Analytical Essay Research Articles

Caught in a Vise: The Challenges Facing Teacher Preparation in an Era of Accountability

BackgroundDespite polling data that suggests that teachers are well respected by the general public, criticism of teacher preparation by various organizations and interest groups is common, often highlighting the perceived need for increasing their rigor and performance. A number of studies and reports have critiqued teacher preparation, and high-profile leaders like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have called for substantive changes. At the same time, the field of teacher preparation has been embracing change with the idea of accountability based on student performance. Indeed, recently released evidence suggests that in the area of clinical preparation, education programs require many hours of field placement experiences, countering one of the key criticisms of the preparation programs.PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the field of teacher preparation in the current era of accountability and testing. After a brief overview of the current context facing teacher preparation, the issue of outcome measures for varying professions is explored by comparing accreditation outcome measures utilized in selected professions. Then, the strengths and weaknesses of currently emerging assessment models are explored. Finally, a discussion of potential ways to assess teacher preparation program performance with an array of sources and measures is presented.Research DesignThe study is a combination of a secondary analysis and analytic essay. The use of outcomes associated with 10 professions was examined by reviewing accreditation standards and documentation from published reports available on websites for the specific measures used to assess student success and program outcomes. As a means of validating findings, feedback was obtained from accreditation coordinators and/or other leaders in each profession. The analysis of currently emerging assessment models for teacher preparation was based upon a review of literature on value added and other similar assessments.Conclusions/RecommendationsThe review of professions found that all are struggling with better means for assessing program outcomes, with a great deal of similarity in the processes currently in place used across fields. Teacher education was found to include more of the different ways for assessing outcomes than any other profession. Significant concerns with currently promoted value-added models for assessing outcomes of teacher preparation were identified, with the use of multiple measures of evidence suggested as the best means for moving forward. We argue that teacher preparation programs are caught in a vise—with an appreciation and desire among those in the field for greater accountability while being squeezed by a sense that the approaches being suggested are prone to error and misuse.

Effects of Inequality and Poverty vs. Teachers and Schooling on America's Youth

Background/ContextThis paper arises out of frustration with the results of school reforms carried out over the past few decades. These efforts have failed. They need to be abandoned. In their place must come recognition that income inequality causes many social problems, including problems associated with education. Sadly, compared to all other wealthy nations, the USA has the largest income gap between its wealthy and its poor citizens. Correlates associated with the size of the income gap in various nations are well described in Wilkinson & Pickett (2010), whose work is cited throughout this article. They make it clear that the bigger the income gap in a nation or a state, the greater the social problems a nation or a state will encounter. Thus it is argued that the design of better economic and social policies can do more to improve our schools than continued work on educational policy independent of such concerns.Purpose/Objective/Research QuestionThe research question asked is why so many school reform efforts have produced so little improvement in American schools. The answer offered is that the sources of school failure have been thought to reside inside the schools, resulting in attempts to improve America's teachers, curriculum, testing programs and administration. It is argued in this paper, however, that the sources of America's educational problems are outside school, primarily a result of income inequality. Thus it is suggested that targeted economic and social policies have more potential to improve the nations schools than almost anything currently being proposed by either political party at federal, state or local levels.Research DesignThis is an analytic essay on the reasons for the failure of almost all contemporary school reform efforts. It is primarily a report about how inequality affects all of our society, and a review of some research and social policies that might improve our nations’ schools.Conclusions/RecommendationsIt is concluded that the best way to improve America's schools is through jobs that provide families living wages. Other programs are noted that offer some help for students from poor families. But in the end, it is inequality in income, and the poverty that accompanies such inequality, that matters most for education.

Toward an Integral Approach for Evolving Mindsets for Generative Learning and Timely Action in the Midst of Ambiguity

Background/Context The implications of complexity theory have become a recurring topic in the literatures of a wide range of scholarly and professional fields including adult education. This paper builds on literature calling attention to the educational need for pedagogically addressing the implications of the intensifying complexity in the environments that confront adults in their professional and personal lives. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Three theoretical streams, (a) Complex adaptive systems; (b) learning through experience; and, (c) adult developmental theory provide the basis for the pedagogical approach that is presented. The focus is on contingently applying these distinct streams of theory into learning designs. We share our experiences in experimenting with course designs for preparing adult learners for taking action on personal, civic, and professional challenges embedded in ambiguity and uncertainty in which rigid application of ready-made solutions is not possible. Our goal is to stimulate deeper experimentation. Accordingly, the question guiding this paper is, “How can we as adult educators create conditions in our classrooms, and other learning venues, for addressing the need for preparing adults to mindfully learn through the challenges that confront them in the context of increasing complexity?” Setting For purposes of illustrating our experience and provoking questions, we draw on examples from our work in three graduate level courses in distinct disciplinary settings—specifically, organizational psychology and adult learning, adult education, and technology management. Research Design This paper is an analytical essay drawing out the implications for generative learning from an integrative literature review connecting the three theoretical streams identified above that guide our thinking and work. We provide a framework for creating generative learning spaces based on the implications drawn from this integrative literature review, along with examples of application. Conclusions/Recommendations Our experiences in a range of settings suggests that applying the framework can provide educative structures in which adults may stretch their capacity to make meaning, and learn how make choices for timely action, under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity generated by the complexity their socio-economic environments. The approach also provokes new challenges for faculty as well as students, challenges that require more systemic research. We conclude with an agenda for future research.

How to Make Innovations Practical

Background/ContextA fundamental tension has long existed between school reform proposals and actual teaching practice. Despite a large literature on teacher change, the discontinuity between innovation and practice continues and many attempts to reform teaching fail to be enacted in most classrooms.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of StudyThe purpose of this paper is to present a bridging methodology for connecting pedagogical innovations to the practical demands of teaching. The methodology is framed within practicality theory, which is an ecologically grounded analysis of the design issues and constraints that practitioners face in the everyday work of teaching. To conduct lessons, teachers must construct procedures (instrumentality) that fit circumstances (congruence) within available time and resources (cost). Underlying these practicality dimensions is a set of reasoning processes that can be understood from the perspective of three strands of research on bounded rationality—goal systems, heuristics, and evolutionary planning.Intervention/Program/PracticeThe analysis of teacher practical reasoning provides a design foundation for a bridging methodology consisting of (a) construction of a heuristic goal system (HGS) representation of the hierarchy of goals and heuristic means that underlie a teacher's planning decisions with respect to lesson segments used to carry out instruction; and (b) a teaching impact analysis (TIA) that connects an innovation's lesson structure to a teacher's heuristic goal system and shows how a teacher can adapt his/her current practice to achieve increased expected value (i.e., an improvement).Research DesignThis study was designed as an analytical essay that theorizes teaching practice, teacher reasoning, and a bridging methodology for connecting teaching practice with specific educational innovations. Cases of an experienced biology teacher and of 11 student teachers are presented that demonstrate the nature of this bridging methodology and variations in its use in particular circumstances.Conclusions/RecommendationsThe bridging framework provides a practical tool for identifying the action-guiding model of a teacher, the connection of this model to the precise components of an innovation, and the recombination or adaptations a teacher can make to achieve personal goals through an innovation. Although further studies are needed, this framework promises to furnish a powerful tool for making innovations practical. We cannot characterise behaviour independently of intentions, and we cannot characterise intentions independently of the settings which make those intentions intelligible both to agents themselves and to others (MacIntyre, 1981, p. 192).

Mexican Long-Living Mestizophilia versus a Democracy Open to Diversity

This analytical essay approaches the history of the Mexican state’s ideologies and practices of ethnic and racial discrimination from three perspectives: a consideration of the different phases of mestizophilia between Independence and contemporary times; thoughts on the negative consequences of mestizophilia on contemporary Mexican migration policies, which are often xenophobic and racist in character; and a critique of the traditional opponents to indigenismo that seeks to explain why the vast majority of opponents have not highlighted the antidemocratic and the racist aspects of this ideology and this policy.

Hillary: The Movie, the History Channel, and the Challenge of the Documentary for Democratic Education

Background/ContextIn Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission (2009), the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence citizens’ decisions about candidates and issues that will appear on election ballots. More important, however, for democratic educators, the ruling was grounded in an assumption that citizens can easily recognize “political speech” when it appears in media such as Hillary: The Movie, the film at issue in the case.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of StudyThis article examines implications of this ruling for democratic education. In particular, this article focuses on the nature of the documentary form in society, including how it is used toward political purposes and how teachers, students, and the public view it as an objective source of information in and out of the classroom.Research DesignThis study is designed as an analytic essay that addresses a critical issue within democratic and media education and draws from a broad base of empirical, theoretical, and conceptual work to examine issues exacerbated by the Citizens United ruling.Conclusions/RecommendationsThis article concludes that critical media education should be a core tenet of democratic education, especially as we move into the 21st century, and outlines areas to address in curriculum, pedagogy, and policy.

Conceptualizing the African American Mathematics Teacher as a Key Figure in the African American Education Historical Narrative

Background/ContextHistorians and researchers have documented and explored the work and role of African American teachers in the U.S. educational system, yet there has been limited attention to the specific work, role, and experiences of African American mathematics teachers. To meaningfully and responsibly conceptualize the role of African American mathematics teachers and better understand their work in U.S. schools, analytic approaches are needed to help us understand cases of African American mathematics teachers as representations of a complex and ever-evolving series of intertwined contexts, forces, and events that include critical events along historical timelines (i.e., U.S. educational system, mathematics education, technological innovation and development, African American teaching force).Purpose/ObjectiveThe purpose of this article is to challenge readers to consider the African American mathematics teacher as a conceptual entity that embodies characteristics, practices, and dispositions that are potentially meaningful for students, particularly African American students, in ways that support students’ capacity to participate and perform within the racialized contexts of mathematics education, the broader schooling experience, and broader society.DesignStructured as an analytic essay, this article provides a rationale and potential directions of inquiry for historians and researchers open to explorations of relationships between race, mathematics education, teacher identity, and teacher practice.Conclusions/RecommendationsWe make two assertions about the African American mathematics teacher that help to conceptualize his or her role as a theoretical construct. First, the African American mathematics teacher is a boundary spanner with membership in multiple communities—a mathematically proficient and intellectually powerful African American person within a historically disempowered African American community with a history of inaccessibility to and underperformance in mathematics. Second, through various implicit and explicit means and micro-interactions, the African American mathematics teacher has the potential to engage in liberatory mathematics pedagogy, a pedagogy that serves to dismantle racialized hierarchies of mathematics ability. We encourage mathematics education researchers to interrogate, challenge, critique, and build on conceptualizations of the African American mathematics teacher as an entity that represents a unique confluence of experiences, perspectives, dispositions, and knowledge domains critical to the education of students. In doing so, it is our hope that theories of student learning, participation, and performance will more willingly embrace, acknowledge, and incorporate the inescapable dynamics of race, class, student identity, and teacher identity.

Alternative Prospects for University Leadership and Perceptions of Career Options by Future Professionals: An Analytical EssayAdrianna J. Kezar and Jaime Lester,Enhancing Campus Capacity for Leadership: An Examination of Grassroots Leaders in Higher Education. (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 368 pp., $60.00Maya A. Beasley,Opting Out: Losing the Potential of America’s Young Black Elite. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011),

Previous articleNext article No AccessReview EssayAlternative Prospects for University Leadership and Perceptions of Career Options by Future Professionals: An Analytical Essay Adrianna J. Kezar and Jaime Lester, Enhancing Campus Capacity for Leadership: An Examination of Grassroots Leaders in Higher Education. (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 368 pp., $60.00 Maya A. Beasley, Opting Out: Losing the Potential of America’s Young Black Elite. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 240 pp., $75.00Beverly LindsayBeverly LindsayPennsylvania State University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Education Volume 119, Number 2February 2013 Sponsored by the Penn State College of Education Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/668703 Views: 59Total views on this site HistoryPublished online December 07, 2012 © 2012 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Government, political actors and governance in urban policies in Brazil and São Paulo: concepts for a future research agenda

Public policies are produced by connections between several actors, within institutional environments and crossing organizational boundaries, but detailed analyses of the environments in which politics occur are relatively rare in Brazil. I believe the concept of governance could help to bridge this gap. However, this concept has different meanings and has been circulated in Latin America with quite confusing and cacophonic meanings. In this analytical essay, I build a definition of governance based both on local debates and the recent international literature, which can be of use to study urban policies in Brazil, going beyond government but specifying the elements under investigation. The article starts by critically discussing the uses of the concept of governance in Latin America and especially in Brazil, highlighting some of the most important problems of the existing analyses, so as to forge an alternate operational definition. I then discuss the most relevant political actors present in Brazilian urban policies and later use these elements to discuss the governance of policies regarding the production of the built environment.

A Companion to Thomas Hardy (review)

Reviewed by: A Companion to Thomas Hardy Goldie Morgentaler (bio) Keith Wilson, editor. A Companion to Thomas Hardy. Wiley-Blackwell. 2009. xiv, 488. $242.00 Thomas Hardy had an unusually long and productive writing career, a career that encompassed achievements in two major areas of literature: prose fiction and poetry. This wide-ranging compilation of thirty new [End Page 748] essays on Hardy’s life and work does a fine job of discussing Hardy’s accomplishments as both a novelist and a poet. Ably edited and introduced by Keith Wilson, this volume is part of the Blackwell Companion series of essay collections on literature. Wilson’s short introductory essay sounds one of the present collection’s unifying themes by drawing attention to the paradoxical nature of Hardy’s work. As Wilson points out, Hardy was a freethinker who cherished religious forms; he was a modernist who wrote within the tradition of nineteenth-century realism; he was a pessimist whose works have struck many as both life-affirming and humorous. Many of the foremost names in Hardy scholarship are represented in this volume, which begins very strongly with an essay by the eminent Hardy biographer Michael Millgate on the difficulty of writing a biography of Thomas Hardy, despite and perhaps because of the fact that Hardy wrote his own biography and had it published posthumously and attributed to his widow. Here too is a paradox, because one might expect that having access to an autobiography written by the author himself would have made the task of the literary biographer that much easier. Not so, writes Millgate, and his reservations about the problematic nature of Hardy’s autobiography are echoed by all of the subsequent essays in the second and third sections of this book, which deal with the intellectual and sociocultural contexts of Hardy’s work. The essays in these two sections refer constantly and uneasily back to Hardy’s The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy. In fact, a biographical strain runs throughout the entire collection of essays, emerging even in those that analyze specific works in the Hardy canon. For instance, Mary Rimmer’s essay on the “Novels of Ingenuity” and Peter Widdowson’s essay on Hardy’s short stories are as much about the publication history of these fictions as they are about analyzing the fictions themselves. William W. Morgan’s contribution on scholarly editions of Hardy’s poems is similarly more concerned with bibliographic history than with an analysis of the poetry, although it follows a more analytical essay on the poetry itself by Tim Armstrong. I do not mean to highlight this emphasis on the biographical as a criticism. Quite the contrary. This is an important focus, since Hardy’s constant battles with publishers over censorship led to changes in his texts and therefore complicate literary analysis of his work. Publication histories can also be very informative about literary trends and styles. But I was surprised at how frequently such information surfaces in the essays under review. All the essays in this volume are of high quality, as might be expected from such an eminent list of contributors. Some, however, are more accessible than others, especially to readers who are not necessarily experts in the field of Hardy studies. This raises the question that occurs [End Page 749] as well with other volumes in the Blackwell Companion series: namely, who is the intended audience? Some of the essays, such as George Levine’s on Hardy and Darwin, are clearly pitched at a readership that is already familiar with nineteenth-century evolutionary philosophy and not at the average undergraduate or the general reader. Similarly, William Greenslade’s essay on Hardy’s notebooks is clearly aimed at those whose interest in Hardy’s work methods is more than cursory. All the essays assume a familiarity with Hardy’s work and life. Some, however, are of more general interest, such as Simon Gatrell’s on Hardy’s use of dress in Far from the Madding Crowd and – surprisingly, because it is at first glance so theoretical – Richard Nemesvari’s fascinating rumination on Hardy’s mixing of genres. In sum, this is an important collection. Not only is each essay...

The Long March toward Revitalization: Developing Standpoint in Curriculum Studies

Background/Context There historically exists significant epistemological and political tension within the field of curriculum studies. Further, although there is some application of standpoint theory in educational research generally, and little used within curriculum studies specifically, much of it is undertheorized at best and, in many cases, misapplied or misunderstood. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The purpose of this article is to offer a potential resolution to the epistemological and political tension within the field of curriculum studies through the development of a conception of curricular standpoint that recognizes the dialectical relationship between the subjectivity of experience and the materiality of social and economic relations. Another purpose of this article is both to illustrate curricular standpoint as both a methodological tool for analysis and to justify a politics of social justice in classroom practice. Research Design This study is designed as an analytic essay that addresses critical issues within curriculum studies, develops a conceptual framework to address those issues, and analyzes concrete examples that illustrate the conceptual framework. Conclusions/Recommendations This study concludes that the framework for curricular standpoint can serve as a viable methodological tool for curriculum studies to overcome its ongoing epistemological and political tensions, and as an epistemologically strong orientation for the curriculum taught by classroom teachers.

Psychoanalysis as a Pocket of Resistance Against Inhumanity: Commentary on Paper by Rachael Peltz

In this commentary I discuss ways in which Rachael Peltz makes use of a work of art—John Berger's The Shape of a Pocket—to glimpse “the absent,” Berger's word for the inarticulate living core of human experience. I first take up the idea that art must overcome the existent as “an act of resistance instigating hope” (Berger, 2001, p. 22). Each of the mediums in which art (including the art of psychoanalysis) is made involves the artist's effort to overcome the resistance inherent in transforming one form of experience (e.g., an analyst's reverie experience) into another (e.g., an intervention or an analytic essay). Peltz describes the state of mind necessary for such transformational movement as “an attitude of receptivity to whatever is about to happen,” but never completely comes into being. A second strand of thought that I discuss is the idea that disappearance is as important a part of the human condition as is appearance. Dreams, for example, would lose their mystery and power if they were not just out of reach, perpetually receding. And finally, I comment on how Berger and Peltz share the belief that each of us is personally responsible for making our own individual effort to come together with others to create acts of resistance against man's inhumanity to man.

Epistemological Threads in the Fabric of Pedagogical Research

Context Over the past 15 years, a philosophical renaissance has emerged within the educational research literature, raising conundrums about the nature of knowledge and how to acquire it. To date, such philosophical conundrums have not been directly posed in relation to pedagogical research, particularly our understanding of what constitutes quality in teaching. Purpose Our purpose in writing this article is to focus a philosophical lens on quality teaching in general, and the High-Quality Teaching (HQT) study in particular, an examination of what teachers do to help fourth- and fifth-grade students succeed in reading and mathematics. Our intent is to demonstrate how such philosophical scrutiny can lead to a fuller understanding of high-quality teaching in its varied manifestations. Research Design This article is an analytical essay. We first identify multiple philosophical threads (epistemological perspectives on knowledge) that can be used to characterize education broadly, and teaching specifically. We next demonstrate how these epistemological perspectives have informed our understandings of quality teaching, the nature of mathematics and reading education, and the use of different research paradigms to investigate teaching and learning. Finally, we apply these epistemological threads to the HQT study retrospectively, highlighting how identifying them helps us better understand our own work and the effects of the decisions that we made. Conclusions Our philosophical scrutiny leads us to conclude that efforts to engage in meaningful and informative research on teachers and teaching would be enhanced if the epistemological threads of such research were explicit and valued components in the conceptualization, design, implementation, and interpretation of research results.

Analytical essay writing: a new activity introduced to a traditional curriculum

Medical students following a traditional curriculum get few opportunities to engage in activities such as a literature search, scientific writing, and active and collaborative learning. An analytical essay writing activity (AEWA) in physiology was introduced to first-year students. Each student prepared an essay incorporating new research findings with existing knowledge on a medical topic. Students were expected to study on the topic in detail from textbooks as well as from research publications and write a descriptive and critical analysis. This activity would help them to be aware of new developments in the field and understand the complexity and rapidity of changes in the subject. The aim of this study was to learn how students used the AEWA as a learning process. For this purpose, student perceptions were assessed quantitatively and those of the faculty staff were assessed qualitatively. The data from the students showed considerable achievements in the medical database search, scientific writing, group work, and search for new scientific knowledge. The activity was influenced by prior capabilities in computer use, English language knowledge, and writing ability. Resources available at the medical school had a greater influence on the activity. Faculty staff appreciated the quality of the essay while highlighting areas of improvement. The students seemed to be satisfied with the supervisory role of the faculty staff, whereas the staff felt that the students used the supervisors less than expected. The AEWA was a successful activity promoting many aspects of active and collaborative learning. The low availability of books and information and communications technology (ICT) resources, poor internet connection, and insufficient English language skills were probably responsible for the negative feedback on this activity in this resource-deprived environment.

Analyzing the Teaching of Professional Practice

Background/Context Based on their case studies of preparation for professional practice in the clergy, teaching, and clinical psychology, Grossman and colleagues (2009) identified three key concepts for analyzing and comparing practice in professional education—representations, decomposition, and approximations—to support professional educators in learning from each other's practice. In this special issue, two teams of teacher educators (Kucan & Palincsar, and Boerst, Sleep, Ball, & Bass) put these concepts to work in representing their practice of preparing novice teachers to lead discussions with their students. Purpose/Objective/Research Questions/Focus of Study This analytic essay presents an argument for the importance of (a) adding a fourth key concept to the Grossman et al. framework—conceptions of quality—and (b) using these four concepts to trace novices’ learning opportunities as they unfold over time in order to serve the goal of facilitating instructive comparisons in professional education. Research Design In this analytic essay, I analyze the three articles to examine how conceptions of quality are already entailed in the characterizations of practice. My analysis focuses on the kinds of criteria or “qualities” that are foregrounded; the grain size of practice to which the conception of quality is applied; and the ways in which variations in criteria— what counts as more or less advanced—are represented. I then contrast the sequence of learning opportunities and assessments described in the articles on discussion leading in terms of these four concepts. Conclusions/Recommendations Even instructional practices that appeared quite similar when described through the lenses of approximations, decomposition, and representations looked quite different when conceptions of quality and learning opportunities and assessments were traced over time. Representing these “learning trajectories”—which entail an understanding of the evolving dialectical relationships between learning opportunities and (at least intended) learning outcomes—seems essential to understanding and learning from the teaching practice.

Smartness as Property: A Critical Exploration of Intersections Between Whiteness and Disability Studies

Background/Context Two scholars who each primarily identify as a scholar of Critical Race/Whiteness Studies and a scholar of Disability Studies, respectively, engage in this article in a purposeful dialogue that responds to the invitation put forth by Baglieri, Bejoian, Broderick, Connor, and Valle to engage with the construct of inclusive education, writ large. Through purposeful engagement with one another's discourse communities, the authors explore both the challenge and the tremendous promise of more theoretically integrated efforts toward abolishing ideological systems of oppression in schooling. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This article explores “smartness” as an ideological system and particularly explores the ways in which it intersects with Whiteness as ideology. Using Cheryl Harris's analysis of Whiteness, the authors argue that smartness works as a form of property, with all the advantages that come with membership in the group. Research Design Analytic essay. Conclusions/Recommendations Analogous to Roediger's claim about Whiteness, the authors argue that smartness is nothing but false and oppressive, and as such, attempts to theoretically rearticulate or rehabilitate smartness may serve to illuminate, but ultimately fail to dissolve, the normative center of schooling.

Disability Life Writing and the Politics of Knowing

Background/Context Scholars in disability studies in education, like scholars in other critical fields of inquiry, increasingly draw on a more interdisciplinary range of texts in their research and teaching, including art, fiction, film, and autobiography. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The author asserts that contemporary disability life writing can and should be read with view to challenging a tangle of oppressive ideologies and destabilizing any claim to a normative or fixed center. Autobiography as a genre, however, requires a particular set of critical reading practices to fully illuminate myriad ways in which these texts can serve as important and politically grounded counternarratives to the dominant discourse. Read critically, these texts have the potential to unravel the myth of normalcy that undergirds so many of the exclusionary practices in education. Research Design Analytic essay. Conclusions/Recommendations A critical disability studies approach requires more than the infusion of different kinds of texts; it also requires the incorporation of diverse methods of analysis and theoretical framing of those texts in order to fully appreciate their transgressive potential.

Re]conceptualizing Inclusion: Can Critical Race Theory and Interest Convergence be Utilized to Achieve Inclusion and Equity for African American Students?

Background/Context Even though not fully realized, in legislation and theory, the requirements of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act and the No Child Left Behind Act have created pressure to address the historical inequity in educational opportunity, achievement, and outcomes, as well as disparities in achievement between students of color and White students; disproportionality in special education referral, identification, and placement; high dropout rates for students of color; and disproportionate discipline and referrals for students of color, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, students from immigrant families, and students in urban areas. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The authors argue that inclusive education never had the potential to be truly inclusive because it is built on the premises of an inferiority paradigm. Issues of race, class, and privilege have rarely been incorporated into the inclusive education definitions or debates in the United States, and certainly not in practice. The purpose of this article is to examine: (a) the historical context of public schooling in America; (b) inclusive education in practice: segregation of African American and other students of color; (c) [re]conceptualizing inclusion: the importance of a social justice lens and critical theory; and (d) the relevance of interest convergence. Research Design Analytic essay. Conclusions/Recommendations The authors contend that the inclusive education movement has not resulted in positive outcomes or inclusion in general education for African American students because the movement was built on faulty assumptions that centered on ability and placement and did not look at the intersection of ability/disability with race, class, culture, and language. More important, the movement did not address issues of racism, White privilege, White dominance, and social class dominance. The authors assert that social justice, critical race theory, and interest convergence are powerful tools with which to [re]conceptualize inclusion and inclusive education in America.

The Prevention of Global Chronic Disease and Academia: Another Key Area?

The recent analytic essay by Greenberg et al. rightfully emphasized the role of the public health academia in preventing global chronic disease.1 The authors focused on key areas such as resource allocation and overcoming barriers to prevention, but paid less attention to academia's crucial role in advancing fresh thinking or innovative models to tackle the epidemic. Two such emerging concepts are Complexity Science (CS) and Allostatic Load (AL) in the causation of chronic diseases.2–5 Our worldview is shifting from mechanistic models to the new CS paradigm. CS perceives social systems (e.g., financial markets) and natural systems (e.g., population health) as emergent properties of open, dynamic, nonlinear, and adaptive systems (i.e., Complex Adaptive Systems [CASs]). Patterns of health and chronic diseases are conceptualized as emergent properties of populations.3 These patterns arise from networks of interactions among dynamic sets of interconnected nonlinear subsystems (e.g., political systems, physical and social environments) that predominantly reside in the latter.6,7 To facilitate changes in a CAS (i.e., health of a population) multiple interventions are required in several subsystems and sectors rather than one magic bullet such as vaccines. Interventions have to be flexible, constantly monitored, and evaluated, and information must be fed back to change the course of intervention. There are few documented reports of CS in health interventions, and a recent report describes its application in an attempt to reduce cardiovascular diseases morbidity and mortality among Canadian Asians.8 Exploring CASs in health will deepen our understanding of how social systems, climate change, human behaviors, and physical environments promote development of chronic diseases in humans and will help us tackle this issue. AL denotes the cumulative wear and tear or the physiological toll experienced by the body over a life course to adapt to biological, psychological, and environmental demands to maintain homeostasis.4 It postulates that chronic diseases are mediated through stress pathways and suggests that stressors of daily living play a role in promoting chronic diseases rather than stemming from a limited set of risk factors.9 Thus, an ordinary social life (as we understand it) may promote chronic diseases over and above what can be explained by the extended life span and traditional risk factors. Because chronic disease affects a majority of the global population, the burden can be substantial. These are just two examples of how fresh thinking and innovative approaches may help us to unravel, understand and contain the epidemic of chronic diseases.

Cultural Narcissism and Education Reform

Background/ContextScholars have described American culture in recent decades as narcissistic, manifested by displays of self-absorption tantamount to a pathological syndrome that has reached epidemic proportions. An education reform movement that is highly critical of public schools, teachers, and students has simultaneously emerged, espousing a wide array of seemingly disconnected innovations and punitive sanctions. Prior efforts to critically analyze these reform efforts have focused on the historical workings of power and knowledge by supporting reflective, emancipatory knowledge and action while overlooking the insights offered by psychoanalytic theory. Consequently, the impact of education policies on the identities of teachers and the personal relationships between teachers and students has not been thoroughly or sufficiently understood.Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of StudyThis article represents a tentative step toward understanding the social and psychological underpinnings of education reform in the United States during the last quarter century. The reform movement is interpreted as being rooted in specific psychological processes associated with narcissistic parenting. Psychoanalytic concepts are employed to illustrate how educators and the general public have become accomplices in their own subjugation. A review of literature that addresses narcissistic parenting yielded eight characteristic behavioral patterns: expectations of perfection in children, particularly with regard to intellect; a grandiose sense of superiority and entitlement; relentless fault-finding; projection of personal fantasies onto children; an absence of empathy for children and their needs; a preoccupation with control; conditional approval; and a well-intentioned view of their own self-centered motives and insensitive actions as being beneficial for children. These conceptual formulations provided a basis for examining proposals and policies found in the National Commission on Excellence in Education's 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, and provisions of the more recent No Child Left Behind legislation.Research DesignThis analytic essay uses a review of the literature, including psychoanalytic research on narcissism and narcissistic parenting as well as contemporary critical theory related to education reform, to examine arguments and policies evidenced in A Nation at Risk and No Child Left Behind.Conclusions/RecommendationsA prevailing “narcissistic education policy style” is posited, which denies the true learning needs of students; disempowers classroom teachers and schools by undermining trust in self and others; and reproduces narcissistic dynamics within the culture. Elements of an alternative education policy more focused on the needs of students are proposed, along with a call to recognize the right of children to be treated with the respect accorded to fully formed human beings.