seeking a post-doc at CIRCLE

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The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University seeks a Postdoctoral Fellow in the area of American higher education and college student political learning and engagement. The Postdoctoral Fellow will lead quantitative research on a range of higher education initiatives, specifically the National Study on Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE). This researcher may also provide support for qualitative research, survey development, secondary data-analysis, literature reviews, and program evaluations. S/he will also be responsible for managing and integrating large datasets and using appropriate methods for processing, storing, aggregating, and replicating analysis. Over the duration of the post-doc, NSLVE will increase the automation of data processing and the production of reports. The Postdoctoral Fellow will play an integral role in this transition.

Required:

  • Ph.D. earned May 2013 through August 2014 or ABD (all but dissertation) with anticipated graduation by June 2015, in public policy, political science, higher education, or other social science discipline
  • Strong quantitative background and experience with multivariate statistical techniques
  • Knowledge of at least one statistical package, such as SPSS, STATA, or SAS, and a willingness to work primarily with SPSS
  • Experience using large datasets
  • Proficiency with data management, including an ability to work with relational database software such as Access and Oracle
  • Data workflow management experience
  • Technological experience and adaptability, with excellent computer skills, knowledge of databases, client management and Microsoft Office, as well as an ability and desire to learn more
  • Demonstrated interest in college student civic learning and engagement and/or public participation and civic renewal more broadly

Preferred:

  • Experience with voting data
  • Experience with Catalist database
  • Experience with evaluation methods
  • Experience with qualitative methods
  • Experience with Salesforce
  • Prior record of publications

Duration: August 1, 2014 through July 31, 2015. This is a grant-funded position for one year with a possibility of continuation.

To apply, please submit a CV, a cover letter describing your research interests or plans, a sample publication, and contact information for three references. Send application materials to Kathy O’Connor at kathy.oconnor@tufts.edu. Screening of applicants begins May 15, 2014 and continues until the position is filled.

become a professor, see the world

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They say that academia is an ivory tower, sheltered from the tumult of human experience. But I’m fortunate, thanks to my job, to meet a very wide range of people in highly diverse settings. In fact, I don’t think many people in other walks of life are as fortunate in that respect. Within the past month, in the line of duty (so to speak), I have

  • Heard a “legalese-hatin’, cowboy-boot-wearin’, unafraid-to-admihuit-it liberal judge who rules from the [Arkansas federal] bench in a rocking chair” tell hootin’-and-hollerin’ jokes at the expense of his own profession.
  • Done a windshield tour of the poorest neighborhood in Champaign (IL), where the small decaying frame houses are scattered on the edge of the prairie.
  • Sat in the hushed office of the president of Duke, amid rubber trees, leaded Gothic windows, and framed honors, discussing the place of the humanities in public life.
  • Visited a game-design studio in Madison, WI, where hip young coders sit on stools of different heights and take breaks playing with Nerf balls and huge inflatable bowling pins.
  • Lectured in the Grecian rotunda of Mr. Jefferson’s University, a World Heritage Site.
  • And heard up-and-coming country singers in a bona fide Nashville honky-tonk on a Friday night.

We may be on the verge of wrecking it–and we certainly need better institutions to govern it–but it’s still a great country and a privilege to be able to see so many facets of it.

(On to DC this evening.)

MoveOn, faith-based organizing, and glimpses of the Great Community

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(Nashville) In the past few days, I have interviewed a prominent leader from MoveOn (the massive liberal online network) and from PICO (a network of community organizers based mainly in religious congregations). It’s fascinating how each sees combining the strengths of their respective organizational types as the essential next step for democracy.

According to my notes, PICO “invests lots and lots of time to connect with people and develop relations. … People begin to understand who they are in a public landscape by engaging with others in contesting for power. … They begin to discover that their voice can matter. … Their appetite [for more engagement] grows as well.” Meanwhile, citizens go on an ideological journey, starting out as relatively conservative and developing views that are more challenging to the status quo, although they would still not identify themselves as progressives. This is deep work, and it builds real power. But “scale is what we are trying to figure out. … How do you get to scale, because we are nowhere near where we want.”

Meanwhile, MoveOn began by channeling the mass voice of liberals, “one collective cry.” But mass petitions are not as effective any more, especially on issues like money-in-politics or climate change. “We need to organize in deeper ways to be taken seriously by those in power.” “Horizontal relations are incredibly important just to motivate people. People care about issues but ultimately they care about people.” “Communities are powerful for accountability for civic action. We are stronger when people are accountable to each other.” MoveOn’s goal is to “move from a list of 8 million to horizontal connectivity.” “A mega movement would radically scale accountability. That would require community.”

PICO has community and accountability, but not mass scale. MoveOn has “tremendous scale and little depth.” The problem is not new, although the solutions may now be dimly visible. John Dewey might as well have written these words (from the Public and its Problems, 1927) yesterday:

We have but touched lightly and in passing upon the conditions which must be fulfilled if the Great Society is to become a Great Community; a society in which the ever-expanding and intricately ramifying consequences of associated activities shall be known in the full sense of that word, so that an organized, articulate Public comes into being. The highest and most difficult kind of inquiry and a subtle, delicate, vivid and responsive art of communication must take possession of the physical machinery of transmission and circulation and breathe life into it. When the machine age has thus perfected its machinery it will be a means of life and not its despotic master. Democracy will come into its own, for democracy is a name for a life of free and enriching communion. It had its seer in Walt Whitman. It will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication.

the Power of Democracy in California

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(Durham, NC) For about a year, I have been assisting a task force called “the Power of Democracy” that formed in California under the active leadership of the state’s Chief Justice, Tani Cantil-Sakauye. Members have been thoughtful and dogged about promoting civic learning and civic engagement in their state, working with their state education agency, the legislature, the judiciary, and key nongovernmental organizations, discussing significant policy changes, giving awards, holding public meetings, and otherwise drawing attention to civic education. I am optimistic that real improvements will come in California.

I’m able to write all this now because the Power of Democracy has a new public face in the form of an excellent website. If you explore it, you’ll see a new article by the leader of the California Chamber of Commerce arguing that business needs better civic education; the “six promising practices” of civics (which originated at CIRCLE) used as their definition of what works; and my own analysis of California’s current civic ed. policies. But the most promising aspect of the project is the strong team that has come together to advocate for civic education in a way that emphasizes equity in opportunities and civic action as the desired outcome.

where is the public on Common Core?

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(Durham, NC) The Common Core standards are the most significant policy change in US education today, and they are increasingly controversial. Strong critics can be found on both the right and left. Meanwhile, the most influential proponents don’t exactly have fired-up grassroots supporters behind them. The main champions include several big foundations, Democratic and moderate Republican governors, and the Obama Administration’s Department of Education.

When read summaries of the Common Core, majorities of Americans and Californians do support it. But of course, how it is summarized will be highly influential if people are not very well informed about its content and origins. If the Common Core is described with hostility, people may be easily persuaded to oppose it. And plenty of political actors have motivations to present it critically–scoring some valid points along the way.

My own feelings are largely favorable, because I like the content of the Common Core, although I would acknowledge that everything depends on the tests that are now being developed to assess it. But even those of us who basically support the Common Core should try to understand what the public is thinking about it so that we can address their concerns.

Public Agenda’s Jean Johnson offers several reasons for the lukewarm level of public support.

First, parents are not primarily worried about low standards or inadequate academic achievement. Public Agenda has frequently found that parents put behavioral and social problems at the top of their lists of concerns. The public’s premise is that kids need the same kinds of educational content that their parents had, but they behave worse. Children either need more surveillance and tougher sanctions or else more care and attention (or, possibly, both). Either way, raising the academic bar is not a relevant solution.

I am not sure the parents are right. One of the striking developments of the last 20 years has been a decline in rates of teen crime and drug use. Kids are behaving better but face increasingly steep global competition. That is the expert’s framework, and it is based on data. But, as Johnson notes, many parents think that school is already hard enough and that testing is too pervasive and consequential.

I have no interest in trying to sell anyone on the Common Core, but would want to present it in a way that gets a fair hearing. To that end, I would avoid talking about tougher standards. After all, how “tough” they are will depend on the tests, which are still being designed. Instead, I would emphasize that they are simpler than traditional standards, easier to read and understand (and thus more fair), and less political because they are not negotiated by state legislatures and education agencies. They also give more flexibility to schools and teachers to decide what to assign.