In the News

Three items this morning for your consideration:

Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier have started a joint blog on the Education Week site. It will be interesting to see them debate their differences. So far they've been agreeing more than disagreeing, but I expect that will change over time. The blog is called Bridging Differences, and unlike much content on the Ed Week site, you can read it without registering.

At Inside Higher Ed, there's a piece about the National Education Association's new plan to deal with the growth of adjunct faculty positions. The article provides an overview of the whole adjunct issue, including the positions held by AAUP and the AFT. (I'd be interested in hearing your comments about the role of adjuncts in teacher education programs.)

Finally, if you were fortunate enough to attend the CEE luncheon in Nashville, you'll want to know that Sherman Alexie's new novel is out. It's called Flight: A Novel and apparently deals with a time-traveling teenager name "Zits." You can read the publisher's information about it here.

Recommended Reading

I’ve recently read two articles that have helped me think about where we are as a profession. Bob Tremmel’s "Changing the Way We Think in English Education: A Conversation in the Universal Barbershop” (English Education, October 2006) explores how tied our thinking is to “the principles, motives, and mechanisms of standards-based education” and then goes on the use the ideas of physicist David Bohm to suggest how we might move toward a new, less fragmented paradigm. The second article (cited repeatedly in Tremmel’s piece) is Bob Yagelski’s “English Education” in English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline (edited by Bruce McComisky, NCTE, 2006). Yagelski argues that English education “can serve a unique and vital function within English studies as a site where theory and practice inevitably converge and where the various subdisciplines of English studies can come together in the service of a project that transcends these separate subdisciplines.” Yagelski’s description of a possible future for English education is one of the more inspiring visions of our work I’ve read. Tremmel’s article is available online to EE subscribers. You can purchase the McComisky volume here.