topics:

1. Whether the practice of curriculum is work that calls for teachers to practice as "professionals"; or

2. Whether "science-based research," as exemplified by controlled experimentation in fields like medicine and agriculture, should be adopted as the preferred basis for decisions about curriculum policy and practice.

For either of these topics, please keep in mind the following considerations:

1. Please be as clear as possible about how you think the central concepts should be understood. For example, what do you see as the meaning of "professional," as when people argue over whether teachers' work is an example of "professional" practice?

2. Please be as clear as possible about what you see as the most important relationships between the nature of teachers' practice and the meaning of "professionalism," or the nature of education and the relevance of "scientific" research. Don't try to write an essay that covers all the issues. Write an essay that succinctly explains what you see as the most important or decisive considerations.

3. This mini-project does NOT call for bringing in any sources or readings outside of the assigned papers. You should not try to summarize the papers, but you should try to make clear to readers the basis for important disagreements that you may have with the arguments presented in our readings on your topic.

4. Although outside resources are not called for, examples that provide concrete illustrations of your thinking are often helpful.

The deadline is again 11:55 pm Monday night (Feb. 28), but please have it done Sunday if possible.

supplemental item (not assigned for this week) :

• Hiebert, et al. (2002) - A Knowledge Base for the Teaching Profession: What Would It Look Like and How Can We Get One? (111K pdf)
  I will refer to this in class (if not this week, then later); but I thought I'd post it now in relation to Eileen's Webtalk posting on Scientifically Based Research and Professionalism (2/19).