Introduction

Abstract

The topic of this section is the federal role in improving educational practice. As I looked over the conference program, it seemed to me that the other topics of inquiry,though very interesting, were relatively obvious areas of description and analysis: the historical context of the federal role in education, the federal role in increasing equality of educational opportunity, and the federal role in educational research. But practice and federalism seemed odd partners, distant territories, disconnected spheres. How could the human endeavor of educational practice—so intimate, so localized, so craftlike—be scrutinized, supported, or directed from afar? How could national governmental directives, inspired by science, rationality, politics, and order, be linked with processes that are largely shaped by personality, subjectivity, and intuition? Are there any discrete, learnable technologies that can be successfully transplanted to school systems,to classrooms, to individual teachers? If some aspects of pedagogy and curricular design can be defined and successfully replicated en masse, how might they complement the more immediate experiential practices defined by person and place? Who has power over the definition of practice—the policymakers, who articulate the educational and political agendas and who distribute the resources, or the practitioners, who negotiate their use and who can close the classroom doors and make relatively autonomous choices about how they will proceed? Are practitioners aware of the larger context within which they work, or is their focus on immediate clinical experience an effective buffer against the broader constraints? If practitioners have, in fact, this myopic perspective, does it support their autonomy and their potential resourcefulness, or does it undermine it?