Symposium Introduction: The Politics of Educational Instrumentalism

Abstract

This collection of essays on the politics of instrumentalism is based on papers originally presented at the fifth symposium of the Studies of Conflict, Culture, and the Political in Education (SCAPE) research network hosted by the Center for Public Education and Pedagogy at Maynooth University in Maynooth, Ireland. They were significantly revised and expanded for this symposium. The essays included here are connected not only by the symposium's theme, which I will discuss below, but also by SCAPE's concerns about the roles dissensus, disagreement, and conflict play in the formation of education and democracy.1 Under this set of terms, the initial symposium gathered to consider the strange bedfellows that instrumentalism makes of contrary political stances. For instance, even with the polemics and long-standing critiques of neoliberal theories of education, the idea that education should serve as a means toward realizing a better society remains a shared feature of neoliberal education reform and its sharpest critics. This point is not to reduce one to the other, but instead to highlight the powerful sway that instrumentalism holds for our theories of education. And while instrumentalism may appear to be a natural part of education and therefore the ground for a consensus beyond the need for a politics, the articles contained here are concerned with the politics and dissent obscured by the normative role instrumentalism plays in educational theory and policy.