Papers by Susan Verducci Sandford
Philosophy of Education, 2018
Philosophy of Education, 2008
Ryan Bevan calls for us to dispense with the model of cultivating autonomy based on the liberal c... more Ryan Bevan calls for us to dispense with the model of cultivating autonomy based on the liberal consumerist model when it includes challenging students' identification with their comprehensive traditions. Instead, he invites us to cull and cultivate from within benign traditions the very values and deliberative processes necessary for liberalism. His argument deconstructs the logical and metaphysical problems of the challenging model. He writes that when the traditions themselves contain the values to be cultivated, guiding students to challenge these traditions effectively undercuts educational objectives. It is more sensible and more effective to affirm students' connections to their traditions and use the traditions themselves to cultivate the values and procedures required of liberal citizens.
Philosophy of Education, Jun 1, 2022
In "The Arts of the Contact Zone," Mary Louise Pratt describes contact zones "as social spaces wh... more In "The Arts of the Contact Zone," Mary Louise Pratt describes contact zones "as social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power." 1 Considering classrooms as contact zones has particular resonance today, as legislation across the United States passes to limit student access to ideas, curriculum, and conversation related to LGBTQ and racial issues. The authors included in this first issue of the 78th volume of Philosophy of Education explore teaching in the classroom contact zone. Collectively, they extend Pratt's seminal ideas into the phenomenology of teaching, curricular experimentation, and ethical, political, and social contexts of the teaching profession. Pratt contrasts contact zones with "safe" spaces in educational institutions; "safe houses" are "social and intellectual spaces where groups can constitute themselves as horizontal, homogenous, sovereign communities with high degrees of trust, shared understandings, [and] temporary protection from legacies of oppression." 2 While these spaces are educationally necessary, Pratt argues that contact zones are equally necessary. They are places where everyone, including the historically marginalized, has "the experience of seeing the world described with him or her in it." 3 Exposure, precarity, and risk constitute the conditions of the contact zone. The first set of essays and responses center on teachers' challenges in contact zones. Cristina Cammarano worries that a teacher's comfort, habits, and routines "anaesthetize" and narrow the perception of students while simultaneously cultivating an "arrogance" of understanding.
Philosophy of Education, 2012
Philosophy of Education, 2017
Philosophy of Education, 2015
Improvisation: "where everything might happen but not anything goes." In this essay, I advocate t... more Improvisation: "where everything might happen but not anything goes." In this essay, I advocate the practice of free and collective improvisation in efforts to cultivate the opening of minds in classrooms. I do so by forging conceptual connections between improvisation and the "openness" required by open-mindedness. I explore how open-mindedness is generally conceived, including the openness entailed in these conceptions. I then lay out the distinctive features of improvisation and the processes improvisers engage in. I conclude by connecting these features and processes to the openness required by open-mindedness. To be clear: I do not claim that improvisation cultivates open-mindedness. My specific argument is that free and collective improvisation requires an opening of its players, the sort of opening relevant for those of us concerned with cultivating open-mindedness in classrooms. Scholars such as William Hare, Jason Baehr, and Hugh Sockett have been exploring the nature and educational value of open-mindedness since the late 1970s. 2 Open-mindedness, as they explain it, is an intellectual virtue that disposes us to value and seek truth by taking a particular stance toward what we know and processing new information in particular ways. On the margins of its general acceptance as a valuable educational aim in a liberal democracy, several debates about open-mindedness have taken place. Questions about the limits of open-mindedness, its status as an intellectual virtue, and whether it should be subsumed under Harvey Siegel's "critical spirit" have sharpened our understanding but have not diminished the fundamental recognition that to be disposed to be open-minded (within fairly wide limits) is an intellectual and educational good in a liberal democracy and, moreover, that schools are appropriate places to cultivate this good. The nature of open-mindedness is more contested. Following John Dewey, Hare proposes thinking about open-mindedness in terms of three interlocking and complementary components: (1) openness to new ideas, (2) critical assessment of these new ideas, and (3) a willingness and eagerness to revise one's beliefs in the face of evidence. 3 Each component is necessary, and each compensates for the weaknesses and excesses of the others. Hare sees open-mindedness as relevant for situations in which there are at least two competing beliefs. In one situation, the inquirer is neutral to the beliefs. In the other, the inquirer holds a belief and is confronted with a new or alternative belief. Jason Baehr's work on open-mindedness adds to these situations that of a detective trying to make sense of disparate clues (for example, Sherlock Holmes) and that of trying to understand something that requires a paradigm shift in thinking. Because these two situations do not necessarily involve the sort of critical analysis
Philosophy of Education, 2022
The third issue of Philosophy of Education 2022 continues the conference theme of examining Mary ... more The third issue of Philosophy of Education 2022 continues the conference theme of examining Mary Louise Pratt's notion of "contact zones." The first issue was concerned with contact zones between teachers and students, including the preparation of teachers. The second issue explored embodiment and "touch" in contact zones. This issue includes discussions that highlight
Philosophy of Education
Ryan Bevan calls for us to dispense with the model of cultivating autonomy based on the liberal c... more Ryan Bevan calls for us to dispense with the model of cultivating autonomy based on the liberal consumerist model when it includes challenging students' identification with their comprehensive traditions. Instead, he invites us to cull and cultivate from within benign traditions the very values and deliberative processes necessary for liberalism. His argument deconstructs the logical and metaphysical problems of the challenging model. He writes that when the traditions themselves contain the values to be cultivated, guiding students to challenge these traditions effectively undercuts educational objectives. It is more sensible and more effective to affirm students' connections to their traditions and use the traditions themselves to cultivate the values and procedures required of liberal citizens.
Encounters in Theory and History of Education, 2019
In Teaching Controversial Issues, Nel Noddings and co-author Laurie Brooks invite teachers to eng... more In Teaching Controversial Issues, Nel Noddings and co-author Laurie Brooks invite teachers to engage students in critical thinking on issues that divide Americans such as religion, race, gender, class, and justice. Across her recent work, Noddings argues that schools are places where students can learn to listen to others and to think about these issues critically and collaboratively. This essay proposes that the power of critical thinking for cultivating students’ ability to participate in social and political life is complicated by current American polarization and needs to be supplemented by exercises that help open teachers’ and students’ minds to alternative perspectives. It points to two potential arts education practices that can help create conditions in which critical thinking on controversial issues carries the possibility of cultivating the democratic citizens Noddings envisions, even in polarized times.
Philosophy of Education, 2014
The purpose of this essay is to explore the role that the dramatic imagination can serve in devel... more The purpose of this essay is to explore the role that the dramatic imagination can serve in developing the disposition of open-mindedness in schools. The essay argues that Method acting techniques can provide students with practice perceiving and embodying the perceptions of others in ways that are important for opening minds in conditions of belief conflict. I suspect that the knowledge claims Logue is most concerned about in her paper and her teaching do not fall within the domain of rational thought…. [T]he ideas we hold about people whose race, gender, sexuality, religion, or ability is different from our own are probably not as susceptible to evidence or rational counterargument as the concept of open-mindedness would suggest.
Philosophy of Education Archive, 2008
Philosophy of Education Archive, 2000
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Papers by Susan Verducci Sandford