This post is a classic paper by Peter Rossi from 1987 (Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Volume 4, pages 3-20), which addresses a chronic problem in all policy efforts to change complex social systems. The social organizations of modern life are so large, so complex, so dependent on the cooperation of so many … Continue reading Peter Rossi: The Iron Law of Evaluation and Other Metallic Rules
Today I'm posting Max Weber's classic piece, "Science as a Vocation." It was originally delivered as a speech at Munich University in 1918. Its relevance for scholars today is as great as it was then, asking these questions: What does it mean to be a scientist? What are the sources and limits of scientific authority? … Continue reading Max Weber’s “Science as a Vocation”
This piece is an essay about my life in scholarship and some of the lessons I learned from it. It was written in mid career, after publishing The Trouble with Ed Schools. It now appears as a chapter in my newish book, Being a Scholar, published in 2023. The core insight is that research trajectories are … Continue reading Adventures in Scholarship
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 piece is an essay about my life in scholarship and some of the lessons I learned from it. It was written in mid career, after publishing The Trouble with Ed Schools, and it first appeared in print as the introduction to a 2005 book called Education, Markets, and the Public Good: The Selected Works of David … Continue reading Adventures in Scholarship
This post is a piece of mine about the futures of the university field of education. It focuses on the question: What kind of roles do educational researchers play in school and society? I wrote this essay as the summary chapter for a book edited by Geoff Whitty and John Furlong, Knowledge and the Study … Continue reading Futures of the Field of Education
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 … Continue reading Sermon on Educational Research
This is a piece I wrote a year ago, which had been rattling around in my head for years. The issue is to figure out what role histories of education should play in the formation of educational policy. My short answer is that we should produce the histories we need rather than the histories we … Continue reading Why We Need Histories of Education
This post contains all of the material for the doctoral proseminar — Introduction to Big Issues in the Field of Education — that I taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Education for the last four years of my time there. The aim of this class is to give first-year doctoral students in education a … Continue reading Doctoral Proseminar — Introduction to Big Issues in the Field of Education
This is a class on academic writing for clarity and grace. It is designed as a 10-week class, with weekly readings, slides, and texts for editing. It’s aimed at doctoral students who are preparing to become researchers who seek to publish their scholarship. Ideally you can take the class with a group of peers, where you … Continue reading Writing Class Syllabus, Including Readings, Slides, and Texts
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 