This post contains all of the material for the doctoral proseminar — Introduction to Big Issues in the Field of Education — that I taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Education for the last four years of my time there.
The aim of this class is to give first-year doctoral students in education a grounding in some of the big issues surrounding the social role and social practice of schooling, with special emphasis on teaching and learning in classrooms and on school organization. Each of you will soon be specializing in a particular component of the educational domain, but it will be helpful to you to be able to locate your own special area to broader themes and literatures in the field. A lot of the readings in the class are nodal pieces in the network of educational citations; these are works you need to become familiar with. This class should help you answer crucial questions about your own work. What is your study a case of? What larger issues does it resonate with? What does it contribute to the larger discourse about school and society?
I’m posting the full syllabus below. But it would be more useful to get it as a Word document through this link. Feel free to share it with anyone you like.
All of the course materials are embedded in the syllabus through hyperlinks to a Google drive. For each week, the syllabus includes a link to tips for approaching the readings, links to the PDFs of the readings, and a link to the slides for that week’s class. Slides also include links to additional sources. So the syllabus is all that is needed to gain access to the full class.
I hope you find this useful.
Doctoral Proseminar
An Introduction to Big Issues in the Field of Education
David Labaree
Email: dlabaree@stanford.edu
Twitter: @Dlabaree
Blog: https://davidlabaree.com/
Course Description
The aim of this class is to give first-year doctoral students in education a grounding in some of the big issues surrounding the social role and social practice of schooling, with special emphasis on teaching and learning in classrooms and on school organization. Each of you will soon be specializing in a particular component of the educational domain, but it will be helpful to you to be able to locate your own special area to broader themes and literatures in the field. A lot of the readings in the class are nodal pieces in the network of educational citations; these are works you need to become familiar with. This class should help you answer crucial questions about your own work. What is your study a case of? What larger issues does it resonate with? What does it contribute to the larger discourse about school and society?
In the first week we look at the backstory of schooling in the U.S. We explore its historical roots, the nature of its original mission, and how that mission evolved over time. And we also examine the conflicting mix of goals that we have imposed on schools and the various social functions they have accumulated over time.
In week two, we turn to the core practices of teaching and learning in classrooms. Included as issues such as: the distinctive characteristics of teaching as a professional practice; the socialization of teachers and the incentives that shape the way teachers play their roles; and the grammar of schooling that both defines it and makes it resistant to change.
In week three, we look at the teacher-student relationship in the classroom and how this relationship is experienced by both parties. We also examine some of the ways that schools create winners and losers, how they both promote and ameliorate social differences.
In week four, we look as school organization from several perspectives: alternative ways of school organization and their implications for school outcomes; the loose coupling of the nested components of American schooling (classroom, school, school district, and state system) that make it different from other organizations; and the reasons that structural reforms often have little impact on teaching practice.
In week five, we look at the social and cultural pressures that shape school. This includes examining how the shared expectations of teachers, students, and parents reinforce our conception of what a “real school” is; the rampant formalism that runs through schooling, favoring process over content; and the organizational features of schooling that allow it to carry social functions that the organization of families does not allow.
In week six, we look at the role that race, class, and culture have in schooling. Among other things, this means examining the class and race factors that shape the kind of cultural knowledge and skill (cultural capital) schools value and try to teach; and the problem of attempting to teach this culture without at the same time demeaning or repressing other cultures.
In week seven, we look at the issue of cultural capital compared to other forms of capital. And then we consider two different theoretical perspectives on the social role of the school curriculum – the functionalist view that schools teach the knowledge and values that all adults need in order to function in a modern society; and the social reproduction view that schools teach different knowledge and values to students from different backgrounds, thus preparing them for stratified futures.
In week eight, we read a classic book by the political economist Albert Hirschman – Exit, Voice, and Loyalty – which explores the mechanisms by which different kinds of organizations correct for dysfunctional outcomes. He shows how market organizations are primarily responsive to exit, in which customers signal their dissatisfaction with a product by buying another one instead. On the other hand, political organizations are primarily responsive to voice, in which clients signal their dissatisfaction by directly voicing their complaint. From this view, low functioning schools can be seen as unhappy hybrids – political organizations that respond to voice but provoke dissatisfied customers to exit.
In week nine, we read another classic book by the political scientist and anthropologist James Scott – Seeing Like a State. Here he addresses the problems inherent in state-initiated efforts at social engineering. The issue is that such schemes too often involve an attempt by planners in the capital to impose a highly rationalized and universalistic model of social order on remote ecologies that are organic and particularistic. Which sounds a lot like what happens in school reform.
In week ten, we look at the role that educational researchers play in shaping educational policy, the nature of educational research as a practice, and the trajectory of academic careers in a stratified system of higher education.
Readings
All of the readings for this class are available as PDFs on the web. This includes the full text of the two books assigned for the course, Hirschman and Scott.
Course Outline
Below are the topics we will cover, week by week, with the readings for each week Just click on the assigned reading to link to the document on Google drive. For every week you can click on a link to get tips for doing that week’s readings. In addition, you can link to the slides for that week’s class.
1) Introduction: The Historical Roots and Competing Goals of the U.S. School System
2) The Problems of Teaching as a Practice
3) The Classroom, the Teacher-Student Relationship, and Tracking
4) The Organization of the School
5) Expectations and the Roots of the Stability of the School as an Organization
6) Class, Race, and Culture in the School
Recommended: The Problem We All Live With, Parts 1 and 2. (2015). This American Life Podcast. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with.
7) Cultural Difference and the School Curriculum
McWhorter, John. (2018). There’s nothing wrong with Black English. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/who-gets-to-use-black-english/566867/?utm_source=twb.
Anyon, Jean. (1981). Social class and school knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, 11, 3-42.
8) Schools as Political and Market Entities
Du Bois, W.E.B. (1903). The souls of black folk. New York: Knopf. http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/203/the-souls-of-black-folk/4457/chapter-13-of-the-coming-of-john/
9) The Problem of School Reform – Imposing a Rationalized Vision on the Ecology of the Classroom; Schooling and the Meritocracy
McClay, William M. (2016). A distant elite: How meritocracy went wrong. The Hedgehog Review 18:2 (Summer). http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2016_Summer_McClay.php
Class slides for week 9
10) The Role of Researchers in Educational Policy and the Prospects for New Researchers in the University
Guidelines for Critical Reading
As a critical reader of a particular text (a book, article, speech, proposal), you need to use the following questions as a framework to guide you as you read:
- What’s the point? This is the analysis issue: what is the author’s angle?
- Who says? This is the validity issue: On what (data, literature) are the claims based?
- What’s new? This is the value-added issue: What does the author contribute that we don’t already know?
- Who cares? This is the significance issue, the most important issue of all, the one that subsumes all the others: Is this work worth doing? Is the text worth reading? Does it contribute something important?
If this is the way critical readers are going to approach a text, then as an analytical writer you need to guide readers toward the desired answers to each of these questions.
Guidelines for Analytical Writing
In writing papers for this (or any) course, keep in mind the following points. They apply in particular to the longer papers, but most of the same concerns apply to short papers as well.
- Pick an important issue: Make sure that your analysis meets the “so what” test. Why should anyone care about this topic, anyway? Pick an issue or issues that matters and that you really care about.
- Keep focused: Don’t lose track of the point you are trying to make and make sure the reader knows where you are heading and why.
- Aim for clarity: Don’t assume that the reader knows what you’re talking about; it’s your job to make your points clearly. In part this means keeping focused and avoiding distracting clutter. But in part it means that you need to make more than elliptical references to concepts and sources or to professional experience. When referring to readings (from the course or elsewhere), explain who said what and why this point is pertinent to the issue at hand. When drawing on your own experiences or observations, set the context so the reader can understand what you mean. Proceed as though you were writing for an educated person who is neither a member of this class nor a professional colleague, someone who has not read the material you are referring to.
- Provide analysis: A good paper is more than a catalogue of facts, concepts, experiences, or references; it is more than a description of the content of a set of readings; it is more than an expression of your educational values or an announcement of your prescription for what ails education. A good paper is a logical and coherent analysis of the issues raised within your chosen area of focus. This means that your paper should aim to explain rather than describe. If you give examples, be sure to tell the reader what they mean in the context of your analysis. Make sure the reader understands the connection between the various points in your paper.
- Provide depth, insight, and connections: The best papers are ones that go beyond making obvious points, superficial comparisons, and simplistic assertions. They dig below the surface of the issue at hand, demonstrating a deeper level of understanding and an ability to make interesting connections.
- Support your analysis with evidence: You need to do more than simply state your ideas, however informed and useful these may be. You also need to provide evidence that reassures the reader that you know what you are talking about, thus providing a foundation for your argument. Evidence comes in part from the academic literature, whether encountered in this course or elsewhere. Evidence can also come from your own experience. Remember that you are trying to accomplish two things with the use of evidence. First, you are saying that it is not just you making this assertion but that authoritative sources and solid evidence back you up. Second, you are supplying a degree of specificity and detail, which helps to flesh out an otherwise skeletal argument.
- Draw on course materials (this applies primarily to reaction papers, not the final paper). Your paper should give evidence that you are taking this course. You do not need to agree with any of the readings or presentations, but your paper should show you have considered the course materials thoughtfully.
- Recognize complexity and acknowledge multiple viewpoints. The issues in the history of American education are not simple, and your paper should not propose simple solutions to complex problems. It should not reduce issues to either/or, black/white, good/bad. Your paper should give evidence that you understand and appreciate more than one perspective on an issue. This does not mean you should be wishy-washy. Instead, you should aim to make a clear point by showing that you have considered alternate views.
- Challenge assumptions. The paper should show that you have learned something by doing this paper. There should be evidence that you have been open to changing your mind.
- Do not overuse quotation: In a short paper, long quotations (more than a sentence or two in length) are generally not appropriate. Even in longer papers, quotations should be used sparingly unless they constitute a primary form of data for your analysis. In general, your paper is more effective if written primarily in your own words, using ideas from the literature but framing them in your own way in order to serve your own analytical purposes. However, selective use of quotations can be very useful as a way of capturing the author’s tone or conveying a particularly aptly phrased point.
- Cite your sources: You need to identify for the reader where particular ideas or examples come from. This can be done through in-text citation: Give the author’s last name, publication year, and (in the case of quotations) page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence or paragraph where the idea is presented — e.g., (Kliebard, 1986, p. 22); provide the full citations in a list of references at the end of the paper. You can also identify sources with footnotes or endnotes: Give the full citation for the first reference to a text and a short citation for subsequent citations to the same text. (For critical reaction papers, you only need to give the short cite for items from the course reading; other sources require full citations.) Note that citing a source is not sufficient to fulfill the requirement to provide evidence for your argument. As spelled out in #6 above, you need to transmit to the reader some of the substance of what appears in the source cited, so the reader can understand the connection with the point you are making and can have some meat to chew on. The best analytical writing provides a real feel for the material and not just a list of assertions and citations. Depth, insight, and connections count for more than a superficial collection of glancing references. In other words, don’t just mention an array of sources without drawing substantive points and examples from these sources; and don’t draw on ideas from such sources without identifying the ones you used.
- Take care in the quality of your prose: A paper that is written in a clear and effective style makes a more convincing argument than one written in a murky manner, even when both writers start with the same basic understanding of the issues. However, writing that is confusing usually signals confusion in a person’s thinking. After all, one key purpose of writing is to put down your ideas in a way that permits you and others to reflect on them critically, to see if they stand up to analysis. So you should take the time to reflect on your own ideas on paper and revise them as needed. You may want to take advantage of the opportunity in this course to submit a draft of the final paper, revise it in light of comments, and then resubmit the revised version. This, after all, is the way writers normally proceed. Outside of the artificial world of the classroom, writers never turn in their first draft as their final statement on a subject.
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 