Academic Freedom, Critical Thinking, and the Culture of American Science Education

Since the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) the topic of biological evolution has been controversial. While evolutionary theory is considered a foundational concept of the biological sciences, the role of the theory in public school science education remains controversial in the United States. In April 2012 the Tennessee Teacher Protection and Academic Freedom Act was passed, which provides protection for teachers who teach the “scientific weaknesses” of “controversial” scientific theories that include biological evolution, chemical origins of life, climate change, and human cloning—topics that are, according to mainstream scientific consensus, socially but not scientifically controversial. The law is based on the “Model Academic Freedom Bill” that was crafted, distributed, and promoted by the Discovery Institute. The purpose of this research was to explore the ways in which ideologies and rhetoric regarding American values and identity inform understandings of scientific inquiry and knowledge and influence educational policy and curricula. This project investigated the purposes and impacts of the Tennessee Teacher Protection and Academic Freedom Act through ethnographic analysis of legislative proceedings, interviews of legislators, and interviews of public and private high school science teachers. Interviews explored the perspectives of legislators and teachers regarding impacts of the law as well as attitudes regarding the influence of political, social, and religious ideologies on science education. This research is grounded in theories of social constructionism and Foucault’s power/knowledge. Data were analyzed using grounded theory methodology and rhetorical and political discourse and frame analysis. The data in this study indicate that the passage of the Tennessee Teacher Protection and Academic Freedom Act was an ideological victory for anti-science movements and that many of the ideologies that serve to maintain the momentum and salience of anti-science movements are only tangentially related to the scientific theories that these movements reject. Rather, these ideologies embody important American values and therefore serve to broaden the appeal of anti-science to a larger proportion of the population. These values include democracy and the rights of voters to determine policy, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and common sense and individualism

Religión, escolarización y Estado: negociando y construyendo el espacio secular

As a prelude to the paper it should be stated that its genesis originates in conference presentations delivered on two separate occasions to two separate audiences. The first was to a mixed group of teacher educators, Roman Catholic priests and nuns, as well as others from diverse religious traditions, at a one-day conference on religion and pluralism held in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. The expressed focus for this conference was ‘inter-faith’ but with the addition of a secular dimension. The second presentation was to an international group largely comprised of comparative education scholars in Glasgow, Scotland. Although the two presentations were broadly similar in content the Dublin paper had a distinct orientation. Given that the publicly-funded Irish school system was characterised by a strong involvement of religion (Department of Education and Skills, 2017) – in particular, that of the Roman Catholic Church, the dominant tradition in that country – the Dublin presentation pursued an approach which sought to widen the educational agenda. Specifically, it focused upon the continuing discussion concerning the role of secularity in school systems where confessional approaches to religion were sanctioned by the central state. On the other hand, the Glasgow presentation was more ‘academic’ in tone, seeking to re-position secularity and religion in a non-oppositional relationship which was, in turn, argued to be functional for 21st education systems. La génesis de este artículo se origina en dos presentaciones en diferentes conferencias para dos audiencias diferentes. La primera fue para un grupo mixto de educadores de maestros, sacerdotes y monjas católicos romanos, así como otros de diversas tradiciones religiosas, en una conferencia de un día sobre religión y pluralismo celebrada en Dublín, República de Irlanda. El enfoque expresado para esta conferencia fue «interreligioso» pero con la adición de una dimensión secular. La segunda presentación fue para un grupo internacional compuesto principalmente por académicos de educación comparada en Glasgow, Escocia. Aunque las dos presentaciones eran muy similares en contenido, el documento de Dublín tenía una orientación distinta. Dado que el sistema escolar irlandés financiado con fondos públicos se caracteriza por una fuerte participación de la religión (Departamento de Educación y Habilidades, 2017), en particular, la de la Iglesia Católica Romana, la tradición dominante en ese país, la presentación de Dublín siguió un enfoque que buscaba ampliar la agenda educativa. Específicamente, se centró en la discusión continua sobre el papel de la secularidad en los sistemas escolares donde el estado central sancionaba los enfoques confesionales de la religión. Por otro lado, la presentación de Glasgow fue más «académica» en tono, buscando reubicar la secularidad y la religión en una relación no enfrentada que, a su vez, se argumentó, que era funcional para los sistemas de educación del siglo XXI

The Unheimlich Man‐Oeuvre

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136524/1/ae.2001.28.4.909.pd

Paradoxical commitments : Evangelicals, Muslims, and relational authenticity in the American Bible Belt

Aux États-Unis, les chrétiens évangéliques (evangelicals) sont souvent associés à la théologie fondamentaliste et au conservatisme social et politique. Cependant, depuis quelques décennies, un mouvement au sein de ce groupe religieux tente de transformer la relation entre la spiritualité conservatrice et l’engagement social dans la société. Récemment, ces évangéliques ont attiré de l’attention à l’échelle nationale pour leurs perspectives positives vis-à-vis l’immigration et la diversité religieuse. Cette recherche porte sur une église évangélique à Nashville, au Tennessee, dont les membres cherchent à développer des « relations authentiques » avec des immigrants musulmans. J’ai découvert que l’inclination morale de mes informateurs d’évangéliser les musulmans est devenue compliquée par le désir de reconnaître et de respecter la diversité religieuse. Paradoxalement, ils ont articulé leur respect de l’autre comme étant une composante essentielle à leurs efforts d’évangéliser dans une perspective à long terme. Dans ce mémoire, je décris ces engagements concurrentiels—d’un côté l’évangélisation et de l’autre côté la reconnaissance de la différence—comme une double contrainte (Bateson 1972). J’ai observé que ceci fait partie d’une tentative de reconnaître et de naviguer différents niveaux de sociabilité. Plus spécifiquement, ils naviguent les normes et les valeurs de l’exclusivisme évangélique et celles du pluralisme religieux dans le contexte social en dehors de leur groupe. Quelques enjeux épistémologiques de l’étude anthropologique du pluralisme religieux sont discutés.In the past decade, a movement among American evangelicals has emerged that is highly critical of fundamentalist theology and social conservatism. Recently, these evangelicals have garnered national attention through their perhaps unexpectedly positive outlook on immigration and religious diversity. This research focuses on an evangelical church in Nashville, Tennessee whose members seek “authentic relationships” with Muslim immigrants. I discovered that my informants’ moral inclination to evangelize their Muslim neighbours was complicated by their desire to acknowledge and respect religious diversity. Paradoxically, they articulated their respect for religious otherness as the most effective means by which to evangelize in the long term. In this thesis, I describe these competing commitments—evangelism, on the one hand, and the acceptance of difference on the other—as a paradoxical situation called a double bind (Bateson 1972). I observed that for my informants, living double bound can contribute to significant changes in religious beliefs and social behaviour as they recognized and attempted to navigate different levels of sociability, namely between their in-group values and norms of religious exclusivism and the perceived values and norms of religious pluralism in their broader social context. Some epistemological issues in the anthropological study of religious pluralism are discussed

Born Again with Trump: The Portrayal of Evangelicals in the Media

Since Trump’s ascendancy in American politics and his subsequent election, a number of articles have surfaced in the media trying to explain evangelical voters’ support of Trump. This paper analyzes common descriptions and conceptions of evangelicals by identifying recurring descriptions of evangelicals in 110 online articles published in a two-and-a-half-year period surrounding Trump’s presidential campaign and election. The results indicate that the answer to the question as to why evangelicals support Trump resides not so much in their theology, but in their aspirations for America and assumptions of what America should be like. This paper argues that it is crucial to recognize and address evangelicals’ prevailing attributes as perceived and portrayed by members of their own society in order to keep evangelicalism from descending into an insular, invalid expression

Rights of power vs. power of rights : synthesis of Muslim built environments

This research is about two modes of built environment production that coexist in the contemporary Arab Muslim world. It argues that the contemporary (acquired modem-capitalist) mode is based on the concept of power; however, the traditional Islamic (inherited) mode is based on the concept of rights as derived from shari 'a (Islamic legal system). Substantial dissensions exist between the two modes, due to differences in their concepts of power and related mechanisms. This research helps to explain many concepts concerning "the structure of power" in contemporary societies and "the structures of rights" in traditional Muslim societies, and their respective impact on the built environment. This thesis argues that most urban studies dealing with Muslim cities stem from Western concepts delineated by thinkers such as Weber, Marx, and Durkheim. Such concepts shaped the thinking of Orientalists and many Muslim scholars in studying Muslim environments, leading to confused conclusions. They have all ignored the exact meaning of power, its sources and its utilisation as a resource in manipulating the built environment. For example, one of the basic differences between contemporary (acquired) and traditional (inherited) environments is that rights (property and individual rights) in contemporary environments are defined by power holders (the state) in society, i.e. power creates rights. On the other hand, in the Muslim built environment, power is limited by rights, or power is created by rights which is quite static as it is well defined by the Islamic legal system. This simple difference, (power of rights or rights of power) has created two different structures of power gain: one is static (Muslim built environments) and the other is dynamic (contemporary built environments). The static structure (or power of rights) has created diverse environmental solutions, as power can only be utilised when environmental interventions are activated by inhabitants, while the dynamic structure (rights of power), because of its hierarchical nature of domination among parties, has created classes of intervening agents with expandable power and thus subjective solutions. Through comparisons, using case studies (examples), this research examines and comments on the nature of both systems of power to clarify their impact on the built environment. Accordingly, this thesis argues, the coexistence of the two modes, loaded with such substantial dissensions in one system ( contemporary Muslim world), inevitably leads to internal systemic contradictions, and thus to a crisis. Therefore, the crisis that contemporary Muslim built environments are witnessing today is but one aspect of this broader societal and systemic crisis. This thesis investigates the genesis of this crisis in the contemporary built environment by focusing on the imperceptible level of the coexistence of those two modes, and mainly the issue of power: the main components of the crisis

Beyond Legal Realism?: Cultural Analysis, Cultural Studies, and the Situation of Legal Scholarship

Everywhere it seems that culture is in ascendance. More and more social groups are claiming to have distinctive cultures and are demanding recognition of their cultural distinctiveness. Identity politics has merged with cultural politics, so that to have an identity one must now also have a culture. Those who fail to establish their culture risk having their truth missed by the myriad of authorities--courts, admissions committees, draft boards-whose judgments help determine life fates. As a result, it sometimes seems as if almost every ethnic, religious, or social group seeks to have its culture recognized, and for precisely this reason the cultural itself has become a subject of political discourse to a much greater extent than in the past. Yet despite the growing sense that culture must be recognized, there is little consensus on what the boundaries of the cultural are, let alone how to read it in any particular instance. Moreover, the backlash against the proliferation of cultures and identities, and the politics of recognition, has been vehement. Politicians declare culture wars in an effort to reassert both the meaning and centrality of certain allegedly transcendent human values. Debates about the meaning and significance of culture become arguments about civilization itself, in which acknowledgment of cultural pluralism and its accompanying decanonization of the sacred Western texts are treated as undermining national unity, national purpose, and the meaning of being American. Political contests are increasingly fought over values and symbols, with different parties advancing competing cultural programs. With the decline of ideology as an organizing force in international relations, culture seems to provide another vantage point from which to understand new polarities.\u27 In addition, the cache of the cultural is increasingly resonant in public policy, where traditional goals like reducing crime and poverty are giving way to cultural goals like reducing the fear of crime, and eliminating the culture of dependency. The cultural is the implicit and explicit space of intervention for popular new strategies like community policing and workfare, which promise to address objective problems by altering the attitudes and experiences of the subjects of policing and welfare. Government and other formal organizations believe that it is essential to have cultural strategies in order to govern their employees and customers more effectively and manage their popular images

Image and glory of God, glory of man : Evangelicals and Paul's hermeneutics of gender in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Medical rituals and media rituals

In the present article the author examines the ritual elements of theprofessionalization during medical studies, and its interference with media content of medical significance, comparing the role of medical and media rituals on the way of becoming a doctor. It is to be explored how these medical soap operas, medical dramas, medical thrillers or crime stories do exert influence on medical identity and role expectations. Do medical students and their relatives (withmedical expertise frequently) identify themselves with these roles? Is their way of reception critical or naïve? How media rituals are organizing, modulating the students’ medical perception and expectations. Is there a mediated “shadow initiation” via media or it is excluded and denied? Does it perfuse the common social experience of becoming a doctor via peer communication and peer shapingof model behavior? We search the answers in the context of a theory of media rituals