Hugh T. Sockett
Welcome!
This home page provides information, but I'd like it to be seen as an invitation to comment on my work, briefly or in depth. If you do write to me, preferably by e-mail at hsockett@gmu.edu, let me know whether you mind if I publish what you have written on this page. Of course, a page like this is always a work in progress, so please forgive mistakes.
PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS
Introduction. For at least the past 20 years, I have been puzzled by this conflict. When many people discuss the purposes of education, they describe a basic moral endeavor, connected to contributing to the development of a person. The detail of their aims may differ, for example between "traditionals" and "progressives", but the heart of the business is a moral one. Yet, in practice, especially in the US, education is treated as a technical matter. The aims are reduced to just political struggles or the whims of the new Superintendent. The reasons for this conflict are immensely complex, and it is part of the legacy of modern science to build a tough-minded separation between ends and means. But I believe education being seen as a technical and bureaucratic business is not merely a cultural quirk, but is morally damaging to the individuals and the institutions who take part in it. So I have tried to use the missing language of education, the language of morality, in my writing and in my practice.
Take a very simple example of moral thought applied to an apparently innocuous issue: when classes for teachers are scheduled. Mostly, such classes are scheduled for faculty convenience. Yet most teachers work extremely hard in their classrooms, and their evenings are appropriately times for preparation, grading, or even being with their families. It is therefore appropriate, if we examine the scheduling question from a moral point of view, to find other times for scheduling which are, as it were, teacher-friendly. That is likely to include summer sessions, maybe Saturday sessions, maybe day-release. At the very least, we should see such matters through a moral lens.
So my work is driven by this overarching quest - to figure out what this missing language is by thinking about it and by practicing it. It begins with the often-posed question: Is teaching a moral activity? That is seen as an epistemological and a normative question. Fortunately, I am not a voice crying in the wilderness. I am just a part of a chorus with much more well-known and better scholars than I - Nel Noddings, Ken Strike, David Hansen, Alan Tom, Tom Green, Philip Jackson and many others.
Educational Reconciliation. Four of us have recently edited a book of faculty and teachers writing about our experience of running a morally-based innovation. Ruminating on that experience, my colleague and friend, Pamela LePage-Lees and I have co-authored a book to be published in 2001, called Educational Reconciliation: A New Vision for Educational Controversy. Our puzzle is basically this. I am a grandparent: Pam is a parent with a young child. Is it unreasonable for us to expect education to have, in some general sense, improved, such that what these youngsters get is better than our experience? Yet what we see and hear is tremendous conflict about education fed by what Deborah Tannen calls the "argument culture". Now we can all complain about that culture and the 2000 Presidential Election aftermath illustrates how vicious it can be. Yet no one, as far we know, has tried to establish a reconciliatory discourse. So we have developed a protocol for it, arguing that people in conflict about what to do mostly don't know whether they could reach a shared view of the problem. There are plenty of books about how to solve problems, usually for business or industry where the problem seems palpable. The protocol thus leads protagonists through a process, which stops at their mutual acceptance of an agreed problem. We hope you will read it, but, as will be obvious to you from a moment's thought, a reconciliatory discourse is going to require people to change their attitudes to each other and to their own habits. It demands moral reflection and new sense of respect for people with different standpoints. We plan to do some field tests and would be very pleased to receive invitations from educators to try it out: no fees, just a share of expenses! The book will be linked with a web-site.
Citizenship Education. This is another aspect of the moral dimension in education, on which topic John Dewey (as in much else) stands head and shoulders above us. When I moved from Education into a Political Science department, I thought that I could bring a useful perspective to undergraduate teaching, though I hadn't taught American undergraduates in any systematic program. Luckily my Department has become intensely committed to making Government 101 (Democracy in Theory and Practice) an important experience for students, mainly by using staff resources to cut the size of classes. In my first year of teaching this, I have framed the syllabus as What is Democracy, How did it get that way, and How can you contribute to it as a citizen? I now think that starting with the theoretical account of democracy's concepts, principles and procedures needs to be changed to have the ideas, responsibilities and problems of citizenship up front, and I have applied for a place in the Carnegie Fellows Program to pursue this within the orbit of the scholarship of teaching. Particular important for me is that fact that GMU is very diverse and many of my students do not have white ethnic backgrounds, and many will be first generation immigrants. Citizenship cannot, I think, be detached: from culture, from workplace, from family.
Teacher Professionalism: the epistemological base. In 1993, I published a book on the Moral Base for Teacher Professionalism. I took the 5 defining points of a profession, its conception of service (its moral base), its conception of knowledge, its character as a community, its views of its accountability, and its central ideals. Instead of inquiring whether teaching met the standards for a profession (a kind of empirical question), I looked at the first of the five through the eyes of the idea of professionalism, i.e. what counts as quality in the role. I was on leave in 1998-1999, and I made major headway with a "companion" book on the Epistemological Base for Teacher Professionalism, which, after various delays I hope to complete in 2001. A central part of the book is the explication of what I call the “epistemological presence in the classroom” where I suggest that discussions about beliefs, truth, evidence, experience, commitment and identity have to be there.
The University and the
Community.
In 1992, I led a team of 57 institutional partners applying for a New American Schools Development Corporation grant – which we did not get. Our proposal offered a ferment of ideas, especially in terms of connecting families and communities, alongside universities, to the task of public education. One of the ideas was for what we thought of as a urban kibbutz. Then Todd Endo, formerly Director of Research for Fairfax County, returned from an assignment in Egypt, retired from Fairfax and offered to develop the idea into what has become The Urban Alternative. With funds from US HUD, and then from several foundations, the Urban Alternative is a thriving project in Columbia Heights West in Arlington, Virginia. It links all kinds of organizations as partners to community, political and educational tasks in a poor neighborhood with high immigration.
Todd and I saw this as having strong potential as a learning community for undergraduate students and teachers. In fact the University response has been desultory. Two educational faculty have worked on the early childhood pre-school in the project and on building family connections with the elementary schools. Yet this is a part of the larger problems within universities about the role of service learning on the one hand and the distance teacher educators set between themselves and families and communities. Furthermore, as it seems to me, big powerful institutions in urban areas, especially where they are publicly funded, have an obligation to find ways to ameliorate conditions for people. In fact they mix only with the movers, shakers and politicians to get bonds and, in our case at this university, dismiss a responsibility for social issues.
Not
complete
Please write to me at hsockett@gmu.edu
5 Publications
Books
Forthcoming
The Epistemological Base for Teacher Professionalism
2001
Educational Reconciliation: A New Vision for Educational Controversy,
with Pamela LePage-Lees
(completed:
under contract negotiation).
Transforming Teacher Education: Lessons for Professional
Education, (publication: April 2001)
with Pamela
LePage-Lees, Elizabeth Demulder, and Diane Wood. CT: New Haven.
Bergin and Garvey.
1994
Teacher Research and Educational Reform. (co-editor with Sandra
Hollingsworth).
The
Ninety-Third Handbook of the National Society for the Study of Education,
Volume I.
Chicago:
National Society for the Study of Education.
1993
The Moral Base for Teacher Professionalism.
Teachers
College Press, Columbia University. (210 pages)
1979
Accountability in the English Educational System. (Editor).
London:
Hodder and Stoughton. (118 pages)
1976
Designing the Curriculum. London: Open Books. (133 pages)
Refereed
Articles, Published Speeches, and Book Chapters
2001
From Transforming Teacher Education: Lessons for Professional Education,
(see above)
Chapter 1: Transforming Teacher Education
Chapter 2: From Educational Rhetoric to Program Reality (With Pamela
LePage-Lees),
Chapter 7: Complexity in Morally Grounded Practice (With Elizabeth DeMulder and
Ann Cricchi)
Chapter 14: Leading a Transformative Innovation: The Acceptance of Despair.
2000 Creating a Culture for the Scholarship of
Teaching, Inventio, Spring 2000.
1998 Levels of Partnership. In Metropolitan
Universities. VIII: 4. 75-82
1997 Educational Transformation: the Roots and Ramifications
of a Pedagogical Innovation. (With Michal Zellermayer)
In
Sandra Hollingsworth, (editor) International Action Research and Educational
Reform. London, Falmer Press.
Chemistry or Character? In Beverley Cross and Alex Molnar, Constructing
the Character of Children.
The
Ninety-Sixth Handbook of the National Society for the Study of Education,
Chicago.
1997 Caveat Emptor: Children and Parents as Customers.
Lies,
Secrets, Partnerships and Institutions.
Two Public Lectures
delivered to the University of Alberta
http://www.quasar.ualberta.ca/cpin/main.htm
1996 Can Virtue be Taught? The Educational
Forum. 60:2. 124-130
Tommy:
The Tragic Case of the Aging Modernist. Cambridge Journal of Education,
26:2. 259-261.
Teachers for the Twenty-First Century: Redefining Professionalism.
Bulletin of the National Association of Secondary School Principals.
80:580. 22-30.
1995 Storming the Tower of Babel: A British Experience
in Ed School Reform. In Larry S. Bowen (editor).
The Wizards of Odds: Leadership
Journeys of Education Deans.
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Washington, D.C.
37-49.
1994 "School-Based"
Masters Degrees. Education Week, October 19, 1994
Teacher-Research and Educational Reform: Movement and Momentum. (with Sandra
Hollingsworth)
In Teacher
Research and Educational Reform.
The
Ninety-third Handbook of the National Society for the Study of Education,
Volume I, Chicago.
1993 Review of Jacques Barzun. Begin Here: The
Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning.
Metropolitan Universities. III-1, 1992
1992 Luck, Excellence, and Accountability in
Teaching. A Reply to Shirley Pendlebury.
Proceedings of the Philosophy of Education Society,
1991
1991 The Moral Aspects of the Curriculum. In
Philip W. Jackson (editor),
AERA Handbook of Research on Curriculum. New
York. Macmillan 543-570.
1990 Accountability, Trust and Ethical Codes of
Practice.
In
John S. Goodlad, Kenneth R. Sirotnik, and Roger Soder.(editors)
The Moral Dimensions of
Teaching. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass. 224-251
1989 Research, Practice and Professional Aspiration
within Teaching. Journal of Curriculum Studies. 21:1. 97-112.
A
Moral Epistemology of Practice? Cambridge Journal of Education.
19:1. 33-41.
Practical Professionalism. In Wilfred Carr (editor).
Quality in Teaching: Arguments
for a Reflective Profession. London, Falmer. 115-135
1988 Education and Will: Aspects of Personal
Capability. American Journal of Education. 98:2. 195-215.
The
Trivialization of Knowledge: Cultural Literacy by E. D. Hirsch Jr. Essay
Review.
International Journal of Group
Tensions. 18.3.
1987 What is a School of Education? An Inaugural
Lecture to the University of East Anglia.
Cambridge Journal of Education,
XV:3. 115-123.
Comprehensive Education in Northern Ireland.
In
Robert J. Osborne, Richard J. Cormack, and Robin L. Miller, (editors).
Education and Policy in
Northern Ireland. Belfast: The Policy Studies Institute. 73-85
The
School Curriculum: A Basis for Partnership. British Journal of
Educational Studies. XXXV:1. 30-43
Has
Shulman got the Strategy Right? Harvard Educational Review.
57:2. 208-215.
1985 The Educational Agenda: A View of the Future.
Inaugural Address to the British Association (Education Division). Irish
Journal of Educational Studies. IV.1. 1-21
Is
Comprehensive Education Still Worth Fighting For? The John Malone
Memorial Lecture.
The
Queens University, Belfast. (20 pages)
1983 Towards a Professional Code in Teaching.
In
Peter Gordon, Harold Perkins, Hugh T. Sockett and Eric Hoyle (editors). Is
Teaching a Profession?
Bedford Way Papers 15, London: University of London. 26-44
Londonderry and Higher Education.
Written Evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Education, Science
and the Arts:
Second
Report from Education, Science and Arts Committee 1982 - 1983:
Further and Higher Education in Northern Ireland. London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office.
1982 Accountability. In Louis Cohen, John Mannion
and James B. Thomas (editors).
Educational
Research and Development in Britain. Volume IV. Slough: NFER.
224-268
1981 Researching Educational Futures.
Educational Review. XIII:2. 18-29
1980 Towards Continuing Education. AONTAS
Review of Adult Education. AONTAS, Dublin.
Educational Research and the Challenge of Continuing Education. Aspects
of Education. 21 Hull. 46-53
Continuing Education: An Introduction. Educational Analysis (guest
editor). III: 3.1-7.
1979 Accountability: The Contemporary Issues.
In
Hugh Sockett (editor). Accountability in the English Educational
System. London: Hodder & Stoughton. 5-25
1978 Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility.
An
Inaugural Lecture to the New University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, (22 pages)
1977 Models of Curriculum Development. Irish Journal
of Curriculum Studies. IV, 1-13.
1976 Teacher Accountability. Proceedings of
the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. X:1. 34-57.
Approaches
to Curriculum Planning. Curriculum Design and Development Units 16
and 17 E 203.
Milton
Keynes: Open University Press. (56 pages)
1975 Parents’ Rights. In David Bridges and Peter
C. Scrimshaw (editors).
Values and Authority in Schools.
London: Hodder and Stoughton. 38-60
1974 Aims and Objectives in a Social Education
Curriculum.
In
John Elliott and Richard A. Pring (editors). Social Education and
Social Understanding.
London: Hodder and Stoughton. 30-46
1973 Behavioral Objectives. London Educational
Review. II:3. 38-45
1972 Curriculum Aims and Objectives: Taking a Means to
an End.
Proceedings of the Philosophy of Education Society of
Great Britain. VI:3. 30-61
Curriculum Planning: Taking a Means to an End.
In
Richard S. Peters (editor). The Philosophy of Education. Oxford:
Oxford University Press. 150-163
Curriculum Gateau. Cambridge Journal of Education. II:3.
170-178
1971 Bloom’s Taxonomy: A Philosophical Critique. Cambridge
Journal of Education. I:1. 1-12
PERSONAL MATERIAL
Hugh T. Sockett is Professor of Education at George Mason University (GMU) working in the Department of Public and International Affairs of the College of Arts and Sciences. Before coming to George Mason in 1987, he was Dean of Education at the University of East Anglia (UK). Prior to that he was Director of the Institute of Continuing Education at the New University of Ulster based in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. At GMU, he was founding director of the Center for Applied Research and Development (CARD) which was merged into the Institute for Educational Transformation (IET) which he also directed from 1991 - 1998. He resigned as Director in February 1998 and the Institute was disbanded in the GMU reorganization process in 1998. He joined the Department of Public and International Affairs in July 1999. He has published numerous articles and four books, the most recent of which is The Moral Base for Teacher Professionalism, published by Teachers College Press in 1993.
Some autobiographical ruminations
My life was changed by reading The Women's Room by Marilyn French in 1976. It shook me out of my automatic ingrained sexism. Since then I have read widely in, and my work has been profoundly influenced by, feminist ethics and epistemology. I therefore think that a home-page is an appropriate place to say something about one's self, not merely as a reflection, but so that people who read my work, come to study with me, or are my professional colleagues know at least something about my background. Of course, you are not visiting this page to read a book length autobiography. What appears here seems important to me to write at the beginning of the millennium, 62 years into my life. But it is not complete -- by any means.
I am the second son of Benjamin and Dorothy Sockett. They were remarkable people.
My father left school at 14 to work in a steel rolling mill in South Wales. He knew he wanted to become a Baptist minister when he was 8. He began part-time work in a barber's shop when he was 5 - as a lather boy smearing the faces of miners and steelworkers filthy with the grime or dust of the factories or mines from six to eleven on a Wednesday night. He had saved pennies to buy himself Sonnenschein's Greek Grammar preached pacifism at the beginning of the World War I but volunteered after the liner, the Lusitania was sunk off Ireland in March 1915. He led a charmed life in a front line regiment, fighting at Ypres, Passchandaele, and the Somme but was commissioned after an act of bravery toward the end of the War. He was not demobilized until he had served in the Occupation Army of Germany to the end of 1919. The scars of that war on his psyche were deep and indelible. Nevertheless, the war gave him sufficient financial resources to get tutorial training and to enter Regents Park, a Baptist College at London University in 1922. He got a Masters degree in Theology the year I was born and then his doctoral thesis was rejected on a technicality in 1944. He wrote it while running a large working class parish in the early days of World War II. It was on a topic in New Testament Criticism requiring the use of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac and Aramaic.
My mother had suffered from rheumatic fever as a child, but read very widely as a result, and in part because her only brother was ten years older. Her parents expected her life to be spent looking after them, so she was not encouraged either to work hard at her London grammar school or to pursue a university education. But she had steeped herself in Keats, Wordsworth, and Dickens. Her life and upbringing was aspiring middle-class. Although in many ways a pure innocent, she had great insights into people, and like my father, an unbounded and unqualified love for her children.
I have written this because my parents had a profound effect on my life, and frankly, I miss them both very badly even though my father died in 1963 and my mother in 1994. They were both committed to a view of life as service and both eschewed material gain. They sacrificed money (and family) to give their three children what they saw as the best education Britain could provide -- public school (private boarding school) and university. While my schooling gave me singular advantages, especially as I was born into a very small age cohort, I didn't send my own children away to school. I woke up to the fact, some years ago, that from the age of 8 onwards I only spent 12 weeks of the year at home and less than that by the time I was 21. This was a stunning realization of how profound was the loss of my parents' care which I now regret and which, bless them, they brought about for the best of motives. I have also recently come to a surprising piece of self knowledge. We were enormously treasured at home. I attended my "preparatory" school from age 8 to age 13. It was in many ways an evil place, much like the school portrayed in Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall. I learnt in very small classes, hardly ever more than 12 boys, and at the top of the school, usually about 6. I was taught almost as if my teachers were my individual tutors. When I left there for a school ten times the size, I didn't know how to cope with having to learn without immediate supervision. I sought attention in many unsuitable ways and when I went to Oxford I was really ill-prepared for serious study. Certainly I know now that I did not come close to my potential in my formal schooling, and for that I blame only myself. And how I regret it!
I came to teaching by accident. I began early to see the importance of the institutional ethos alongside what went on within the classroom. I thus got interested in working with problems of innovation in institutions. As a neophyte school teacher at Eltham Green School in London, England, in the early 1960s, I founded a school newspaper which attracted some of the best and brightest students. Bernard Barker became a Headmaster of an outstanding comprehensive high school: David Hills works in the NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and Conal Condren is now one of Australia's leading historians--- to name but a few. I developed something of a taste for working on institutional structures. At Avery Hill College of Education, I found myself working on a constitution for the College's Academic Board (it had never had one) and I did similar work at the Cambridge Institute of Education which I joined in 1970.
I was more interested, however, in curriculum structures and these interfaced with the institutional structure. At Cambridge I developed a postgraduate course built around a fluid agenda, a curriculum described by principles not by objectives (see my Designing the Curriculum). I was fortunate to begin my studies in education in 1963 the year that Richard S. Peters came to the chair of philosophy of education in London where he met Paul H. Hirst, whom I had known slightly in Oxford. So I went through the Academic Diploma and the Masters in Philosophy of Education (four years part-time, two or three nights weekly!) and then to a doctorate supervised by Peters titled The Philosophical Basis of Curriculum Planning. Peters was at the top of his form in those years. He had edited Brett's History of Psychology, written an outstanding Social Principles and the Democratic State with Stanley Benn, and a fascinating examination of The Concept of Motivation. He was expert in social philosophy, moral philosophy and philosophical psychology before he published Authority, Responsibility and Education, Ethics and Education, The Logic of Education (with Paul Hirst), a collection of his papers on Psychology and Ethical Development, a blockbuster of a book -- and much else. This was a formidable intellect with whom to study. Read his essay on Behaviorism in Psychology and Ethical Development if you want an example of the breadth and depth of his scholarship. He was also a teacher with an interesting "grading system". It came down to three expressions: "not very interesting"(C), "interesting" (B) and "important"(A). It was when he began to describe draft chapters as "important" that you knew you were getting near the mark.
But from Cambridge to Ulster and then to East Anglia -- from 1970 to 1986 -- I had wonderful opportunities for someone with my institutional and curriculum interests. As Director of the Institute of Continuing Education in northern Ireland, I led its institutional rebuilding and major curriculum developments. As a founding senior professor (and Dean) at a new school of education at East Anglia, I was fortunate enough to work with others from a virtually clean slate, including contributing to the design of a new building for the School. The major redesign we accomplished there was the undergraduate degree in Education which, I think, was dam near perfect. And so to the United States in 1987 on a permanent basis after a three month spell at the University of Chicago with Philip W. Jackson. I was brought in as a "systems buster" to run a Center for Applied Research and Development. This was later merged into the Institute for Educational Transformation (see below and link) which I founded and directed from 1990-1998 when with changes in the university, and a diagnosis that I had lymphoplasmacytoid lymphoma (a non-Hodgkins version), I decided to shift my base in 1999 to Public and International Affairs. There I am writing more, teaching undergraduates and helping my new Department on its mission to work on citizenship education.
I `Education
1974 University of London, King’s College (Ph.D.) Philosophy of
Education
1972 University of Cambridge (M.A. by incorporation)
1967 University of London, King’s College (MA)
1965 University of London, Academic Diploma in Education
1963 University of Oxford (MA)
1963 University of London. Postgraduate Certificate in Education
(Distinctions in Theory and in Practice).
John William Adamson
Prize.
1960 Member: Middle Temple, Inns of Court
1959 University of Oxford, Christ Church (B.A: Modern History)
II Professional Career
1999
-
Professor of Education, Department of Public and International Affairs, George
Mason University.
1992 - 1999 Professor of Education and Director,
Institute for Educational Transformation, George Mason University
1987 - 1993 Research Professor and Director, Center for
Applied Research and Development in Education,
George Mason University
1981 - 1987 Professor of Education, Dean of the School
of Education (1983 - 1986),
University of East Anglia, United Kingdom
1975 - 1980 Professor of Education, Education Center,
New University (1975-1976)
Professor of Education and Director, The Institute of Continuing Education
(1976 - 1980)
New University of Ulster, Northern Ireland
1969 - 1975 Research Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy of
Education, Cambridge Institute of Education.
Director of Studies in Education, Clare Hall College.
1964 - 1969 Lecturer in History, Senior Lecturer in
Education, Warden, George Barker Jeffrey Residential Hall,
Avery Hill College of Education, Inner London Education Authority,
1959 - 1964 Assistant Teacher: Deputy Head of
Department of History,
Eltham Green School, Inner London Education Authority, United Kingdom.
III Teaching Experience
Doctoral
Seminars, Committees, and Supervision (1975-)
Teaching of
Graduate Teachers, Philosophy of Education, Curriculum Studies, Education
Foundations (1969-1999)
Nurse Tutor
Education, (1977-1980)
Undergraduate College Teaching, English History, Military History and the
Theory of War,
European
History (1964-1967), Education (1969-1986),Government 101 (1999- )
Teacher
Student Field Experience Supervision (1964-1975, 1980-1985)
High School
History and Social Studies (1959-1964)
IV Research and Development Experience and Accomplishments
Principal Investigator, The Urban Alternative: a project for the development of a holistic approach to inner-city problems through the provision of health, community, economic, social and educational facilities. (US Department of Housing and Urban Development, $600,000, 1995-1998)
Principal Investigator, The HeadStart Transition Demonstration Project Evaluation: Fairfax County Office for Children sub-contract from Department of Health and Human Services Grant: $228,776, 1991)
Principal Investigator, The Manassas Park Educational Partnership (US
Department of Education, $716,822, 1990):
Director, Project on Professional Development in Manassas Park City Public
Schools (1990): $15,000
Director, The Ethos Partnership (1986-1987): Professional Development in
Fauquier County Public Schools (1992):
Investigator: Evaluation of UK Police Probationary Training Project
(1980-1982):
Director, Northern Ireland Schools Cultural Studies Project (1975-1976):
Evaluation of the Londonderry Youth and Community Workshop (1978-1980):
Director, Adult Motivation and Adult Learning Project (1978-1980):
Management Committees of Community Action-Research in Education
(1977-1980)
Londonderry Archaeological Project (Chairman): (1976-1980)
Principal Investigator, The Aims of Social Education Project (1969-1972):
Curriculum Consultant and Evaluator, Hemel Hempstead School, Impington Village
College (1970-1973):
1998
Award for Outstanding Service to Public Education in Virginia, by George Mason
University PDK Chapter.
1997 -
American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education Task Force:
Teacher Education as a Moral Community.
1996 - 1997 Board Member. 1) Alexandria Community
Pre-School Network. 2) Center for Excellence, Fairfax.
3) TechCorps, Virginia.
1996
Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
1994 - 1998 Virginia Higher Education Representative.
Board of the United States Senate Productivity and Quality Award for Virginia.
1994
Television Presenter and Interviewer (Channel 53) on The Intellectual Life of
Schools with:
Sarah Lawless: Education and the Arts.
James Trefil: Why "Science Matters".
Marilyn Sanders Mobley: Multiculturalism and the work of Toni Morrison,
Egon Verheyen: This Temple of Democracy: The US Capitol.
1993
Northern Illinois University, The James and Helen Merritt Lecturer.
1992-
President, Institute for Educational Transformation Inc.
1992
Member, representing the British Council. International Review Team on the
Faculty of Education,
University of the West Indies.
1989 - 1992 Member, Committee on the Role and Status of Women in
Educational Research and Development,
American Educational Research Association.
1989
Speaker and Presenter, The District of Columbia Public Schools. Conference
Center for Special Projects Leadership.
1989
Guest University Lecturer, University of the West Indies at Jamaica and
Barbados
1989
Guest Lecturer, College of the Bahamas, Nassau.
1988
Panelist, The Governor’s Conference on Values in Education, New York State
Board of Education
1987
Spencer Foundation Personal Grant
1986 - 1992 Speaker and Presenter promoting the Institute for
Educational Transformation:
1: to academic organizations (e.g. Phi Delta Kappa; Delta Sigma Nu);
2: to local authorities (e.g. Fauquier County
Commission on Excellence in Education; Fairfax County Public Schools Leadership
Team; Prince William County Leadership Team; Manassas Park City Council;
Fairfax County Public Schools Committee on Professionalism; Fairfax County
School Board; Virginia Region IV Superintendents’ Conference, Virginia; Project
Lead Conference for Virginia Principals (Wintergreen); Joint Meeting of
Education Officers of the Smithsonian Institution,
3: to business organizations (The George Mason Century Club, Leadership
Washington, The George Mason University Foundation, Inc.,) to elected and
appointed officials: Superintendent(s) of Commonwealth of Virginia, District of
Columbia, State of Maryland; Chancellor, University of Maryland System: President,
George Mason University; Director, State Council for Higher Education,
Commonwealth of Virginia Reps. Woolf, and Moran. Chairman, BDM
International; Chairman, American Aerospace Manufacturers Association;
Vice-President, IBM Federal Systems; President, Electronics & Defense
Division, ITT Corporation; President, Atlantic Research Corporation.
1986
Chairman, Music and Communications Skills Conference, Guildhall School of Music
& Drama,
City of London
1986
Visiting Scholar, University of Chicago
1985 & 1986 Chairman, Inaugural Conferences of The Secondary
Examinations Council for England & Wales
1985 - 1987 Member, Norwich School of Art Governing
Body
1985 - 1987 Member, Norfolk and Norwich Advisory
Council on Continuing Education
1985
John Malone Memorial Lecturer, The Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern
Ireland
1984
Inaugural Speaker, The British Association Conference (Education Division)
1983
Special Education Lecturer, University of London
1980
Visiting Scholar, University of Oxford.
1980
Chairman, The Future of Higher Education Conference. United Kingdom Higher
Education Foundation
1979
Contributor and Discussant, Open International Seminar and Workshop on Northern
Ireland:
held at DOCUMENTA, Kassel, West Germany, with Joseph Beuys and Caroline
Tisdall.
1978 - 1981 Member, The Open University Delegacy on
Continuing Education.
1978 - 1981 Member, United Kingdom Council for National
Academic Awards Educational Studies Panel
1977 - 1980 Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
nominee, Public Services Training Committee for Northern Ireland
1977 - 1980 Council for Continuing Education in
Northern Ireland. Chairman, Development Committee (1978 - 1980)
1978 - 1979 Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
nominee,
Advisory Committee for the Supply and Training of Teachers in Northern Ireland.
1978
Presenter and Discussant, International Seminar on the Deprived Regions of
Europe, Erice, Sicily.
Sponsor: the Italian Government.
1977
Visiting Professor, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio, U.S.A.
1976
Fellow, Salzburg Seminar, Austria
1975 - 1986 Member, Universities Council for the
Education of Teachers, UK
1974
Chairman, National Conference on Teaching Race Relations, UK
1968 - 1976 National Secretary, Philosophy of Education
Society of Great Britain.
V Recent Conference Presentations in USA
American Educational Research Association
1985: Invited Speaker. Towards a
Professional Code in Teaching.
1989: Collaboration in Professionalism: The Case
of the Center for Applied Research and Development in Education.
(With Todd Endo)
Symposiast: Typologies of Teacher Action Research: Constraints on Projects and
Participants.
Paper: Courage, Friendship and Character Education.
1990 Paper: Curriculum Studies as a Pioneer
in Changing Higher Education Structures
1991 Paper: Virtue and Wisdom: Teaching as
a Moral Career
Paper: The Virtues of Teacher Research
1992 Chair: Women and Educating for a
Morality of Evil,
with Maxine Greene, Thomas F. Green, Philip W. Jackson and Nel Noddings.
Chair: Teacher Research and Educational Reform, with
J. M. Atkin, Virginia Richardson, Jean Clandinin,Michael Connelly, Sandra
Hollingsworth and Janet Miller.
1993 Symposiast: Focusing on Action
Research: Viewing and Reviewing the Methodology.
Symposiast: School University Partnerships - Moving from the Periphery to the
Center.
1994 Discussant: Meet the Authors.
The Moral Base for Teacher Professionalism.
1995 Chair: John R. Searle (Invited
Address), with DC Phillips, Maxine Greene and John Guthrie.
1996 Chair and Discussant: Teachers as
Researchers in the Context of UK Award-Bearing Courses and Degrees:
A Critical Discussion.
1997 Chair/Discussant: The American Dream
and Public Education:
A Curriculum for Reinterpreting and re-imagining what it might be to be a
teacher.
Discussant: International Action-Research:
The Politics and Promise of School-University Partnerships around the world.
1998 Discussant: Moral Understanding
in Curriculum and Teaching.
1999 Paper: Protecting the Moral
Integrity of Teachers.
2000 Moderator: Thorndike and Dewey -
The Rematch (Gary Fenstermacher and James Popham)
Paper: The Epistemological Presence in a Moral Classroom.
2001 Paper: Innovation as the
Acceptance of Despair.
Paper: (with Pamela LePage Lees): The Missing Language of the Classroom.
American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education Conference
1990 Symposiast: Beyond the
Conventional Wisdom in Teacher Assessment: Moral and Ethical Considerations.
1992 Critic/Discussant. Educating
Teacher Educators: A Feminist Pedagogy.
(Major) Symposiast. The Ethics of Educational Leadership (with Nel
Noddings and Ken Strike).
1994 Symposiast. Teacher
Research and Educational Reform.
1998 Symposiast. Moral
Ideals and Principles in Teacher Education.
1999 Critic/Discussant.
Perspectives on Statewide Standards of Learning: Virginia.
Symposiast. The Moral Dimension in Teacher Education.
2000 Chair/Discussant. Pitfalls
and Opportunities: The Experience of a Morally Grounded Innovation.
Paper: Recasting the Assumptions of Education
Paper: Management and Leadership in a Moral community.
2001 Chair: Taking the Moral
Seriously in Teacher Education.
Educating K-12 teachers as leaders for a moral community: the tensions between
individualism and community
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
1994 Invited Speaker: The Moral Base for Teacher Professionalism
Editorial Experience
1974
-
Journal of Curriculum Studies, Editorial Board
Reviews Editor: 1974 - 1985
1971 - 1976 Proceedings of the Philosophy of Education
Society of Great Britain
(now the Journal of Philosophy of Education)
Joint Editor with Richard S. Peters and Paul H. Hirst.
1971 - 1975 Cambridge Journal of Education, Editorial
Board.
1970 - 1985 Irish Journal of Educational Studies,
Editorial Board.
1974 -
Collected Original Sources in Education, Editorial Board
Professional Associations
British Educational Research Association
American Educational Research Association
Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
Philosophy of Education Society
Back to Top
REFERENCED
MATERIAL IN THE ABOVE TEXT
Government 101 Spring
Semester 2001
Introduction
1
Committing yourself to
learning
·
All can teach and all can learn –
You have a distinct experience of life, culture and society. We can learn from you.
·
Everyone is entitled to respect for their learning
needs –
Don't keep silent if you don't
understand. You are important to
us.
·
All must show commitment and responsibility for their
own learning and, where appropriate, for a group –
You have to pull your weight. Other learners depend on you. You owe it to yourself as well as to others to put in the time and do your level best.
·
Learning well is partly organization and partly
commitment --
Make sure you listen carefully. Practice asking questions. Keep up with the demands of study. Devise and keep to your
own learning schedules. Meet
difficulties head on.
·
Relish intellectual struggle -- Try to avoid thinking of learning as something to be gotten through.
Enjoy its challenges.
·
Be your
own best critic --
Try to examine what you believe as a habit of mind.
·
Constantly practice your reading and writing –
You don't know what you think until you have said it or written it.
2 Committing
myself to teaching
I regard teaching people as a moral engagement. My responsibility is to engage you in an exploration of the profound questions of human life, in this case, citizenship in a democracy.
I place great emphasis on creating an environment of participation and trust in which we can struggle together with ideas.
I seek to introduce you to the varieties of human thought, and I believe that the development of criticism and judgment is essential to understanding.
I want to contribute to your development as a person, the principles you live by, the values you are committed too, the identity you have and how your life becomes coherent through establishing links between meaningful work and meaningful living.
Success in teaching for me is achieved when learners begin to ask questions they had never dreamt of, accept ambiguity, enjoy the challenge of difficulty and, above all, are brave enough to take risks with ideas.
3 Cashing these commitments
These teaching and learning commitments will, I hope, pervade our experience together. This document gives a public account of what you are formally expected to do including:
a) how you will be taught and how you will learn,
b) how you will show publicly that you have met the standards,
c) the books and papers you will read and come to grips with, and
d) the schedule as planned at the beginning of the semester.
Two
Obligations:
·
Abide by the Honor Code, although you will frequently
work in groups.
·
Our punctual
attendance is an obligation and, where anyone is absent, they will provide
a detailed explanation in advance wherever possible as a matter of courtesy to
the class. In particular, you should be aware at the outset that the program is
so structured that missing a class can seriously impact your ability to follow
it.
Finally, the Department of Public and International Affairs has made a major commitment to this course by ensuring that class size is small. This will enable you to get to know each other and enable me to provide detailed support for individuals. Please take advantage of this by consulting me on your questions and issues.
The Program: Democratic
Theory and Practice
1
THE QUESTIONS
This
class is designed as a learning experience in becoming and in being a citizen
in a democratic society. Together, we will explore three central
questions, each of which forms a Part of the course. These are:
I What
does it mean to be a citizen in a democracy?
II How have these
ideas and practices developed, and how do they differ across societies?
III How can the aspirations of
democratic citizenship be realized and what will you do to help?
You
are expected to pursue these questions by:
a)
reading
the prescribed and other material for each topic,
b)
using
the WWW access to local, national and international newspapers to monitor
relevant issues in a country of your choice (excluding USA) and your home
state,
c)
contributing
to Class Web Forum on “Being a Citizen in a Democracy”, and
d)
completing
the prescribed work to the best of your ability.
2
Texts
a) Required
BOOKS
Anthony Arblaster: Democracy (second edition). University of Minnesota Press. 1994
Democratic Theory and
Practice. Government 101 Course Reader. Houghton Mifflin.
Refer constantly to the Glossary, pp. 62-66.
Strongly
recommended: Sanford Lakoff: Democracy: History, Theory and Practice. Boulder,
CO: Westview Press.
B) REQUIRED
OTHER SOURCES
i) National
newspapers worldwide: http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Newspapers/
Scroll down and click on
desired country.
ii) Washington politics:
http://www.looksmart.com
(search the site with "US President and Congress").
iii) Regular national reports
and analyses:
http://www.publicagenda.org
C) Wider
Reading
. Nelson
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Boston: Little Brown, 1994.
Robert Hughes: The Culture of Complaint - The Fraying of
America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Deborah Tannen: The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to
Dialogue. New York: Random House, 1998
3) The Class Web Forum
To access this, you must first let me have your GMU
e-mail address. I can then add your name to the access list for this site. This is to keep the site private to
this class.
Go to http://townhall.gmu.edu
(note no www):
Register (once I have
accessed you), then Login with Password
Click on Course Forums,
Scroll to Spring 2001,
Scroll to Government 101-006
(Sockett) and you are at the site.
There you will see a folder entitled About this
Site. Please read that before
proceeding.
4) THE CLASS BOOK
At the beginning of most class sessions, you will
be given material. This will include the whole syllabus and a day-by-day
description of the content. You will find it helpful to have the material kept
together and built on cumulatively.
Part I: What
does it mean to be a citizen in a democracy?
January
17 Introduction:
What is a citizen?
January
22 The
contested concept of democracy
Arblaster:
pp. 1-10, Schmitter and
Karl, 158-163 (CR)
"Democracy
Up, Government Down." Broder, D: Post, 1/2/00
January
24 The
contested concept of democracy, continued
Close
Reading: Schmitter and Karl
January
29 Citizens,
democracies, nations and states
Arblaster, ch. 5. Declaration of Independence (CR, 35-38)