Silhouettes of knowing as “Potemkin knowledges”

In a 2007 article,* I discussed how our prevailing approach to education results in the production of mere silhouettes in place of genuine knowing and understanding. Rhetorically, there might be some good occasion for referring to such things as “Potemkin knowledges,” analogous to the old “Potemkin Villages.” This fragmentary thought is hardly worthy of a blog […]

CERU: 12th Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends

The Commercialism in Education Research Unit, a partner center of the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University, has released Click: The Twelfth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends: 2008-2009. The word “Click” is part of the title this year (not just part of the link), since this year’s report is concerned with children […]

“Neuatheismusstreit”: Was ist das?

My recent post on “Mooney & the ‘new atheists’: another round” begins with a reference to the latest round “in the ongoing Neuatheismusstreit.” I’ve been asked what that is–this “Neuatheismusstreit” that I’m referring to. Let me begin with the “sense” (or Sinn) of the word, and then explain its “reference” (or Bedeutung) in the context […]

Discourses (lexicon)

For a new article here on Curricublog, “Why I don’t believe in “THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION,” I will need to use the word Discourse in a sense that’s understood in my field (Curriculum Studies) and in other fields of the social sciences and humanities — but a sense that is not so common in general […]

Discourses, genres, and other “form fields”

From physics, we know about magnetic fields, gravitational fields, electrical fields, and other fields of physical force. If curriculum is the semiosic activity or course of experience in which human being comes to form, then curriculum theory and curriculum studies must be concerned with the fields of semiosic forms guiding the formation of human persons, […]

Curriculum & the post-(cognitivist) synthesis

If “cognitivism” is an ideology that represents learning and understanding as matters that can be understood, in a reductive way, as being, in their essence, just matters of “cognition,” it does not follow that advancing beyond cognitivism would mean taking up a newer ideology of “postcognitivism.”

constructivism v. postpositivism

I am very interested in the general question of constructivism v. postpositivism, however, and I have a paper coming out soon that the reader would be interested in, I think. It should be published sometime this spring, and the citation will be: Whitson, James Anthony. “Education À La Silhouette: The Need for Semiotically-Informed Curriculum Consciousness.” Semiotica 164, no. 1/4 (2007): 235-329.

“lesson study” & teachers’ unions

Mike is asking about the role of teachers’ unions in education reforms … Another relevant source of examples, it seems to me, would be the role of unions in districts where “lesson study” has been implemented. Any real “lesson study” effort requires real time and other resources. In union-organized school districts, it seems to me commitment and support from both the District and the Union would be absolutely necessary.