Knight Abowitz, Kathleen
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Item Defining moral responsibility for school leaders in times of democratic crisis
Knight Abowitz, KathleenIn this chapter, I offer an ethical alternative to liberal neutrality in the present political contexts of educational governance and leadership, one that does not abandon important principles of political liberalism. The context for shared political and ethical life in the United States provides a democratic moral framework for understanding the challenges of moral responsibility, as the concept applies to public schooling in an era of democratic crisis. The traditional conception of the moral responsibility for positional educational leaders, particularly building principals, is too often viewed as fulfilling a linear, directive task of communicating and enforcing the correct moral ideal to guide educators, families, and students, with the expectation that this proper set of ideals (or, less often, theories) will determine right practice. I argue here for a contextual moral responsibility, derived from a practice-based ethic grounded in democratic political and ethical norms lived within a school community.Item Democracy in Action
Collins, Jonathan; Gottlieb, Derek; Knight Abowitz, Kathleen; Murray, Brittany; Saultz, Andrew; Schneider, Jack; Stitzlein, Sarah; White, RachaelSchool systems are important training grounds where both students and adults alike can learn and encourage the practice of civil discourse and where democratic values can be enacted, expressed, and achieved.Item Populism, Legitimacy, and State-Sponsored Schooling
Knight-Abowitz, KathleenIn this article, I explore a selection of current scholarship on educational populist movements in Brazil, the U.S., and Israel. After a brief examination of these populist forms, which reveal political trends of ethno-nationalism, religious orthodoxy, anti-secularism, and authoritarianism, I examine democratic theory to understand populism from a dual democratic theoretical positions: pragmatism, and radical or critical democratic theory. I use pragmatist insights into the public sphere (Dewey, 1927; Frega, 2010, 2019), to explain how and why publics emerge in the dynamic of democratic state institutions of schooling. I then turn to radical democratic theory to explain the idea of populist expression and its role in democratic politics (Laclau, 2005; Mouffe, 2018). In pragmatist terms, populist movements are potential publics, relying on an experimentalist idea of political life which includes group associations in civil society which generate feedback, action, and dissent in attempts to shape decisions in state institutions. Yet too many populist movements fail to become democratic publics insofar as they are characterized by narrowed, private interests, unreflective habits, and practices which are antagonistic to inquiry, responsiveness, and deliberation. As such, populist movements threaten the normative legitimacy and stability of liberal democratic state institutions of schooling. While minimalist, or thin versions of populism are compatible with, and important vehicles for educational politics, the presently dominating maximalist versions profiled in this article threaten the liberal-democratic state project (Sant, 2021). Pragmatist theories of democratic politics and publics (Frega, 2019) offer ways to meet the populist moment, but contain significant implications of institutional re-design and reform for their realization.Item Pragmatist Thinking for a Populist Moment: Democratic Contingency and Racial Re-Valuing in Education Governance
Knight-Abowitz, Kathleen; Sellers, KathleenWe examine school governance in populist era, using contemporary readings of pragmatist philosophy. We are in a “populist moment,” a time of uprisings and movements of the demos making political claims (Mouffe, 2018). School officials in the U.S. are subject to an array of political demands in the form of protests and campaigns. We focus on the struggles around critical race theory in K–12 schools. Glaude (2017) has advocated pragmatism’s use in light of racial revaluing and democratic struggle. Rogers’ work (2009) has highlighted inquiry, founded on contingency, in the face of disagreement and power struggles. These scholars show us educational governance’s dual task in this moment: a revaluing of racialized Others in educational institutions done while simultaneously crafting conditions for deliberative judgment and meaningful policymaking in the face of political contingency. In light of this racial reckoning, we argue that populism presents a democratic irony for educational governance. Racial justice cannot be achieved without populist expression, taking the form of campaigns and persistent nonviolent signals that institutional racism is unacceptable. Yet our populist moment also contributes to the increasing political polarization that makes the conditions for democratic deliberative policymaking more elusive. Deliberative conditions for policymaking and curriculum development in schools are critically necessary for reinventing and reimagining our shared society.Item Social Foundations, Disciplinarity, and Democracy.
Knight-Abowitz, Kathleen; Quantz, RichardThis article was originally conceived for a paper session at the 2000 American Educational Studies Association conference in Vancouver, a session designed as a “multilogue” on teaching the foundations. In the article we discuss the nature of the “disciplines” and disciplined thinking within the field. We are vulnerable, as are many in the social sciences and humanities, to understanding disciplines” as biased, political codifications that privilege the elite. Yet, as we argue here, we should avoid the modernistic discipline/antidiscipline binary by recognizing the “disciplines” as multivocal discourses. Teaching the “disciplines” that inform social foundations from this point of view presents our students with a historically grounded, critical view of education and schooling.Item Publics for public schools: Legitimacy, democracy and leadership
Knight-Abowitz, Kathleen; Thompson, StevenThis book articulates a path for a renewed conception of-and commitment to-the public dimensions of schooling. It is an interdisciplinary book of philosophy and politics, written for educational leaders working in or on behalf of public schooling. Publics for Public Schools introduces a fresh view on how educational leaders might view the public ideal. In this conception of public work and leadership, educational leaders do not work with the public but help to achieve publics for public schools. The demos, or "the people" in the case of democratic governance of schools, mobilize around particular problems related to young people and schooling; they are best understood not as "the public" but as multiple publics. This book provides a conception of public life and of public leadership that can enable educational leaders of all types to help achieve publics for their schools.Item Engaging Youth in Leadership for Social and Political Change
Knight-Abowitz, Kathleen; Evans, MichaelYouth leadership initiatives can help young people engage in democratic life, participatory governance, and social and political change. Leadership education oriented towards political and social change must continue to evolve in response to the lived experience of youth. This edited volume explores those new meanings through examining the theories and practices constituting the emerging ground of public leadership, including: research spanning secondary and higher education programs; local and; international contexts,; school-based and out-of-school time initiatives, and a broad diversity of youth.Item Black Bodies in Schools: Dewey’s Democratic Provision for Participation Confronts the Challenges of ‘Fundamental Plunder’
Henry, Sue Ellen; Knight-Abowitz, KathleenIn this chapter, we read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me (2015) against Dewey’s Democracy and Education (1916) to glean insight into how Deweyan transactionalism can help theorize greater democratic participation for the corporeally disenfranchised; that is, those persons who experience socio-cultural and/or political marginalization due to the racialized status of their bodies. We argue that transactionalism carries promise to help interrupt current, systemic practice that negatively reifies Black bodies and reasserts Black bodies as central, full participants in democratic action. An analysis of transactionalism as interpreted from Democracy and Education and other Deweyan writings is followed by an analysis of Coates’ memoir, Between the World and Me, focusing on his experiential understanding of how Black bodies exist in educational institutions. We conclude the chapter with possibilities for an embodied ideal of democracy, and some educational practices that can follow from it.Item "On Parents and Schooling," Podcast Episode, Thinking in the Midst
Knight Abowitz, Kathleen; Shuffelton, Amy; Gottleib, Derek; Furman, CaraKathleen Knight Abowitz and Amy Shuffelton talk with hosts Derek Gottleib and Cara Furman about the sharing of authority in education, the recourse to rights language and discourses of expertise in the context of our political moment in the United States, as well as the gendered division of labor with respect to schooling.Item Achieving a Pakistani public: The problem of Privatization in Educational Policy-making
Rind, Gul Muhammed; Knight-Abowitz, KathleenIn many nations around the globe, including Pakistan, education is losing ground as a public good to become another market-based commodity as the state shrinks its responsibility to schooling. This presents challenges to democratic futures, and particularly for young democratic states such as Pakistan. The government of Pakistan is pouring a significant amount of money into the private provision of education, encouraged by the policies and investments of international donor-partners such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. These changes in educational provision represent the impacts of neoliberalism and globalisation on Pakistani policymaking and the growing influence of the conceptualisation of education as a private commodity. To address these trends, we offer a normative philosophical framework for a conception of education as a critical public good in Pakistan, drawing on Islamic tradition, public good theory, human rights, and common good global education theories.Item Rhetoric and the purposes of public education: building discourse for shared responsibility
Knight-Abowitz, Kathleen; Stitzlein, SarahIn this study, we employ discourse analysis of US gubernatorial political advertisements to analyze the discursive struggles over the purposes of public schools. The advertisements are analyzed to demonstrate how rhetoric works to shape consent for dominant, human capital views regarding schooling's purposes, as well as to communicate alternative articulations of schooling's purposes which can disrupt that consent. In the latter exploration, we draw upon the approach of public persuasion, where the public is persuaded to deem something other than dominant economic values as relevant for making education decisions. We analyze alternative contextual cues that can shift citizens’ impressions, leading them to weigh conflicting values toward schools differently. We offer narratives that change the meaning citizens make of schools with the aim of building public support for public schools.Item #NeverAgainMSD Student Activism: Lessons for agonist political education in an age of democratic crisis
Knight-Abowitz, Kathleen; Mamlok, DanIn this essay, Kathleen Knight Abowitz and Dan Mamlok consider the arguments for agonist political education in light of a case study based in the events of the 2018 mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and the subsequent activism of its survivors. We use this case to examine agonist expressions of citizenship, and to present an argument for framing agonist politics through the lens of Deweyan transactional communication combined with the critical concept of articulation. A major lesson in this case is the significance of citizenship learning that prioritizes challenging the political status quo along with working to reestablish new political relations on grounds that are more just. The authors argue that the endgame of agonist-informed political education should be that which helps students, as present and future citizens, reconstruct existing political conditions. Knight Abowitz and Mamlok conclude with suggestions for four domains of knowledge and capacities that can productively shape agonist citizenship education efforts: political education, lived citizenship, critical political literacies, and critical digital literacies.Item 132 Words: A Critical Examination of Digital Technology, Education, and Citizenship.
Mamlok, Dan; Knight-Abowitz, KathleenThis article explores the potential of digital technology to advance democratic citizenship. Drawing on critical theory and following a critical, comparative qualitative study which examined the relationships among digital technology, education, and democracy in the US and Israel, the authors explore epistemological assumptions of teaching and learning with digital tools. The article examines the tension between the promise of digital technology to transform education, and the instrumental hegemony of the neoliberal imperative. At the heart of this article, the authors contend that current teachers’ understanding of using digital technology, and the practices used in classrooms constrain the promotion of digital citizenship. The authors argue that transforming education through digital technology and advancing civic aims require epistemological transformation which will move beyond instrumental understanding of digital tools. They conclude with a recommendation of a theoretical framework for digital citizenship.Item Reclaiming Community
Knight-Abowitz, KathleenThe call for community can be heard throughout public and educational discourses; parallel calls for respecting difference are part of the discursive landscape as well. The terms have now become simplified and dichotomized. The author argues that a feminist-pragmatist conception of learning communities can be used to reclaim the idea of community 'from' both essentializing discourses of sameness, and to reclaim community 'for' those critical theorists who have abandoned the term as hopelessly exclusionary and oppressive. Feminist-pragmatism, a philosophical lens utilizing the strengths of feminism and pragmatism in dialogical union, is a promising tool for reconstructing visions of learning communities.Item Telling new stories about school
Stitzlein, Sarah M.; Knight-Abowitz, KathleenContemporary societies frame education through cultural narratives about schooling’s purposes and practices. Societal stories about school are not just reflective of our current views and values, but shape our political preferences and the realities that result from them. Stories of the traditional common school and its more collectivist, shared culture are giving way to newer stories oriented around competition and choice. Telling new stories which foreground the public or shared purposes of public education may lead to choosing candidates and backing policies that better serve our children and our communities.Item Virtual Charter Schools and the Democratic Aims of Education
Hornbeck, Dustin; Knight-Abowitz, Kathleen; Saultz, AndrewVirtual schooling is expanding as an alternative to traditional public schooling in the early twenty-first century. This paper analyzes virtual schooling with regards to the democratic associational aims of public schooling as conceived by John Dewey. We examine the general landscape of virtual schooling by looking at recent history, governance, and student performance in these schools. Next, we analyze the significant ways in which virtual schools fail to meet associational aims for schooling. We conclude with a normative argument about the nature of new educational trends and innovations, drawing from Dewey’s ideas in The School and Society to articulate the importance of aligning those innovations with democratic social ideals.Item A Pragmatist Revisioning of Resistance Theory
Knight-Abowitz, KathleenResistance theorists in education urge educators to evaluate the moral and political potential of opposition in schools. The scholarship of resistance calls us to examine oppositional acts of students in school settings as moral and political expressions of oppression. Resistance theorizing over the past several decades" has not, however, adequately explored the idea that resistance is communication; that is, a means of signaling and constructing new meanings, and of building a discourse around particular problems of exclusion or inequality. In this paper, I use pragmatist theories of inquiry and communication to interpret and critique resistance theories in education. Using Dewey and Bentley's notion of transactionalism (1946), I present a theoretical framework for future inquiry into school opposition. Interpreting resistance theory through a pragmatist lens leads to a more relational reading of resistance, and can promote school-based inquiry (rather than simple avoidance or punishment) directed toward acts of resistance in schools.Item Citizenship in our Time: Community Service, Town Meeting, Protest March, or Drag Show
Knight-Abowitz, KathleenHow is citizenship properly enacted in the contemporary era? How are contemporary discourses of citizenship constructing and reconstructing our meanings of the terms of citizenship? To answer these questions, I have recently surveyed the massive literature on citizenship research, identifying key discourses of citizenship circulating in Western, English-speaking countries (Knight Abowitz & Harnish 2000). In this paper, I investigate how Enlightenment-born conceptions of citizenship burden us with dated understandings of political life. By way of response, I construct a notion of citizenship that owes great debt to critical, feminist, and postmodern critiques of Enlightenment-based citizenship which explores the boundaries of membership, employs notions of intersubjective agency, utilizes the unrecognized power of the aesthetic and performative dimensions of civic life, and reminds us of the importance of civil society as a significant context for the pursuit of democratic life.Item The school principal as democratic leader: A critique of the Wallace Foundation’s vision of the principalship
Knight-Abowitz, KathleenWhat is the role of the public school principal in the contemporary era? As conceived by many in educational policy-making and research today, the duty of the US school leader is to ensure that the district is, above all else, improving student achievement, defined by standards measured by high-stakes test results. Here, I examine and critique this contemporary conventional response to this question, as exemplified by the Wallace Foundation’s work, and sketch an alternative vision based on the principles and practices of democratic leadership traditions. While rarely writing directly about school leadership or the school administrator’s role, John Dewey’s linked notions of democracy, community and citizen participation are, with some updating, sorely needed as a counter to the narrowed conception of the principal role today. School leaders are community leaders, with important inward-facing and outward-facing responsibilities for communicating and building visions for good education with their constituencies inside and outside the school building.Item The case of #NeverAgainMSD: When proceduralist civics becomes public work by way of political emotion
Knight-Abowitz, Kathleen; Mamlok, DanCivic culture is a term for how citizens actively live out, perform, and create public life through our habits, actions, words, and public work. A vital civic culture, with an engaged citizenry, is one of the measures of a healthy democratic republic. In this inquiry, we explore how civic education—holistically envisioned across disciplines and types of curriculum—might be imagined in light of civic cultural engagement and creation. We use the recent #NeverAgainMSD youth activism against gun violence as a single case study through which to examine what educators can learn from youth enacting citizenship in real time, contributing to a vital civic culture in an era when many lament youth apathy and disconnection from public life. We argue that much civics education ignores the worth of political emotion, and we describe both the important role of affect in civic culture and curricular possibilities for working with students around the intersections of affect, civic culture, and public work as citizens.