Well-Intentioned Progressivism and the Role of Educational Inequity: Creating Citizens in Official and Unofficial Curriculum

• In Event: Trauma, Chaos, Resistance

Abstract

In times of rapid social change, schools promote various models of assumed citizenship, which are embodied, enacted, supported, and contradicted in relationships between teachers and students. These studies suggest that the enactment of democracy depends on the broader social structures surrounding schools. In this paper, we use critical race theory as a methodological and analytic lens to investigate how democratic citizenship is formed in practice within two progressive, high-status early childhood programs. Data was gathered from two more extensive, separate ethnographic studies conducted in kindergarten classrooms. In presenting these situated accounts, we show how democratic citizenship is established in the classroom. In doing so, we pay attention to how universal, liberal notions of democratic participation can reproduce dominant power structures.

Authors

• Muge Olgun-Baytas, Pennsylvania State University - Abington

• Allison Sterling Henward, The Pennsylvania State University