Thursday, March 21, 2013

Schools Matter: AERA's Bill Tierney: Clueless Per Usual

Schools Matter: AERA's Bill Tierney: Clueless Per Usual:


AERA's Bill Tierney: Clueless Per Usual

Ever since Bill Tierney began his not-so-subtle business-friendly nods to the austerity zealots and the plutocrats who think they know more about education than educators, his emails to the AERA membership have consistently shown him to be a neoliberal do-gooder who has no notion of what it means to do social science research that matters to the educational, political, and cultural health of democratic societies.

Here's an example from near the end of his latest email that offers a failed opportunity to take up the subject of poverty in a way that would lay down a challenge to researchers and academics:
I am suggesting that, based on our mission, we must not simply produce high-quality research with various theoretical frames and methodologies. We must engage directly with policy makers and local communities, and we must take part in thoughtful dialogue with people who disagree with us. . .
Here Tierney offers us a classic false dichotomy of either doing rigorous research that upholds some element