The Sense of Education: Reexamining Michael Apple’s Use of Gramscian Theory in Education Research

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11

Session Submission Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

Papers presented in this symposium examine, critique, and extend Michael Apple's efforts to develop and employ Gramscian theory. Each paper engages Apple’s ideas from a different disciplinary location: philosophy of education, cognitive linguistics, or critical studies of education. The papers explore matters including: the theoretical foundations for Apple’s recent policy work regarding ensembles of relations; struggles in education domains over common sense understandings of who and what counts as “Israeli;” the function of cognitive frames in the maintenance and contestation of common sense about education; and the role of normative theory within the theory hegemony. In examining these issues, these papers sharpen theories indispensable to research on the politics of education.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Marxian Analysis of Society, Schools, and Education

Chair

• Michael W. Apple, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Papers

• Common Sense and the Alien Form of the Will in Apple, Marx, and Gramsci - Josh Shepperd, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Hegemony and Common Sense in Israeli Public Education - Assaf Meshulam, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

• Cognitive Frames and Struggles Over Sense - Ross Emmerson Collin, Manhattanville College

• Can We Be Best Friends Forever? Why Apple’s Theory of Hegemony Needs Normative Theory - Quentin Wheeler-Bell, University of Wisconsin