Mission
The National Society for the Study of Education is an organization of education scholars, professional educators, and policy makers dedicated to the improvement of education research, policy, and practice. Founded in 1901, NSSE is the oldest national educational research organization in the United States.
NSSE’s mission is to advance the study and practice of education by providing accessible scholarship and promoting informed discourse about the challenges and opportunities of education in a democratic society.
NSSE brings to its work a century of research and thought from the best and most influential scholars and observers in the field of education and related disciplines. Building upon its unique past, NSSE is dedicated to providing in-depth social-foundational and historical perspectives to define and study important education problems today. NSSE believes that research, policy, and practice can inform and influence each other in mutually beneficial ways. Thus, NSSE seeks to develop stronger relationships among researchers, educators, and policy makers through collaborative study of educational problems, and to support informed public discussion about educational issues.
EXTENDED MISSION/VISION STATEMENT
April 2005
Setting a New Course for NSSE
Founded in 1901, the National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE) is the oldest national educational organization in the United States. The historical mission of NSSE has been to explore enduring and contemporary educational problems through scholarship, broadly disseminate its work, and engage members of the education community in study and discourse around this work in an effort to better inform research, policy, and practice. These broad goals have defined the aim and the products of the Society well for many years.
Over the last couple of decades, the proliferation of educational organizations, publications, and interests has made for a crowded field in the Society’s primary educational domain. Although NSSE’s yearbooks continue to be attractive to distinguished researchers and practitioners as a vehicle for publication and to audiences as a respected source of scholarship, an important question for the Society concerns how its historical mission aligns with an ever-changing educational field, with evolving constituencies, and with the diverse needs of the educational community.
A significant amount of staff and Board energy during the 1980s and 1990s went into ensuring the yearbooks continued publication, and little else, as the ongoing viability of the organization was debated. In 2000, however, NSSE moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Education. With this move came renewed enthusiasm for repositioning the Society as a crucial link between researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and other educational constituents. This energy is reflected in the current support of the Board of Directors, staff, and Society members for new initiatives and for new opportunities for greater collegial interaction. In light of these developments, NSSE Staff applied for and won a grant from the Spencer Foundation to engage in the first formal strategic planning process in its history.
As part of this strategic planning process, NSSE is now considering its broader mission, and developing a vision of how it could expand its influence on the educational establishment and the society and citizens it serves.
Rediscovering a Distinctive Voice: Promoting the “Public Square”
In the midst of busy professional lives, a complex culture, and in an educational environment with many conflicting objectives, what distinctive voice might NSSE find to reenergize its leaders and membership? This work of renewal began with a discussion of a yearbook proposal tentatively called “Why Do We Educate?” This two-volume yearbook would focus on normative, moral, and civic questions around education—an important effort, it was felt, that would offer a thoughtful alternative to current educational discourse.
The Board’s enthusiastic response to this project developed into a reexamination of the Society’s mission and vision. The Board and Director agreed that, although the original activities of investigation, dissemination, and engagement continue to be worthy, today’s educational landscape demands another function: an explicit commitment to promoting what John Dewey, one of the founders of NSSE, called the “public square”: discourse, conversation, discussion, civil debate—in this case, about the challenges and opportunities of education in a democratic society.
We refer specifically to the need for educators to meaningfully inform public discussion so that all who have a stake in educating children—from parents to policymakers—can engage in a robust exchange of ideas about learning and instruction. We also refer to the opportunities and responsibilities that educational institutions have to help develop citizens who not only understand the rights and responsibilities of a democratic society, but who are active participants in the ongoing dialogue and practice that are the essence of that society.
Our consideration of such a role for NSSE takes us back, in a satisfying full circle, to many of the ideas promulgated by John Dewey. Ever the practical educator, Dewey was a clear advocate for the role of education in the formation and growth of intellectual and moral attitudes. And, as he wrote in School and Society, “Whether this educative process is carried out in a predominantly democratic or non-democratic way becomes … a question of transcendent importance not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the interests and activities of a society that is committed to the democratic way of life.”
“Part of the Bone and Blood”
In this context, NSSE now seeks to actively encourage public discourse about “education for a valued end”—the shaping of citizens who not only can read, write and do mathematics, but also can think critically, solve problems and work cooperatively, and who value the importance of engaging in informed public discussion about the issues of our time. These qualities are valuable in and of themselves, and particularly valuable in terms of examining the purposes and aims of education in a democratic society. We believe our membership and audience—teachers, researchers, policymakers, administrators and other constituents of public education—have a critical responsibility to claim a leadership role in encouraging debate and discussion, identifying and defining problems, developing knowledge and understanding, and linking education clearly to citizenship responsibilities and to the preservation and advancement of our democratic society.
This is more than “education about” … it seeks to go deeper. Writing at a critical juncture in world history, 1937, Dewey’s words echo for us today: the “fundamental beliefs and practices of democracy” need to be part of the “bone and blood of the people in daily conduct of its life.”
It is in that deeper sense—part of the bone and blood of society—that our educational institutions and leaders must have a greater impact. And it is in that domain that NSSE seeks to expand its influence. This is not a focus on “civics education.” Harry S. Broudy, writing in 1971 about education in a democratic society for NSSE, underscored the difference between the rhetoric and the reality of democracy, asking, “If…this rhetoric no longer presents a true image of America or democracy, then are we doing our children or the country or anyone else a service in using the schools to ritualize a myth?” As he went on to explain, it is far too easy for education to stop at the “slogan level” of democratic concepts, but “a curriculum which does so invites the question of whether it is worth bothering with at all.”
Today’s educational climate and the relentless call for accountability, while grounded in real concerns and legitimate expectations, have essentially muted any meaningful examination of what we want children to be when they leave school—not simply what we want them to be able to do.
Current policy and practice reflect radically different aims. We claim that teachers are professionals yet expect them to perform like technicians. We pay lip service to the environmental limitations that many children are burdened with, yet expect students in neglected schools with earnest but under-qualified teachers to perform as well on tests as children in more privileged neighborhoods. We expect more and more of administrators, principals and teachers without supporting opportunities for them to grow professionally and to engage in substantive discussion about the work they do. We focus on numbers, and not on children and our larger responsibilities to them, and our schools and our nation are poorer for this.
No one disputes that children, both for today and for the future, must be skilled in reading, writing, and mathematics. However, the narrow focus on these goals has accelerated a trend towards disengaging from the larger values that we as a society must model and impart to our youngest citizens—values that, arguably and ironically, serve to support academic achievement and engagement in schooling.
Making a Change
Why are we asking that educators and those who care about education join us in this endeavor? Why, in a climate in which quantifiable results matter so much, should anyone take the time and the risk to advocate for children as something other than test scores? Because, as Dewey goes on to say, “unless democratic habits of thought and action are part of the fiber of a people, political democracy is insecure. It cannot stand in isolation.”
We do believe that children can often rise to the highest expectations; the trouble is not that we have set the bar too low; it is that we have set the wrong bar. We should be looking to develop engaged, interested, provocative, challenging, motivated, and committed young people who believe that their lives demonstrate Dewey’s core principle of continuity—what happens to them now matters in terms of their past and, more importantly, their future. We need educators and a public that believes the same thing. And we need educational leaders who draw connections between these broader aims and academic success as measured by current standards.
We further believe that educators need to feel joy in the work they do. The continuing loss of teachers in the early phases of their careers, the short-lived tenures of many superintendents, the unending demands on state education officials to do more and more with less and less suggests that there are significant numbers of unhappy adults charged with educating our nation’s children.
Implications: Being and Doing
Consequently, the Society will seek not only to continue to provide respected scholarship on educational topics along with opportunities to debate these topics, but will act more broadly to inform public debate about the role of education in promoting a “public square” that provides a forum for citizens to be heard and to collaborate to address challenges and work in mutual respect toward new opportunities. We will work to create and support a robust and informed discussion—among educators, educational theorists, policymakers and the general citizenry—about the educational issues of our time and about the valued outcomes of education. We will work to encourage educational leaders—administrators, practitioners, and researchers—to do so as well. Our “products”—the yearbook series, conferences and workshops, and website—will continue to provide the means to advance this undertaking.
We look forward to challenging both ourselves and our members and audience, working together, to more effectively address these concerns.
