What does it mean to say a school is doing well?

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 82, Issue 5, 2001, Pages 367-372

  Eisner, Elliot W ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0000899483     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/003172170108200506     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. The document that most directly expresses this view is National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983).
2. Donald Schön describes the process of rationalization of behavior as technical rationality.See Donald Schön, The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Basic Books, 1983). Nor is this the first time technically rational approaches to planning and assessment have dominated schooling. The efficiency movement in American schools -from about 1913 to about 1930 - is one example. The behavioral objectives and accountability movements of the 1960s and 1970s are two more.
3. For a discussion of issues pertaining to the quantification and use of standards, see Elliot W. Eisner, Standards for American Schools: Help or Hindrance? Phi Delta Kappan, June 1995, pp. 758-64.
4. One of the foremost philosophical constructivists is John Dewey. The concept of interaction was a central notion in his philosophy of mind and in his conception of the educational process. For a succinct view of his ideas pertaining to education, see John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1938).
5. David Tyack, The One Best System (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974).
6. League tables not only affect the priorities of the school, they are a major influence on real estate values. The value of houses is influenced significantly by perceptions of the quality of the schools in a neighborhood, and test scores are the indices used to determine such quality.
7. For a full discussion of the processes of observation and disclosure as they pertain to teaching and its improvement, see my book The Enlightened Eye: Qualitative Inquiry and the Enhancement of Educational Practice (New York: Macmillan, 1991).
8. For an insightful and lucid discussion of the pressures secondary school students experience in the high-stakes environment that we have created in schools, see Denise Pope, Doing School(Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1998).
9. John D&wey, Art as Experience (New York: Minton, Balch and Company, 1934), especially chap. 13.
10. J. P. Guilford, The Nature of Human Intelligence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967).
11. Elliot W. Eisner, Forms of Understanding and the Future of Educational Research Educational Researcher, October 1993, pp. 5-11.
12. Also see my book Cognition and Curriculum Reconsidered (New York: Teachers College Press, 1994).
13. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).
14. For a discussion and illustration of what I call educationally interpretive exhibitions, see Elliot W. Eisner et al.. The Educationally Interpretive Exhibition: Rethinking the Display of Student Art (Reston, Va.: National Art Education Association, 1997). 1C