Bradley Levinson Research Collection

Permanent link for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/2022/25629

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Afterword: Implications for educational policy and practice
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) Levinson, Bradley A. U.; Sutton, Margaret
This book provides rich resources for teaching and learning about broad social and cultural issues in education. At the same time, it raises a question often heard by instructors in educational foundations courses, and that is, "What is the practical relevance of this material?" -to policy formation, curriculum design, school administration, classroom pedagogy, and so on. This is a fair question, but not an east one to answer. Social and cultural analysis in education is often more akin toe "basic" than "applied" research, to use a distinction common in the natural sciences. The primary purpose of this work is to clarify and expand existing insights, illuminate new concepts, raise new questions, and the reframe perspectives on long-standing issues. To be sure, a few of the authors in this book -notably several in section III- do offer specific ideas for improving educational policy and practice that flow from their research. Most, however, leave the reader to draw out such ideas in the context of his or her own specific experiences and understandings. This kind of contingent "application" is compatible with the interpretive enterprise in which the authors are engaged.
An Anthropological Approach to Education Policy as a Practice of Power: Concepts and Methods
(Springer, 2020) Levinson, Bradley A. U.; Winstead, Teresa; Sutton, Margaret
Since the introduction to our 2001 edited volume, Policy as Practice: Toward a Comparative Sociocultural Analysis of Education Policy (Sutton and Levinson 2001), we have continued to sketch the foundational postulates of a critical anthropological approach to the study of education policy. In 2009, we expanded and deepened many of the points from that introduction, more systematically introducing and defining theoretical terms, and providing a bit of their intellectual genealogy (Levinson et al. 2009). We also discussed certain methodological considerations that accompanied the theoretical approach, and we argued for a type of engaged educational anthropology that goes beyond the mere “study” of education policy to its democratization and transformation. Here we provide an updated synopsis of our approach.
Bringing in the citizen: Culture, politics, and democracy in the U.S. anthropology of education
(Tsantsa: The Swiss Review of Anthropology, 2005) Levinson, Bradley A. U.
This article reviews historical and con- temporary developments in the field of educational anthropology in relation to programs for democratic citizenship. Anchored in reflections and insights from his evolving research in Mexico, the author attempts to show how the anthropology of education, engaged with critical theoretical discourses in the broader discipline, can contribute to research on democratic citizenship education. The author argues for the need to put questions of democracy, citizenship, and governance at the conceptual heart of the field.
Cultural production and reproduction in contemporary schools
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) Borman, Kathryn M.; Fox, Amy E.; Levinson, Bradley A. U.
The articles included in this section include a wide range of topical areas and theoretical frameworks. A common set of organizing ideas links the articles that, taken together, cover the life course of school-aged children and young adults engaged in formal schooling arrangements. Three important concepts related to schooling in a capitalist society constitute overlapping themes. These themes are: (1) persistent and inherent inequities in the educational delivery system, resulting in equally persistent gaps in academic achievement between groups of students; (2) inadequacies of current pedagogical and administrative practices; and (3) the continuing importance of race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES) in structuring students' life experiences and opportunities.
El sueño y la práctica de sí: Pedagogía feminista
(El Colegio de México, 2009) Levinson, Bradley A. U.
Los antropólogos de la educación hemos señalada desde have décadas ya que la educación debe concebirse como un proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje, en mayor o menor medida intencional, que se da tanto dentro como fuera de la escuela. Y aunque los procesos escolares siguen ocupando mucho a los investigadores educativos, siempre ha existido el reconocimiento de la vida cotidiana, la llamada educación no formal.
Forming and implementing a new secondary civic education program in Mexico
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2007) Levinson, Bradley A. U.
For at least two decades now, Mexico has been in the throes of a fitful transition from a long history of corrupt authoritarian rule to a more fully democratic regime. yet changes in civil society have not always kept pace with changes in the formal political-electoral sphere. Like so many other countries currently experiencing democratic transition, Mexico has looked to its school system to undertake the daunting task of cultivating democratic attitudes and dispositions among the new generation. There is both great enthusiasm for this project, and great skepticism that schools can accomplish it.
From curriculum to practice: Removing structural and cultural obstacles to effective secondary education reform in the Americas
(Organization of American States Working Papers for the Sixth Meeting of Ministers of Education, 2009) Levinson, Bradley A. U.; Casas, Carolina
Few would question the growing importance of secondary education in the contemporary outlook. Now more than ever, amidst globalization, youth require sophisticated and engaging pedagogies that will enable them to navigate the social, moral, and technological complexity of the modern world, and to recapture a sense of excitement, purpose, and wonder in learning. Ideally, schools can provide youth with the tools to navigate this new landscape. Yet sadly, schools and school systems in our region still reflect the bureaucratic, state-building imperatives of an older age. With all too few exceptions, and often in spite of their own best efforts, schools attempt to instill standardized knowledge through authoritarian means.
From Non-Compliance to Columbine: Capturing Student Perspectives to Understand Non-Compliance and Violence in High Schools
(Urban Review, 2003) Stevick, E. Doyle; Levinson, Bradley A. U.
The paper reviews a number of ethnographic studies of students in U.S. secondary schools to help understand the causes of a range of student behaviors from minor non-compliance to lethal violence. Based on these studies, as well personal experience, the authors suggest that educators and educational researchers approach and understand student perspectives on school life. Such perspectives often reveal the logic of non-compliance, and show that aspects of school structure and practice can exacerbate or contribute to violence. Student non-compliance and alienation can escalate into violence if the student view is not regularly consulted in schools.
Hopes and challenges for the new civic education in Mexico: Toward a democratic citizen without adjectives
(International Journal of Educational Development, 2004) Levinson, Bradley A. U.
This paper presents the main goals and themes, as well as a critical analysis, of an ambitious new reform of Mexico’s secondary-level program for civic education. It begins with a brief historical review of the modern Mexican secondary school, as well as a thematic analysis of the new published curriculum and study program, which puts heavy emphasis on the development of democratic citizenship skills and habits. The paper then draws on interview research to highlight some of the challenges that national and local actors have identified for the program’s successful implementation. Because the new program espouses a progressive democratic pedagogy in the absence of a supportive democratic political culture, an appropriate structure of school governance, or adequate training for in-service teachers, many actors expressed skepticism about whether the reform could meaningfully take hold. Skepticism turned around two areas of concern that must be addressed by policymakers: 1), teacher training, teacher identities, and teacher hiring, all mired in older structures of tradition, convenience, economic opportunism, and even union favoritism and corruption, and 2) the cultural and political immaturity of the broader society to sustain whatever democratic habits and attitudes the school manages to develop in students.
Integrating Indiana’s Latino Newcomers: A Study of State and Community Responses to the New Immigration
(Indiana University, 2007) Levinson, Bradley A. U.; Everitt, Judson; Johnson, Linda C.
Despite decades of research on the “new immigration,” we know little about how states and communities where Latino immigrants have recently settled respond to the arrival of these newcomers.1Most research still highlights the experiences and problems of immigrant newcomers themselves; we have learned relatively little about the culture and institutions of long established residents in host states and communities.
Introduction: Cultural context and diversity in the study of democratic citizenship education
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2007) Stevick, E. Doyle; Levinson, Bradley A. U.
Jefferson's "safe repository" for the power (kratos) of the people (demos) is democracy itself. Since the Athenians first coined the term more than 2,500 years ago, democracies have taken remarkably diverse forms, even while debates over a democracy's essential and ideal characteristics continue. What constitutes a democratic society? The mechanisms of voting? The alternation of power, freedom to assemble, and to speak as one wishes? Meaningful participation for all citizens? Sets of rights- political, civil, cultural, human? Social safety nets or unencumbered markets? Openness to newcomers?
The symbolic animal: Foundations of cultural transmission and acquisition
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) Levinson, Bradley A. U.
In this section I present a number of key writings on the nature of education and culture. My aim is to illuminate how the very foundations of the educational process are rooted in the human penchant for making meaning out of experience and communicating that meaning to others. I hope to show that, in a very real sense, education is culture, that is, education involves the continual remaking of culture as human beings transmit and acquire the symbolic meanings that infuse social life.
Toward an Anthropology of (Democratic) Citizenship Education
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) Levinson, Bradley A. U.
In recent years, discourses about citizenship have come to occupy center stage, in both contemporary political practice and academic scholarship. The salience of citizenship has certainly made itself felt in anthropology as well, but less so in our educational subfield. In this chapter, my aim is to explore the relationships between educational processes and citizenship education from an anthropological perspective. In doing so, I review (not exhaustively) a good deal of work in anthropology that probes these relationships, but I also argue that our patchwork conceptual frameworks in the anthropology of education have yet to catch up with the richness and complexity of citizenship education across both formal and informal educational domains. I hope to point the way toward a more coherent and unified approach.
Whither the symbolic animal?; Society, culture, and education at the millennium
(Rowman and Littlefield, 2000) Levinson, Bradley A. U.
The question I pose here interrogates the evolution of humankind: How are we unfolding, and what form will our individual capacities and our global society eventually take? Education, of course, provides an important key to the answer, and the fields comprising the interpretive social sciences provide important intellectual resources for understanding and improving education. This reader presents some of the very best work produced by the interpretive social sciences on the social and cultural foundations of education. My aim is to provide teachers and students with the basic conceptual tools to understand a variety of sociocultural dynamics that shape the educational process in its many dimensions. Such sociocultural understanding is especially crucial for designing educational experiences -forging "tools for conviviality," in Ivan Illich's (1973) rich phrase- worthy of the multicultural societies of the present and future. Therefore, this book aims to compose one small part of the answer to the question: Whither the symbolic animal?

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