Unsettling Education: Searching for Ethical Footing in a Time of Reform

Unsettling Education: Searching for Ethical Footing in a Time of Reform offers a counter-narrative to the prevailing orthodoxies of schooling and school reform that conflate education and learning with that which can be measured on state-mandated examinations. Despite the push to "settle" the purposes of teaching and schooling in ways that see education as the teaching of a discrete set of skills that align with standardized exams, there are teachers and students who continue to resist standardization and whose stories suggest there are many ways to organize schools, design curriculum, and understand the purposes of education. Unsettling Education shares stories of how teachers have resisted state and local mandates to teach to the test in dehumanizing ways, how such teachers have sought to de-commodify educational spaces, how they have enacted their ethical commitments to students and communities, and how they have theorized such practices, sometimes even reconsidering their roles as teachers and the very purposes of schooling. Volume contributors offer concrete ways in which teachers might challenge the structures of schooling to reveal the full humanity and potential of students through different forms of resistance pedagogy, institutional critiques, and critical self-reflection. Featuring a wide range of voices and contexts, the collections’ chapters blend story and theory, resulting in a volume both accessible and thought-provoking to varied audiences—from undergraduate students of education and concerned citizens to veteran educators, teacher educators, administrators, and policymakers.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments – Brian Charest/Kate Sjostrom: Introduction – Section I: The Promise of Unsettling Moments – Introduction – Avi Lessing/Glynis Kinnan: Against Measurement: Making a Case for School Play – Angela Whitacre de Resendiz/Will Hudson: Calculating Justice? Using Mathematical Mindsets for Teaching From a Social Justice Perspective – Noah Asher Golden: Challenging Misrecognitions Through Reflexive Teacher Education: Knowing and Growing in an Age of Commodification – Section II: Pedagogies of Resistance – Introduction – Sarah J. Donovan: Beyond Mandates and Measurement: Imagining a Gradeless Classroom – Matthew Homrich-Knieling/Alex Corbitt: Pedagogies of Resistance: Reflecting on the Successes and Challenges of Humanizing Classrooms in a Time of Standardization and Accountability – Mikela Bjork: Compulsory Heterosexuality: Unsettling and Undoing the Hidden Curriculum of Heteronormativity in Schools – Section III: Unsettling Education Through Institutional Critiques – Introduction – James McCoyne: Managing Teachers: Efficiency and Human Relations in Education – Kevin Christopher Carey: Motivation, Mental Health, and the Eclipse of Social Imagination – Samantha Young/Deborah Bieler: A Look Into Leaving: Learning From One Equity-Oriented Teacher’s Resignation – Russell Mayo: "all schooled up": One Teacher’s Path Toward Deschooling – Epilogue – Jay Gillen: Everyone Knows Whose Side I’m On: Teachers, Students, and the Struggle for Freedom – Contributors.