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Sasha Sidorkin
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Research Agenda
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 | Focus on school as an organization and as a community. |
| Creating an educational theory that explains the mechanisms of school life and development. |
| Exploring the role of dialogical relations in education. |
One overarching question that interests me is how schools do and do not work. My focus has been on understanding the specifics of schools in comparison to other social institutions, and critique of education as a social phenomenon. At this moment, I am in the midst of defining the next step in my scholarship; the field of economic anthropology has recently captured my imagination.
| Years | Research interests | Main findings | Questions leading to the next project |
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1988-1991, Russian Period |
Educational systems: A study of successful schools |
Schools success depends on quality of relations, not on curriculum and methods |
What type of relationships is most beneficial for an educational institution? |
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1992-1999 Seattle Period |
An ontological theory of dialogue: A philosophical study of dialogical relation |
Dialogical relations are at the center of each successful school |
What are the connections between dialogue and other types of relations in schools? |
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1999-2003 BGSU Period |
Pedagogy of relation: A study of complex systems of heterogeneous relations |
The relation of mutual interest provide a necessary foundation for dialogue |
What are mechanisms that connect relations of interest with those of dialogue? |
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2003-2006 |
The economic anthropology of schooling: A study of school micro-economics |
Schools are non-market economies, but economies nevertheless. Learning should be understood as a form of labor, and it is motivated by economic forces. | Can school economies be reformed to become market-based? |
| 2006-present | Study of learning markets | TBD | TBD |
My scholarly work is interdisciplinary both in context and methodology. I have spent significant time on qualitative research of successful schools, and undertook a discourse analysis study. Most of my publications are the genre of educational philosophy, and yet I very often use ideas from psychology, anthropology, and economics. Among the philosophical traditions, social theory, feminist theory, and hermeneutics are most important for me, although it has never been my intention to identify with a specific “ism.” Eclecticism has been my orientation and working method. I often use statistical data, fiction, news, and internet sources, along with traditional philosophical methods of analysis.
My intellectual roots could be best described by listing the authors who most profoundly influenced my thinking are: Karl Marx, Martin Buber, Mikhail Bakhtin, Anton Makarenko, Vivian Paley, Michal Foucault, and Nel Noddings. Two most influential mentors who in many ways determined the direction and style of my thinking are Liudmila Novikova and Donna Kerr. Dr. Novikova is an unofficial dean of Russian democratic education theory; she is a head of a very influiencial school of thought that includes some of the most prominent Russian educational scholars (A.Mudrik, V.Karakovskii, O.Gazman, N. Selivanova). Dr. Kerr has created a unique school at the University of Washington that develops philosophy of education as a truly interdisciplinary field.
I follow and participate in several on-going philosophical conversations. Feminist theory is one of the major sources for my pedagogy of relation. Postmodernist/critical pedagogy debate informs my thinking about the specificity of education. The conservative critique of Progressivism helps to question the feasibility of contemporary reformism. However, it is difficult for me to identify closely with any of existing groups or discussions. Rather, I belong to a vaguely defined group of scholars who share critical (but not conservative) stance toward critical discourse. The most recent edited volume project on the pedagogy of relation includes many of these authors (G.Biesta, F.Margonis, C.Bingham, and others).
970-351-2701, sasha.sidorkin@unco.edu
University of Northern Colorado, McKee 216 |
