This is a case study of a leader who fosters authentic participation for advancing social justice in an urban community center in Caracas, Venezuela, located in the midst of poverty, marginality, and social and economic alienation. This educational space enables the local community to control the destiny of their own institution. Learning from this case, we argue that urban educational transformation might succeed in terms of practicing social justice, if leadership facilitates and creates urban sanctuaries by working with the communities and not on the communities; fosters an organizational structure that is flexible and democratic; and creates a safe (trusting) environment where the local community is engaged in authentic participation.

This article discusses the relevance of Foucault's work to the field of educational administration. It argues for Foucault's concept of disciplinary practice as a powerful new generative metaphor for the field. A major implication of Foucault's view of power is that educational practices that may appear more democratic, participatory, or progressive may in fact constitute forms of disciplinary power and thus result in more effective technologies of control. The authors argue that regardless of which techniques of administration are used, the effects of disciplinary power cannot be escaped. No educational practices are inherently more empowering than others. They further discuss how disciplinary power operates through discourse practices, which, according to Foucault, link knowledge and power Discourses shape administrative practices, and administrative practices produce discourses. Finally, the authors discuss how Foucault's methodology (genealogy) can be used to determine why some discourses have prevailed over others in the field of educational administration.

No abstract

What happens in a teacher education program when control is neither exercised by formal professional or state standards nor by traditional dominant “disabling” market influences (Labaree, 1994)? To answer this question, the focus of this paper is on looking at teacher education through the lenses of pedagogical practices and discourses not in traditional institutions such as normal schools, colleges, and universities but in an alternative institution. Thus, this paper presents detailed accounts and analyzes the practice of the preparation of teachers in a progressive program during the 1930s in New York at Bank Street College of Education. Mostly, these accounts are grounded in the participants’ perspectives, providing data about how this progressive teacher-education program was experienced, and in particular on Lucy Sprague Mitchell's teaching based on data especially composed to describe two courses: (1)Environment (a mix of what today can be called social foundations and social studies methods) and (2)Language (mostly about the writing process). Bank Street, initially called the Cooperative for Student Teachers and intrinsically connected with experimental schools and a well-known institution among practitioners and progressive educators, was formed in 1930, which were times with heavy ideological discussion given the social and economic American and international contexts. Teaching at Bank Street centered on making experience a subject matter of study, while making connections between learning about children, the self, the world (the social contexts), and schooling, to foster progressive practices in the classroom. This case about pedagogical practices suggest a need to pay closer attention to the teaching of progressive teachers as an important aspect of learning to teach and teacher education improvement beyond dominant discussions about standards, organization, regulations and control of teacher education. This paper shows that it was possible to have a highly intellectual and inquiry-oriented teacher-education program, with a rigorous study of experience, with passion to understand children, subject matter, social contexts, and the self, and with a commitment to justice.

This article provides a cultural and political critique of the constitution of bilingual/English-as-a-second-language (ESL) education as a disciplinary practice in the case of New Mexico. Using genealogy and postcolonial, post-structural, and critical frameworks, this article claims that the directions advanced by the Chicano/Chicana movement were lost. Instead, what emerged was a field that nurtured a mix of symbolic colonization and docilization through the construction of a settlement that controls thought and behavior, perpetuating misrecognition in a Bourdieuian sense. Illusion, collusion, and delusion have enabled the dominance of psycholinguistic approaches. Problematizing the constitution of bilingual/ESL education within a cultural and political sphere could foster an emancipatory education for marginalized students.