Richard A. Quantz

Changes in Educational Attitudes of Education and Science Arts and Students during Four Years of College

The authors found that Education majors become more progressive in their attitudes toward educational practices after experiencing professional courses and clinical and field experi ences, particularly when those experiences are organized and directed by Education faculty members who hold progressive views. The results contradict often-found conclusions from less rigorously designed studies and suggest that the contradictory findings of different research paradigms may be reflecting the different factors that make up the various attitude constructs.

Nonrational Classroom Performance: Ritual as an Aspect of Action.

Through the presentation and analysis of two extended examples, the authors develop a clear conceptualization of ritual as formalized, symbolic performance and show how such a conceptualization allows us to look at ritual as an aspect of action rather than as a type of action. As an aspect of action, ritual is to be found in nearly all classroom action and helps us understand how the most mundane and ordinary of activities carry with them powerful cultural messages.

Culture-Based Leadership.

Abstract The field of educational leadership is beset with a barrage of different ‘leadership theories’. There are so many differently named theories and models of leadership that the student and practitioner have difficulty understanding them as anything other than an automat of alternatives. To confuse matters even more, nearly all of these alternatives claim to work in the interest of transformation and social justice and against the status quo. Unfortunately, the dominant textbooks available in educational administration and leadership favour certain traditional approaches to leadership while all but ignoring the most cogent of the contemporary critical alternatives. This essay argues that one reason for the absence of critical voices in the dominant textbooks and practices in the field results from the failure to recognize a commonality among certain critical stances on educational leadership that distinguish them from more traditional approaches. It suggests the field would benefit from recognizing that educational leadership theories may actually be approached as either organization-based theories or as culture-based theories and then advocates more consideration be given to culture-based theories.

Introduction to the Nonrational in Education

The air lies still across the coliseum. The murmurs and shuffling quiet as the black-robed figure of the Superintendent approaches the podium. Dr. Laffer pauses for effect. Her gaze moves from her right to her left taking in the packed audience of the families and friends of today’s graduates. Then she looks downward at the graduates themselves. A small smile grows upon her face. Spread before her are 14 rows of peaceful and hopeful young adults beautifully arrayed in 14 blue and white columns in a natural symmetry that represents all that is good about American education. With calm voice Dr. Laffer addresses her audience, “Twelve years ago you began your schooling. It seems like an eternity to you, but to your parents it seems like yesterday. Whether an eternity or a mere moment, in that time, you have matured from small children to young adults. There have been many influences in your life from your parents to your siblings to your friends, but certainly some of those influences were found among your teachers and schoolmates. Part of who you are today grew in the education that you have pursued here. We are confident that your learning during these years is only the beginning of much more learning to come whether that future education is found in college or work.” Dr. Laffer’s address continues for only a few minutes more and then, to polite applause, she returns to her seat on the dais.

School Ritual as Performance

That people construct the social world is a commonplace assertion in the education literature today; how they construct the social, however, is less frequently addressed. To the extent that a social analyst does address the mechanisms used in social construction, the discussion is overwhelmingly in the realm of language; the focus is on what people say and what the researcher hears. Yet from the earliest work in theoretical sociology to the most recent postmodern influences in cultural studies, the influence of performance has been known. Durkheim’s well-known 1912 study The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1965) identified ritual performance as one key mechanism in the construction of the social. Since then, social analysts, particularly social anthropologists, have recognized ritual as an important social mechanism. And yet when it comes right down to it, with only a few notable exceptions (e.g., Lesko, 1988; Magolda & Gross, 2009; McLaren, 1999 little has actually been done to develop ritual into a key component of the social analysis of education. Educational ethnographers appear to prefer to listen to what their informants say rather than to observe what they perform. Ethnographers’ evidence draws from their interviews with informants rather than the detailed visual and aural descriptions that one often finds in the classic ethnographies of tribal societies.

Ritual Critique and the New Pedagogy

If we understand ritual to be that aspect of action that is a formalized, symbolic performance, then we come to realize that nearly everything that happens in a school includes some ritual and every act has the potential for ritual effects. In other words, nearly everything that happens in a school is both effected by and affects the nonrational. And yet educators approach schooling as if it were a rational exercise. Examine any teacher’s lesson plans, or any grade-level curriculum, or any statewide objective and the assumption is that schooling is about the rational. But I hope by now, this book has convinced you that not everything in a school can be reduced to the technical logic of rational self-interest. We must learn to consider the nontechnical reasoning of the nonrational if we are ever going to understand what is actually happening in schools. In fact, this book argues that the nonrational aspects of schooling are ultimately more important to most students and teachers than the rational and yet, the nonrational is seldom consciously considered by either. Rarely do students and their teachers actually focus on the cultural politics exemplified in the symbolic struggle embedded in ritual. And even more rarely are the material politics that support and form these symbolic struggles recognized.