Larry Cuban
Auteur van Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform
Over de Auteur
Larry Cuban is professor emeritus of education at Stanford University.
Werken van Larry Cuban
How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms 1890-1990 (Research on Teaching) (1984) 19 exemplaren
How Scholars Trumped Teachers: Constancy and Change in University Curriculum, Teaching, and Research, 1890-1990 (1999) 18 exemplaren
Reconstructing the common good in education : coping with intractable American dilemmas (2000) 13 exemplaren
Inside the Black Box of Classroom Practice: Change without Reform in American Education (2013) 10 exemplaren
How Can I Fix It?: Finding Solutions and Managing Dilemmas : An Educator's Road Map (2001) 7 exemplaren
Hugging the Middle -- How Teachers Teach in an Era of Testing and Accountability (2008) 7 exemplaren
Technology, Curriculum, and Professional Development: Adapting Schools to Meet the Needs of Students With Disabilities (2000) 7 exemplaren
Japan 3 exemplaren
The Flight of a Butterfly or the Path of a Bullet?: Using Technology to Transform Teaching and Learning (2018) 3 exemplaren
Teaching History Then and Now 1 exemplaar
The Managerial Imperative and the Practice of Leadership in Schools (Suny Series in Educational Leadership) (1988) 1 exemplaar
Suburbs (People and the City) 1 exemplaar
OVERSOLD AND UNDERUSED 1 exemplaar
How Teachers Taught 1 exemplaar
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This slender but illustrative book traces this history of public education reforms across the 20th century. Two themes run through the book. The first is that public schools are set in their ways and very difficult to reform. The authors show that many reforms are "successful" in that they're widely adopted but don't actually improve education. Other reforms have changed teaching for the better and have succeeded so much that they've worked themselves into the basic nature of education so that they're not even seen as reforms. One example the authors give is the blackboard, a new technology adopted by schools that has become synonymous with education (even as they're becoming less common in classrooms). The second theme of the book is that proposals for reform are cyclical returning to the education policy debate generation after generation. While the authors acknowledge this is true, they also point out that the context in which these reforms are proposed is always changing, thus the implementation of these "same old" reforms can lead to very different outcomes as they address different problems.
As the title gives away, the authors find that incremental change and working through reforms by adapting to local needs are the most successful ways of carrying out educational reform that actually improves student learning and outcomes. Although the book was published 20 years ago, the issues discussed are very familiar to anyone involved in today's education policy debates, and it serves as a good bulwark against calls for sweeping reforms and disruptive panaceas to today's education problems.
Favorite Passages:
As the title gives away, the authors find that incremental change and working through reforms by adapting to local needs are the most successful ways of carrying out educational reform that actually improves student learning and outcomes. Although the book was published 20 years ago, the issues discussed are very familiar to anyone involved in today's education policy debates, and it serves as a good bulwark against calls for sweeping reforms and disruptive panaceas to today's education problems.
Favorite Passages:
"We want to probe the meaning of continuity in schooling as well as to understand change. Change, we believe, is not synonymous with progress. Sometimes preserving good practices in the face of challenges is a major achievement, and sometimes teachers have been wise to resist reforms that violated their professional judgment.… (meer)
Although policy talk about reform has had a Utopian ring, actual reforms have typically been gradual and incremental. It may be fashionable to decry such change as piecemeal and inadequate, but over long periods of time such revisions of practice, adapted to local contexts, can substantially improve schools. Rather than seeing the hybridizing of reform ideas as a fault, we suggest it can be a virtue. Tinkering is one way of preserving what is valuable and reworking what is not." - p. 5
"Better schooling will result in the future - as it has in the past and does now - chiefly from the steady, reflective efforts of the practitioners who work in schools and from the contributions of the parents and citizens who support (while they criticize) public education. This might seem to be just common sense. But in planning reforms in recent years, policy elites have often bypassed teachers and discounted their knowledge of what schools are like today. ...
To the degree that teachers are out of the policy loop in designing and adopting school reforms, it is not surprising if they drag their feet in implementing them. Teachers so not have a monopoly on educational wisdom, but their first-hand perspectives on school and their responsibility for carrying out official policies argues for their centrality in school reform efforts." - p. 135
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Othemts | 1 andere bespreking | Jan 19, 2016 |
Othemts | 1 andere bespreking | Jan 19, 2016 | Would have been 4.5 because I thought that some chapters could have used greater detail. Drew significantly on the work of Richard Elmore and Milbrey McLaughlin.
I actually think it could have profited from a stronger voice, and could have been more critical.
Situating school reform in the context of efforts to reform public institutions (e.g. health sector) would also have been illuminating. Nevertheless, a very good book.
I actually think it could have profited from a stronger voice, and could have been more critical.
Situating school reform in the context of efforts to reform public institutions (e.g. health sector) would also have been illuminating. Nevertheless, a very good book.
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>>From the title, this book suggested an interesting reading, as I am always interested in books about education. This one was written in what can only be described as a soporific and sluggish writing style.
I found interesting the historical parallels between the progressive movement of the late 19th century and the reform movements of the 1970s, both driven by business interests. Who says history does not repeat itself? Santayana was definitely right about those who fail to study history. Interesting also, to say the least, is the fact that business often tries to drive reforms in the midst of its own problems: mismanagement, bad CEOs, failures, so on, but people overlook these and keep believing for some reason that escapes me. People, some with good intentions, others with self-interest seem to be conveniently forgetful when it comes to the business community. It must be noted also that very often schools are blamed for social ills, and then society's "experts" turn around and expect those schools to fix those same social ills they decried. Talk about ironic.
And thinking about it three years later or so, clearly the situation has not changed. If anything, it has gotten worse, and yet we keep bailing big corporate interests instead of letting them fail as they should be allowed to do. After all, if they can be big boys when the times are good, when they screw up, let them fail and suffer the consequences of the risks they took instead of whining to the government to save them. And they, of course, are the same ones whining about how kids are poorly educated, etc. Is their example really what is needed to fix education? Food for thought, but this is not the book to really think about these issues.… (meer)