Article
Unasked or unheard?: turning up the volume on Sprague’s questions
Communication Education
(2019)
Abstract
The six questions that Sprague posed in 1992 serve as a guide for mapping current educational policies and philosophies. The national educational policies of the past four administrations have seen little uptake of the critical answers to Sprague’s six questions offered by scholars of teaching and learning over the same period of time. The thirty-year historical trend away from critical pedagogy precedes the current administration’s indifference to education, and the controversy surrounding Betsy DeVos distracts from the broad political support for teacher accountability, transmission or “banking” models of education, and compliance-based programs. These same trends have shaped postsecondary education, which emphasizes job readiness over civic commitments, promotes a meritocracy, has de-professionalized faculty, and equates benchmarks with learning. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and the critical pedagogies embraced by many teachers are two notable exceptions to these historical trends. The next phase of critical communication education should focus on sharing this work with public audiences and documenting the true cost of impactful, equitable, transformative education.
Keywords
- Educational advocacy,
- critical pedagogy,
- educational policy,
- historical trends,
- national boards
Disciplines
Publication Date
August 12, 2019
DOI
10.1080/03634523.2019.1646428
Publisher Statement
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Citation Information
Kathleen F McConnell and Melissa Urbain. "Unasked or unheard?: turning up the volume on Sprague’s questions" Communication Education (2019) ISSN: 1051-0974 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/kathleen_mcconnell/16/