In this essay, Erica Halverson and Kimberly Sheridan provide the context for research on the maker movement as they consider the emerging role of making in education. The authors describe the theoretical roots of the movement and draw connections to related research on formal and informal education. They present points of tension between making…

In this essay Ruben A. Gaztambide-Fernandez uses a discursive approach to argue that mainstream arts in education scholarship and advocacy construes "the arts" as a definable naturalistic phenomenon that exists in the world and is available to be observed and measured. In the course of his analysis, he examines how this construction is…

In this essay, Gary Thomas argues that education research repeatedly makes a mistake first noted by Dewey: it misunderstands our science. This misunderstanding has led to attempts to import various putatively scientific precepts into education inquiry. But in reality, he argues, those "scientific" precepts do not characterize scientific endeavor,…

In this article, Lois Weis and Michelle Fine introduce critical bifocality as a way to render visible the relations between groups to structures of power, to social policies, to history, and to large sociopolitical formations. In this collaboration, the authors draw upon ethnographic examples highlighting the macro-level structural dynamics…

In this open letter, Eve Tuck calls on communities, researchers, and educators to reconsider the long-term impact of "damage-centered" research--research that intends to document peoples' pain and brokenness to hold those in power accountable for their oppression. This kind of research operates with a flawed theory of change: it is often used to…

Multilateral donors like the World Bank and bilateral agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the British Department for International Development exert a great deal of influence in international educational development--particularly in sub-Saharan Africa--both in the programs they fund and the types of…

In this article, Jonathan Cohen argues that the goals of education need to be reframed to prioritize not only academic learning, but also social, emotional, and ethical competencies. Surveying the current state of research in the fields of social-emotional education, character education, and school-based mental health in the United States, Cohen…

In this article, John Holst presents findings of his historical research on Paulo Freire's educational work in Chile from 1964 to 1969. Freire's "Education as the Practice of Freedom", which was written in 1965 from notes he brought from Brazil, was informed by a liberal developmentalist outlook. In contrast, his "Pedagogy of the Oppressed",…

Drawing on their legal expertise and their experience working with public school districts, John W. Borkowski and Maree Sneed discuss the controversies surrounding the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). They acknowledge that its principal benefits lie in its recognition of the right of each child to learn and be assessed by…

Ellen Lagemann focuses on developments within the history of education to examine questions about the role of humanities research in the study of education--an issue which has plagued education scholarship since its inception. In this article, Lagemann demonstrates that scholars of education have sought to base their work on factual or…

In this article, Kieran Egan contests the scientific foundations of Piaget's developmental theories and the scientific basis of much educational research. In so doing, he pushes researchers and practitioners alike to rethink the centrality of Piaget's tenets to teaching and learning. Egan traces the history of the developmental literature that…

In this conversation, Kevin K. Kumashiro shares his reflections on challenges to publishing anti-oppressive research in educational journals. He then invites eight current and former editors of leading educational research journals--William F. Pinar, Elizabeth Graue, Carl A. Grant, Maenette K. P. Benham, Ronald H. Heck, James Joseph Scheurich,…

In this article, Jonathan Jansen describes his experiences as a Black dean in the formerly all-White University of Pretoria in South Africa. The article shows how race, gender, history, and institutional culture constitute emotional terrain in which decanal leadership plays itself out in the volatile postapartheid era. In the context of South…

In this article, Ralf St. Clair makes the argument that induction--the process of applying research findings from one setting to another--is logically unsupported, irrespective of method or methodology, due to the existence of superunknowns. Superunknowns are defined as factors that cannot be anticipated, not because of instrumentation defects,…

In this article, Walt Haney, Michael Russell, and Damian Bebell summarize a decade of work using student drawings as a way to both document and change education and schooling. After a brief summary of more than one hundred years of literature on children's drawings, the authors point out that drawings have been little recognized as a medium of…