This post is a discussion of Karl Weick’s classic essay, “Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled Systems,” which was published in Administrative Science Quarterly in 1976. Here’s a link to the original. The essay begins with this wonderful thought experiment: Imagine that you’re either the referee, coach, player or spectator at an unconventional soccer match: the field for the game … Continue reading Educational Organizations as Loosely-Coupled Systems
This lovely essay explores the most common question that modernity prompts strangers to ask each other: What do you do? The author is the philosopher Alain de Botton, who explains that this question is freighted with moral judgment. In a meritocracy, what you do for a living is not just your job; it’s who you … Continue reading Alain de Botton: On Asking People What They “Do”
This is a piece I published in 2012 in Bildungsgeschichte: International Journal for the Historiography of Education. It draws on my experience over the years working with doctoral students in education. The advice, basically, is to approach your apprenticeship in educational research doing the opposite of what everyone else tells you to do. Hope you like it. SERMON ON EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH … Continue reading Sermon on Educational Research
This post is a commentary on a classic essay by Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” which appeared in the 1985 book Bringing the State Back In. Here’s a PDF of the original chapter. His essay is a riff on an aphorism he developed earlier: the state makes war and war makes the state. … Continue reading The State as Organized Crime
Earlier I posted a piece about mangled metaphors, which focused on the trouble that writers get into when they use a metaphor without taking into account the root comparison that is embedded within it. Example: talking about "the doctrine set forth in Roe v. Wade and its progeny” -- an aborted metaphor if there ever … Continue reading Academic Writing Issues #9: The Poetry of Everyday Life
This post is an essay I wrote for a festschrift volume in honor of my dear friend and colleague, Daniel Tröhler, who is a professor at University of Vienna. The book is National Literacies in Education: Historical Reflections on the Nexus of Nations, National Identity, and Education, edited by Stephanie Fox and Lukas Boser. It was … Continue reading Reflections on States, Schools, and National Literacies
The introduction to a paper is critically important. This is where you try to draw in readers, tell them what you're going to address, and show why this issue is important. It's also a place to show a little style, demonstrating that you're going to take readers on a fun ride. Below are two exemplary … Continue reading Academic Writing Issues #8: Getting Off to a Fast Start
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 