The Paranoid Politics of Curricular Narrowing: Policy Erasure as Gendered Racial Exclusion

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 11:40 am Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Unpacking the Implementation, Impact, and Policymaking Processes of Literacy Policy (Table 10)

Abstract

Research has examined how school and classroom practices drive racial and gender inequities, but we know less about the political processes by which racialized and gendered categories are linked in education policymaking. I use historical-political analysis of archival data from the onset of the literacy debates (1966) to the publication of a DOE-sponsored humanities curriculum (1987) to conceptualize policy erasure as a form of intersectional oppression. I find that reformers linked (il)literacy to a racialized and gendered moral panic about families, legitimizing curricular narrowing and “quality” discourse as modes of embedding family values in education. This provides theoretical insights into mechanisms by which policymaking shapes the conditions of teaching and learning toward recognizing or marginalizing diverse forms of knowledge.

Author

• Andrew Stein, Northwestern University