In this essay Harry Boyte and Margaret Finders argue that addressing the “shrinkage” of education and democracy requires acting politically to reclaim and augment Deweyan agency-focused concepts of democracy and education. Looking at agency from the vantage of civic studies, which advances a politics of agency — a citizen politics that is different from ideological politics — and citizens as cocreators of political communities, Boyte and Finders explore the technocratic trends that have eclipsed agency. These disempower educators, students, and communities. Using the case study of the youth empowerment initiative Public Achievement and its translation into the Special Education Program and partnerships of Augsburg College, the authors conclude with an examination of how agentic practices have survived in “shadow spaces” in schools, how such spaces might be turned into “free spaces” for democratic change, and how teacher education needs to prepare “citizen teachers” as well as promoting pedagogies of empowerment. These suggest grounds for a movement of hope and democratic change.

中文翻译：

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“权力解放”：代理机构和民主教育

在本文中，哈里·博伊特（Harry Boyte）和玛格丽特·芬德斯（Margaret Finders）认为，解决教育和民主的“萎缩”需要采取政治行动，以恢复和增强杜威严机构着眼的民主和教育概念。从公民研究的兴起看代理，它推动了代理政治（不同于意识形态政治的公民政治），而公民作为政治共同体的创造者，博伊特和发现者探索了使代理黯然失色的技术官僚主义趋势。这些剥夺了教育者，学生和社区的权力。通过对青年赋权倡议“公共成就”的案例研究，并将其转化为奥格斯堡学院的特殊教育计划和合作伙伴关系，作者得出结论，考察了代理行为如何在学校的“影子空间”中幸存下来，如何将这些空间变成民主变革的“自由空间”，以及教师教育如何准备“公民教师”以及促进赋权的教学法。这些为希望和民主变革运动提供了依据。