Thomas M Philip

Rightful presence, as a metaphor, has real and tangible power. Metaphors afford and constrain how we make sense of our world, how we imagine yet-to-be possibilities, how we engage with those around us, and how we muster the courage to act differently. Especially in the context of contemporary school reform, where it is common for initiatives to come and go, it might be tempting for educators to overlook the significance of this term. Tan and Calabrese Barton invite us, however, to consider how spaces of learning would transform profoundly if we authentically embraced the notion of rightful presence: What would it mean for us to teach and create spaces of learning with the deep conviction that every child fully belonged?

While metaphors are powerful, no metaphor is perfect. Returning to the origins of the term, activists and academics alike have raised concerns about the limits of rightful presence. It is important for us to consider at least two critiques. The first has emerged in light of the overwhelming magnitude and ramifications of federal policy and policing. Second, activists and scholars have reminded us of the erasure of Indigeneity in the very concept of rightful presence.

In this chapter, we examine a significant shift in research in the learning sciences, mathematics education, and science education that increasingly attends to the co-construction of power and learning. We review articles in these fields that embody a new sense of theoretical and methodological possibilities and dilemmas, brewing at the intersections of critical social theory and the methodological approaches of interaction analysis and microgenetic analysis. We organize our review into three thematic categories: (1) the dynamic construction of identity and ideology, (2) attending to the organization of a learning environment, and (3) leveraging and repurposing tools. Reading across these thematic areas, we identify and outline a burgeoning subfield that we term critical interaction and microgenetic analysis. By bringing this collection of articles together, this chapter provides collective epistemic and empirical weight to claims of power and learning as co-constituted and co-constructed through interactional, microgenetic, and structural dynamics. In our conclusions, we suggest six analytical commitments that are important to hold when engaging in critical interaction and microgenetic analysis.

Cognition and Instruction has developed a well-deserved reputation for publishing empirically grounded scholarship that makes rich theoretical contributions to what it means to “think, learn, know, and teach” (Enyedy & Hall, 2017, p. 2). As described in our Aims & Scope, the commitment to theory building in this journal “preferentially attends to the ‘how’ of learning.” From the establishment of the journal in 1984, prioritizing the how has been an intellectual endeavor to push back on frameworks that diminish the complexity and contextuality of learning. At least implicitly, if not explicitly, this journal’s emphasis has been a political stance that strives to in uence and redesign the environments in which people learn. As editors, we hope to build on this rich tradition of Cognition and Instruction. We call on those of us who intend to publish in this journal to more clearly attend to the ways in which the for what, for whom, and with whom of teaching and learning are necessarily intertwined with the how of learning—an e ort that asks us to carefully examine and address the cultural and political contexts and consequences of our scholarship. We also hope to unequivocally broaden this journal’s usage of teaching and learning to include and appeal to scholars whose work on culture and politics may fall outside traditional notions of cognition and instruction.

This article makes a unique contribution to the literature on teachers’ racialized sensemaking by proposing a framework of “ideology in pieces” that synthesizes Hall’s (1982, 1996) theory of ideology and diSessa’s (1993) theory of conceptual change. Hall’s theory of ideology enables an examination of teachers’ sensemaking as situated within a structured society and diSessa’s research on conceptual change provides an analytical lens to understand the elements of ideological sensemaking and the processes of ideological transformation. I use the framework of ideology in pieces to analyze and interpret the ideological sensemaking and transformation of a teacher engaged in a collaborative teacher research group in which participants explored issues of social justice in their high school math and science classrooms. The framework and analysis presented in the article offer a more comprehensive theory of teachers’ ideological sensemaking and transformation that includes their cognitive, social, and structural dimensions.

The relationship between ideology and learning remains insufficiently theorized and sparsely investigated in the learning sciences. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s theorization of ideology, Judith Butler’s notion of the (un)grievability of lives, and Sara Ahmed’s construct of stickiness, we illustrate how insights from critical social theory are indis- pensable to understanding processes of learning and how perspectives from the learning sciences can enrich critical social theory. Through the analysis of a classroom discussion on the use of militarized drones in an undergraduate engineering ethics course, we show how ideological convergence among participants constructed locally significant categories of “civilian,” “terrorist,” and (un)grievability, which narrowed the possible trajectories for students’ disciplinary learning in engineering and engineering ethics. Our analysis also shows that fleeting moments of ideological expansion offered opportunities for new learning; however, most of these instances of possibility were not sustained through the classroom discussion. We explicate how ideological convergences and expansions, as interactional achievements, profoundly matter for disciplinary learning and students’ identities. In conclusion, we explore the implications of our findings for broader contexts of learning and for the field of the learning sciences.

Out-of-school settings promise to broaden participation in science to groups that are often left out of school-based opportunities (National Research Council [NRC], 2009). Increasing such involvement is premised on the notion that science is intricately tied to “the social, material, and personal well-being” of individuals, groups, and nations (NRC, 2009)—indicators and aspirations that are deeply linked with understandings of equity, justice, and democracy. We observe, however, that the very conception of equity in the field is a moving target, shifting widely in mean- ing across contexts and research perspectives—a fact that points both to conceptual and theoretical imprecisions and the politically contested nature of the term. We argue that these dehistoricized and depoliticized meanings of equity, and the accompanying assumptions and goals of equity-oriented research and practice, threaten to render the concept useless. This risk is exasperated by the nearly ubiquitous but also often cursory ways in which discourses of equity are employed. In this essay, therefore, we seek to resuscitate the term. We surface the aforementioned inadequacies, as well as the implicit assumptions they carry, so as to sharpen our conception of equity and to reveal possibilities for future research. In particular, we attend to how different individuals and groups might participate and author themselves in everyday settings of science learning toward more equitable ends. Given space constraints, we do not aim to be comprehensive in our treatment; rather, we elaborate three interrelated sets of issues that are foundational for how equity can be realized through everyday science and, reflexively, for considering the role that science (everyday or otherwise) could play in a more equitable, just, and democratic society.

This Viewpoint considers the challenges, commitments, and quandaries that arise with the use of mobile technologies in the classroom. It presents my reflections on struggles encountered in a curricular reform project that relied heavily on new technologies in the classroom. I am transparent about the difficulties we experienced in the hope that our candor will allow for pause and deliberation as others embark on similar efforts, ultimately providing them a more advantageous point of departure.

Data visualizations are now commonplace in the public media. The ability to interpret and create such visualizations, as a form of data literacy, is increasingly important for democratic participation. Yet, the cross-disciplinary knowledge and skills needed to produce and use data visualizations and to develop data literacy are not fluidly integrated into traditional K–12 subject areas. In this article, we nuance and complicate the push for data literacy in STEM reform efforts targeting youth of color. We explore a curricular reform project that integrated explicit attention to issues pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation, representation, visualization, and communication of data in an introductory computer science class. While the study of data in this unit emphasized viewing and approaching data in context, neither the teacher nor the students were supported in negotiating the racialized context of data that emerged in classroom discussions. To better understand these dynamics, we detail the construct of racial literacy and develop an interpretative framework of racial-ideological micro-contestations. Through an in-depth analysis of a classroom interaction using this framework, we explore how contestations about race can emerge when data visualizations from the public media are incorporated into STEM learning precisely because the contexts of data are often racialized. We argue that access to learning about data visualization, without a deep interrogation of race and power, can be counterproductive and that efforts to develop authentic data literacy require the concomitant development of racial literacy.

The authors of this commentary explore the challenges that arise when learning technologies are not carefully examined for their possibilities and limitations through a critical lens of educational equity and justice. They outline an approach to the incorporation of learning technologies that begins with and prioritizes educational equity and social justice.

As Big Data becomes increasingly important in policy-making, research, marketing, and commercial applications, we argue that literacy in this domain is critical for engaged democratic participation and that peer-generated data from mobile technologies offer rich possibilities for students to learn about this new genre of data. Through the lens of what we term the paradigms of technology and cutting-edge content as an educational end, means, and equalizer, we explore how learning about Big Data with mobile tech- nologies exists at the critical intersection of issues such as the purpose of schooling, global competitiveness, corporate profit, student agency, and democratic participation. These competing interests surface tensions at the classroom, institutional, and societal levels. Engaging these tensions, we offer a framework of student objectives for learning about Big Data with mobile technologies. Through a reflection on the challenges we continue to encounter as we attempt to implement innovative curriculum within the constraints of urban public schools, we hope to prompt dialogue and changes in practice with respect to what it means to learn for democratic participation using Big Data.

There is a need to examine the implications of the apparent unanimity by researchers and practitioners about recruiting and retaining teachers of color. In particular, the push for diversifying the teaching force must be scrutinized within the context of larger patterns and structures of racial injustice and should be pursued as part of broader efforts toward equity-oriented school reform.

How might we acknowledge and work toward the important task of diversifying the educator workforce and still maintain healthy skepticism about the confluence of actors with differing  motivations who are promoting educational reform, including actors who effectively devalue and dehumanize communities of color?

We propose two principles when considering the diversification of the educator workforce: (1) specifying the need for and possibilities of strategic essentialism, and (2) keeping the focus on transforming schools. Flowing from the two principles, we offer a set of questions that educational stakeholders concerned with the diversification of the teaching force should consider. These questions should be employed when stakeholders consider or implement efforts to diversify a school’s educational workforce.

Teachers often learn about issues of race and racism in teacher education programs but receive little guidance on facilitating related classroom conversations (Bolgatz, 2005; Lin, Lake, & Rice, 2008). Despite the lack of preparation, teachers of color, in particular, feel a moral obligation to explicitly engage is- sues of race in their classrooms (Foster, 1994; Su, 1997). The lack of preservice preparation and ongoing in-service support for teachers as they engage issues of race, coupled with the passion for racial justice that teachers of color often bring to their work, regrettably leaves these teachers in a precarious position. We explore these challenges through the construct of friendly-fire racism, which we use to analyze the racial discourse in a classroom where a teacher of color inadvertently hindered her students’ analyses of race and racism and reproduced “deficit understandings” of people of color (Valencia, 2010) precisely because she assumed “cultural synchronicity” (Villegas & Irvine, 2010) with her students. On the basis of our findings, we make a case for the unique supports that teachers of color must receive for them to effectively challenge racism and other forms of oppression in their classrooms.

Based on a two-year self-study by a group of early-career scholars of color, we explore and purposefully name our role, within the contempo- rary context of neoliberal reform, as educational researchers of color who are former K-12 teachers. We capture the insights that emerged from our self-study through a close reading of dominant neoliberal educational reform discourses, particularly through an examination of the writings of Michelle Rhee and Wendy Kopp. Along three dimensions of: (1) experi- ence as teachers; (2) solidarity with teachers; and (3) analyses of racism in schooling, we characterize prominent discourses through which educa- tors, researchers, and the public describe teachers and teaching. We name these discursive frames to make explicit the assumptions that are embed- ded in each and the intentional or inadvertent consequences of each. Finally, we propose a teacher solidarity lens through which we strive to approach our research and work with teachers.

In this article, I consider the emergence of the term Asian American as a political and racial identifier in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and survey the meanings that are associated with the term today. Through the analysis of in-depth interviews, I examine how Asian American prospective teachers, who were enrolled in a master’s and credential program that had an explicit focus on social justice and on teaching in urban communities of color, appropriated and challenged these multiple meanings. The interview data highlight the relationship between these teachers’ understandings of their racial identity and the responsibil- ities and challenges they anticipated for themselves as Asian American teachers of other students of color. I conclude the article by exploring the implications of these findings for teacher education programs, particularly programs that enroll high proportions of Asian Americans.

Understanding teaching as a political act is often assumed to be a strength for teachers; however, this assumption conceals important aspects of their processes of becoming politicized. I argue that seeing teaching as a political act can be a liability for prospective teachers of color who engaged with college student activism if these assumed qualities are not productively ad- dressed in teacher education programs. I examine trajectories of change in a prospective teacher’s sense-making about activism over the course of her first year in a master’s and credential program and explore the implications of these findings for programs of teacher education.

Through in-depth interviews with a group of accomplished teachers of color who emphasized the need for their students to access the “culture of power” as a means to work toward racial justice, I attempt to represent the purposefulness of their practice within the context of what one participant termed the “millennium form of slavery.” I argue that such teachers of color are portrayed through a progressive lens as authoritarian and conformist, making it difficult to see the multifaceted nature of their practice, including their deep commitments to their students and their communities, and their understanding of the systemic nature of racism. Such representations hinder a deeper dialogue with them and do not adequately portray them as successful models for prospective teachers. In the concluding section, I explore challenges as well as productive approaches to characterizing the practice of these teachers in ideologically diverse preservice teacher education programs.

Through a close reading of the talk of a self-identified critical educator of color, we explore the contradictions, possibilities, limitations, and consequences of this identity for teachers and teacher educators. We examine how the performances of particular critical educator of color identities problematically intertwine claims of Freirian pedagogy with crude dichotomizations of people as critical and non-critical. We explore how particular tropes limit the productive possibilities of being critical for other educators of color and erase the centrality of dialogue, reflexivity, and unfinishedness that define Freirian-inspired notions of being critical.

Background: We build on participatory and critical understandings of democracy to analyze a two-and-a-half-year collaborative redesign of our teacher education program. Purpose: To theorize and design for the seemingly everyday, ordinary, and unremarkable work it takes for teacher education programs to embody democratic principles and practices-an effort that is simultaneously outward and inward looking. Research Design: Self-study. Findings/Results: We outline three organizing principles for teacher education redesign: (1) collectively name the societal purpose(s) that will guide our work as teachers and teacher educators; (2) develop a programmatic lens that allows us to see our individual contributions to a program as they relate to the holistic preparation of novice teachers; and (3) deliberately co-construct and sustain open participatory spaces so that various constituents of a program of teacher education learn to practice and enact the first two principles. Conclusion: Our analysis contributes to a theory and practice of democratic teacher education that is grounded in the everydayness of programs and has the interpretive power to understand and help transform the obstacles, structures, and relationships that hinder justice-oriented, reflexive, deliberative, participatory, educative democratic practice in teacher education.

Teacher solidarity co-design is a special case of participatory design research that emphasizes the unique power dynamics of partnering with teachers who are multiply positioned in schooling, educational policy and research, and society. Through contrastive case analysis of four instrumental cases, five principles that characterize teacher solidarity co-design emerged. Collectively, the cases traverse the professional life-course of teachers in a variety of contexts but foreground co-learning and relationality between teachers and researchers in their efforts to create transformational change in schools. Additionally, the analysis of the cases centers our own experiences and insights as former teachers who are currently educational researchers. The principles account for the complex and nested systems of power that teachers occupy within efforts that seek to transform schools into more equitable and just spaces.

A letter to prospective teachers articulating why social foundations is vital for educators who are committed to making our democracy more equitable and just.

Excerpted from Philip, T.M. (2013). Articulating the purpose of a social foundations of education course through instructor self-interviews. Studying Teacher Education, 9(3), 203-218.

In this article, I build on this body of scholarship as well as theories of ideology and conceptual change (Philip, 2011) to argue that we, as teacher educators, often fail to facilitate the development of important aspects of prospective teachers' ideological clarity when we promote broad critiques of injustice without attending to how these critiques are situated in contemporary efforts "to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines" (Omi & Winant, 1994, p. 56). To examine this argument more closely, I briefly explore the processes through which public institutions and spaces, particularly schools, have been undermined in California in the years leading up to and following the historic Civil Rights rulings and legislation of the 1950s and 1960s. Based on my experience as an instructor in teacher education courses that examine the historical, social, political, and economic contexts of schooling, and my work with prospective teachers more generally, I argue that social justice educators often re-voice and reaffirm well-intentioned critiques that inadvertently undermine the public, thereby continuing to deny equitable access, particularly to people of color, in the post-Civil Rights era (Bonilla-Silva, 2001, 2003).

Within contemporary political discourses that narrowly characterize learning in terms of high-stakes standardized examinations, the value of the social foundations of education for teachers is increasingly questioned and challenged by those within and outside programs of teacher education. Even more troubling, prospective teachers often struggle to identify the purpose and usefulness of social foundations for their work as teachers. In this self-study, I engaged in a form of self-interviewing that I adapted to the self-study context in order to better articulate the nuances, complexities, and tensions in the purpose of social foundations for teachers’ practice.

A growing body of scholarship in teacher education has explored the historical, systemic, interactional, and individual factors that create possibilities and challenges in White teachers’ reconceptualization of their racial identity and of the purpose and nature of their work in a racialized society. However, there has been little attention to programs of teacher education as critical mediators of such learning and change. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews with four prospective White teachers in the United States, we develop a framework of White teachers’ racial identities as situated within racial ideologies and mediated by the context of teacher education programs. The framework helps elucidate how teachers’ racial identities are instantiated through interactions and available identities in a program space, which are in turn shaped both by ideology and program structure and culture. The framework and findings urge an insertion of our own agency, as teacher educators, into the analyses of White prospective teachers’ learning and change, by highlighting our role as individuals who co-construct the programmatic structure and culture that partially instantiates these teachers’ racial identities.

Abstract Teacher solidarity co-design is a special case of participatory design research that emphasizes the unique power dynamics of partnering with teachers who are multiply positioned in schooling, educational policy and research, and society. Through contrastive case analysis of four instrumental cases, five principles that characterize teacher solidarity co-design emerged. Collectively, the cases traverse the professional life-course of teachers in a variety of contexts but foreground co-learning and relationality between teachers and researchers in their efforts to create transformational change in schools. Additionally, the analysis of the cases centers our own experiences and insights as former teachers who are currently educational researchers. The principles account for the complex and nested systems of power that teachers occupy within efforts that seek to transform schools into more equitable and just spaces.

Background A significant body of scholarship has highlighted the importance of improvisation in teaching, particularly the interactional and responsive creativity that is required for teachers to co-construct meaning with students. However, recent efforts inside and outside university-based teacher education have pushed against novice teacher learning through improvisation, preferring to focus on the “practicing” of identifiable components or discrete techniques of teaching. Purpose Based on an expansive view of practice, I argue that improvisation is inextricably connected to practice and illustrate that the marginalization of improvisation limits opportunities for novice teachers to learn the relational aspects of teaching. I develop the concept of principled improvisation: improvisation that is purposefully oriented toward justice and that accentuates each moment of teaching as political, ethical, and consequential. I describe the design of a learning environment for preservice t...