Bradley Levinson Research Collection

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

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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.
Democratic citizenship education in Latin America: A new imperative for the Americas
(Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy, 2007-09) Levinson, Bradley A.U.; Schugurensky, Daniel; González, Roberto
During the last decade, countries across the Americas have been active in revising programs for civic education in order to create a broader and deeper democratic political culture. Perennially a bulwark of national identity and allegiance for more authoritarian or populist regimes, civic education has been reconceived as a space for fostering democratic citizenship. Yet school-based civic education remains but one actor in the drama, variously competing and aligning with the many forces and influences that shape the construction of citizenship, from popular culture and the media, to peer groups and economic relations, to political opportunities and the balance of rights and responsibilities present in each particular context. In discourse across the Americas, civic education is giving way to “citizenship” education, and the broader term, “citizenship formation,” is often preferred, especially in the Spanish and Portuguese languages. In our usage, then, democratic citizenship education (DCE) includes state-sponsored initiatives in schools and in non-formal education programs, as well as informal socialization processes and organized civil society initiatives. During the last decade, the Organization of American States (OAS) has also played an important role in the region promoting DCE. At least since the Second Summit of the Americas, held in Santiago de Chile in 1998, numerous mandates for attention to “democratic values and practices” have been promulgated during OAS general assemblies, plenary sessions, and Summits of the Americas. Such efforts were strongly bolstered by the signing of the Inter-American Democratic Charter of the OAS in September of 2001. Articles 26 and 27 of the Charter placed emphasis on the need to develop a “democratic culture” to accompany democratic political reforms. In particular, Article 27 mandated that “special attention shall be given to the development of programs and activities for the education of children and youth as a means of ensuring the continuance of democratic values, including liberty and social justice.” Since that time, the Department of Education and Culture, in collaboration with the Department for the Promotion of Governance of the OAS, has taken the lead in convening meetings with participants from governmental and non-governmental institutions throughout the Americas to share knowledge of best practices across borders and to exchange ideas through open discussions and debates.
Editorial Introduction
(Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy, 2009-06) Levinson, Bradley A.U.
As I write these words, the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago has just wrapped up, and a renewed sense of respectful hemispheric cooperation is being widely proclaimed. The Inter - American Democratic Charter, which stimulates and reaffirms all OAS member states’ commitment to democracy as way of life, has once again been invoked as a touchstone for such cooperation. At the Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy, we are heartened by these trends, and we also look forward to similar collaboration at the upcoming sixth OAS Meeting of Ministers of Education, already in planning for August 12th, in Quito, Ecuador. We see our work as contributing to educational development in the Americas, and we envision this work unfolding in a spirit of mutuality and public-mindedness. The Journal serves as a space for the exchange of research experiences and ideas, a vital forum for reflection amidst the otherwise urgent business of constructing and strengthening democratic political cultures in our region.
Education reform sparks teacher protest in Mexico
(Phi Delta Kappan, 2014-05) Levinson, Bradley A.
The tumult in Mexican education has deep roots in politics and tradition, but it is latter-day global competition and international measures of student performance that are driving reform efforts.
El docente de secundaria ante las reformas educativas. De apóstol a empleado desechable
(Revista Electrónica Actualidades Investigativas en Educación, 2018) Lozano Andrade, Inés; Levinson, Bradley A.
Este artículo trata sobre las condiciones que vive el docente de secundaria ante los cambios derivados de la implementación de diversas reformas educativas en México (2006, 2011, 2013). Se realiza una investigación cualitativa que emplea entrevista semi-estructurada a 18 docentes de este nivel en la ciudad de México. El objetivo es describir e interpretar los significados y sentidos que tienen los docentes acerca de cómo viven estos cambios y de los factores que generan su situación. El análisis revela cómo los docentes de secundaria han significado su labor cada vez menos autónoma y, por tanto, más alienante, este último concepto es fundamental para comprender la sensación que están viviendo hoy en función de la implementación de estas reformas que han generado sensaciones que van desde el desencanto hasta el malestar. Los resultados revelan que los docentes hacen mención a la indisciplina e indiferencia de los jóvenes como una problemática central; a una pérdida del poder derivada de imposiciones para acreditar forzadamente al estudiantado independientemente de su desempeño; a la pérdida del prestigio social de su labor por las campañas mediáticas realizadas recientemente, las cuales justificaban la nueva y última reforma que afecta sus condiciones de estabilidad laboral, lo que les genera una sensación de incertidumbre y discontinuidad. La enajenación, como pérdida del dominio que tienen sobre sus acciones y la pérdida de seguridad en sus perspectivas, se plantea como un factor importante para ser considerado en la comprensión de la situación crítica de la escuela secundaria en México.
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.
Etnografía de la educación: Tendencias actuales [Ethnography of education: Current trends]
(Revista mexicana de investigación educativa, 2007-07) Levinson, Bradley A.U.; Sandoval-Flores, Etelvina; Bertely-Busquets, María
Qué es la etnografía, de dónde proviene, y hacia dónde se dirige, en cuanto acercamiento teórico-metodológico? ¿Cómo ha aportado la etnografía a la investigación educativa y, consecuentemente, al cambio de la práctica educativa? ¿Cuáles son las tendencias actuales de la etnografía educativa, que nos permiten apreciar las nuevas comprensiones y conocimientos que pueda aportar a los procesos educativos? En este ensayo introductorio a la sección temática procuramos dar respuesta a estas preguntas, de forma muy breve y sintética, sobre todo a través del recuento de los temas y avances teórico-metodológicos representados en los artículos que conforman la temática.
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.
Interculturality as a pivotal aspect of education for democracy: A dialogue with Sylvia Schmelkes
(Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy, 2008-06) Levinson, Bradley A.U.
In this dialogue, the editor of the Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy, Bradley Levinson, interviews the distinguished educator and educational researcher Sylvia Schmelkes, member of the Editorial Board of this Journal, who is currently the Chair of the Department of Education and Director of the Institute for Educational Research of the Ibero-American University of Mexico. Sylvia Schmelkes has a long and prominent trajectory as an educational researcher, specializing in values education, popular and non-formal education, and aspects of quality in basic education. Among her more significant books and articles are Quality in Primary Education in Mexico; Toward Better Quality in our Schools; and Values Education in Basic Education. For many years Ms. Schmelkes was a researcher for the Center of Educational Studies, and later on, the Department of Educational Research (CINVESTAV-IPN), in Mexico. After 2001 she joined the Secretariat of Public Education as Director of the Office of Intercultural and Bilingual Education, a position she held until 2007.
Linking state and society in discourse and action: Political and cultural studies of the Cárdenas era in Mexico
(Latin American Research Review, 1999) Spenser, Daniela; Levinson, Bradley A.
On 6 July 1997, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, founder and leader of the Mexican Partido de la Revolucion Democraitica (PRD), scored an impressive victory in being elected mayor of Mexico City. Cardenas's new status as leader of the world's largest city, along with the PRD's substantial gains in parliamentary elections, has raised important questions about the sources of their combined political strength. To what is owed the victory of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas and his party? At least three answers suggest themselves: the particular political talents, programs, and bases of support developed by Cuauhtemoc Cardenas; the identification of his father, former President Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940), with the zenith of a popular revolutionary project; and the exhaustion of the corporatist political model that, perhaps ironically and unwittingly, Lazaro Cardenas bequeathed to the Mexican state. All these elements contributed in some measure to the recent victory, but it is not our intention to sort them out here. Instead, we would like to explore the evidence that the popular legacy of the Lazaro Cardenas era has provided significant support for his son and the PRD.
Radical pluralism and the challenges of educating for democratic-ecological civic identities: Reflections from the Mexican school context
(2020) Levinson, Bradley A.
This paper builds on the growing importance of concepts of identity and diversity in citizenship education studies, and argues for an expanded conception of diversity that ultimately includes the non-human and even inanimate realm. The dramatic pace of human-induced global climate change requires a commensurate urgency in developing forms of citizenship education that shape new ecological as well as political civic identities, and which expand democracy beyond the human community. Situating my empirical work on Mexican civic education reform in a global, comparative context, I consider the challenges that all schools and school systems will need to address to incorporate even deeper practices of respect for diversity and acknowledgement of the radical pluralism that life (and non-life) on earth presents.
Reduciendo brechas entre cultura juvenil y cultura docente escolar: El desafío institucional para crear una secundaria con sentido
(IIPE-UNESCO, 2012) Levinson, Bradley A.
¿Por qué no se ha podido construir una secundaria en América Latina que realmente atienda los intereses y las necesidades de los jóvenes de la región? ¿Por qué sigue habiendo una brecha tan abismal entre la expectativa del joven y la oferta de la escuela? En torno a estas preguntas, compartiré algunas reflexiones que han surgido a partir de mis investigaciones empíricas en México, combinadas con mi lectura de una bibliografía sobre la juventud y la secundaria en todas las Américas así como la teorización sociocultural del proceso educativo. Mis investigaciones en México, cabe señalar, han ido desde la convivencia profunda, etnográfica, con alumnos de una secundaria mexicana de provincia hace ya 20 años (Levinson, 1993; Levinson, 2002), hasta las entrevistas y observaciones con maestros, directivos, supervisores, funcionarios, y responsables de decisiones en distintos ámbitos de la educación básica mexicana, sobre todo con referencia a la secundaria, entre los años 2001 hasta la fecha (Blackwood, Levinson, y Cross, en prensa; Levinson, 2004; Levinson, 2005). A lo largo de muchos años, en mi calidad como antropólogo, he estudiado la problemática de la secundaria cualitativamente desde “abajo”, o sea, desde la perspectiva de los estudiantes y sus padres de familia, hasta “arriba”, es decir, desde la perspectiva de los que ocupan varios puestos de administración y poder en un sistema educativo. Tengo en cuenta todos los actores del sistema como punto de referencia etnográfico. Y hay que añadir que estas reflexiones han surgido también en el marco de un proceso de democratización de la sociedad y las instituciones mexicanas, y de una gran reforma de la educación básica, que hoy sigue en marcha. Así lo marcan los mismos documentos de la reforma mexicana, donde se apuesta a la formación de un estudiante crítico y democrático. A mi juicio, no se puede hablar ni de reforma educativa ni de mejorar la calidad de vida de nuestra juventud sin hacer referencia al horizonte de democratización y la democracia que se intenta construir en México y todas las Américas.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and education for democracy
(Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy, 2008-06) Schugurensky, Daniel; Levinson, Bradley A.U.; González, Roberto
We are very happy to present this second issue of the Inter-American Journal of Education for Democracy. Producing a peer-reviewed journal has proved a more complicated and demanding task than we originally anticipated, especially considering that most of the work is done on a volunteer basis, that the editorial committee is located in different parts of the continent, and that the process of evaluating the many papers submitted in three different languages creates additional logistical challenges. Nonetheless, and despite the natural growing pains, the Journal is overcoming these and other challenges, and we are already busy preparing the third issue.
"Una etapa siempre dificil": Concepts of Adolescence and Secondary Education in Mexico
(Comparative Education Review, 1999) Levinson, Bradley A.
The concept of adolescence as a unique and difficult stage in the human life-course has itself followed a turbulent historical path. Although the term occasionally appeared in European texts from the medieval period,' it was the U.S. psychologist G. Stanley Hall who in the late 1800s advanced the first "scientific" account of puberty's specific psychological entailments, which contributed to the more common and modern usage of "adolescence" we know today. Joseph Kett documents the influence of Hall's work at the turn of this century, and provides an intimate social history of the various groups in U.S. society that attempted to create institutions specifically attending to adolescent needs (i.e., Boy Scouts, the high school, etc.). In the United States and Europe, the concept of adolescence has since become thoroughly enmeshed in both popular and expert discourses on the behavior of youth, prompting Ari's to call this the "century" of adolescence.3 Academic journals and institutes, based primarily in departments of education and psychology, devote themselves entirely to the study of adolescence, while talk shows, books, and magazines communicate proverbial gem of wisdom to parents and teachers in search of advice about their charges. The prevailing thought characterizes adolescence as a universal psychological experience that, in evolutionary terms, we have only recently begun to understand and therefore socially and educationally accommodate. Meanwhile, a number of scholars have begun to question the value and relevance of such a concept. Like Aries had previously done for the concept of childhood, these authors interrogate the analytical value of adolescence, wondering whether it represents, among other things, an ideological conflation of biological and sociocultural life stages central to the social control modalities of modern capitalist societies.

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