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The Politics of Education (ADMS 707)

This is the "home" for our course on The Politics of Education (ADMS 707), a doctoral-level course in the Department of Educational Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University.


COURSE FRAMEWORK

Politics is constituted by the meeting of power and justice, thus delineating the limits and possibilities of social action.  So defined, the political structure of public education in our nation determines the nature of schooling.  Further, the political structure of schools determines the political content of instruction.  Therefore, there is a strong relationship between the political structure of education, broadly speaking, and the political education of future citizens.  The study of the politics of education can, therefore, provide insight into the political quality of American society.


[IMAGE SOURCE: Tyack, David (1974). The One Best System. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Page 286]


HOW WE WILL LEARN

As the designated "instructor" for this course, I intend to do very little instruction.  In fact, the time you spend engaged in learning with me, the other doctoral students registered for this course, and the "community" is almost entirely about knowledge construction. The challenge for me, then, is to cultivate engagement through active, meaningful learning.  Active learning, according to Bonwell and Eison (1991), is defined as “...activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing“ (p. 2).  Furthermore, active learning requires that students “read, write, discuss, or be engaged in solving problems,” (Bonwell & Eison, 1991, p. 2).

Learning, especially learning in a fully online "course" in the digital information age can look very different from learning face-to-face in earlier days. George Siemens offers connectivism as a learning theory for the digital age.

The starting point of connectivism is the individual. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual. This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.

This course is built on connectivism as a theory of learning, and students will be given the freedom to learn consistent with Cormier’s (2008) theory of Rhizomatic Education. 

In the rhizomatic model of learning, curriculum is not driven by predefined inputs from experts; it is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process. This community acts as the curriculum, spontaneously shaping, constructing, and reconstructing itself and the subject of its learning in the same way that the rhizome responds to changing environmental conditions

In that light, you will be doing lots of reading, writing and discussing; you will be given a digital toolbelt and work within online, social spaces that foster the sort of networked learning that social media afford. I cannot promise that you will truly solve any of the real-world problems that plague public education, but I can assure you that you will have to problem-solve as you learn.  The learning you do this semester will be characterized as:
  • Collaborative - WE (including me) will learn together. We will share data and information and we will support each others' learning as much as possible.
  • Documented - I care more about the processes of learning you undertake than the specifics of the knowledge you construct. You will document that learning process, and you will do that in the...
  • Open - by exposing your learning to your colleagues and the public, you are taking the first steps in taking control of your digital identity and expanding your horizons as a learner.
My main expectation is for you to learn and learn hard.  As Dr. Gary Stager writes, "Let your personality shine and most importantly, HAVE A GO! Be present, take some risks, stretch yourself."

[NEXT: For some specificity on the learning design I have in mind for this semester, check out the syllabus page.]