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Principled provocations in education

The Next Normal

Image of Dean Carole Basile

Dean Carole Basile

The Next Normal

In 1885, Arizona State University, where I serve as dean of Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, came into this world as the Territorial Normal School at Tempe. Since the early 19th century, the term ”normal school” has been used in the U.S. to refer to institutions that train high school graduates to be K-12 teachers.

At MLFTC, we want to push conversation and action about education beyond normal. In this blog, I and others affiliated with MLFTC share some of what we are doing and why we are doing it. We’ll reflect on what we’ve learned and what continues to challenge us.

Normal isn’t good enough. It doesn’t deliver enough for learners, educators or communities. We need to think, argue and act our way toward next practices in education.  

COVID and families

Looking beyond COVID to a coherent theory of change


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A time for provisional decisions

We don’t want the question of what to do with our teacher candidates to be an unresolved problem on the bottom of the to-do list of our school partners. We want to be part of the solution to the challenges high on that list.


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Systems planning in a crisis

Crisis planning is unavoidable in the face of a pandemic. Yet, as we and our partner districts make future plans, we’re finding that school-related challenges presented by COVID-19 are not new.


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Dean's blog image

Times of extreme stress reveal cracks in the normal that have been there all along. As our college has responded to the disruptions caused by the coronavirus, we have lived in and peered through the cracks in the normal. What have we seen?


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Classroom

As we have engaged schools and districts in this work, we are seeing how prevalent school staffing practices mismanage human capital in ways that impede equity.


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