Cultural Studies, Public Schooling

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Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies

DOI: 10.1177/1532708603003002006

2003; 3; 203Cultural Studies Critical MethodologiesLouis F. Mirn

The Cultural Images of Public Schooling and the Emergence of Plurality in Research

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10.1177/1532708603251809ARTICLECulturalStudies CriticalMethodologies May2003Mirn CulturalImagesofPublicSchooling

The Cultural Images of Public Schoolingand the Emergence of Plurality in Research

Louis F. MirnUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

In this experimental article, the author initiates a methodological movetoward the aesthetic in educational research. In doing so, he uncovers thehidden dynamics of power in the politics of knowledge. By treating the cur-rent commonsense images of public schooling as part of an emerging plu-ralism, he argues for a conception of aesthetics that is anchored in every-day cultural practices. Viewing public schooling as both a site oftheoretical/methodological inquiry and intervention, the article begins to

move away from an epistemological perspective that is rooted in problemsolving to one that Willis captures as the relations of creativity.

Keywords:aesthetics; postmodernism; pluralism; deconstruction

Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.William Butler Yeats (The Second Coming)

Cultural images of public schooling discursively structure the way research-ers conceptualize the research problem as well as the largersets of empiricalandtheoretical guiding questions. In other words, images, and their embeddedmetaphors, vigorously shape our conceptual models of educational research.

As such, images and metaphors are more than mere rhetor ical devices. Lakoffand Johnson (1980) observed that metaphors are pervasive in everyday life,not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual sys-tem, in terms of which we both think andact,is fundamentally metaphoricalinnature (p. 3). Understanding the prevailing cultural images shaping public

203

Authors Note: Previous versionsof thisarticlewerepresentedat thefollowingconferences:Universityof

CaliforniaOutreach Conference,San Francisco, October1998; AmericanEducationalResearch Associ-

ationannualmeeting,Montreal,Quebec,April1999; andReclaiming VoiceII, University of California,Irvine, June 1999.

Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, Volume 3 Number 2, 2003 203-228

DOI: 10.1177/1532708603251809

2003 Sage Publications

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schooling, in short, coming to terms with why these images are hegemonic,

may be an analytical key to more fully open the doors of what I would describeas an emerging plurality in educational research. This is as it should be in ademocratic scholarly culture.

More ambitiously, this understanding may in a limited fashion disrupt thepower-knowledge relation, what Michel Foucault (1979) richly captured as aknot (p. 27). Such an understanding ultimately points the way toward theprimacy of the aesthetic in educational research. What will hopefully result is amove away from an understanding of theeducationalsubject as objector subal-tern (marginalized) subject (see below).

It appears that as a pluralistic society, we are inescapably bombarded withmultiple cultural images. These predominate in the mass media, the Internet,and communications in general. Out of these appear to emerge what I callhegemonic images that substantially affect public schooling and the myriad

of societal perceptions of academic success or failure. Especial ly in the arena ofpublic schooling, the responses to these cultural images from both elite groupsas well as classroom-level educators and students are of significance to research-ers for their interpretive political meanings.

It is important to recognize that by no means do these hegemonic imagesremain unchallenged. They are scattered hegemonies (Grewal & Kaplan, ascited in Mahler, 1999). For example, the discourse of academic performancetheorized below has undergone serious challenge by both upper-middle-classparents in Long Island as well as ethnic minority students and their families ineast Los Angeles. This hegemonic image is inextricably tied to the articulatorypractices of the establishment of state educational standards, standards-basedschool reform, and high stakes testing. Following Appadurai (1997), perfor-

mance cultural images and discourses are prime examples of what we mightcharacterize as representational hybridity. As I will attempt to explain indetail, such complexity has profound implications for research and of coursefor the signification of hegemonic cultural images and the capacity to resistthem. Michael Peter Smith (2001) defined (cultural) hybridityand thecapacity for political resistanceas the recombinant possibilities of contem-porary life (p. 137; also see Marcus & Fischer, 1986, p. 122).

These cultural images emanate outside of public schooling. On a moreabstract level, these shifts in research paradigms signal an emergingepistemological acceptance in the educational research community towardmultiple changing social realities of postmodernity (see definition below)(Harvey, 1989). Perhaps the single best illustration of these conditions is themediating effects of communication technologies on educational research.

This movement in educational research toward postmodernity is still in transi-tion and, as I argue in the third and final section of this article, optimallyshould culminate in public schools and classrooms in Arnstines (1995) notionof the primacy of the aesthetic.

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The purpose of this article is to explore the dialectical, that is, interactive

relationships between the cultural images of public schooling and the researchtraditions in theacademy. Thearticle is organizedintothreeparts. Part1 of thisarticle examines the hegemonic images of public schooling, especially in innercities. In Part 2, I argue that there is an emerging plurality in educationalresearch, a plurality that is symbolized by commonsense images, primarilyemanating from institutions. Finally in Part 3, I outline possible uses of aes-thetics in public schools.

1. Hegemonic Images of Public Schooling

To unpack the multiple social constructions of educational research, bothquantitative and qualitative, I explore the usefulness of hegemonic, common-sense images of public schooling. It seems that the metaphorical language

embedded in the multiple cultural images of public schooling is especially wellsuited for communicating research into the practices and processes of publicschools. I rely on cultural images as a rhetorical strategy to begin the continualprocess of untying the knowledge-power knot (Foucault, 1979, p. 27).

For want of more precise nomenclature, letme dividethe prevailing culturalimages of public schooling into three types: those that flow from modernity,those that flow from what I call a transitional postmodernity (see below), andthose that are rooted in the aesthetic as a kind of discourse practice and thepolitics of the performative (see Phelan, 1993, and conceptualization of theaesthetic below). Modern cultural images focus on the commodification ofschooling. These cultural images tend to treat the individual learner, and thesocial relations of learning, as objects. Transitional postmodern images, as they

relate to thestudy andpractice of public schooling, are transitional in that theytend toward the plural, and local. They reinscribe the school subject in history,culture, and politics. As such, they partially embrace Biestas (1994) concept ofpractical intersubjectivity. Finally, the aesthetic cultural image embraces bothmodern images and images emanating froma transitional postmodernity. Thatis, they move toward the near complete acceptance of the conditions ofpostmodernity as they apply to the conduct of educational research. Put differ-ently, aestheticimages invokea kind of radical plurality of researchdesigns andmethods (see Barone, 2000). Aesthetic images of public schooling more com-pletely andaccurately capture thefull range of intellectual andemotional qual-ities of the students, teachers, parents, and educational leaders who live theeveryday discourse practices of public schooling.

Representing the Politics of Aesthetics in Research

In numerous writings, Stuart Hall (1986, 1996, 1997) has argued that lan-guage is the central medium through which meaning is produced, communi-

Mirn Cultural Images of Public Schooling 205



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cated, circulated, and reproduced through everyday cultural practices. As such,

language takes on more then merely symbolic and rhetorical functions:Embedded in wider notions of discourse theory, language is implicated materi-ally in lived cultural experiences. Thus, language is concernedwith both rheto-ric and action. It is fundamentally performative in nature. For example, in thearts language producesmaterial1 effects thatPeggy Phelan (1993) characterizedas a kind of performance politics. Her observations are worth noting ingreater detail:

By suggesting that [performance art] participate in a performative exchange Ihope to broaden current disciplinary boundaries which define the field of thegaze, the animate and the inanimate, and the seen and the unseen. Performanceis the art formwhich most fullyunderstands the generative possibilities of disap-pearance. Poised forever at the threshold of the present, performance enacts theproductive appeal of the nonproductive. Trying to suggest that the disappear-ance of the external other is the means by which self assurance is achievedrequires that one analyze the potential payoffs in such disappearance: perfor-mance exposes some of them. (p. 27)

The implication is clear for purposes of this article: Although rhetorical inscope, performance is a kind of discourse practice. Itis a speech act (see Mirn &Inda, 2000). More precisely, as Thomas Popkewitz (1998b) has argued, dis-course practices are effects of power that, in turn, may produce material effectson powerrelations. For purposes of this article, the material effectsmay be con-ceptualized in productive terms, that is, ones that may reduce both theexclusionary school practices thathelp define the Other (seeexample on specialeducation, below) as well as academic and social inequalities that partiallyresult from these exclusionary practices. I build on these theoretical and nor-

mativepositions below to advance a conception of aesthetics as it relates to edu-cational research.

Although the concept of aesthet ics has a rich history in philosophy, art, andliterary criticism (see Eagleton, 1990; Easthope, 1991), it is only relativelyrecently that aesthetics has gained widespread utility in educational research.

With the publication of Maxine Greenes (1995) Releasing the Imaginationcame new and important insights into how aestheticsas a cultural practicethat has discursive, normative, and material consequences (Hall, 1997)might inform the professional activities of educators and educational research-ers. Aesthetics concerns the realms of politics as well as the philosophical pur-suits of beauty.

Aesthetics as a Cultural Object

Generally speaking, the meaning of aesthetics has taken two distinct epi-stemic paths. On one hand, it refers to the rather fixed interpretation of works




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imply value judgments and provide an organizational context for meaning in

the conduct of everyday decisions. Whether written in the mission statementof the school or posted on its Web site, these concrete activi ties help representlived cultural experiences for students. Artistic form is not separate from theintentional or unintentional meaning of the subjects who create it, asNussbaum (1990) elegantly argued (pp. 3-13). In educational research, forexample, presentations of findings that seek to capture in artistic form whattraditional qualitative or quantitative designs and methodology may miss arean example (see Barone, 2000; Crue, 2000). The research performance isstrictly ritualistic, precisely because it is narrowly artistic in form and pur-pose. It does not lead to action with an ethical content (see Stone, 1999).

Secondly, aesthetics is performative, that is, a discourse practice that hasmaterial effects on the learner as both object of study and subject of multipleresearch discourses. To use Searles language, discourse actually performs the

words it describes. It enacts. Moreover, as Stone (1999) correctly indicated, thisaction is ethical in content in that it concerns the ever-elusive issues of social

justice for the Other. Aesthetics includes the use of the imagination (Greene,1995) to take action on behalf of the subaltern Other in public schools andclassrooms. I want to suggest that this action is inevitably moral. Havingspelled out in detail what I mean by aesthetics, I turn now to a catalogue ofsome of the multiple cultural images in public schooling.

Thinking Modern

Modern cultural images of public schooling can be characterized by their

tendencies toward what Lyotard (1984) called totalization. For the purposesof this article, totalization as encapsulated in modern cultural images may beoperationally defined in structural-functional terms (Parsons, 1971, 1977).They emanate from institutions outside of public schooling that seek tosocially regulate and thereby partially control human behaviors through theirfunctional systems. Social control is primarily achieved within these systemsthrough the productive exercise of power (see Popkewitz, 1998b). At the sametime, because power is decentered and inextricably tied to knowledge, newconstructions of these institutions (and thus the cultural images themselves)are possible. Modern cultural images of public schooling are inappropriate.They primarily focus on the educational product and hence reify the tendencyto commodify knowledge and the social relations of knowing. As mentioned,they tend to make objects of the learner.

Examples of modern cultural images3

of public schooling include the medi-cal, civil engineering, industrial/business, and athletic images. The social rela-tions embedded in cultural modern images are hierarchical and patriarchal innature and often involve racialized classifications (see Banton, 1977; Meyer &

Jepperson, 2000; Torres , Mirn, & Inda, 1999). There is usually a figure in




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power, often upper-middle-class male and White, that comes to the rescue of

the ailing Other.The modern cultural images are closely linked; the dynamics between them

effectively blur their demarcations. Discourses that emerge during the deploy-ment of the medical image are illness and disease (the school system is sick).The medical image functions like treatments in a hospital. The patient (thestudent or public school system) is perceived as part of a biological system

whereby the architects of the system (eli tes and activist citizens) seek to achievecontinuous, and stable, homeostasis and apparently avoid disequilibrium at allcost (see Martin, 1990). When applied to inner-city schools in particular, thisfunctional system is held as being in a chronic state of degenerative illness. Thebiological system (like its engineering counterpart, below) is ill beyond organi-zational surgery. Interestingly, the medical image operates discursively in clini-cal terms; that is, the language used connotes a technical medical problem

(acute or chronic illness)one that must be remedied by treatment. Moreexperimental portrayals of this cultural image that would spurn innovation inpublic schooling are shunted for more immediately solvable treatments.These convey the idea of quick fixes.

In this regard, medical images work in conjunction with engineering ones(see below). I would prefer importing scientific experimental methods and thesense of improvisation and innovation characteristic of the scientific methodratherthan view educational illness as an evil to be eradicated like a violationofnature. Put simply, viewing the school system as sick leaves little room for trialanderror. The consequence of a medical mode of thinkinggiven that an edu-cational disease is merely metaphoricalis an abiding sense of crisis (Mirn,1996).

Parallel to the medical image of public schooling is the engineering image,in particular civil engineering, the profession of building bridges and the like.Civil engineering imagesappear to resonatewith theculture of NorthAmerica.Like the current call to save or fix social security in time forthe retirement yearsof the baby boomers, both education bureaucrats and politicians understand-ably desire to fix failing schools. The assumption is that when the schools arefinally fixed (or cured, as in the medical image), the process is completed.Rarely entertained is the notion that the work of school improvement is neverover. It is a continuous process. Finally, an unintended consequence of thismode of thinking is the social reproduction of public schooling and otherforms of social inequalities in the inner city and in rural communit ies. It is rareto learn of a failing school in the suburbs in need of engineering redesign, cer-tainly not the affluent ones.

Closely linked to the civil engineering image is the industrial/business one.Perhaps the most widely used of the cultural images emanating from moder-nity, it is most embedded in capitalists social relations. The concern is with theeducation product. Mirroring the growth in the global economy and in thestock market, the focus is on the production of statistical gains from high-




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performingschools.Those that fail to achieve at high levels or, worse,academi-

cally fail altogether are punished.This form of accountability is evident in Pres-ident Clintons reform proposal to end federal funding to states that do notimprove failing schools and more recently in California Governor Gray Davisseducational reform initiative to rank order public schools from highest per-forming to the worst performing school in the state.4

My last modern hegemonic image in public schooling is familiar to manyparents of athletes in the research community. This is the athletic image. Theassumption is that the education race is a zero-sum sport contest. That is,there are clear winners and losers. Of course, in every zero-sum game the win-ners come at the expense of the losers. As pointed out in the description of theindustrial/business image above, society rewards performance. There are norewards for failures. Collaboration, here the idea that gains can be made whenlearning is mutual, tends to get lost. On the other hand, a more optimistic con-

ception of the education problem as an athletic contest potentially allows forthe setting of high academic standards.

Modern cultural images appear to implicitly wield a functional systemsapproach. For example, the medical image embraces a biological system, thecivil engineering a mechanical system, and the athletic image a Darwiniansystem of survival of the fittest. School reform efforts aimed at fixing thebroken system, for example within the image of medicine, apparently uni-formly impose one model of reform on all schools, regardless of socioeco-nomic structures, organizational dynamics, or levels of parental and commu-nity involvement.

Transitional Postmodern Images

Transitional Postmodernity

I usetransitionalas a temporal metaphor. That is, it is an analogy to theongoing transformations in the global economy fueled by communicationtechnologies. As such, I signal a transformation in culture resulting frompostmodernity, what Harvey has termed an epoch of postmodern condi-tions. These conditions, in turn, facilitate the construction of electronic cul-tural imagesof publicschools.I arguethat as these imagesbecome implantedinsociety through mass media, they become socially structured, that is, culturalimages that cognitively shape how researchers think about public schooling(see discussion on cultural images below). This phenomenon is especiallyobservable in inner-city schools in urban centers, where increasingly the dis-course of school failure is prevalent (see Mirn & St. John, 2003).

I borrow the notion of transitional from a broad spectrum of literature,5

including social postmodernism (see Nicholson & Seidman, 1995), critical




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social theory, post-Marxism (Harvey, 1989), and poststructuralism (Poster,

1989). In particular, Douglas Kellner has argued that there exists an emergingcultural transformation that is in its transitional historical phase. As the forcesof globalization have caused a change from manufacturing to an integrated,technology-driven economy (the knowledge sectors), Kellner argued that theinteraction of technology and capital is helping to transform every aspect oflife. Poster (1990) echoed this sentiment when he asserted that an increasingsegment of communication is mediated by electronic devices (p. 1).

In educational research, the movement away from dominant research para-digms, whether quantitative or qualitative in methodology, toward multiplemethods is an illustration of this broader shift in society. Not insignificant,moreover, relatively new information technologies such as video cameras,online e-mail and conferencing, and more mundanely, qualitative softwareprograms have perhaps propelled this shift. For example, Campbells research

in progress uses interactive video to assess how elementary students in Califor-nia conceptualize mathematical problems. His research has significant impli-cations for a complex philosophical question, constructivism. It is conceivablethat without the use of interactive video, questions of constructivism would bepursued through philosophical rather than empirical analys is. My argument isthat this movement toward plurality in educational research remains con-tested, and its outcomes, though perhaps inevitable, are a result of ideologicalconflicts in the research community. Like the conceptualization of aestheticsadvanced above, educational research also may be considered a politicaldiscourse.

Transitional images in public schooling tend to (re)focus research and prac-tice on the problems of theindividual or thecollective learner. Theeducational

subject is restored as a concern of public schooling. Because transitionalpostmodern images place educational subjects, and their social relations, at thecenterof theeducationalenterprise,I assertthat such cultural imagesapproachmore complete characterizations. They are more appropriate when comparedto modern images. These cultural images are potentially more useful becausethey capture phenomena closer to the agents of public schooling, as they morefully enter into practical, intersubjective social relations embedded in teachingand learning (see Biesta, 1994; Maxcy, 1991). However, these cultural imagesare still hegemonic in that they are in bipolar opposition to the more modernand totalizing images described above. Although transitional postmodernimages tend to be more complete, because they more fully capture pluraldimensions of school actors lived cultural and social experiences in the class-room, they nonetheless are effects of power. Put differently, these cultural

images view the learner as Other, that is, a subaltern, marginalized subject(see McCarthy & Crichlow, 1993; Mirn, Bogotch, & Biesta, 2000).Popkewitzs (1999) observations in this regard are worth noting at length:




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The role of professional knowledge is to assimilate and develop the ra tionalized

and universal narrative about action initiated and carried out by actors. The nar-ratives of action function as salvation stories by which people express intentions(consciously or unconsciously; Ideologically or whatever is its opposite). The-ories of action circulate different ideological traditions as salvation stories[italicsadded]of changethroughthe actor inscribedin thetheory as securing truth. (p.1)

Furthermore, the transitional postmodern images I describe below tend tounintentionally paint a picture of students in need of rescue by families, com-munities, or even the student himself or herself. This salvation story of thesoul (Popkewitz, 1999) is paradoxically tied to the emancipatory aims of theproject of modernity. These emancipatory goals are neither good nor bad inthemselves (see Anderson & Grinberg, 1998). As I tried to make clear above,transitional postmodern images are potentially more progressive in that theirunderlying values seek to make the institution of public schooling more equal

and equitable for greater numbers of students. It is naive, however, to viewthese aims as free of theeffects of powerand logocentrism(see Poster, 1989).

First is the constructivist learner. Popkewitz (1999) observed that recentpolicy discourses embedded in the rhetoric of neoliberalism (e.g., markets, pri-vatization, and community) makes the agent a local, constructivist actor suchas found in state decentralized discourses about community health, commu-nity schools, and community based welfare systems (p. 12). Constructivistlearners are flexible workers who can prosper in the knowledge sectors becausethey can take responsibility to autonomously manage their own educationaland training needs, whether in or out of formal schooling. Constructivistlearners move a bit closer toward embodied learning (see below). This culturalimagefocuses on the restoration of academic confidence, bothindividually and

collectively (see Bush, 2000). Viewed from this perspective, so-called failingschools would not be primarily a problem of the institution but rather one ofconfidence intrinsic to the learner. I stress the notion of intrinsic because I amnotconcerned here with the fairly mechanical issue of building self-esteem by aseries of motivational rewards or punishments. This would reify the business/industrial image described above. The educational taskif you will, prob-lemwould consist of restoring confidence to the individual learner or cul-tural group. In short, restoring confidence is analytically distinct from thenotion of self-esteem; the latter is a purely modernistic image.

In the family image of schooling, the emphasis is on meeting individual stu-dent needs or caring for a social group. An example would be African Ameri-cans, whose family members grew up during the civil rights movement. Thesefamilies view access to educational opportunity as a fundamental civil right,

not a privilege to be earned (Mirn & Lauria, 1998). As my work with MickeyLauriahas shown, many African American parents from poor and lower-middle-class backgrounds demand equality of educational opportunity for their chil-dren. However, owing to the lack of human attention to respect, trust, and car-ingas well as often deplorable physical conditions (Kozol, 1991)students




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and families perceive that access is unattainable. Within the family image,

the gamut of student needs is provided forphysical, emotional, social,and academic.6

In addition to the family, students individual needs can also be met in com-munity. This leads to my last transitional postmodern image. Collaborativelearning models, for example, peer tutoring, can flourish. Respect and trust, inaddition to caretaking, are the social foci. The social relat ions embedded in thecontexts of the enterprise of public schooling are the analytical unit, the poten-tial focus of research if you will. Thus, mutuality defines the quality of experi-ence of schooling, and learning may be considered a potential by-product ofpragmatic collaboration between student and teacher, what Biesta (1994; seealso Maxcy, 1991, 1995) conceptualized philosophically as practicalintersubjectivity.

In summary, what primarily distinguishes a modern from a transitional

postmodern orientation in public schooling as expressed through the use ofcultural images is the concern of the former with the multiple problems ofteaching and learningoutcomes,organizational functionalityand commodi-fication,and themanner in which thelearner is represented andthe meaning oflearning is defined (Hall, 1997, pp. 1-13)as product andeducational perfor-mance. By contrast, transitional postmodern images recall the human dimen-sion, the learner himself or herself, whether encapsulated in psychological pro-cesses or social relations. The focus is on the human subject and practicalintersubjectivity (Biesta, 1994), although paradoxically the subject is con-ceived as Other. In the following sections, I extend the transitionalpostmodern image of public schooling and its emphasis on understandingschooling as a human enterprise into the realm of aesthetics. Before doing so, I

need to analyze the consequences of modern and transitional postmodernimages of public schooling.

Effects of Commonsense Cultural Images

A consequence of the epistemology of modernity is a tendency toward com-modification. Cultural images of public schooling suchas the athletic and busi-ness image grossly illustrate these tendencies in modernity, tendencies toequate process with product, the separation of knowledge from power, and theobjectivication (commodification) of knowledge and the social relations ofknowing (Mirn, Biesta, & Bogotch, 1999, p. 4). The product of publicschooling is a prime example. Less obvious illustrations are found in other

modern images, however. For example, the engineering image, a favorite ofneoliberals, depicts schooling as a problem of organizational structure, that is,the attempt to technically design (reengineer) the correct, single best system ofteaching and learning. Research into school practices is potentially plagued

with ser ious epistemological difficulties. If the sole purpose of schools and stu-




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dents is to perform,7 for example, researchers might understandably con-

clude that the master (sic) teachers of the school, near-mythical figures, causedtheschool to fail or to excel.Virtually no serious researcher of publicschooling,much less experienced practitioners, would make such a claim. Nonetheless,popular culture and media are riddled with images of gallant teachers andschool administrators who turn around failing classrooms and their test scoresovernight. Just picture Jaime Escalante.

I want to be especially clear here. Thepointis notthat excellentteachersandschool leaders do not matter. Of course they do. However, when commonsenseimages are applied unscrupulously to failing or high-performing schools,the mistaken notion may ensue that lifting (no metaphor intended) aca-demic performance to such lofty heights is the sole purpose of schooling.Other, potentially more fundamental goals such as community developmentinitiatives (Crowson & Boyd, 2000; Mirn & St. John, 2003; Torres & Mirn,

2000) may get buried. By inadequately examining the language and symbolsembedded in the use of everyday, commonsense images of public schooling,the conclusions of the investigator perhaps point in the wrong direction. Politi-cians and policy makers might, for instance, spend billions to fix an educa-tional bridge leading to nowhere. As recent works by Anyon (1997), Lipman(1998), Weiner (1999), and Mirn (1996) have established, the issue in manycases is not failing schools but rather failed school reform and distressed urban,inner-city communities (also, see Mirn & St. John, 2003).

My research has shown that schools in the inner city have a difficult timeestablishinga climate of trust andmutual respect (Mirn, 1996, 1997).Educa-tional research that reveals in detail the processes whereby such conditions areconcretely and deeply established in whole schools and classrooms may unex-

pectedly conclude that academic outcomes may not be that significant in thelong term or, more precisely, that the meanings of academic achievement aremultiple. Thus, we need multiple representations of the meaning of academicachievement. The social reality now is that the meaning of achievement isnearly totally defined by the results of standardized, national , and increasinglyinternational test scores. On the other hand, if students, especial ly in the innercity, who are routinely deprived of healthy social conditions grow up, instead,learning how to trust adults, resolve conflicts by negotiation, and appreciatesocial, class, gender, and sexuality differences, then these nonacademic out-comes of public schooling could possibly be viewed as significant. These socialoutcomes can be juxtaposed with more traditional measures such as test scores,school climate, and dropout rates. Such outcomes can help begin to redefinepublic schools as political institutions in the sense that shared community

moral values can be put on the school reform agenda. Public school reform canthus potentially help foster local community development (see Baum, 1997;Crowson& Boyd, 2000).8 More publicschools canthen contribute to theover-all quality of life in local communities (Mirn, 1995).




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Ultimately, the community image may hold the most promise in the transi-

tional postmodern camp, but students still lack voice and power. The sense ofcommunity is whats missing in contemporary society. Information technologyhas significantly reduced the need for face-to-face interaction (see Poster,1990).True, a sense of place andshared valuesthat mark theexperience of com-munity are systematically being infused into schools through parent and com-munity involvement (California Commission on Teacher Credentialing,1998; California Department of Education, 1999; also see University of Cali-fornia, Irvine, 1999). Parents and community members still hold the balanceof power. Students are seen as rescued or saved by community and businesspartnerships (see Popkewitz, 1999; also Baum, 1997, personal communica-tion, July 1999; Epstein, 1993). This move toward parental and communityempowerment is understandably appealing in that unequal power relationsmay seem more balanced in favor of families and residents, but ironically, stu-

dents are frequently cast as theOther in publicschools(Mirn et al., 2000).Transitional postmodern images begin to more appropriately refocus9 our

scholarly and practical attention to human beings and human agency; to thepersons that are the hallmark of schooling and education, or at least should be;as well as to the concrete differences these subjects make in the everyday lives ofpublic school students. Educational subjects, for example, superintendentsand building principals, can take action. However, these actions are notthings that lead to better products. They are, rather, discursive practices orcommunicative actions (Habermas, 1970). As such, school-level actions(reforms) are embedded in social relations marked by multiple discursivespaces and subject positions (see Mouffe, 1988). Primary among these are theinteractions with students.

Schoolagents can act. This is so because thesubject whoacts on educationalalternatives (see Hays, 1994) is historically contingent, that is, constituted inlanguage and forever reconstituted in discoursepractices and social relationsofpower (Butler, 1993). Objects are thus potentially recast as subjects in publicschooling. The hegemonic images of public schooling and corresponding edu-cational research, thus, may reflect a larger historical-theoretical trajectory,

which ranges from viewing the student as an object in modernity to a consti -tuted (yet marginalized) subject in transitional postmodernity. In Part 2, I pro-vide the social and historical-theoretical contexts that give us insights into anemerging plurality in educational research.

2. Emerging Plurality in Educational Research

In 1998, Elliot Eisner laid out the parameters of what I am arguing in thisarticle as an emerging plurality in educational research. 10 Eisner didnt specifyany field within the generic category of educational research. Rather, his callembraced, perhaps unintentionally, a transitional postmodern orientation,




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whose new epistemological and ontological underpinnings potentially disrupt

the historically monolithic character of educational research. In education, theputative dominant paradigms of the physical, social, and human sciences havetended to marginalize important theoretical and methodological insights fromthe humanities, the arts, and cultural studies (see Ginsberg, 1997). Eisner(1998) put the issue squarely: My own view is that social and physical scienceare a species of research; research is not a species of science (p. 34). Here, Iexpand on Eisners brief argument to assert that educational research is no lon-ger monolithic. Whether conscious or not, educational researchers nowembrace a plurality of methodological approaches (see Anderson & Herr,1999). For example, research in educational leadership embraces multipleapproaches (see Capper, 1993, 1998, 1999), including the study of the ethicsof administrative dilemmas (Beck, 1994) and their potential resolutionthrough moral leadership (Sergiovanni, 1992); educational leadership as dra-

matic performance (Starratt, 1993); the spiritual dimensions of administrativepractices (see Bolman & Deal, 1995; Capper, 1998); the ethos of caring, social

justice, and critique (Starratt, 1991, 1994); and finally the concept of researchin the field as embedded in the language and symbols of metaphors (Beck,1999). There now appears to be an abundance of diversity in research designand methods.11 Moreover, I view this move toward pluralism, away from meth-odological metanarratives, as a healthy one. It signals a more democratic schol-arly culture and tolerance for differences in educational research.

These multiple educational research paradigms help to partially disrupt theregimes of truth as systems of reason (Popkewitz, 1998b) that are embedded inapproaches that tend to make students and schooling as objects of nature.These natural epistemological assumptions, for example, that public school-

ing is a commodity, are linked to the modern cultural images described above.Viewing the processes and outcomes of public schooling as commodities is aconceptual legacy tied to the modern cultural images detailed above. Pluralisticapproaches in educational research potentially net both theoretical as well asmethodological gains. That is, the relational dynamics unearthed in such sub-stantive areas as those listed above begin to spotlight the internal circuits ofpower, the uncritical assumptions embedded in the internal circuits of power,and the uncritical epistemological assumptions embedded in educationalresearch. The hegemony of epistemologies of nature (the natural sciences) nolonger appears to unilaterally obstructthe social relationsof teaching,learning,and leadership.

The language and research methods of the arts, cultural studies, and thehumanities best capture the emerging plurality of educational research. Fur-

thermore, because knowledge emanating from the social sciences may besocially constructed,care mustbe givento distinguish between material (physi-cal) reality and social (nonphysical) reality; the former is better suited forresearch methods imported from the physical sciences. Here, I am especiallyconcerned with the latter forms of reality as they relate to the understanding of




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the realm of desires, emotions, and meanings educational actors (classroom

teachers and othereducational leaders) may bring to school processes and class-room practices.

The Positionality of the Educational Researcher

The emerging postmodern project generally, and specifically within therather broad field of educational research, may seriously question the main fea-tures of the epistemological worldview of modernity. In particular, it poten-tially challenges the conception of the subject as an ego or consciousness thatexists outside of (and therefore also prior to) history (see Biesta, 2000;Popkewitz, 1998a). Moreover, it partially interrupts the near universal under-standing of knowledge as a neutral registration/representation by this ego or

consciousness of the world outside (see Hall, 1997). Contrary to the notionthat the subject serves as its own point of departure, postmodernism stressesthat the subject is a constituted[italics added] subject (Butler, 1992, p. 9),that is,a subject that is alwaysinscribed, andpotentially reinscribed, in history.For example, decisions that classroom teachers make, and the values thatunderpin their professional judgments, have a history: They come from some-

where and are linked to such sociopolitical dynamics as the relationship of theschool to itslocal communityand wider society (Apple, 1985, 1993, 1996),theauthoritative positionality of the school administrator (Giroux, 1993), and thenear autonomy of the classroom teacher (Tyack, 1974; see also Poulantzas,1969, 1978).

Nagel (1979) theorized

that there is a necessarylogical[italics added] connection, and not merely a con-tingent or causal one, between the social perspective of a student of humanaffairs and his standards of competent social inquiry, and in consequence theinfluence of the special values to which he is committed. (p. 498)

Research in the human and social sciences, thus, is contingent on historicallyrelative influences. More to the point of this article, because social organiza-tions (public schools) are in constant flux, be they so-called open or closed sys-tems, the intellectual apparatus summoned to study such phenomena needchanging as well (Nagel, 1979). This is especially the case when the emotions,desires, beliefs, and meanings that educational subjects bring to the researchproblem mark the scope of investigation.

Theemergence of pluralityin research into publicschooling is part of what Iam describing as a transitional postmodern move. Scholars such as HenryGiroux (1981, 1991) have long asserted that pedagogical and leadership prac-tices seem uniquely resistant of postmodern change, however broadly thesesocial conditions are conceived.12As a whole, the field of educational research




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now seems to tolerate a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches

(for example, see Capper, 1998, 1999); these developments are relatively new,few in number, and controversial. Constas (1998) was therefore correct toargue that educational research still relies on the paradigms of science. Under-standing whether such paradigmatic resilience is good or bad is beyond thescope of this article. The emergence of plurality, despite some significant ques-tions, is healthy in a democratic society. As previously stated, this diversity ofapproaches is still in transition. Debate on theparadigmwars,as Anderson andHerr (1999) claimed, is to a certain extent misdirected. As has been establishedabove, there is no categorical, definitive postmodern stance in educationalresearch. This point cannot be overemphasized. So what is the fuss about?Scholars are in need of research epistemological assumptions and correspond-ing designs that encapsulate both modern and postmodern worldviews (seePart 3, below). This signals a move toward the aesthetic.

3. Using Aesthetics in Public Schools

Efforts to improve the quality of experience in individual classrooms andentire schools may be the only way to interest students. My hope is to apply theaesthetic cultural images of public schools and theirpotential usefulnessto sug-gest what aesthetic school practices might actual ly look like. This may map thecontours of aesthet ic efforts to improve the quality of public schooling, in par-ticular inner-city schools. These are thus both theoretical and practical inter-ventions into the everyday life of public schools. Following Dewey, the aes-thetic cultural image of public schooling captures the quality of the learningexperienceas perceived by the individual learner or social groups (learning

communities, racial-ethnic minorities, and so on). At an idealistic level, thisimage invokes the sense of beauty, wonder, curiosity, and a literary imagina-tion, what Maxcy (1991, 1995) characterized as aesthetic intelligence (seealso Greene, 1995). Although it superficially concerns matters of taste, I wantto use theideasof Donald Arnstine to explore substantively howthe primacy ofthe aesthetic might engage more substantial questions relevant to the needs ofparticular kinds of students (as stated, my concern is with inner-city students).By examining the dimensions of aesthetics in public schooling, more attentioncan be given to matters of design, the quality of the learning environment, andexperience of public schooling, as well as to the aesthetic crafts of teaching andleadership. These foci have significant implications for educational research, asI will attempt to demonstrate at the conclusion of this article.

Elsewhere, I have written that in particular urban schools lack aesthetic

sensibilities (see Mirn, 1996, p. viii). Kozol (1991) has sensitively, andexhaustively, documented the conditions of everyday life in inner-city schoolsacross the United States. In urban communities such as East St. Louis, New

York, and San Antonio, the resources needed to bring public schools in these




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districts to a level remotely approaching their counterparts in more affluent

school districts in suburbs are substantial:

Looking around some of these inner-city schools, where filth and disrepair wereworse than anything Id seen in 1964, I often wondered why we would agree to letour children go to school in places where no politician, school board president,or business CEO would dream of working. (p. 5)

Usually, we attribute aesthetics in public schooling to programs such as artsin education. These programs have been somewhat successful in raising aca-demic achievement in schools (see Catterall, 1998). They range from employ-ing part-time performing artists (dancers, poets, and sculptors) in elementaryand secondary schools to comprehensive educational tours such as WyntonMarsaliss tribute to Duke Ellington at the Lincoln Center. These tours are

nationwide and are often associated with organizations such as the NationalAssociation of Jazz Educators, which holds annual national conventions.

Rarely, however, do practitioners and educational researchers think of theconverse scenario: education in arts or, more specifically, education throughthe arts or the aesthetic experience. The latter would involve at least a partialrealization of an aestheticquality in theclassroom.To geta glimpse of what thismeans, especially in light of research and practice in public schooling, I turnnowto the writings of Donald Arnstine. In Democracy and the Arts of Schooling,Arnstine (1995) developed a conception of the primacy of the aesthetic. Bythis he meant that aestheticqualities must be present in theclassroom for(pub-lic) schooling to have a genuine educative effect on the learner, that is, beyondits successful institutional function of socialization (the latter is a by-productof a systems perspective discussed above). Put simply, the primacy of the aes-

thetic in schooling means a concern . . . to create conditions that will help stu-dents have experiences of high quality (p. 68). I want to distinguish betweentwo dimensions of aesthetics in education, teaching and learning, or betweenteacher and student. The latter two are of course the key primary subjects inschooling, the other being parents or family-type support groups (CaliforniaCommission on Teacher Credential ing, 1998; California Department of Edu-cation, 1999).

Aesthetic Teaching

The goals for the teacher within this framework are to create in the class-room a climate that fosters high-quality learning experiences. In the followingpassage, Arnstine (1995) illustrated this climate by providing specific dimen-sions of aesthetic teaching, including engaging high-quality reflection, elimi-nating routine activities, andallowingstudentsa measure of social control overtheir own learning. Arnstines statement is worth repeating at length.




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When an exper ience is high in qual ity and also [italicsadded] involves thought,it

is aesthetic in qual ity. Teachers must focus on the elimination of routine ac tivi-ties [busy work] that go a long way toward maintaining control over studentsbehaviors, but have the unintended effect of disengaging them from instructionand therefore probably from learning as well. The overall purpose of developinga classroom climate that embraces the primacy of the aesthetic is to treat our stu-dents as active individua ls, responsive to their social group yet growing in powerto make discriminating judgments. For this growth to occur, they need to actthoughtfully in ways that are characteristics of experience when its aesthetic.(pp. 69-70)

This climate set by the classroom teacher will in turn result in the learning ofdispositions (customs and affectations) (see Eagleton, 1990, pp. 13-31)toward the acquisition of the practice of reflection. The underlying theoret icaland practical assumption is that of the community image, which contains the

idea of mutual respect and trust. In contexts such as inner-city schools, thisgoal may be unreachable without deliberate attention to fostering such aclimate.

What produces thoughtful engagement reminiscent of the arts is theteachers ability to foster confrontation in the student. Following Derrida(1992), by confrontation I mean the emotionally violent collision with theunexpected or, as Arnstine noted, a discrepancy. This involves the resolutionbetween what the student expected to learn based on prior experiences andinformation and what is actually true based on empirical evidence or logic. Forexample, the idea that Latino parents actually may want to participate as activeparents with their teachers in the learning process may come as somewhat of asurprise to many Anglo students in teacher educationcourses,who cite empiri-cal research that finds that such parents seemingly do not value education.

What students actually do with the discrepancyhow they do or do notresolve itis the intellectual labor of becoming a student and ultimatelybecoming educated. This work is a process of practical intersubjectivity, whichBiesta (1994) has conceptual ized as the practical-pragmatic interactive processbetween teachers and students in the classroom.

An example from a second-grade classroom in Boston should make the pro-cess clearer. Darby and Catteralls (1994) lengthy illustration is worthnoting:

An early encounter with aesthetic symbols for a struggling second-grader in theBoston area emphasizes the importance of the arts in one childs earlydevelopment.

Lanika is one of my special education kids. She has poor attendance and,therefore, never really established solid friendships. . . . She has poor language/articulation skills. . . . We did a unit on birds and as one of our books we read

Sing A Song of Peoplewhich is about Boston. We looked carefully at the picturesand admired how the artist used layered paper to create the pictures. . . . Theassignment was to make a bird with paper and scissors and giveno[italics added]pencils or crayons. The kids could not draw, they could cut, just cut. . . . Lanika




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used the book to give her visual clues on how to make a swan. I wish I had video-

taped Lanika making that swan, though I doubt I will ever forget it! I had neverseen her so focused. (p. 302)

This example vividly highlights the core of aesthetic teaching, which Arnstine(1995, p. 73) argued provides students with a sense of sustained curiosity. Itconcretely illustrates the artistry of teaching as performance (see Sarason,1999). Here, teaching helps move this classroom into an aesthet ic mold. How-ever, the organizational context appears to be cast in functionalists terms, thatis, as systems of reason generally and populational reasoning in particular(Popkewitz, 1998b). The effects of power appear to reproduce exclusionarypractices. What does this mean? Put simply, the classroom practice appears tolack a politics of the [aesthetic] performative (Phelan, 1993) in that the hier-archical discourses (see above) representing the identity of the students are cast

as Other (special education kids). But the procedural steps seem at leastpointed in the right direction.

Quality Learning

As mentioned, the passage above s ignals classroom processes pointing theway toward a performative (Mirn & Inda, 2000) view of learning.13 Here,learning means doing,both in the poststructural (see Poster, 1989) sense as dis-coursepracticesas well as in the behaviorist ic sense as concrete action. Theactions, furthermore, stem from the encounters with learning discrepanciesmentioned above. These discrepancies (the unexpected knowledge that stu-dents confront) are a result of the climate teachers instill in the classroom. In

aesthet ic terms, students must desire such encountersbe willing to engage inthe process of their potential resolutionsin order for high-quality thought toemerge. In a word,deep learninggenuine knowledgeis at the heart of theprimacy of the aesthetic with respect to what such practices may look like inactual public schools.

Concluding Observations

In this article, I have juggled back and forth between modernity andpostmodernity, attempting to strike a balance between them. For example, Iused theconstructivist image in Part1 andthe embodied learningimagein Part3 to illustrate that transitional postmodern images of public schooling can,almost fluidly, merge with aesthetic ones. I have shown that though related tomodern psychological views of enhancing self-esteem, academic confidence isnot primarily about instilling positive emotions. Above all, confidence con-cerns the feedback students derive when they are academically successful. This




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Notes

1. Hays (1994) conceived material as embedded in a social structure, that is, a

given set of social relations, natural resources, or identifiable economic and political

institution (p. 60).

2. The ideaof performanceis quite controversial.Here,I follow GertBiesta, who

observed that the performative practice in schooling directly implies communication

with an audience. Thus , the act of the performative i s fundamentally educative in i ts

broadest sense in that it promotes radical reciprocal understanding between the com-

municative authority (classroom teachers) and others (students).

3. I am certain that other images in both the modern and postmodern categories

can be found. However, hereI focus on whatI considerhegemonic images in education.

See Mirn (1992) for a discussion of hegemony.

4. Daviss call ultimately failed to pass muster with the California legislature,

although it was largely supported by business and industry.5. Space doesnot permit even a cursory synthesis of thiscomplex literature here.

6.A vivid exampleof thefamily imageis thestory of Charles G.EmeryElementary

School in Orange County, California. Emery increased achievement rates on the high-

stakes Stanford 9 Test by 20 percentage points in certa in areas. In 1998, the 1st year the

test was administered, scores languished below the national average. However, as a

result of a school-improvement strategy that examined the strength and weaknesses of

the children who would be coming to them from lower grades, setting priorities based

on their new students needs rather than their former students past performance[italics

added], dramatic gains were had (Hefland, Alexander, & Sahagun, 1999, p. A30).

7. Contrast this definition of performance with the one discussed for the aesthetic

image.

8. Traditional ly, academic rather than social outcomes were the exclusive purview

of leadership effects (see Hallinger & Murphy, 1983, 1985; Wimpelberg, Teddlie, &

Stringfield, 1989).

9. Of course, we need to consistently remain mindful of Popkewitzs admonition

cited earlier.

10. A version of this article was presented at the Reclaiming Voice II conference,

University of California, Irvine, June 1999.

11. My colleague Jonathan Inda correctly asks, Might not pluralism be a

metanarrative itself? This possibility is acknowledged as part of the transitional

movein postmodernism (seebelow). I thankJonathan Inda for thisobservationas well

as his detailed criticisms of an earlier version of this article. See Hall (1986).

12. For the purposes of this ar ticle, I follow Mark Posters (1989, 1990, 1997) theo-

retical-historical trajectory to assert that a central feature of the culture of

postmodernity is that of a marked switch in advanced capita lists societies to the modeof information and away from the mode and relations of production. These transfor-

mations are global in scope and, as Manuel Castells (1996, 1999) has established, have

affected the coreof identity related to an information society(also seeGiddens,1990).

13.For a detailedexplanation of performativitytheory, seeMirn andInda (2000).




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Louis F. Mirnis a professor of educational policy studies at the University ofIllinois, Urbana-Champaign. Previously he served for 5 years as chair of theDepartment of Education, University of California, Irvine.


Documents

Cultural Studies, Public Schooling