Off to Boston

I'm off to Boston early tomorrow morning. It'll be nice to see some of the folks from grad school. I haven't been to NCA as a presenter since 1999. Didn't go last year, and the year before I went on a job search. That's sort of like doing the same sales presentation for two days straight. I hate wearing a suit, and I think I spent about 24 hours in one over the course of two days. I didn't get a job out of the eleven or so interviews I had there, but I did get a lot of practice with my pitch. That's another good reason to go to the conference.

So, what's the paper all about? My argument runs something like this. Standards-based reform policy in U.S. public education is based upon a flawed model of human experience and motivation. Essentially, policy makers imagine students in an idealized fashion, and tend to believe that the best way to get them to learn is to establish "standards," test their learning of those standards, and then hold them responsible for the outcomes. I argue that the difference between students as conceived in policy, and students "for real" makes the outcomes of policy potentially devastating. By assuming that people will learned if threatened and bribed enough, the policy tends to ignore that different people are motivated in different ways. Moreover, it virtually eliminates the idea that student "audiences" actively interpret what happens to them, sometimes in ways that are reactive against the imposed policies. I address these points through some of the work in media, rhetorical, literary and cultural studies that touches upon audience, and attempt to use the notion of ideology to provide a central concept for understanding audience and critiquing policy makers' understandings of audience.

I tried to write something short and sweet, but was unsuccessful. I think I'm going to try to shop it as the first chapter in a book. We'll see if I find anything good at NCA, in terms of prospective publishers.

See you all soon.