Educational Problems Division Newsletter of the Society for the Study of Social Problems Volume 11 Issue 1 A Message from the Chair... Thanks to all of our members who made our meetings in Las Vegas such a success. I apologize again for not getting the chance to meet so many of you due to flight cancellations and delays. Even more reason for us all to meet up in Denver! I would like to extend a special thanks to the organizers and presiders of the Educational Problems Division sponsored and co-sponsored sessions. Congratulations again to S. Michael Gaddis and Andrew Payton from the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill for their outstanding paper titled, “The Influence of Habitus in the Relationship Between Socioeconomic Status, Cultural Capital, and Academic Success,” which won our Student Paper Competition. We had several excellent submissions this year! We hope to see more of the same when this year’s Student Paper Competition gears up. Finally, I want to apologize for the bare bones appearance of this fall’s newsletter. This is my first pass at being Division Chair. Having no newsletter editor makes the job a bit daunting. If there are any members willing to serve as our Division Newsletter Editor, please let me know. The entire division would really appreciate it! We would also appreciate any contributions to the Division newsletter and to the listserv. Send us your thoughts, comments, announcements, or an article or essay. Best wished to all for a healthy and happy ends of semester. And happy grading! Leslie R. Hinkson, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Sociology Georgetown University Division Chair 2011-2013 2012 Graduate Student Paper Competition Call for Papers Deadline 5/01/12 The Educational Problems Division announces its 2012 Graduate Student Paper Competition. Papers must address a contemporary educational problem and may be empirical or theoretical in nature. Authors must be current graduate students or recent graduates with conferral dates no earlier than January 2012. Only unpublished, single-author papers will be considered. Papers must not exceed 30 double-spaced pages (excluding notes, references, tables and figures). All papers must include a 150-200 word abstract and be prepared for anonymous review with the author’s name and institutional affiliation appearing only on the title page. Winners will receive a small stipend, student membership in the SSSP, conference registration to the 2012 SSSP annual meeting, and a complimentary ticket to the awards banquet at which all winners will be recognized. The recipient will also have the opportunity to present the paper at the 2012 SSSP conference held in Denver, CO. All papers must be submitted electronically (as an attachment) to the Division Chair, Dr. Leslie R. Hinkson at lrh27@georgetown.edu , with subject line: SSSP- Edu. Probs. Div. Student Paper Competition. Please include your name, institutional affiliation and contact information in the body of your email. The paper should be submitted no later than 11:59 PM (EST), May 1, 2012. Educational Problems Division Sponsored & Co-Sponsored Sessions 2012 Annual Meeting Call for Papers SESSION: "SCHOOLS, COMMUNITY, AND INEQUALITY" Co-sponsors: Educational Problems; Community Research & Development Organizer & Moderator: Felicia Sullivan, University of Massachusetts Boston Organizer contact info: felicia.sullivan@umb.edu SESSION: "SEGREGATED COMMUNITIES: QUESTIONS, TRENDS, AND POLICIES" Co-sponsors: Community Research & Development; Racial & Ethnic Minorities; Educational Problems Organizer & Presider: Gesemia Nelson, Metropolitan State College of Denver Organizer email: gnelso16@mscd.edu SESSION: "GENTRIFICATION AND URBAN REDEVELOPMENT: CONFLICT, OPPORTUNITY, AND INEQUALITY" Co-sponsors: Community Research & Development; Environment & Technology; Racial & Ethnic Minorities; Educational Problems Organizer & Presider: Jennifer Darrah, Harvard University Organizer email: darrah@post.harvard.edu SESSION: "EDUCATORS AS ACTIVISTS" Co-sponsors: Educational Problems, Institutional Ethnography Organizer: Elizabeth Brule, York University Organizer email: ebrule@yorku.ca Moderator: Margaret Austin Smith, University of Maryland, College Park Moderator email: margaretaustinsmith@gmail.com SESSION: "MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION AS SOCIAL ACTIVISM?" Educational Problems Organizer: Cynthia Baiqing Zhang, University of Kentucky Organizer email: baiqing.zhang@uky.edu Moderator: Rae Shevalier, Metropolitan State College of Denver Moderator email: shevalie@mscd.edu SESSION: "THE SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE" Educational Problems Organizer: Leslie Hinkson, Georgetown University Organizer email: lrh27@georgetown.edu Moderator: Bao Chiwen, Harvard University Moderator email: cbao@fas.harvard.edu SESSION: "PREPARING FOR POWER? EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CAPITAL." Educational Problems Organizer: Fiona Pearson, Central Connecticut State University Organizer email: pearsonaf@ccsu.edu Moderator: Stephanie Southworth, Clemson University Moderator email: southwo@clemson.edu Revisiting Our Division Mission Statement The mission statement of the Educational Problems Division has not been updated since 2007 despite the fact that it should be revisited every 2 years. Below is the text of our current mission statement as put forth by our former Division Chair Billie Gastic. While we are past the deadline for revising it this year, I would invite all members to carefully review the text and consider any changes you believe the Division should consider for the upcoming calendar year. The field of education is ever changing as are the challenges to educational justice. Please consider this as you peruse the statement. Any recommendations for revision should be sent to lrh27@georgetown.edu. All suggestions will be documented and prepared for our Division meeting in Denver where we will put it to member vote. Educational Problems Division Mission Statement 2007 Billie Gastic* Temple University The pursuit of educational justice is fundamental to the mission of the Educational Problems Division. Through our research, teaching and practice, we critically examine how educational and learning practices are shaped and shaped by social contexts and conditions. We are a diverse community whose members are engaged in the creation of new knowledge and are committed to vitalizing linkages across and between theories and practices. Our vision of a just world reflects our belief that the value of education transcends its economic function. While critical basic skills, such as numeracy and literacy, remain systematically denied to large segments of our population, they represent only one – albeit significant – type of learning that merits our attention and care. An educated populace is not only one that can compete in the global economy; it is also one in which learning is valued as the means by which culture is lived and shared and by which communities are nurtured and strengthened. Education has many purposes – many of which cannot and should not be met by formal institutions, such as schools. Conversely, schools are sites of kinds of learning that cannot be adequately replicated elsewhere. Our Division is committed to bringing attention to the myriad purposes that are pursued and intended by the teaching and learning that is (and is not) going on in our communities. These varied educational goals and purposes deserve careful consideration to determine which societal principles, needs and constituencies are being represented and which are excluded. We must also assess how and the extent to which these aims are being achieved across communities and sites of experience. The current political climate of educational accountability – most prominently articulated by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Spelling Report – reinforces a devastatingly narrow idea of what education is and how we assess learning. Legislation and other efforts to improve current and future outcomes for youth and our communities will continue to fail to reach their full potential as long as they are based in a shallow and compartmentalized views of education. Many existing programs and initiatives are helping to create the conditions for positive change in the educational lives of children, adolescents and adults. These local, regional, national and international efforts promote self- efficacy while also building integrated networks of stakeholders whose successes are magnified through collaboration. These programs also recognize the intrinsic connections between health, education and well-being and treat individuals and communities holistically. Examples include UNESCO’s Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE), the National School Lunch Program, the Federal Work-Study Program and Head Start. We also applaud the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Health and Human Services and Justice, for supporting school districts as they work to build partnerships and collaborations within their communities to better serve the needs of students, families and neighborhoods. We are doing this important in a time of great turbulence and despair in many parts of our world. We must be resilient and overcome our own fears, prejudices and distrust to work together – across difference – to bring about a better world. Recommended Reading Apple, M.W. (1982). Education and power. Boston: Ark Paperbacks. Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: The New Press. Ferguson, A.A. (2000). Bad boys: Public schools in the making of Black masculinity. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Fullinwider, R.K., & Lichtenberg, J. (2004). Leveling the playing field: Justice, politics, and college admissions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Kumashiro, K. (2002). Troubling education: Queer activism and antioppressive pedagogy. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lugg, C.A. (2003). Sissies, faggots, lezzies and dykes: Gender, sexual orientation and the new politics of education. Educational Administration Quarterly, 39(1), 95-134. Orfield, G., & Eaton, S.E. (1996). Dismantling desegregation: The quiet reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: The New Press. Trifonas, P.P. (Ed.) (2000). Revolutionary pedagogies: Cultural politics, instituting education, and the discourse of theory. New York: Routledge Falmer. Tyack, D., & Cuban, D. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ______________________________________________________________________________________ * Chair, Educational Problems Division, 2005-07 News and Announcements New article published by Division Member: “Awareness of Race and Ethnic Diversity in Japanese Junior High Schools’ English Language Textbooks.” by Miekeo Yamada, Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne. Released this Fall (2011) in, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies: The Official Journal of the International Society for Language Studies, 8 (3): 289-312. New Blog of Interest to Division Members! Educational Problems (available at www.educational-problems.com) is looking for regular as well as guest contributions from graduate students and early career scholars. The EP blog aims to discuss new research snippets, local problems with national implications, and national education policy issues. New contributions are currently being solicited from graduate students and early-career scholars. Authors are welcome to post one-time entries or become regular contributors to the blog. Please visit the website for contact and submission information and to see previous entries. Interesting new study In this article, the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) presents its unique and very large-scale panel study of educational processes and individual competence development from early childhood to late adulthood. The NEPS invites all American sociologists to use its well-documented longitudinal data. A first release is already available—and it is also in English! See brief summary at http://www2.asanet.org/soe/german_neps.cfm