Researching Educational Experiment, Idealism, and Utopianism

Today and for several days next week, you'll be doing some research into educational institutions, systems, and ideas that have utopian, reform-oriented, or idealistically experimental aspects. The goal of this research is to help you envision more engaging, socially responsive, equitable, and/or forward-looking forms of and practices in education, which might in turn help us to come up with ideas for making the most of the experimental nature of our class and its potential for trying out ideas to make our learning as dynamic and meaningful as we can.

You all have experience looking for things you're interested in or need to know on the internet, and so one way to go about this research is simply to use your experience, common sense, and what you've learned about researching online to go forward and find sources that will give you information about experiments, alternative practices, and innovative ideas in education. You might begin with an idea that has already piqued your interest from the conversations we've had so far, beginning with a specific search idea like "sleep and student achievement," "learning life skills secondary school, " or "reading aloud learning benefits." You could use Sweet Search or Google Scholar to explore more reliable sources, go to the University of Illinois A-Z Databases and see which databases seem likely to turn up results for this topic of inquiry, or use some knowledge you already have to lead you down a particular research path (exploring, for example, what contemporary education scholars are saying about the legacy of a famous educational reformer like John Dewey).

If you're having trouble finding anything you're satisfied with, here are a couple of portals I've discovered with that may lead you to some interesting sources:

Edutopia, The George Lucas Educational Foundation's resource for educators

Relevant articles: “Student-Led Culture Change" and “Igniting a Passion for Reading”


The Journal of Experimental Education, an academic journal devoted to research and scholarship on educational innovation

Relevant article: “Social Goals and Well-Being”


Teaching Tolerance, the Southern Poverty Law Center's resource for teachers and administrators

Relevant articles: “Secret Agents of Kindness: A teacher gave students a simple task: Be kind, but selfless. The results illustrate the contagious effects of humanity,” “Community Walks: A Day of Learning for Schools,” or “Yoga in Public Schools”


And here are a couple of links the wonderful Uni library staff found that might be of interest:

The Global Utopias project, which is focused on education.

The Philosopher's Mail, which gives concrete examples of what a utopian school system might look like. It is from The School of Life, a company that seems to publish articles on philosophy and emotional intelligence. Its articles are not the most scholarly, but it might give you some ideas.

Remember that ultimately you'll be proposing ideas in some or all of the following areas (and possibly others you decide are important):

Learning environment
Policies and habits
Activities 
Assignments 
Weekly schedule