Teacher Education in Tension: Historicizing the Bifurcation Between Justice-Oriented Education and Evidence-Based Education Reforms

• In Event: Roots and Routes: Revisiting Dilemmas in The Purpose of Education

Abstract

This paper explores the tension in teacher education today (justice-oriented education vs. evidence-based education) as a historical problem. Drawing upon teacher education research archives of the Cold War period, it examines how the social justice agenda is silenced in the systems approach to teaching and teacher education, a precursor of evidence-based education. Although the systems approach provided theoretical grounds to create the general model that needs to be contextualized, this eclectic sense of practicality has peripheralized social justice issues. The study suggests approaching the emptiness as a productive space for education research. This is to expand educational responsibility by making visible/intelligible how the common practice in education has systematized injustice, despite unintentional, by silencing the other parts of the world.

Author

• Sun Young Lee, Wichita State University