CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS FOR AN EDITED BOOK

Working title: Pedagogies that challenged history…and the histories
that challenge our pedagogies

Editor: Encarna Rodríguez ([log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]), Saint Joseph's University

This book will present the reader with representations of a variety of
public schools in three different continents (North America, South
America, and Europe) and spanning across the 20th century that have
contested the educational discourses of their time and have engaged in
innovative ways of teaching disenfranchised communities. In essence,
Pedagogies that Challenged History is a call to contest current
national and international educational discourses that equate teaching
with test scores and that believe in the standardization of education
as a legitimate foundation for educational reform. By looking at
schools that have tried to “imagine” a different educational path,
this book intends to remind all of us that good education has always
required a high degree of intellectual commitment and social
imagination and that we can renew this commitment by reflecting on the
tapestry of experiences that public schools have undertaken to better
serve students in poor communities.

The core of every chapter in the book will be a description of the
specific curriculum implemented in the featured school. This part will
also include an account of the way in which this curriculum intended
to articulate a particular vision of education and the issues faced
along the way. To contextualize this description, the first part of
every chapter will provide a general historical overview of the time
covered in the description of the school as well as the main issues
that public education faced at that time. Following this description
of the curriculum, the third part of every chapter will provide an
analysis of the importance of the school in the sociopolitical moment
in which existed and, if pertinent, its importance in the present.

The schools to be included in this book will not be representative of
the schools of their time or of the way in which schools tried to
create alternatives to normalized education. Rather, they will be
selected as “evocative” examples of how schools have tried to empower
socially marginalized communities in very different historical,
social, and cultural contexts. Chapter proposals, therefore, should
focus not on the degree or quality of educational changes attempted by
the school, but on the innovative elements of the school’s curriculum
that expand our imagination and can provide us, in our particular
historical context, with new insights on how to teach students from
disenfranchised communities.

All chapter proposals have to address public schools. Exceptionally,
proposals can include schools that, even when not technically public,
they may have functioned de facto as such by being the only
educational institution in the area at the time. All proposals also
need to address schools that have served socially disenfranchised,
poor, or marginalized communities. The schools featured in the
proposal can be large or small, rural or urban, long lasting or
short-lived, or have served any grades K-12. Submitted chapters may be
grouped in sections such as schools that created new pedagogical
paths, schools born out of community control, schools that taught
against or despite harsh political contexts, schools sponsored by
institutional changes, or schools that tried to disrupt the historical
and social narratives society imposed on their students. Additional
themes are expected to emerge to warrant additional/different
sections.

This book intends to be a resource in any course that looks at
education from an interdisciplinary perspective and that emphasizes a
holistic view of educational change. It also intends to be a resource
for courses in the areas of history of education, curriculum, teacher
education, educational policy, and sociology of education. Ultimately,
this text intends to be a useful tool for any professional in the
field of education, including current school teachers and
administrators, who are dissatisfied with the narrowness of the
current rhetoric of school reform and who are looking for creative
ways to transcend it.


If interested, please submit a brief description of the school (no
more than 500 words) and of the features of its curriculum that you
think are particularly relevant for this project by June 1, 2012.
Please attach a short CV with your recent publications. Authors whose
proposals are selected by the editor will be notified by July 1, 2012.
The deadline for the final draft for chapters is December 1, 2012.

Please direct proposals and inquires to Editor: Encarna Rodríguez
([log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask])

The Editor:
 Dr. Encarna Rodríguez is an Associate Professor in the
Department of Educational Leadership at Saint Joseph's University,
Philadelphia, US. She has published a number of articles on curriculum
reform and neoliberalism. Her current areas of research include the
role of constructivism in curriculum reforms and the internalization
of curriculum in teacher education programs. She is also the author of
Neoliberalismo, Educación y Género, a study of the curriculum reform
in Spain during the first socialist administration. Her works have
been published in scholarly journals such as Journal of Curriculum
Theorizing, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Teacher Education
Quarterly and Revista de Educación (Spain) among others.

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