Papers by Kathleen Knight-Abowitz
Policy Press eBooks, May 2, 2023
Globalisation, Societies and Education
In many nations around the globe, including Pakistan, education is losing ground as a public good... more In many nations around the globe, including Pakistan, education is losing ground as a public good to become another market-based commodity as the state shrinks its responsibility to schooling. This presents challenges to democratic futures, and particularly for young democratic states such as Pakistan. The government of Pakistan is pouring a significant amount of money into the private provision of education, encouraged by the policies and investments of international donor-partners such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. These changes in educational provision represent the impacts of neoliberalism and globalisation on Pakistani policymaking and the growing influence of the conceptualisation of education as a private commodity. To address these trends, we offer a normative philosophical framework for a conception of education as a critical public good in Pakistan, drawing on Islamic tradition, public good theory, human rights, and common good global education theories.
An article of empirically informed philosophical analysis of charter schooling that features loca... more An article of empirically informed philosophical analysis of charter schooling that features local histories, voices of stakeholders, and an optimistic view on the democratic potential of charter school policies, the original piece presents a compelling, if extreme, case of charter school formation. In this response, I offer an alternative theoretical framing to the case. I argue that the scholarship of constitutional scholars is much less relevant as an interpretive lens on the case than more critical, contemporary pragmatist thinkers. I hope to show in this response how Deweyan political philosophy might have been used throughout the argument to produce a more nuanced and less naïve reading of charter schooling as a venue for creating new public spheres in education beyond traditional public schools. The qualitative study featured in this paper produces a detailed reading of a local charter schooling initiative that is worthy of serious analysis. My response suggests new, more pla...
Technology, Knowledge and Learning
This article explores the potential of digital technology to advance democratic citizenship. Draw... more This article explores the potential of digital technology to advance democratic citizenship. Drawing on critical theory and following a critical, comparative qualitative study which examined the relationships among digital technology, education, and democracy in the US and Israel, the authors explore epistemological assumptions of teaching and learning with digital tools. The article examines the tension between the promise of digital technology to transform education, and the instrumental hegemony of the neoliberal imperative. At the heart of this article, the authors contend that current teachers' understanding of using digital technology, and the practices used in classrooms constrain the promotion of digital citizenship. The authors argue that transforming education through digital technology and advancing civic aims require epistemological transformation which will move beyond instrumental understanding of digital tools. They conclude with a recommendation of a theoretical framework for digital citizenship.
Philosophical Inquiry in Education, Jul 15, 2020
Philosophical Inquiry in Education, Jul 28, 2020
Agonistic critiques of democratic theory conceptualize democracy as a site of conflict and strugg... more Agonistic critiques of democratic theory conceptualize democracy as a site of conflict and struggle; as the fight against privatization escalates, these critiques become more relevant for educational governance. Public education governance has, in addition, increasingly been the site of conflicts between federal, state and local levels, as populist and other types of dissent are now emerging in educational politics. These conflicts reached a new peak with the nomination of Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education. This nomination represented a pitched battle over public school as a "public thing," a material object, space, institution or place of symbolic and embodied civic importance (Honig, 2017). DeVos's nomination stirred up, in popular imagination, the idea of public schools as "public things" of meaning and value for many citizens who participated in unprecedented ways to (unsuccessfully) block her appointment. It was with this threat to public education that the value of school as a "public thing" became crystalized among a diverse network of citizens. This political moment reveals (1) the nature of schools as public things and (2) the importance of agonist critiques of democracy, and public work, as a means for citizens to help safeguard the future of schools as public things. I conclude by explaining the limits of agonism as a comprehensive approach to the democratic governance of schooling, advocating for its use as a critique and expansion of current models of public engagement with educational politics.
Teoría de la Educación. Revista Interuniversitaria
En este artículo, analizo una muestra de las prácticas educativas actuales en los movimientos pop... more En este artículo, analizo una muestra de las prácticas educativas actuales en los movimientos populistas educativos de Brasil, Estados Unidos e Israel. Tras un breve examen de estas formas de populismo, que revela tendencias políticas de nacionalismo étnico, ortodoxia religiosa, antisecularismo y autoritarismo, reviso la teoría democrática para interpretar el populismo desde una posición teórica democrática dual: pragmatismo, y teoría democrática crítica o radical. Utilizo reflexiones pragmáticas en la esfera pública (Dewey, 1927; Frega, 2010, 2019), para explicar cómo y por qué emergen colectivos en la dinámica de las instituciones estatales democráticas de educación. Y posteriormente, paso a la teoría democrática radical para analizar la idea de la expresión populista y su función en la política democrática (Laclau, 2005; Mouffe, 2018). En términos pragmáticos, los movimientos populistas son colectivos en potencia, basados en una idea experimentalista de la vida política que inclu...
In this article, I explore a selection of current scholarship on educational populist movements i... more In this article, I explore a selection of current scholarship on educational populist movements in Brazil, the U.S., and Israel. After a brief examination of these populist forms, which reveal political trends of ethno-nationalism, religious orthodoxy, anti-secularism, and authoritarianism, I examine democratic theory to understand populism from a dual democratic theoretical positions: pragmatism, and radical or critical democratic theory. I use pragmatist insights into the public sphere (Dewey, 1927; Frega, 2010, 2019), to explain how and why publics emerge in the dynamic of democratic state institutions of schooling. I then turn to radical democratic theory to explain the idea of populist expression and its role in democratic politics (Laclau, 2005; Mouffe, 2018). In pragmatist terms, populist movements are potential publics, relying on an experimentalist idea of political life which includes group associations in civil society which generate feedback, action, and dissent in attempts to shape decisions in state institutions. Yet too many populist movements fail to become democratic publics insofar as they are characterized by narrowed, private interests, unreflective habits, and practices which are antagonistic to inquiry, responsiveness, and deliberation. As such, populist movements threaten the normative legitimacy and stability of liberal democratic state institutions of schooling. While minimalist, or thin versions of popu-lism are compatible with, and important vehicles for educational politics, the presently dominating maximalist versions profiled in this article threaten the liberal-democratic state project (Sant, 2021). Pragmatist theories of democratic politics and publics (Frega, 2019) offer ways to meet the populist moment, but contain significant implications of institutional re-design and reform for their realization.
Phi Delta Kappan , 2020
Reframing our narratives about school to focus less on individuals' economic futures and more on ... more Reframing our narratives about school to focus less on individuals' economic futures and more on our shared responsibilities could improve outcomes for our children and our country.
Teoría de la Educación, 2023
In this article, I explore a selection of current scholarship on educational populist movements i... more In this article, I explore a selection of current scholarship on educational populist movements in Brazil, the U.S., and Israel. After a brief examination of these populist forms, which reveal political trends of ethno-nationalism, religious orthodoxy, anti-secularism, and authoritarianism, I examine democratic theory to understand populism from a dual democratic theoretical positions: pragmatism, and radical or critical democratic theory. I use pragmatist insights into the public sphere (Dewey, 1927; Frega, 2010, 2019), to explain how and why publics emerge in the dynamic of democratic state institutions of schooling. I then turn to radical democratic theory to explain the idea of populist expression and its role in democratic politics (Laclau, 2005; Mouffe, 2018). In pragmatist terms, populist movements are potential publics, relying on an experimentalist idea of political life which includes group associations in civil society which generate feedback, action, and dissent in attempts to shape decisions in state institutions. Yet too many populist movements fail to become democratic publics insofar as they are characterized by narrowed, private interests, unreflective habits, and practices which are antagonistic to inquiry, responsiveness, and deliberation. As such, populist movements threaten the normative legitimacy and stability of liberal democratic state institutions of schooling. While minimalist, or thin versions of populism are compatible with, and important vehicles for educational politics, the presently dominating maximalist versions profiled in this article threaten the liberaldemocratic state project (Sant, 2021). Pragmatist theories of democratic politics and publics (Frega, 2019) offer ways to meet the populist moment, but contain significant implications of institutional re-design and reform for their realization.
Philosophy of Education
My first decision about convention involves using the first word in this sentence. My. Signaling ... more My first decision about convention involves using the first word in this sentence. My. Signaling the subjective, personal, and flawed, it is a decision about how I acknowledge the presence of self. The second decision regarding convention involves how I address the author of the essay to which I am responding. I know this person well enough to call her Audrey, and perhaps even well enough to give her a hug when I see her annually. Here, in the spirit of unreliability, I choose the convention that reveals these relations: nonphilosophically, I refer to her as Audrey. Keep this little experiment with un-convention in mind; see how it plays on your thinking as you read these remarks. Keep in mind what I risk, and how I am interpreted, in this move. Convention structures much of our life. Convention refers to the customary way things are done within a group, repeating and maintaining group norms, solidarities, exclusions, traditions, and human bonds. We rely on conventions even as we might wish to break free of them.
John Dewey's <I>Democracy and Education</I>
Theory & Research in Social Education
in Historical Perspective.” Educational Studies 18:13–33. Warren, Donald. 1993 “A Wake-Up Call to... more in Historical Perspective.” Educational Studies 18:13–33. Warren, Donald. 1993 “A Wake-Up Call to the Social Foundation of Education.” Educational Foundations 7: 4. ———. 1998. “From There to Where: The Social Foundations of Education in Transit Again.” Educational Studies 29:117–130. Weis, Lois. 1993. “At the Intersection of Silencing and Voice: Discursive Constructions in School.” Educational Studies 24:1–22.
Theory & Research in Social Education, 2019
Civic culture is a term for how citizens actively live out, perform, and create public life throu... more Civic culture is a term for how citizens actively live out, perform, and create public life through our habits, actions, words, and public work. A vital civic culture, with an engaged citizenry, is one of the measures of a healthy democratic republic. In this inquiry, we explore how civic education-holistically envisioned across disciplines and types of curriculum-might be imagined in light of civic cultural engagement and creation. We use the recent #NeverAgainMSD youth activism against gun violence as a single case study through which to examine what educators can learn from youth enacting citizenship in real time, contributing to a vital civic culture in an era when many lament youth apathy and disconnection from public life. We argue that much civics education ignores the worth of political emotion, and we describe both the important role of affect in civic culture and curricular possibilities for working with students around the intersections of affect, civic culture, and public work as citizens.
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Papers by Kathleen Knight-Abowitz