Abstract
This article describes the broad consideration of educational standards that occurred in a pre-service language arts methods course in a public, urban university context. This deliberation over standards was rooted in an urgent community concern about the school facilities in the university’s home city. It utilized photography and a focus on standards evidenced in the “built environment” of city schools to allow a cohort of teacher candidates to consider the nature and specifics of the current emphasis on standards that is increasingly a part of every educational context. These methods allowed these teacher candidates to “see” the ways that a broader range of standards are played out in the aesthetics and designs of schools, classrooms, and other educational environments. This essay suggests that such methods might provide teachers with concrete tools for engaging their students with community concerns and an explicit means to uncover “standards” that may limit teachers and students in order to address the democratic education purposes of public education.
Recommended Citation
Marquez-Zenkov, Kristien
(2002)
"Seeing Standards: Schools’ Built Environments and the Standards Movement,"
Mid-Western Educational Researcher: Vol. 15:
Iss.
4, Article 5.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/mwer/vol15/iss4/5
