Michael P O'Malley

Public Educational Policy as Performance: A Queer Analysis

Critical Approaches to Education Policy Analysis

This critical policy analysis examines the publicly contested process through which one school di... more This critical policy analysis examines the publicly contested process through which one school district in Texas successfully enacted a queer inclusive policy. The purpose of this research is to illuminate dynamics of policy adoption in order to support development of equitable educational policies. Analysis focused on performativity of the body politic, with attention to how emergent transgressive discourses of queer equity in educational policy are taken up, enacted, and contested within the public sphere. Data sources were a sample of 74 print media articles from 2006 to 2014 reporting on the policy development and statewide struggle related to the district's 2012 adoption of domestic partner benefits. The analysis identified two key strategies used in the public sphere to impede policy adoption: (1) a patterned public representation of queer inclusive policy as hetero-exclusive; (2) a restratification of heteronormative social organization through disciplinary mechanisms. It also identified two strategies used by the district to facilitate adoption of this equity oriented policy: (1) socially transformative leadership through systematic engagement across differences; (2) building district social justice capacity. Implications identify strategies for managing equity oriented policy development within contested contexts, and also address the value of queer theory as an intellectual tool for critical policy analysis.

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O'Malley, Michael P., "Conceptualizing a Critical Pedagogy of Human Soul: Ethnographic Implications for Curriculum Studies," Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 4(Summer, 2007), 84-112

Aesthetics and the Social Imagination in Educational Leadership Preparation

Breaking Without Fixing: Inhabiting Aporia

Public Pedagogy Theories, Methodologies, and Ethics

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education

Public pedagogy is a theoretical concept focusing on forms, processes, and sites of education and... more Public pedagogy is a theoretical concept focusing on forms, processes, and sites of education and learning occurring beyond formal schooling and practices. Scholars have drawn from the theoretical arenas of cultural studies, critical pedagogy, and artistic/aesthetic approaches to learning in the public sphere. Focusing on both the hegemonic and the resistant aspects of public educational sites, educational scholars employing the term typically explicate its feminist, critical, cultural, performative, and/or activist pedagogical dimensions. Other scholars studying public pedagogy take up the challenge of redefining education in order to deinstitutionalize its conceptualization and uncouple it from its automatic associations with schools; and yet others take these criticisms further to explore posthuman reconceptualizations of pedagogy. Public pedagogy scholarship between 2011-2019 deploys various imaginings of the nature of the public, bringing divergent yet needed specificity to inq...

Asking queer(er) questions: epistemological and methodological implications for qualitative inquirers

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education

Abstract This collection of distinct scholarly essays deliberatively turns to queer experience an... more Abstract This collection of distinct scholarly essays deliberatively turns to queer experience and theorizing as a resource for constructing vibrant qualitative research designs. Queer theory offers a breadth of epistemological and methodological possibilities for qualitative projects that are too frequently overlooked for many reasons. These reasons include frequently strict association of queer theory with queer research topics and researchers, as well as a concurrent reluctance to interrogate the representational needs of heterosexist culture served by the metaphor of the ‘closet.’ Queer theory also compels inquiry that takes up the unique circumstances of queer subjects. Locating educational inquiry within globally complex socio-historical dynamics and a post-Obergefell/post-2016 election U.S. context, this article poses multiple trajectories through which various scholars explore queer(er) qualitative inquiry in educational studies. These perspectives invite researchers to rethink qualitative inquiry designs through engagement with the queer, inclusive of research topics not initially perceived to be queer.

A Measure of the Quality of Educational Leadership Programs for Social Justice

Educational Administration Quarterly

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how aspiring principals in the United States... more Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how aspiring principals in the United States are prepared for social justice leadership, by focusing particular attention on equitable leadership for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and questioning (LGBTIQ) persons as a measure of the preparation program’s commitment to social justice. Research Method: The research design involved a cross-sectional survey instrument completed by 218 full-time faculty teaching in 53 different University Council for Educational Administration university principal preparation programs. We performed descriptive analysis of Likert-type scale responses with cross-tabulation of selected survey questions and constant comparative analysis of open-ended questions. The descriptive analysis provides a one-moment-in-time snapshot of the perceptions of particular education leadership faculty. As such, the data are illustrative of certain patterns evident across the national sample rather than def...

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Creating Inclusive Schools for Lgbtiq Youth, Staff, and Families

Handbook of Research on Educational Leadership for Equity and Diversity, 2013

Liberation Theology

Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies, 2010

Talking Cents: Public Discourse, State Oversight, and Democratic Education in East St. Louis

Educational Studies, 2006

... References Aguilar, Aisha. 2004. School Panel Will Be Ousted. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10 J... more

Public Pedagogy

Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies, 2010

What Do You Do All Day?

Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 2009

Multiple and complex issues simultaneously present themselves for the principal’s attention. Lear... more Multiple and complex issues simultaneously present themselves for the principal’s attention. Learning how to identify, prioritize, synthesize, and act in relation to these issues poses a particular challenge to early career principals. This case study engages aspiring and current school leaders in critical reflection upon leadership opportunities and practices in a simulated setting that elicits challenges commonly experienced by early career principals. Discussion questions integrate educational leadership research specific to the case issues. Activity suggestions focus on use of the case as a collaborative assessment in an educational leadership admissions process, midpoint review, or course; as a self-assessment; and in supervision of principals.

Deconstructing a Politics of Student Association Within Arts-Based Education: Ethnographic Reflections on “The Show Kids” and “The Show Fags”

Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2004

Lisa Parker Langston is an art educator at Strawbridge Elementary in Virginia Beach, Virginia and... more Lisa Parker Langston is an art educator at Strawbridge Elementary in Virginia Beach, Virginia and is currently the Virginia Beach City-Wide Teacher of the Year 2005 for Virginia Beach Public Schools. In 2003, Langston was named Model Teacher by Virginia Beach Public Schools and received the Tagged by the Superintendent recognition. The following year, Langston was named Teacher of the Year 2005 for Strawbridge Elementary School. She is a frequent presenter at the annual Virginia Art Education Association conference and is the author of an article on studying the art of Whitfield Lovell in Teaching Voices, the newsletter of the United States Society for Education Through Art. In 2004, Langston entered the Old Dominion University/Virginia Beach Schools Education Leadership Cohort Program. In August 2004, she was nominated as the elementary school representative for the Hampton Roads Institute for the Advanced Study of Education. Langston exhibits her mixed-media artworks locally and recently completed a commission for the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, Virginia.

New Cosmology, Leadership, and the Possibilities of an Ecozoic Era: An Interview with Miriam Therese MacGillis, OP

Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2005

... The following is excerpted from Miriam's comments in a lively and provocative conversati... more

Conceptualizing a Critical Pedagogy of Human Soul: Ethnographic Implications for Curriculum Studies

Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2007

Conceptualizing a critical pedagogy of human soul: Ethnographic implications for curriculum studies

Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2007

... Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy 90 ... Among other critical and postmodern scholars (Kanpo... more

Talking cents: Public discourse, state oversight, and democratic education in East St. Louis

Educational Studies, 2006

... References Aguilar, Aisha. 2004. School Panel Will Be Ousted. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10 J... more

New Cosmology, Leadership, and the Possibilities of an Ecozoic Era: An Interview with Miriam Therese MacGillis, OP

Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2005

... The following is excerpted from Miriam's comments in a lively and provocative conversati... more

Issues in Education: Pedagogies of Absence: Education beyond an Ethos of Standardization

Childhood Education, 2009

Organizing curriculum and instruction in PK-12 public schools in relation to standardization prac... more Organizing curriculum and instruction in PK-12 public schools in relation to standardization practices presents us with the inherent paradox of limiting education to that which is already known and anticipated. Prescriptive standards, assessment-driven curricula, narrowly defined outcomes, and social efficiency-oriented scripted instruction only serve to shift teaching and learning away from the inexistent and "not yet" and toward preconceived knowledge (Dentith & Bronson, 2006; Pinar, 1998). Such strategies reveal a philosophical and intellectual (or, more accurately, anti-intellectual) worldview that imposes foundational pedagogical claims on a multiplicity of schools despite extensive social, cultural, economic, linguistic, personal, and geographic dif ferences that rupture assertions of a presumed universal norm. Paradigmatically linked to politico-economic and religious fundamentalisms, this pedagogical fundamentalism explicitly organizes educational systems according to the socio-economic interests of state bureaucracies and tends to view the ends and means of effective schooling as known and settled (Milligan, 2005). In contrast to pedagogical fundamentalism, I propose pedagogies of absence as the educative possibility for constituting alternate autobiographical and social imaginaries. My argument here is not for curricula devoid of the guidance offered by well-constructed standards and authentic assessment, but rather for a holistic educational practice that also engages the indeterminate, ambiguous, and unknown. Specifically, I wonder about nurturing students' and teachers' capacities to construct meaningful possibilities for themselves and their world beyond that which has already been delineated for them by received curriculum standards, educational policy, social norms, or cultural traditions-all of which interpret human experience from particular, limited vantage points. The concern for pedagogical practice, then, is the place of the absent and the "not yet" within the epistemological question that asks what knowledge is of the most worth. In order to explore this question and illuminate pedagogies of absence, I draw on insights from the artist Julie Mehretu. Absence, or the inexistent, functions in several notable ways in relation to the cultural and interpersonal spaces that Mehretu attempts to map through her paintings. Specifically, her workaddresses absence by foregrounding: 1) the disappearance of lived reality behind the scrim of media representations, 2) the invisibility of linguistic and institutional assumptions, and 3) the palimpsest, which is an altered, erased, or reconfigured reality that somehow evidences tracesof its previous form (Detroit Institute of Arts, 2007; Foster as cited in de Zegher, 2007). I will relateeachof these three manifestations of absence to opportunities for pedagogical practice. First, reality's "disappearance" references the manner in which media-generated representations often come prior to personal experience of such phenomena as identity, desire, and politics. In this contemporary hyper-reality, representations act as totalizing narratives that mediate world and self to oneself, and so structure, explain, and delineateexperienceevenprior toitsoccurrence. Mehretu's paintings, for example, highlight ways in which consumer culture affords distinct conditions in which radical representations might become subordinated and inverted into icons of consumerist politico-economic interests, as exemplified in the transition of the socialist star into Macy's logo (de Zegher, 2007). A characteristic of the globalized media age, then, is the intensification of representational construction and imaginative power through the compression of time and space in modes that subordinate personal realities to received paradigms. In relation to public schooling, news, entertainment, and professional media provide a

What Do You Do All Day?

Multiple and complex issues simultaneously present themselves for the principal’s attention. Lear... more Multiple and complex issues simultaneously present themselves for the principal’s attention. Learning how to identify, prioritize, synthesize, and act in relation to these issues poses a particular challenge to early career principals. This case study engages aspiring and current school leaders in critical reflection upon leadership opportunities and practices in a simulated setting that elicits challenges commonly experienced by early career principals. Discussion questions integrate educational leadership research specific to the case issues. Activity suggestions focus on use of the case as a collaborative assessment in an educational leadership admissions process, midpoint review, or course; as a self-assessment; and in supervision of principals.

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