Examining How the Student "Determines" the Success and/or Failure of Education Reform

Authors

  • Christopher Brown University of Texas, Austin

Abstract

The goal of this article is to offer insight into how education stakeholders (i.e., policymakers, administrators, teachers, parents, students) can reframe the discourse of education reform so that the child is no longer viewed simply as an object of success or failure within the field. The arbitrariness of the ‘failure’ construct, as well as related conceptualizations within American education that eventually lead all children to be identified as lacking, is examined (Varenne & McDermott, 1998). An analysis of how education policymakers in Wisconsin fostered a system of education that used the dualism between the success/failure constructs as foundational is conducted. The author concludes by arguing that education stakeholders must take up their ethical responsibility and examine how they structure children as failures so that the field of education research can pursue solutions that alter that structuring.

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Published

2012-07-26

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2008)

Section

Articles (Peer Reviewed Research)

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