Doctoral Dissertation Research: Contested Geographies of Education: Neighborhood Schooling Struggles in Post-Katrina New Orleans

博士论文研究：有争议的教育地理：卡特里娜飓风过后新奥尔良的社区学校教育斗争

• 批准号: 1434330
• 负责人: Helga Leitner
• 金额: $ 1.48万
• 依托单位: University of California-Los Angeles
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-07-15 至 2016-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1434330&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Contested; Geographies

Across the United States, cities have become testing grounds for policies designed to promote market-based solutions to problems in public education. These initiatives commonly rely on the institution of charter schools, which are publicly funded but often privately managed and only minimally accountable to locally elected entities. This research project examines place-based challenges to charter reform through analysis of the attempts of four New Orleans neighborhood-based groups to re-open schools in their communities. With 90 percent of its public school students currently enrolled in charter schools, New Orleans has been a major testing ground market-based reform, and of the ways such reforms might be contested. By focusing on the ability of neighborhood-based groups to address schooling concerns in the public sphere, this project will enrich understanding of place-based social movements, expand the range of concerns commonly addressed in discussions of public education policy, and support ongoing efforts to create more democratic urban spaces through collective inquiry and action. Because schools serve a variety of social, political, and economic purposes, the effects of school reform reach far beyond the school house walls. As they re-work essential aspects of daily life in cities, market-based school reform efforts have provoked intense struggles over the purpose and provision of schooling and the role of community members in influencing urban education policy and practice.The project will use multiple methods, including document analysis, participant observation, and interviews in order to examine how group members develop, understand, and pursue their schooling agendas under the post-Katrina charter school regime in New Orleans. The specific research questions include: How do neighborhood schooling groups frame their grievances with respect to the effects of neoliberal schooling policies and what counter discourses are advanced in support of neighborhood schooling? What strategies do neighborhood schooling groups use to insert those counter discourses into a larger public sphere and to what effect? How are race, class, and gender implicated in these struggles? What learning is taking place in these place-based efforts to realize particular schooling agendas and what are the democratic implications of both the processes and results of their activities? The proposed research provides (1) an empirical analysis of the possibilities for producing schooling alternatives to neoliberal policies through collective action initiated at the neighborhood level, (2) a socio-cultural counterpoint to existing political-economic arguments regarding how and why people become involved in such movements, and the ways that place and race inform strategy and the ability to achieve desired goals, and (3) an analysis of how people learn to do democratic work, including identifying and framing common problems, constructing space for social inquiry, negotiating difference, and navigating uneven power relations.

在美国各地，城市已经成为旨在促进以市场为基础的解决公共教育问题的政策的试验场。 这些举措通常依赖于特许学校制度，这些学校由政府资助，但往往由私人管理，对当地选举产生的实体只承担最低限度的责任。 本研究项目通过分析新奥尔良四个以社区为基础的团体在其社区重新开设学校的尝试，探讨了基于地点的挑战，以宪章改革。 新奥尔良90%的公立学校学生目前就读于特许学校，因此新奥尔良一直是以市场为基础的改革的主要试验场，这种改革可能会受到质疑。 通过关注以社区为基础的群体在公共领域解决学校教育问题的能力，该项目将丰富对以地方为基础的社会运动的理解，扩大公共教育政策讨论中通常涉及的问题范围，并支持通过集体调查和行动创造更民主的城市空间的持续努力。 由于学校服务于各种社会、政治和经济目的，学校改革的影响远远超出了学校的围墙。 随着城市日常生活的基本方面的重新设计，基于市场的学校改革努力引发了关于学校教育的目的和提供以及社区成员在影响城市教育政策和实践中的作用的激烈斗争。该项目将使用多种方法，包括文献分析，参与者观察和访谈，以研究群体成员如何发展，理解，并在卡特里娜飓风后的新奥尔良特许学校制度下继续他们的教育议程。 具体的研究问题包括：社区教育团体如何表达他们对新自由主义教育政策影响的不满，以及在支持社区教育方面提出了哪些反话语？ 邻里教育团体使用什么策略来将这些反话语插入更大的公共领域，效果如何？ 种族、阶级和性别是如何卷入这些斗争的？ 在这些以地方为基础的努力中，为实现特定的学校议程正在进行哪些学习，其活动的过程和结果的民主含义是什么？拟议的研究提供了（1）通过在社区层面发起的集体行动，对新自由主义政策产生学校替代方案的可能性进行实证分析，（2）对现有的政治经济论点进行社会文化对比，这些论点涉及人们如何以及为什么参与这些运动，以及地点和种族如何影响战略和实现预期目标的能力，以及（3）分析人们如何学习做民主工作，包括识别和框定共同问题，构建社会探究空间，协商差异，以及驾驭不平等的权力关系。