Thinking in the Midst

Barb Stengel, a retired Vanderbilt faculty member and author of the book Responsibility, joins educators Kathy Hytten and Deron Boyles to explore the concept of responsibility in education. They discuss the troubling impact of neoliberal accountability on teaching, emphasizing the importance of fostering democratic habits. Kathy connects responsibility to issues of race and privilege, while Deron critiques how current policies undermine teacher professionalism. The conversation highlights the need for collective responsibility and reimagining schools to prioritize meaningful engagement.

Kathy Schultz and Jerusha (Rue) Beckerman join Cara and Derek to talk about what attracted them to teaching in the first place, what anchors their thinking there, and where they see dignity emerging in practice and where they see it under threat. For Kathy's most recent book, click here. For more on the teaching program Rue runs, click here. Here is the transcript for the episode. Use this form to recommend future guests and topics!

Spurred by Adam Kotsko's piece on reading habits among college students (a similar piece appeared just this week in the Chronicle of Higher Ed), Cara and I invited David Hansen and Claudia Ruitenberg -- both esteemed and thoughtful readers -- to talk to us about how they think about reading in their own lives and as part of what they teach their students. For David's books, click here and here. For Claudia's books, click here and here. The transcript of the episode is here. Recommend future guests and topics using this form!

Morgan Anderson and Ken Saltman sit down with Cara and Derek to discuss ed tech's penchant for innovating new forms of much older problems, even as they are promoted as presenting solutions. Solutions for whom? See Morgan's critique of "technophilia" here. See Ken's recent books here, here, and here. Click here for the transcript. Use this form to recommend future guests and topics!

Jess Calarco and Mark Nagasawa sit down with Cara and Derek to talk about public institutions and programs--and especially the lack thereof--for early childhood education, and the racialized and gendered ramifications of our policy choices. LINKS: Order Mark's collection, Transforming Early Years Policy in the US. Preorder Jess's new book, Holding It Together: How Women Became America's Safety Net. Here is a transcript of the episode. Use this form to recommend future guests and episodes!

Philosophical Studies in Education SIG officers Caitlin Murphy Brust, Jamie Herman, and Ka Ya Lee join Cara and Derek to share thoughts and advice about navigating conferences generally and AERA in particular. Two events for grad students to note at AERA: 1.) Mentoring coffee chat (Sat Apr 13th, Elixr Coffee, 3-4:30pm) 2.) Graduate student social (Sat Ap 13th, Victory Brewing, 5-6:30pm) LINKS For more of Caitlin's work, click here For more of Ka Ya's work, click here, here, and here Here is a transcript of this episode. And please recommend future guests and topics here.

In this episode, we present a symposium on the idea of culturally just assessments proposed and led by Joy Dangora Erickson, and featuring Winston Thompson, myself, and Cara. It was convenient to put together because neither Cara nor Winston were able to be at PES in person and so had pre-recorded their comments already. LINKS! The two articles that started this conversation are here and here. Here is a transcript of the episode! And here is the form to recommend future topics and guests!

"If you really analyze it, all bullying is gender policing," says one of our guests this week. Cris Mayo and Elizabethe Payne join Cara and Derek to talk about the various forces at work making LGBTQ+ students and their institutional allies especially vulnerable in our current climate. LINKS: The transcript is here. For more of Cris's work, click here and here. For more of Elizabethe's work, click here and here. To recommend guests and topics, use this form.

Michaila Peters, Ksenia Filatov, and Yuya Takeda join Cara and Derek to talk about their work on conspiratorial thinking and media literacy. All three guests are presenting work on this topic at the 2024 PES annual meeting, and this conversation broadly covers the genesis and context of the arguments they will make next week. LINKS! A transcript is here! For Ksenia's ongoing work, click here. For Yuya's work, click here and here. For Michaila's work, come see her session at PES! We'll update this with the link as soon as it's published. Here is the form to recommend future guests and topics!

Virginia Dearani, Adi Burton, and Clarence Joldersma speak to Cara and Derek about the mutual implications and shared concerns, both real and possible, of these two massively complex regions of human experience. LINKS! A transcript of the episode is here. The form to recommend future guests/topics! The Masha Gessen piece we briefly discussed is here. Adi's dissertation is available here For more on Virginia, see here. For Clarence's work, click here, here, and here.