Theory and Research in Education

This article explores the ways that philosophy and evidence interact in the exploration of normative questions in philosophy of education. First, the authors provide a description of reflective equilibrium, a central method in normative philosophizing. They proceed to describe three tasks of normative philosophy, each of which requires engagement with empirical evidence, albeit in different ways: identifying values, assessing institutional arrangements, and guiding policy action. They recommend increased attention from social scientists to the potential contribution of philosophy in setting the agenda for empirical research, and they recommend increased use by philosophers of real-life case studies, which enable philosophers to better understand decision-makers’ feasibility constraints. These recommendations, they argue, can enable both social scientists and philosophers to better equip decision-makers to enact the best policy from among the options available to them.

Collaborative community-based research can bring a range of benefits to universities, communities, and the public more broadly. A distinct virtue of collaborative community-based research is that it makes the ethical–epistemic intersections and challenges in research a focal point of its methodology. This makes collaborative community-based research well positioned to address various forms of ‘epistemic injustice’ (Fricker, 2007) that demean certain people and groups as knowers and exclude them from knowledge production. In this article, we examine the ethical and epistemic advantages and challenges of collaborative community-based research in light of the concept of epistemic injustice. We argue that collaborative community-based research can help provide an institutional response to epistemic injustices often embedded within processes of knowledge production.

How can access to public elementary schools of variable quality be justly distributed within a school district? Two reasonable criteria are: (a) that children should have equal opportunity to attend high-quality schools, and (b) school assignment policies should foster an overall increase in the number of high-quality schools. This article analyzes Boston Public Schools’ new school assignment plan in light of these criteria. It shows that Boston Public Schools’ plan violates equal opportunity by giving middle-class families privileged access to existing high-quality schools. Boston Public Schools arguably panders to more-advantaged families, however, in order to pull them into the system and deploy their economic, political, and social capital to increase the total number of high-quality schools. Is this ethically defensible? To answer this question, we need to develop an ethical theory of pandering: of privileging the interests and preferences of already unjustly privileged actors because the consequences tend to benefit everyone. Such a theory will need to be ethically pluralistic and weighted along a contextually sensitive continuum, rather than rendered in all-or-nothing terms.

Both neoliberals and liberals call for mitigating inequality of educational opportunity stemming from circumstances beyond an individual’s control. In this article, we challenge the wisdom of making equality of opportunity hinge on emphasizing the distinction rather than the relationship between choices and circumstances. We utilize an empirical analysis focusing on the extent to which certain circumstances beyond the control of low-income urban Black adults (e.g. poverty and community instability) limit their eventual chances for maintaining traditional two-parent households, which in turn limits their capacity to make effective choices instrumental in improving the educational prospects of their children. We conclude from this that collectively bearing the burden of attending to differences in the quality of circumstances – in which these voluntary choices are made by poor urban Black parents – is something that we owe to each other whether we are neoliberals or liberals if we share a common normative commitment to equality of opportunity.

Educational thought and research often operates with whole-race (‘Black’, ‘White’, and ‘Asian’) and whole-class (‘low-income’) categories. For both explaining disparities and assessing them normatively, it is essential to pay attention to subdivisions within those groups. Regarding affirmative action, on average African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants, and to some extent their offspring, have educational and motivational advantages over, and a distinct normative standing from, African Americans that is masked in the use of ‘Black’ as the operative category in affirmative action. With regard to assessing – both explanatorily and normatively – the performance of ‘high commitment’ charter schools, such as the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), that make substantial demands on parents of admitted students, compared to traditional public schools serving the same population, it is essential to internally differentiate the relevant race and class categories with respect to the degree of poverty, English language learner status, and parental capital.

Released time is an arrangement through which students are excused from public schools during regular hours to participate in devotional lessons. South Carolina has become the center of operations for a movement of evangelical Christians to expand proselytizing released time programs throughout the United States. As a result of the movement’s lobbying efforts, in 2006 South Carolina became the first state to enact legislation allowing public schools to award graduation credits for participation in released time courses. Ohio recently adopted legislation modeled after South Carolina’s, and other states are presently considering similar bills. In response to these developments, this normative case study evaluates the appropriateness of granting public school credits for released time courses in a pluralist, democratic society.

This article argues that in divided societies, civic education fails to fulfill one of its most important social role: creating a more inclusive society that allows a democratic dialogue to flow across different ideological, religious, and cultural communities. This failure is grounded in two main reasons. First, civics teachers are socially and politically vulnerable and have neither the social power nor the social status to convey moral or ideological messages. Aware of their vulnerability, teachers prefer to adhere to topics shielded by neutrality and avoid controversial issues. Consequently, the message delivered in schools is a conservative one, intensifying feelings of estrangement among members of marginalized groups. Second, estranged communities encourage ‘their’ civic teachers – that is, teachers who are members of these communities – to teach their children a counter-curriculum that undermines the official narratives offered by the state. To its dismay, the state finds that in many of its classrooms it has become a ‘present absentee’. In the power struggle between the thin ‘neutral’ curriculum and the thick counter-curriculum, divisive forces prevail, social trust is eroded, and cleavages deepen. No one should therefore be surprised to find in the suburbs of Paris of Ferguson Missouriangry youth who despite the fact that they aregraduates ofthe public school system feel alienated and estranged.