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Public Schools as Publicly Imagined

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Pedagogies and Curriculums to (Re)imagine Public Education

Part of the book series: Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education ((CSTE,volume 3))

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Abstract

This last chapter reviews the proposition that the neoliberal discourses that currently shape educational policies and school practices have undermined the publicness of public education by allowing private visions of education to percolate, and even to dominate, our educational imagination. Believing that public education will not be able to perform its democratic duties if deprived of the public imagination that identifies this institution as a fundamental pillar of modern democracies, the chapter further reflects on the narratives of the 11 schools presented in the book and explores the theoretical possibilities of the notion of education as publicly imagined to reclaim new public grounds for our educational imagination. The chapter concludes by mapping four conceptual avenues in this process: (1) a commitment to the historical and social specificity that shapes students’ lives; (2) the understanding of curriculum and pedagogy as indispensable tools to secure educational visions of equality; (3) the notion of schools as sites of collective visions, and; (4) the potential to conceptualize schools as counterpublics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, USA

    Encarna Rodríguez

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  1. Encarna Rodríguez
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Correspondence to Encarna Rodríguez .

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  1. Department of Educational Leadership, Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    Encarna Rodríguez

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Rodríguez, E. (2015). Public Schools as Publicly Imagined . In: Rodríguez, E. (eds) Pedagogies and Curriculums to (Re)imagine Public Education. Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education, vol 3. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-490-0_14

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