Anne Newman

Ethical and Epistemic Dilemmas in Knowledge Production: Addressing Their Intersection in Collaborative, Community-Based Research.

Collaborative community-based research can bring a range of benefits to universities, communities, and the public more broadly. A distinct virtue of collaborative community-based research is that it makes the ethical–epistemic intersections and challenges in research a focal point of its methodology. This makes collaborative community-based research well positioned to address various forms of ‘epistemic injustice’ (Fricker, 2007) that demean certain people and groups as knowers and exclude them from knowledge production. In this article, we examine the ethical and epistemic advantages and challenges of collaborative community-based research in light of the concept of epistemic injustice. We argue that collaborative community-based research can help provide an institutional response to epistemic injustices often embedded within processes of knowledge production.

Comparing Ethical and Epistemic Standards for Investigative Journalists and Equity-Oriented Collaborative Community-Based Researchers: Why Working for a University Matters

Criticisms of IRBs are proliferating. In response, we compare the ethical and epistemic standards of two closely related forms of inquiry, investigative journalism and equityoriented collaborative community-based research (EOCCBR). We argue that a university affiliation justifies formal ethical review of research and suggest how institutionalized research ethics might better serve EOCCBR. Our comparative analysis also sheds light on the public role of universities by underscoring what is morally relevant about being a university-affiliated researcher.

Not Your Mother's PTA: Hybridity in Community-Based Organizations Working for Educational Reform

Abstract An increasing number of community-based organizations are engaging with educational reform. Some groups are applying hybrid organizational models to engage with the public and education policy makers. In this article, the authors use a multiple case study approach to better understand the development of organizational hybridity in three such groups. The findings indicate that shifts in political environments and the evolving desires of publics are the primary motivators for organizational change.

All together now? Some egalitarian concerns about deliberation and education policy-making

Deliberative theory has served two purposes in recent studies of education policy-making at the community level in the US: as a lens through which to examine existing practices, and as an ideal toward which to strive.These studies, though, overlook a prior and important theoretical question: should deliberative theory be applied to education policy-making? In this article, I explore this question from an egalitarian perspective. I criticize the prevailing assumption that deliberative decision-making is an egalitarian way to make education policy, by underscoring how it fails in this instance on its own terms. I argue that deliberating about education policy is especially problematic compared to deliberations about other social goods, owing to the unique relationship between education and political equality in public fora. I also highlight two features of American education — de facto segregation, and the availability of exit options — that further challenge the appropriateness of using deliberative processes for education policy-making. Given the current state of educational politics, I conclude by pointing to the benefits of school finance litigation and its rights-based approach, which establishes educational entitlements that apply across communities.

Introduction to the symposium on equality of opportunity and education

Equality of opportunity is an ideal that finds a place in almost all theories of a just society. This ideal is also prevalent in our own political discourse, especially in debates about education policy. Given the myriad and significant dimensions of individual and collective well-being that flow from education – including health and access to health care, rewarding employment, income, leisure time, and civic participation – equality of opportunity matters deeply in the education realm. And it is within this realm that the meaning of this ideal is perhaps most deeply contested. How should limited educational resources be distributed to best honor equality of opportunity (e.g. by merit, by need)? What inequalities in educational opportunity, if any, are permissible? Can equality of educational opportunity be secured when large inequalities in educational inputs and outputs remain in place? The papers in this symposium focus on different dimensions of these questions. This symposium is part of a larger multi-year project at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford, funded by the Spencer Foundation, which examined the relationship between the ideal of equality of opportunity and the public provision of education. The impetus for this issue, and the larger project of which it is a part, is that despite widespread agreement that equality of opportunity is an essential ideal, its meaning, goals, and application to education are highly contested. Gaining greater clarity about this fundamental ideal is especially urgent given mounting evidence about the increasing scope of income and wealth inequality, and the role of educational disparities in exacerbating those inequalities. The symposium begins with a paper that enters the debates about the conceptual meaning of equality of opportunity of education and proposes a framework to remedy confusion surrounding the ideal. In this paper, ‘What is Equality of Opportunity in Education?’ Hugh Lazenby distinguishes equality of opportunity through education from equality of