February 28 - "Countering and Ecology of Violence: Exploring the Complexity of Curriculum Leadership and Ethical Agency"
The presentation explores curriculum leadership as a process by which individuals move beyond their initial assumptions of themselves, their practices, and leadership to a far more complex understanding of ethical existence, commitment and agency. We introduce the concept of an ecology of violence - stemming from the belief that the world faces a crisis of violence as a commonly accepted paradigm influencing beliefs and actions. We then review a framework of ethical responsibilities for transformative curriculum leadership: educational, critical, ethical and transformative. We use this heuristic to to focus on the literature of education for peace and ecojustice to explain the core ethical orientations of transformative curriculum leaders who work to counter a violence and environmental degradation within classrooms, schools and other educational organizations. We also will discuss the complexity of such transformative curriculum leadership by considering identity development as well as ethical and existential conundrums faced by such curriculum leaders.
Presenter Biographies
Pamela Bolotin Joseph
Pamela Joseph is Senior Lecturer in Education at University of Washington Bothell where she teaches courses in curriculum studies, education and society, and reflective practice. She has focused her professional career on helping teachers to develop expertise and identities as scholars, researchers, educational leaders, and activists. Her scholarship is in the areas of curriculum studies, curriculum inquiry, the teaching profession, moral education and the moral dimensions of teaching. Joseph is an elected member of Professors of Curriculum and is editor of the second edition of Cultures of Curriculum (2011) published by Routledge in the Study of Curriculum Theory Series.
Edward Mikel
Edward Mikel is Core Faculty and Interim Dean in the School of Education at Antioch University Seattle. His teaching and scholarship over the last two decades have been focused on the application of participatory democratic principles to curriculum and instruction and to school governance, the role of schools in progressive social change, and teacher activism for education and social justice, and ecojustice education. Mikel is a co-founder of the Project on Global, Social and Civic Education, lead advisor and member of the board of directors for Global Source Education, and is active in Snohomish County environmental and peace organizations.