Blog

Working to Strengthen Citizen-Centered Democracy in a Time of Faltering Hope

In our latest publication, SPF presented an essay on the creation of a new antisemitism curriculum entitled Antisemitism from a framework of collective Liberation (Antisemitism from a Framework of Collective Liberation – Social Publishers Foundation). The curriculum was created by members of PARCEO – an education, resource, and research center based in New York City – focused on strengthening educational, […] Read Moreabout Working to Strengthen Citizen-Centered Democracy in a Time of Faltering Hope

America’s Mass Shooting Epidemic: Six Ways To End It

The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group that tracks gun violence using police reports, news coverage, and other public sources, defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are killed or injured. As of March 27th, the archive had counted 130 mass shootings in the United States so far in 2023, including the massacre of […] Read Moreabout America’s Mass Shooting Epidemic: Six Ways To End It

Public Distrust, Science, and Practitioner Research

I recently read a Time magazine interview[i] with Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, regarding her efforts to change the CDC and fix its “dramatic mistakes” during COVID 19. In the interview Walensky shared that a recent in-depth review of CDC revealed, among other things, the challenges of the agency’s current orientation towards […] Read Moreabout Public Distrust, Science, and Practitioner Research

“BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN”

I took a break from the Blog for a number of months to focus further on my health and to complete preparations for the 10th Anniversary Conference for the Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA), which I co-founded and in which I remain active.  My wife and I also spent 6 weeks on the road, traveling around the Southwest, […] Read Moreabout “BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN”

A Morning After: Ukraine, Putin, and the Attack on Democracy

INTRODUCTORY NOTE:  I have been in a period of personal and professional reorganization following a major health scare. From June through September I was in treatment for throat cancer following 2 months of diagnosis and testing. The chemo and radiation therapy I underwent destroyed what had been a malignant tumor at the base of my tongue, and this good news […] Read Moreabout A Morning After: Ukraine, Putin, and the Attack on Democracy

Reflecting on the Taos Education As Relating Conference

My thanks to colleague, friend, and SPF Advisory Board member, Rolla Lewis, for submitting the Guest Blog below. Rolla was a long-time California counselor educator. We worked together on a number of projects in support of school counseling and school counselors in the state back in the 80s, 90s, and into the start of the new century. As you will […] Read Moreabout Reflecting on the Taos Education As Relating Conference

Practitioner Research in a Time of Triple Crisis: When Too Much is Not Enough

We are living in terribly perilous times. And the stress of it all showers down on us daily. In its August 25 weekly online Education Briefing, The New York Times proclaimed “A bumpy fall semester.”[i]  The article focuses on the impact of current COVID anxieties and the political divides associated with determining how best to respond to COVID and school […] Read Moreabout Practitioner Research in a Time of Triple Crisis: When Too Much is Not Enough

Beginning Again: On Knowledge democracy and Culture Circles in America

Knowledge democracy is a phrase that refers to long-standing conflicts over what constitutes knowledge and whose knowledge counts. The phrase has been advanced as a kind of platform for resistance to the domination of what long-time scholar-activists Budd Hall and Rajesh Tandon (2017) describe as a small band of knowledge systems created by white male scientists in Europe some 500 […] Read Moreabout Beginning Again: On Knowledge democracy and Culture Circles in America

On Reading the World in 2020-2021

Book clubs can be a worthwhile and enjoyable activity. It is generally estimated that more than 5 million people in the US now participate in Book Clubs, with club popularity increasing over the past several decades.[i] With a history that in some form goes back several centuries, a core premise of book clubs is that reading is a pleasure and […] Read Moreabout On Reading the World in 2020-2021

The SPF Blog: Issues in Practitioner Research, Policy Making in Helping Professions and Social Change

Around six years ago my wife and I were beginning to have some serious conversations about our upcoming retirements from higher education including our evolving views of what we had accomplished as teachers and as scholars in education, where we had fallen short in our original goals and aspirations, and what we wanted to do for the after-retirement period. We […] Read Moreabout The SPF Blog: Issues in Practitioner Research, Policy Making in Helping Professions and Social Change