Thomas Popkewitz – författare

The book brings together contributions from curriculum history, cultural studies, visual cultures, and science and technology studies to explore the international mobilizations of the sciences related to education during the post-World War Two years. Crossing the boundaries of education and science studies, it uniquely examines how the desires of science to actualize a better society were converted to the search for remaking social life that paradoxically embodied cultural differences and social divisions.

The book examines how cybernetics and systems theories traveled and were assembled to turn schools into social experiments and laboratories for change. Explored are the new comparative technologies of quantification and the visualization of educational data used in the methods of mass observation. The sciences not only about the present but also the potentialities of societies and people in the psychologies of childhood; concerns for individual development, growth, and creativity; teacher education; and the quantification and assessments of educational systems. The book also explores how the categories and classifications of the sciences formed at intersections with the humanities, the arts, and political practices.

This informative volume will be of interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of curriculum studies, the history of the social sciences, the history of education, and cultural studies, and to educators and school leaders concerned with education policy.

The book brings together contributions from curriculum history, cultural studies, visual cultures, and science and technology studies to explore the international mobilizations of the sciences related to education during the post-World War Two years. Crossing the boundaries of education and science studies, it uniquely examines how the desires of science to actualize a better society were converted to the search for remaking social life that paradoxically embodied cultural differences and social divisions.

The book examines how cybernetics and systems theories traveled and were assembled to turn schools into social experiments and laboratories for change. Explored are the new comparative technologies of quantification and the visualization of educational data used in the methods of mass observation. The sciences not only about the present but also the potentialities of societies and people in the psychologies of childhood; concerns for individual development, growth, and creativity; teacher education; and the quantification and assessments of educational systems. The book also explores how the categories and classifications of the sciences formed at intersections with the humanities, the arts, and political practices.

This informative volume will be of interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of curriculum studies, the history of the social sciences, the history of education, and cultural studies, and to educators and school leaders concerned with education policy.

This book explores the complex social assumptions and values that underlie research programmes about schools. The analysis of educational research draws upon American and European scholarships in the sociology of knowledge, social philosophy and the history and sociology of science. The discussion considers first the communal, crafts and social characteristics of educational research. Three research models empirical-analytic, symbolic or linguistic and critical sciences are given attention. The discussion of the three research models is to illuminate how the constellation of commitments, assumptions and practices inter-relate to perform a paradigm giving different and conflicting definitions to the meaning of educational theory and to the use of the particular techniques of enquiry. The social role of educational research and the researcher is also considered.

This book explores the complex social assumptions and values that underlie research programmes about schools. The analysis of educational research draws upon American and European scholarships in the sociology of knowledge, social philosophy and the history and sociology of science. The discussion considers first the communal, crafts and social characteristics of educational research. Three research models empirical-analytic, symbolic or linguistic and critical sciences are given attention. The discussion of the three research models is to illuminate how the constellation of commitments, assumptions and practices inter-relate to perform a paradigm giving different and conflicting definitions to the meaning of educational theory and to the use of the particular techniques of enquiry. The social role of educational research and the researcher is also considered.

Challenging conventional ways of thinking about school reforms and teacher education, this book analyses how the "knowledge systems" which organize how teachers’ observe, supervise, and evaluate children produces norms that have the effect of excluding children who are poor and of color. Building on Struggling for the Soul (1998), his original study of the day-to-day life of new teachers in the Teach for America program, Popkewitz delves deeper into how the teaching and learning practices of urban and rural schools. Applying an ethnographic focus to how difference and divisions are produced to exclude despite efforts to include, he explores the complexities of educational change and raises important questions about the politics of schooling, knowledge and power. This book provides an original way of thinking about ethnography through a critical post-foundational approach.

Conceptually focusing the ethnography of "the system of reason" that organizes teacher practices, the analysis offers a critical lens to understand the contemporary politics of school reform, the limits of teacher research, and suggests why current teacher and teacher education reforms may conserve the very conditions required for change. Beyond its relevance to U.S. schools, the conceptual and methodological resources of the book have relevance internationally, especially given the global important of education responding to cultural and social diversity through teacher and teacher education reforms.

Challenging conventional ways of thinking about school reforms and teacher education, this book analyses how the "knowledge systems" which organize how teachers’ observe, supervise, and evaluate children produces norms that have the effect of excluding children who are poor and of color. Building on Struggling for the Soul (1998), his original study of the day-to-day life of new teachers in the Teach for America program, Popkewitz delves deeper into how the teaching and learning practices of urban and rural schools. Applying an ethnographic focus to how difference and divisions are produced to exclude despite efforts to include, he explores the complexities of educational change and raises important questions about the politics of schooling, knowledge and power. This book provides an original way of thinking about ethnography through a critical post-foundational approach.

Conceptually focusing the ethnography of "the system of reason" that organizes teacher practices, the analysis offers a critical lens to understand the contemporary politics of school reform, the limits of teacher research, and suggests why current teacher and teacher education reforms may conserve the very conditions required for change. Beyond its relevance to U.S. schools, the conceptual and methodological resources of the book have relevance internationally, especially given the global important of education responding to cultural and social diversity through teacher and teacher education reforms.

Problematizing the "reason" of schooling as historical and political, in this book leading international and interdisciplinary scholars challenge the common sense of schooling and the relation of society, education, and curriculum studies. Examining the limits of contemporary notions of power and schooling, the argument is that the principles that order school subjects, the curriculum, and teaching reforms are historical practices that govern what is thought, acted on, and talked about. Highlighting the dynamics of social exclusion, the normalizing of people through curriculum, and questions of social inclusion, The "Reason" of Schooling underscores the urgency for rethinking curriculum research.