Democratic Purpose Research Articles

The Time is Now, the Time is Always

The time could not be more urgent, and university faculty and leaders must act and reclaim their responsibility for civic preparation. In the face of enrollment decline, an emphasis on student credit hours, and a history of siloed tunnel vision, action seems impossible in a system that opposes the core mission of higher education. In this article, authors—faculty from two teacher preparation departments—share their journey that started as state-mandated program revision to a campus-wide civic agenda. They argue for the integration of civics teaching in disciplinary courses and share classroom teaching ideas that cultivate civic identity and virtues. Feeling empowered, they widened the scope of their work to include a campus-wide learning community and civic survey audits to target professional learning opportunities. Through collected data and lessons learned, they demonstrate the moves needed to reclaim higher education’s core democratic purpose.

Creating meaningful connections: An experiment in practically engaged CMS

Can meaningful connections between academics, consultants, and practitioners of workplace democracy be created to bring about critically inspired change? This article presents an exploration of our experiment in producing a practical and engaged form of Critical Management Studies (CMS) through a case study of a 2-day event. The event brought together academics, consultants, and practitioners of workplace democracy to examine the possibilities and challenges of creating meaningful connections between these groups. It served as a platform for investigating and reflecting on the efforts made to bridge the gap between academia and practice in CMS. Drawing on pre-event documents, recordings of the event and interviews with participants after the event, we provide an account of academics out of their comfort zone struggling to feel authentic and useful; suspicion and uneasiness between groups leading to inter and intra group struggles; and lingering difficulties around power and control. Our event suggests that CMS scholars seeking more practical engagement should pursue a: (i) deliberative research perspective of co-production alongside multiple stakeholders (academics, consultants, and practitioners) to practically seek to bring about change; (ii) democratization of the research process so that the democratic intentions of the research outcomes are built into the research process; (iii) fluid research position breaking down and blurring of boundaries between academics and practitioners to increase the possibilities for creating meaningful connections.

American Superiority, Democratic Idealism, and the Truman Commission: A Critical Discourse Historical Analysis of Higher Education for American Democracy

ABSTRACT In this critical historical analysis, Higher Education for American Democracy is considered a historical artifact, and its veneration as a landmark quest for equal opportunity in higher education is challenged. I argue that this report and the institutional expansion that resulted positioned the federal government to have a direct role in higher education, allowing presidential agendas and dominant ideologies to influence the course of college and university curriculum, access, and purpose. Through a discourse historical approach and a critical realist lens, the Truman Commission Report and President Truman’s public statements are analyzed to reevaluate ther report and its implications for the democratic purpose of higher education in America after World War II.

Literature for All: On Designation and Interpretation in Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris

Abstract This article contends that Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris is a novel that follows a democratic principle by opening up its meaning, and that of its titular cathedral, to anyone and everyone. Whereas Hugo’s novel and his famous syntagm ‘ceci tuera cela’ have been extensively studied as an examination of the fall of architecture in favour of the printed book, this article will argue that a semiotic analysis of the syntagm reveals Hugo’s intention to recognize the legitimacy of society’s subjects to experience and talk about (artistic) objects. Through a discussion of the chapters added in the book’s second edition and in which Hugo comments on his own work, this article recontextualizes the spatial, historical, and political components that help clarify the democratic intent at the centre of the novel, but also of its resurgence in popularity in 2019 when Notre-Dame was devastated by fire.

The Wilsonian Moment at Lausanne, 1922–1923

This article discusses the background and diplomatic strategies of the Turkish delegation at Lausanne and their selective understanding of self-determination, excluding non-Turkic and non-Muslim people in Anatolia from the ‘self’ that has the right to determine its national existence. It also elaborates on the reasons why the Allies acknowledged this exclusion in the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923. We borrow from Erez Manela's interpretation of the ‘Wilsonian moment’ to frame these diplomatic and political developments and to show how and why the democratic intent of Wilson's idea of self-determination vanished in the framing of the Peace Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

Ethical thinking and decision-making in the leadership of professional learning communities

ABSTRACT Background Despite widespread interest in the leadership and establishment of professional learning communities (PLCs), the ethical dimension may be overlooked. This article examines, in a Norwegian context, how principals have to deal with different sorts of ethical dilemmas in leading professional learning communities. Purpose The study aimed to investigate the leadership strategies and interventions that principals implemented in professional learning communities and the nature of ethical dilemmas that were apparent in establishing a professional collective culture. Methods Participants were from two different schools, both of which had challenging environments. Data were collected through observations and interviews with the principals (including follow-up interviews after a year had passed), middle managers, two groups of teachers and two groups of students in the two schools, and also with a district-level representative. In total, 15 interviews were conducted with 41 informants. Data were analysed qualitatively. Findings Analysis suggested that establishing a professional learning community, building on an inclusive ethos, pedagogical collaboration and democratic leadership are all important strategies. Leadership practices were anchored in an ethical perspective that emphasised responsibility not only for personal morality but for the enhancement of civic moral education that leads to self-knowledge and community awareness. Conclusion This research draws attention to how school leadership, especially in challenging environments, is closely connected to the democratic purpose of the school. Ethical thinking and decision-making can be developed in discussions between leaders at school and district level and between leaders and teachers in the learning communities in the school. To lead such discussions, school leaders should increase their knowledge and understanding of ethical decision making, which can help develop their own ethical leadership practice.

The notwithstanding clause: Legislatures, courts, and the electorate

This article interprets the notwithstanding clause in section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When a legislature activates the notwithstanding clause, subsection 33(2) temporarily ensures a protected law’s ‘operation’ by preventing it from being ‘inconsistent’ with the Constitution of Canada in the sense of the supremacy clause, thereby precluding judicial remedies such as striking down. Construed in the light of its components (some never considered by the Supreme Court of Canada) and other constitutional features, the notwithstanding clause does not make rights irrelevant or strip them of their legal character. Nor does it confide the assessment of trade-offs about rights to the legislature alone. Instead, subsection 33(3) indicates a framework for such assessments in which the voting public plays a crucial evaluative role. The courts, as interpreters and guardians of the Constitution, can, and in some circumstances should, support the public’s constitutional role by declaring the extent to which a protected law unjustifiably limits Charter rights. The public’s ability to take such declarations into account in evaluating rights trade-offs would advance the democratic purpose of subsection 33(3), a purpose that underpins our constitutional framework more broadly.

Roots and progress: A review of civic learning and democratic engagement on college campuses

AbstractIn this chapter, the authors trace the historical roots of civic learning and democratic engagement in higher education from the founding of the first institutions to the present day. In different major historical moments, universities elevated their mission to develop an engaged citizenry. Furthermore, public perception of the purpose for higher education acts as a pendulum, swinging between higher education as a public good or as a private good. The intersections of these perceptions, along with critical moments in which colleges and universities emphasized civic learning and democratic engagement shaped the past, and understanding these historical moments can help shape the future ways in which higher education institutions embrace their democratic purpose.

Mission and mandates: school leaders’ and teachers’ professional discretion in enacting education for democracy

ABSTRACT Previous research has contributed to the literature on what constitutes school leaders’ and teachers’ democratic practices in both high- and low-stakes accountability contexts, but less is known about how they interpret, legitimize, and translate the democratic purpose of education in a low-stakes, ‘soft-regulation’ system. The current study used Norway as an example, and examined this issue via a qualitative case study design with interviews as the data collection method, while theories of policy enactment, professionalism, and democratic leadership functioned as analytical approaches. The findings suggest that interpretations and legitimizations are cross-curricular based on an internalized code of ethics; there is a large discretionary space for teachers but the schools experience – in their dialogs with parents – tensions between a thin democracy representing an individualist and self-centered project, and a deep democracy aiming for the public good. A main argument is that instrumental approaches to education and an increased focus on individual rights may undermine a broad interpretation and translation of the democratic purpose of education over the long term.

For the greater good

Democracy is an important concept in relation to sustainability. If you can embed in your provision the democratic intent to give every child equal rights and opportunities, your practice will be embracing the ideals of inclusivity and non-discrimination, says Hilary White.

Teaching at Holocaust memorial sites: Swedish teachers’ understanding of the educational values of visiting Holocaust memorial sites

The present article focuses on teaching and learning about the Holocaust in Sweden, conducted as study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. Although about a quarter of Swedish teenagers visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum each year, this study is the first to examine these Swedish study trips. Since there are no centralised systems for arranging these study trips, this study regards dedicated teachers as the main stakeholders. By deploying critical discourse analysis of transcripts of nine in-depth interviews with teachers, the study terms the discursive order of the teachers’ talk about the study trips ritual democratic catharsis. The teachers’ two main purposes are the use of the study trips as a vehicle for the social dynamics in the group to evolve in order to promote personal growth among the students, and the students’ learning about democracy and human rights. Their overarching didactic strategy of focusing on the suffering of the victims is meant to evoke empathy among the students, but lacks an explanatory aim. The study critically points out the teachers’ unreflected relationship to historiographic Holocaust content as a subject, making their teaching vulnerable to contemporary political influences, jeopardising the democratic purpose of these trips.

La literatura en Quimantú: una revolución incómoda

Proponemos una reflexión sobre las colecciones literarias de la Editora Nacional Quimantú durante el gobierno de la Unidad Popular, entendiéndolas como parte de las tensiones existentes entre un imperativo revolucionario y otro económico. La valoración de la literatura y la conformación de un canon literario internacional se vinculan con el propósito democratizador propio de Quimantú, pero también con la configuración política del gobierno de la Unidad Popular y las divergencias del campo cultural en torno al rol que debían jugar los intelectuales en la creación de una nueva cultura. La utopía de una sociedad sin clases revela, al mismo tiempo, la atracción y la incomodidad de la clase intelectual frente al nuevo lector popular que emerge. El paratexto de los libros de literatura ofrece una escena para la expresión de distintas posturas en torno a la relación entre literatura y revolución, al mismo tiempo que se proponen al lector modos de lectura literaria afines a los cambios políticos, sociales y culturales promovidos por el gobierno.

Religious education for free and equal citizens

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to interact critically with Matthew Clayton and David Stevens’s recent critique of non-confessional religious education, constituted as a separate, compulsory subject in the school curriculum. Three different critical arguments are considered: the contention that religious education is an unsuitable vehicle for fostering toleration and mutual understanding; their framing and application of an ‘acceptability requirement’ to religious education, which states that government principles and policy should be justified by reasons that cannot be rejected by reasonable citizens, and which they believe religious education fails; and finally, their rejection of the view that religious education fulfils a democratic purpose in providing pupils with the competences to consider and assess religious claims to truth. Religious education is defended against all three charges.

Does the Combination of Professional Leadership and Learning Management Systems Signal the End of Democratic Schooling?

Education of democratic citizens is a fundamental aspect of Danish primary and secondary schooling. However, policymakers push school principals' agency towards professional leadership by encouraging specific methods for assessing student learning outcomes. Enactment of a learning management system (LMS) supports the transition towards professional leadership and leads to self-regulation by all actors within schools. While supporting the professional agency of school principals, this transformation is at the expense of core elements of democratic practice. This article argues that schooling's democratic purpose tends to be forgotten in the shift towards the professionalization of principals' agency. In this process, an LMS is a powerful tool because principals can keep track of what teachers are doing digitally at all times. The concept of professional agency is used in this article to denote how the actions of school principals become distanced from the educational practice within the schools. The article is based on a qualitative study at four schools, comprising 31 semistructured interviews with principals, teachers, and civil servants. Bourdieu's thinking tools -field, habitus, and capital - will be used along with the concept of governmentality to explore principals' professional agency and self-regulation and to conduct a thorough analysis of practice

Paul Woodford, Music Education in an Age of Virtuality and Post-Truth (New York: Routledge, 2018)

Reviewed by: Music Education in an Age of Virtuality and Post-Truth by Paul Woodford Panagiotis A. Kanellopoulos Paul Woodford, Music Education in an Age of Virtuality and Post-Truth (New York, Routledge, 2018) This book is provocative. And challenging. It is written with passion, aiming to induce controversy. And with good reason. For we live in times when populism professes an illusionary sense of community, invoking a seemingly 'anti-systemic' but highly hypocritical, racist, and sexist discourse;1 in times where "bullshitting"2 has advanced to the highest governmental levels in many countries; in times where "authoritarian neoliberal statism"3 becomes the new status quo, inducing a scandalous increase of economic inequalities, forcing large populations to live precarious lives; in times where privatization of educational services in the context of market-oriented practices impose restrictive and ultimately unjust politics of accountability and performativity;4 in times where instrumentalization of educational ends has taken the lead, assisted by a systematic co-option and misappropriation of notions such as excellence and creativity;5 in times, finally, where spaces that allow for "the sharing (out) of the incalculable,"6 forging unknown potentialities in education, life, and thought, are being destroyed. In such times, Paul Woodford has stepped in, reclaiming his right to speak uncompromisingly. Hannah Arendt has written that "[w]hen men [sic] are deprived of the public space--which is constituted by acting together and then fills of its own accord [End Page 108] with the events and stories that develop into history--they retreat into their freedom of thought."7 Woodford refuses to retreat. He writes as a public intellectual of the highest order, committed to upset and not please those in power. A great service that his latest book performs is that it speaks daringly, stirring a debate that helps us all to do away with fear. For as Bertrand Russell has aptly said quite a long time ago, "[I]f thought is to become the possession of many, not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men [sic] back."8 Resisting the "melancholy of inner exile,"9 but not immune to possible accusations of left melancholy, understood as "a refusal to come to terms with the particular character of the present,"10 the author wrote a book that provokes music educators to actively think beyond their sealed and safe world of convictions that is based on ideology-free conceptions of music teaching. Estelle Jorgensen has long ago brought to our attention the urgency of this task: "in an era in which the mindset and political reality have changed dramatically, … there is an urgent need to revisit the political character of music education and the ways in which it needs to address the cultural issues of our day."11 Along this pathway, Woodford's book encourages music educators to live and teach as public intellectuals, forging "a democratic purpose for music education"12 that acts against the "anachronistic and formalist conception of music that reduces music education to supply-side economics as children are conceived as either future professional musicians or consumers and not as citizens to be prepared in schools to participate intelligently in the political life of society."13 Woodford articulates a vision of music education "as preparation for adulthood and democratic and global citizenship."14 He strongly advocates an approach that balances performance and creativity-based experiences with a socio-historical study of the social, ideological, and cultural workings of different musics in a wide variety of contexts. He encourages music educators to teach "how music's structural properties and qualities contribute to the shaping of people's perceptions and understandings of themselves and their world,"15 "asking the who, what, when, where, how, to, with, or for whom, and, most importantly of all, why of music."16 He envisions a music classroom that exercises social criticism "directly and self-consciously"17 both through "learning how to make music"18 and through thinking about music. He sees this approach as a tool for raising students' consciousness. Woodford's ultimate vision of music education is one that casts it as a means for cultivating "a justice-oriented" approach...

Towards a Democratic New Normal? Investor Reactions to Interim‐Regime Dominance during Violent Events

AbstractAlthough interim regimes in former autocracies are generally tasked with initiating a democratic ‘new normal’, they may privately intend to become their country’s new autocratic rulers. We argue that, to cope with the uncertainty stemming from this possibility, investors infer an interim regime’s intentions from the dominance displayed by the regime during government‐related violence, as reflected in the share of civilian fatalities. Specifically, we propose that investors interpret higher interim‐regime dominance as a signal of weaker democratic intentions and associate such weaker intentions with a gloomier political outlook for local firms. We therefore hypothesize that investors react more negatively to violent events characterized by higher interim‐regime dominance. We also hypothesize a less negative effect of such dominance for firms with larger foreign footprints, lower indebtedness, or more concentrated ownership, since investors will likely consider such firms more resilient to political deterioration. Applying event study methodology to 94 spells of violence in Egypt during the Arab Spring, we find substantial support for our hypotheses, thus contributing to management research on investor decision‐making, violence, and political uncertainty.

Student voice research as a technology of reform in neoliberal times

ABSTRACT Calls for educators to promote student voice and agency in classrooms often overlook the importance of the policy milieu in which teaching and learning is performed. In this article we interrogate the constitution of student, teacher and researcher subjectivities within student voice research. Working with Stephen Ball’s neoliberal technologies of reform (technologies of the market and performativity (including technologies of the self); implemented through acculturation), we take up the notion that those of us working in education are complicit in the reforms we work to disrupt and conceptualise research as a technology of reform. We analyse performativity mechanisms at play in our student voice research that produced students, teachers and researchers as neoliberal policy subjects even whilst working toward the democratic intent of student voice. We contribute a heuristic with which scholars and educators can interrogate technologies of reform at work in their student voice work.

Critical theory and the implementation of lifelong learning in Vietnam

Lifelong learning is the continuous acquisition of knowledge and skills which occurs throughout life with an emphasis on the full development of personality. Despite the increasing interest of Vietnamese policy makers in promoting lifelong learning, the implementation of lifelong learning at universities is still limited. This research delineated and critiqued the policies and the current practices of lifelong learning at the college level of the Ministry of Education and Training in Vietnam (MOET) under the perspective of critical theory. From the discussion of the policies and practices that the MOET was implementing, recommendations for the policy makers were made with the aim of helping Vietnamese students embrace their right to lifelong learning and fulfill the personal and democratic purpose of education.

Local government as an institution of civil society: municipal-legal problems of interaction and functioning

The article is devoted to the research of municipal-legal problems of increasing the efficiency of civil society functioning in Ukraine. The emphasis is on the need to improve and strengthen the legal status of local self-government as the fundamental institution of civil society. The contemporary theory of local self-government as an institution of civil society is considered, its role in ensuring the stability of the constitutional system and the development of constitutionalism in Ukraine is determined. The basic theories of self-government are analyzed, the definition of local self-government as one of the main forms of democracy and the constitutional means of limiting state power in the conditions of formation of civil society is proposed. This approach emphasizes the increasing role of the municipal-territorial factor in the life of civil society. It is connected with the creation of capable territorial communities, confirmation of democratic intentions of national states and their special attention to the inhabitants of certain territories.It is concluded that only realization for long time in the minds of residents - members of territorial communities - of stable anti-theatrical institutions, radical changes in the stereotypes of socio-political behavior of the general population, its self-organization and self-discipline, the formation of patriotic sentiments may in the future become the basis for leveling the conflict between state and public interest, the formation of an optimal balance between public and private, and, therefore, a powerful tool for improving efficiency the organization and functioning of civil society.

Minority Influence and the Struggle for Recognition: Towards an Articulation between Social Influence Research and Theory of Recognition

In a broader social context where the social divisions have increasingly come to be seen through cultural or ethnic lenses, one-sided concern with identity dynamics runs the risk of defining social categories in essential terms, emphasize issues of cultural incompatibility, and reduce social influence phenomena to ingroups allegiances. Mugny and his colleagues argued that minority influence and social identifications processes interacted in such a way as producing conditions allowing outgroups to exert a genuine influence. Adopting an interactionnist approach to the study of racism and xenophobia, which in turn builds on Axel Honneth’s (1996) philosophical theory of recognition, it will be argued that assuming the very possibility of outgoup influence emphasizes the role of the voice, in particular of minorities, as chance to enter into processes of persuasion. This voice can be seen as a bulwark against the ethnic and cultural divisions that undermine contemporary societies’ democratic purpose.