Gabbard, David A.

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Gabbard, David A.
(David Gabbard)

PERSONAL:

Male. Education: Centre College of Kentucky, B.A., 1982; University of Cincinnati, M.Ed., 1988, Ed.D., 1991. Postdoctoral studies at Pennsylvania State University.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858.E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator. Eastern Montana College, Billings, educator, 1991-94; East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, assistant professor, 1995-98, associate professor, 1998-2003, professor, 2003—. Marxian Analysis of Society, Schools, and Education, Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association, program coordinator.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Critic's Choice Award, American Educational Studies Association, 2001, for Knowledge and Power in the Global Economy: Politics and the Rhetoric of School Reform.

WRITINGS:

EDITOR

Knowledge and Power in the Global Economy: Politics and the Rhetoric of School Reform, L. Erlbaum Associates (Mahwah, NJ), 2000.

(With Kenneth J. Saltman) Education As Enforcement: The Militarization and Corporatization of Schools, Routledge/Falmer (New York, NY), 2003.

(Editor, with E. Wayne Ross) Defending Public Schools, four volumes, Praeger (Westport, CT), 2004.

(With Alain Beaulieu) Michel Foucault and Power Today: International Multidisciplinary Studies in the History of the Present, Lexington Books (Lanham, MD), 2006.

Cofounder and coeditor, Public Resistance: An Academic Journal to Confront the Lies of the Right. Member of editorial boards for the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy and the Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies. Also contributor of over fifty articles to periodicals and chapters to books.

SIDELIGHTS:

Educational theorist David A. Gabbard is well known in his field for his studies of policy and theory in education. He has edited or coedited numerous books on the subject, including Knowledge and Power in the Global Economy: Politics and the Rhetoric of School Reform, Education As Enforcement: The Militarization and Corporatization of Schools, and Defending Public Schools. Education As Enforcement, which Gabbard edited with Kenneth J. Saltman, was released in 2003. The book examines the militarization of our schools through the use of surveillance cameras, metal detectors, and random searches of students and lockers. The book is a collection of twenty-one essays by various educational experts including Noam Chomsky, Henry A. Giroux, and Gabbard himself. The contributors discuss these newly common security additions in the education world and how they fit in with modern life both private and corporate. According to Roger Chapman, reviewing the volume for Radical Teacher, "The cultural aftermath of September 11 is the common thread of these writings, although the anthology, revealingly, was underway prior to the attacks." The critic noted that the essayists of Education As Enforcement reveal the possibly "debilitating" nature of this restrictive environment as they argue the idea that the learning process "should be liberating, with a focus on individual and community interests" rather than in an environment reminiscent of a police state. Human Nature Review Online contributor Mark Daims observed that "each writer defends children passionately and should be heard," and specifically pointed out the oft-repeated negative sentiment toward the "No Child Left Behind" program, which guides minorities into a lower socioeconomic career path due to poor minimum educational standards and poor funding. Daims acknowledged that the volume is "compelling"; Chapman agreed, claiming that despite some evidence of "sloppy editing," the book "is timely and appropriate."

Gabbard collaborated with E. Wayne Ross in 2004 to edit Defending Public Schools, a four-volume assessment of the public school system in the United States, both the schools themselves and the education provided therein. The contributors additionally express concern at the need to defend these schools. Nancy J. Mactague, in a review for theLibrary Journal, noted that the work "tackles difficult questions" and seems to answer them well, covering a vast number of topics including teacher education, assessments of children and educators, and the path of curriculum from past to distant future. Mactague called the book "balanced" as well as "thought-provoking and sometimes controversial."