Call for Submissions Equity & Excellence in Education "Smartness, Schooling, and Power" Guest Editors: Beth Hatt and Pamela Twyman Hoff

Call for Submissions

Equity & Excellence in Education

"Smartness, Schooling, and Power"

Guest Editors: Beth Hatt and Pamela Twyman Hoff

Many students can demonstrate smartness as typically defined in school settings through good grades but cannot necessarily display sound logic or know how to get along with others. Other students may struggle in some subjects, like math, but excel in other areas, such as working with computers, athletics, or art. In reality, smartness is much more broad, complex, and ever changing than the overly narrow, simplistic, and static ways it often gets defined within schools. 

This special theme issue seeks to explore smartness as a culturally constructed concept. Instead of something objective and biological, we argue that smartness is embedded in issues of power and is less a characteristic people possess than a cultural practice that is done to people as a form of social positioning and power. In particular, we are interested in exploring the symbols, identities, schooling practices, language, behaviors, and ways of knowing connected to smartness in different educational settings. Furthermore, we aim to understand better how smartness is connected to issues of equity and access in school settings.

We invite manuscripts that bring together a number of scholarly, research, and practitioner perspectives 
(educators, scholars, community workers, and learners), that address some of the following questions:

How is smartness culturally constructed across various settings, including different school, family, community, international, and alternative educational spaces?

What are school-ideologies that marginalize students not thought of as “smart” and how do these ideologies interact with unexamined notions of IQ, tracking, standardized testing, academic preparation, cultural or social capital, and other ways of reproducing advantage and disadvantage in schools?

Topics might include:

 Different ways of knowing, perceptions of valuable knowledge, and constructions of ability both in and outside of school settings (i.e., funds of knowledge, cultural wealth, deficit thinking, gifted programs, and special education)

 Historicizing and/or theorizing the concepts of smartness, intelligence, and ability.

 Smartness, identity politics, and marginalization (i.e., gender, race, class, language, and disability)

 Schooling practices that counter or reinforce dominant perceptions of smartness (i.e., assessment, behavior, teacher expectations, curriculum, tracking, special education, and/or bilingual/ESL)

 The ways smartness influences how students perceive their own academic competency and potential (i.e., experiences of first generation college students, students who speak English as an additional language, and low expectations for students of color). In particular, how these perceptions are tied to achievement

 Pedagogical possibilities for disrupting dominant constructions of smartness

Submission Guidelines

Follow the Instructions for Authors on our website (http://www.eee-journal.com). In addition, please include a cover letter indicating that this submission is for the Smartness, Schooling, and Power special issue. E-mail or mail manuscripts so that they will be received by November 15, 2013 with an expectation of revisions following external peer review. Publication date: Spring 2015. For further information about this special issue, please contact both guest editors: Beth Hatt (hatt.beth@gmail.com) and Pamela Twyman Hoff (phoff@ilstu.edu).