Deron Boyles

‘Exergaming,’ corporate interests and the crisis discourse of childhood obesity

In this paper we explore ‘exergaming’ in schools, the latest trend influencing the physical education (PE) curriculum. Throughout the paper we investigate the various proponents of exergaming including the gaming industry, academic researchers and PE teachers. Our inquiry takes a closer look at exergaming as a pedagogical trend and describes exergamings potential implications for the profession of PE as well as for individual students. Our methodological approach includes review and analysis of popular, scholarly and curricular texts related to the use of exergaming in schools. The analysis underscores the political nature of the curriculum and, in so doing, invites a closer look at this curricular trend by examining whose interests are served through the circulation of crisis discourses surrounding youth (ill)health and the use of these crisis discourses to justify the placement of commercial products in schools.

Reconsidering Learning Communities: Expanding the Discourse by Challenging the Discourse

This article draws on historical and philosophical lenses and interviews with students to question some fundamental tenets underlying the practice of freshman learning communities (FLCs): that they develop community and improve studentsÕ learning experiences. The article brings to the discourse of FLCs some critical questions regarding their value and practice.

Considering the Roles for AESA: An Argument Against Commercialism, Reductionism, and the Quest for Certainty

When we graduated with our Ph.D.s, my friends and I held a party. It was called “The Soap Box Party,” and there were two straightforward rules. Each person had to stand on the soap box and talk about their thesis for five minutes. This sounded easy enough because each of us had recently defended our dissertations, so we certainly should have been able to talk about our work for a mere five minutes. The rub was the other rule. You couldn’t cite anybody else’s work. You had to hold forth for five minutes without a single “as Dewey said,” or “according to Foucault.” The goal was to speak with authority—as though we had achieved a level of sophistication and understanding that meant we knew what we were talking about. Nobody made it. Not a single person succeeded. Why? Well, we were too-well schooled. We learned very well what our job was as a doctoral student. We had to take a long list of classes, read lots of books, write plenty of papers—and cite source after source after source. We had to present at conferences and we had to publish our work. We had to know Plato’s Forms, Pestalozzi’s regard for young children, and that Charles Saunders Peirce’s last name is pronounced Purse, not Peirce, like it’s spelled. Indeed, we had to know what they said, when they said it,

Uncovering the Coverings: The Use of Corporate-Sponsored Textbook Covers in Furthering Uncritical Consumerism

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. 1994. Changing the Educational Landscape: Philosophy, Women, and Curriculum. New York: Routledge. ———. 1999. “Women, Schools, and Cultural Wealth.” In Women’s Philosophies of Education, edited by Connie Titone and Karen E. Moloney. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall. ———. 2000. Coming of Age in Academe: Rekindling Women’s Hopes and Reforming the Academy. New York: Routledge. ———. 2002. Cultural Miseducation: In Search of a Democratic Solution. New York: Teachers College Press. Mulcahy, Daniel G. 2002. Knowledge, Gender, and Schooling: The Feminist Educational Thought of Jane Roland Martin. Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey. Noddings, Nel. 1992. The Challenge to Care In Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education. New York: Teachers College Press. ———. 1996. “Learning To Care and Be Cared For.” In Schools, Violence, and Society, edited by Allan M. Hoffman, 185–198. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Thompson, Audrey. 2003. “Caring In Context: Four Feminist Theories on Gender and Education.” Curriculum Inquiry 33:9–65. Vigil, James Diego. 1999. “Streets and Schools: How Educators Can Help Chicano Marginalized Gang Youth.” Harvard Educational Review 69:270–288. Ward, Janie. 1995. “Cultivating a morality of care in African-American Adolescents: A culture-based model of violence prevention.” Harvard Educational Review 65:175–188.

Neoliberalism, Technology, and the University: Max Weber’s Concept of Rationalization as a Critique of Online Classes in Higher Education

In this essay, we focus on Max Weber’s concept of rationalization to understand and make sense of the rise of bureaucratic, corporate governance and online learning in higher education. We reveal the distinct disconnect between human interaction and online platforms and how such disconnection is antithetical to higher learning. We also show how Weber’s analysis helps us recognize the uniquely crass commercialism embedded in the very rationalization that makes online learning in universities thinkable and actionable. Our use of online learning is only one illustration of Weber’s concept of rationalization, but it provides an important understanding of the nefarious effects rationalization has on human interaction. The nexus of marketization, technology, and higher education represents, on our view, a juggernaut against faculty autonomy, academic freedom, and humane learning and should be directly challenged. One difficulty this challenge faces is the degree to which online learning has become ubiquitous and taken-for-granted. It has, as Weber clarifies, been rationalized.

From transmission to transaction: John Dewey’s imaginative vision of teaching

ABSTRACT This paper uses John Dewey’s ([1916]. Democracy and Education. New York: The Free Press) to explore the difference between teaching as transmission and teaching as transaction. Proceeding in three sections, the paper clarifies what Dewey understood to be the problems and promises of teaching, as well as the potential of transactionalism. Experiences from working with teachers in a Dewey-inspired school are included to illustrate the possibilities and limitations of advancing Dewey’s imaginative vision.

In Defense of Academic Freedom and Faculty Governance: John Dewey, the 100th Anniversary of the AAUP, and the Threat of Corporatization.

This essay situates John Dewey in the context of the founding of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 1915. We argue that the 1915 Declaration of Principles, together with World War I, provides contemporary academics important historical justification for rethinking academic freedom and faculty governance in light of neoliberalism and what we argue is an increased corporatization of higher education in the United States. By revisiting the founding of the AAUP and John Dewey’s role in the various debates surrounding the establishment of the organization—including his broader role as a public intellectual confronted by war, questions of duty and freedom, and the shifting boundaries of the professoriate—we argue that professors today should demonstrate academic freedom and reclaim faculty governance for the public good over private interests.

Intellectualism, Infiltration, and the Imaginary: The Challenge of Conservative Think Tanks in Developing Coherent Democratic Community

“...it is impossible to account fully for the success of all the holistic philosophies inspired by a common indifference to differences, without taking into account the specifically intellectual functions of their silences and reticences, denials, and slips or, conversely, the displacements and transfers they make towards the themes of ‘homogenization,’ ‘massification,’ or ‘globalization.’ Thus obedience of the dominant ideology manages to impose itself on intellectuals in the form of obedience to the conventions and proprieties of the intellectual world.” Pierre Bourdieu, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, 1990, 192–193.