This post is a review I wrote of a new book by Ken Teitelbaum, which will eventually appear in the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy. At its heart, this is a book of advice for teachers, and its messages really resonate with me. You can't change the world, but you can do something important where … Continue reading Work with What You’ve Got: Advice for Teachers from Ken Teitelbaum
In this post, I want to explore a vivid image developed by Larry Cuban to characterize the peculiar nature of teaching and learning in schools. Scholars have frequently argued for a form of educational exceptionalism that sees schooling as a social structure that is distinctive from the normal patterns of bureaucratic organization that one sees … Continue reading Larry Cuban — Rockets Are Complicated but Schools Are Complex; Thoughts about Educational Exceptionalism
Professionals, by definition, are more skilled than amateurs in any given field, but they both experience failure. And to an average observer, they appear to fail in similar ways. The practitioner is moving along nicely in carrying out his or her craft -- and then suddenly it all falls apart. The golf ball flies off … Continue reading Panicking vs. Choking: The Different Ways that Amateurs and Professionals Fail
In 1932, Willard Waller published his classic book, The Sociology of Teaching. For years I used a chapter from it ("The Teacher-Pupil Relationship") as a way to get students to think about the problem that most frightens rookie teachers and that continues to haunt even the most experienced practitioners: how to gain and maintain control … Continue reading Willard Waller on the Power Struggle between Teachers and Students
In this post, I explore a key issue in understanding the social role that schools play: Why do we need schools anyway? For thousands of years, children grew up learning the skills, knowledge, and values they would need in order to be fully functioning adults. They didn't need schools to accomplish this. The family, the … Continue reading What Schools Can Do that Families Can’t: Robert Dreeben’s Analysis
This post is a piece I recently published in Aeon. Here's the link to the original. I wrote this after years of futile efforts to get Stanford students to think critically about how they got to their current location at the top of the meritocracy. It was nearly impossible to get students to consider that … Continue reading Pluck vs. Luck
This post is aabout a 1975 paper by James G. March, which was published in, of all places, the Texas Tech Journal of Education. Given that provenance, it's something you likely have never encountered before unless someone actually handed it to you. I used it in a number of my classes and wanted to share … Continue reading James March: Education and the Pursuit of Optimism
In this piece, I explore a major problem I have with recent educational policy discourse -- the way we have turned teachers from the heroes of the public school story to its villains. If students are failing, we now hear, it is the fault of teachers. This targeting of teachers employs a new form of … Continue reading Targeting Teachers
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 