EDCP faculty

Research Interests

Biography

Dr. Ross is interested in the influence of social and institutional contexts on teachers’ practice as well as the role of curriculum and teaching in building a democratic society in the face of antidemocratic impulses of greed, individualism, and intolerance.

In recent years he has examined the influence of the educational standards and high-stakes testing movements on curriculum and teaching. His most recent research investigates the surveillance-based and spectacular conditions of (post)modern schools and society in an effort to develop both a radical critique of the “disciplinary gaze” and a means by which teachers, students, and other stakeholders might resist its various conformative, anti-democratic, anti-collective, and oppressive potentialities.

Dr. Ross is a co-founder of The Rouge Forum, a group of educators, parents, and students seeking a democratic society. He is also a General Editor of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor and Co-Editor of Cultural Logic.

A former secondary social studies (Grades 8 to 12) and day care teacher in North Carolina and Georgia, Dr. Ross was Distinguished University Scholar and Chair of the Department of Teaching at the University of Louisville prior to his arrival at UBC in 2004. He has also taught at the State University of New York campuses at Albany and Binghamton.

His personal website is ewayneross.net

Selected Publications

Recent Books

Gabbard, D., & Ross, E. W. (Eds.). (2008). Education under the security state. New York: Teachers College Press.

Mathison, S., & Ross, E. W. (Eds.). (2008). Battleground schools (Vols. 1-2). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Mathison, S., & Ross, E. W. (Eds.). (2008). Nature and limits of standards-based reform and assessment. New York: Teachers College Press.

Ross, E. W., & Gibson, R. (Eds.). (2007). Neoliberalism and education reform. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Selected Recent Articles & Book Chapters:

Gibson, R., & Ross, E. W. (in press). Using children’s books to explore power, tyranny and justice. In E. Heilman (Ed.), Social studies and diversity teacher education: What we do and why we do it. New York: Routledge.

Ross, E. W. (in press). Clockwork: Taylorism and its continuing influence on work and schooling. In E. Heilman (Ed.), Social studies and diversity teacher education: What we do and why we do it. New York: Routledge.

Ross, E. W., & Queen, G. (in press). Globalization, class, and the social studies curriculum. In D. Kelsh, D. Hill & S. Macrine (Eds.), Class in education: Knowledge, pedagogy, subjectivity. New York: Routledge.

Welsh, J. F., Ross, E. W., & Vinson, K. D. (in press). To discipline and enforce: Surveillance and spectacle in state reform of higher education. New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry.

Gibson, R., Queen, G., Ross, E. W., & Vinson, K. D. (2009). The Rouge Forum. In D. Hill (Ed.), Contesting neoliberal education: Public resistance and collective advance (pp. 110-136). New York: Routledge.

Ross, E. W., & Marker, P. M. (Eds.). (2009, Winter). Social studies teacher education: Dare we teach for democracy? Teacher Education Quarterly, 36(1), 1-192.

Gibson, R., & Ross, E. W. (2008, March 1-15). The role of schools and of “No Child Left Behind” in a rotting imperial system: How educators should resist. CounterPunch, 15(5), 1, 4-6.

Ross, E. W. (2008). Social studies education. In D. A. Gabbard (Ed.), Knowledge and power in the global economy: The effects of school reform in a neoliberal / neoconservative age (2nd Ed., pp. 367 – 375). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Courses Taught

EDCP 562 - Introduction to Curriculum Studies:

History and development of the curriculum emphasizing the underlying perspectives that inform curricular choices and activities; principles and issues related to organization, development and evaluation.

EDCP 601 – Curriculum and Pedagogy: History and Theory:

This seminar is intended for first-year doctoral students. It examines the emergence of contemporary conceptions of curriculum and pedagogy, looking across various historical and theoretical influences. Emphasis is placed on analysis of varied conceptual and political perspectives, explicit and tacit rationales for formal education, and consequent principles that infuse conceptions and enactments of curriculum and pedagogy.

EDUC 500 - Research Methodology in Education:

An introduction to educational and social research for practitioners in schools and human services. The focus will be on fundamental issues in research including research methodology and research techniques (e.g., data collection, analysis and interpretation). This is not a research design or statistics course. In this course we will focus on: (a) developing an understanding of various kinds of educational and social research; (b) developing skills that will facilitate critical reading of educational and social research; and (c) exploring the role and use of research techniques to reflect upon and improve practice.

SSED 317 - Curriculum Issues in Social Studies Education

This course is based on the premise that good social studies teaching and learning requires teachers and students to pose and analyze problems in the process of understanding and transforming our world. In other words, social studies education should not be about passively absorbing someone else's conception of the world, but rather it should be an exercise in creating a personally meaningful understanding of the way the world is and how one might act to transform it. To that end, this course focuses six key topics in the social studies curriculum: democracy and citizenship; race; First Nations/aboriginal peoples; social class; gender and sexuality; and globalization.