Challenging the Status Quo: Public Education in Hawaii, 1840-1980

This article summarizes some emerging concerns as learning analytics become implemented throughout education. The article takes a sociotechnical perspective — positioning learning analytics as shaped by a range of social, cultural, political, and economic factors. In this manner, various concerns are outlined regarding the propensity of learning analytics to entrench and deepen the status quo, disempower and disenfranchise vulnerable groups, and further subjugate public education to the profit-led machinations of the burgeoning “data economy.” In light of these charges, the article briefly considers some possible areas of change. These include the design of analytics applications that are more open and accessible, that offer genuine control and oversight to users, and that better reflect students’ lived reality. The article also considers ways of rethinking the political economy of the learning analytics industry. Above all, learning analytics researchers need to begin talking more openly about the values and politics of data-driven analytics technologies as they are implemented along mass lines throughout school and university contexts.

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Pracademics in the pandemic: pedagogies and professionalism

Journal of Professional Capital and Community ◽

10.1108/jpcc-06-2020-0038 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 5 (3/4) ◽

pp. 295-305

Author(s):

Trista Hollweck ◽

Armand Doucet

Keyword(s):

Public Education ◽

Teaching And Learning ◽

Transformational Change ◽

Status Quo ◽

Communication Process ◽

Educational Systems ◽

Content Type ◽

Professional Capital ◽

The Status ◽

Individual Knowledge

PurposeThis thinking piece examines, from the viewpoint of two Canadian pracademics in the pandemic, the role of pedagogy and professionalism in crisis teaching and learning. The purpose of the paper is to highlight some of the tensions that have emerged and offer possible considerations to disrupt the status quo and catalyze transformation in public education during the pandemic and beyond.Design/methodology/approachThis paper considers the current context of COVID-19 and education and uses the professional capital framework (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012) to examine pandemic pedagogies and professionalism.FindingsThe COVID-19 pandemic has catapulted educational systems into emergency remote teaching and learning. This rapid shift to crisis schooling has massive implications for pedagogy and professionalism during the pandemic and beyond. Despite the significant challenges for educators, policymakers, school leaders, students and families, the pandemic is a critical opportunity to rethink the future of schooling. A key to transformational change will be for schools and school systems to focus on their professional capital and find ways to develop teachers' individual knowledge and skills, support effective collaborative networks that include parents and the larger school community and, ultimately, trust and include educators in the decision-making and communication process.Originality/valueThis thinking piece offers the perspective of two Canadian pracademics who do not wish for a return to “normal” public education, which has never serve all children well or equitably. Instead, they believe the pandemic is an opportunity to disrupt the status quo and build the education system back better. Using the professional capital framework, they argue that it will be educators' professionalism and pandemic pedagogies that will be required to catalyze meaningful transformational change.

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