Nieto, S. (2017, August 23). On Reconciling Divergent Ideas: A Life-long Quest. Acquired Wisdom Series, edited by S. Tobias, D. F. Fletcher, & D. Berliner. Education Review, 24. http://dx.doi.org/er.v24.2285 On Reconciling Divergent Ideas: A Life-long Quest Sonia Nieto As an educator whose work has focused on equity and social justice, I have long struggled with a conundrum: how to reconcile meritocracy – an idea at the very heart of U.S. thinking – with the reality of inequality and injustice. In its simplest form, meritocracy can be described in this way: if you work hard and apply yourself, you’ll succeed at anything you set your mind to. If people don’t succeed, the thinking goes, it must be their own fault; they just didn’t work hard enough, didn’t study as much as they should, didn’t believe in themselves, and so on. Poverty, culture, race, and other differences don’t matter; it’s all about individual striving. It’s a seductive idea, meritocracy, and it’s firmly enmeshed in U.S. culture. Though I didn’t necessarily hear the term itself until I was an adult, I learned about meritocracy from my teachers, the books I read and the movies I saw as a child, and the general culture. Numerous Horatio Alger stories, both fiction and nonfiction, have affirmed this belief throughout our history. It is no surprise, then, that as a child and young adult, I wanted desperately to believe in the idea of meritocracy, hoping it would be true for me. I worked hard, studied every day, and had dreams of becoming a teacher and perhaps even a professor. I dreamed of having nice clothes, living in a “good” neighborhood with a house of our own, and having all the other trappings of the middle class to which I aspired. “Learning” Meritocracy and Inequality Until I was 13, we lived in apartments in tenement buildings, not in a private house on a tree-lined street like those we saw in our Dick and Jane readers. My parents, immigrants from Puerto Rico, didn’t look like the parents in those readers. We ate not hamburgers and hot dogs but arroz con habichuelas and pernil, what to my classmates might be foreign-sounding foods. We bought our clothes at cheap discount stores. Neither of my parents had much of an education: my mother managed to stay in school until 10th grade, a very respectable showing for an orphaned Puerto Rican girl who lived with her grandparents from the age of 13. My father, on the other hand, as the second oldest male in a family of eight children and a widowed mother, had to quit On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 2 school in fourth grade to work on a farm in the small mountain town of Peñuelas to help with expenses. The other idea, one that competed with meritocracy, began developing when I was a young adult, and it conflicted directly with the first. It can best be expressed in this way: the system is rigged because the odds are stacked against people of certain social, racial, economic, cultural, linguistic, and other backgrounds and there’s little that can be done to change this situation. Though meritocracy seemed to have worked for me, I soon learned that for every person like me who was able to succeed in school despite the odds, most did not. I had only to look around at my own family and community to see the truth of this idea. Many of my cousins who lived in the same immigrant community as we did were victims of poor schooling. With meager formal schooling and even less in the way of the social and cultural capital deemed necessary for success, some dropped out of school and, even if they were lucky enough to graduate, they had little chance for a future better than that of their parents. Later, as a teacher of African American and Puerto Rican children living in poverty in public schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx, I saw inequality played out even more starkly. Though many of my students had great promise, they struggled in school as in life. No matter how hard they worked, success for them was elusive. At first, the idea of a rigged system made me uneasy as it challenged everything I had been led to believe. But soon the evidence was overwhelming and hard to repudiate. Though my belief in meritocracy was based on what I had learned over the years from the “official curriculum,” the reality of injustice in education is what I had seen in the lives and experiences of those close to me and, later, in my teaching and research. How to reconcile them? I’ve spent my professional life – whether teaching, mentoring, researching, or writing – trying to make sense of these conflicting beliefs. I’ve been on a quest to learn how to teach and write about them with some sense of integrity, with neither an unrealistic Pollyanna-ish optimism nor a doomsday negativism. In other words, I’ve wanted to figure out how to be truthful but hopeful. I haven’t wanted to parrot the old clichés I learned as a child because I’ve learned that it doesn’t just take hard work and determination. Nor does it take just “grit,” the current fashionable term to suggest that if young people have enough determination and “stick-to-itiveness” they’ll succeed. But I’ve learned that many times – too many – it takes having been born into a family of means that provides their children the socially sanctioned cultural capital. Knowing “the right people” who can open doors for them, just plain good luck and, often, a combination of all these things gives young people a great advantage. Yet, I knew that if I presented this idea to my young students or later when I became a teacher educator, to prospective teachers, it might diminish their hope and determination to succeed (I addressed these questions, and many more, in my memoir: Nieto, 2015). On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 3 In this essay, I address what this quest has meant for my teaching, research, and writing. I present two major lessons I’ve learned: one, being humble about what we know and do is essential if we want to collaborate with, and learn from, those who are most impacted by injustice in education, that is, students, their families, and teachers; and two, education is a political endeavor. Collaboration and Humility: Learning From Families and Other Educators I have come to believe that our work should not be a closely guarded secret, something to which we alone have access. Instead, I now know that our work is most powerful when it is done in the service of the common good. After all, what is the purpose of research in particular, and education in general, if not to improve the human condition? Unfortunately, however, hubris is not unknown among university professors. Nevertheless, all educators, perhaps especially academics, need to develop humility. Given our preparation and the privileged place we hold in society, a sense of humility is sometimes difficult to achieve. After all, as academics, we’ve been taught to believe that what we say and do are significant, that because we are highly educated what we say, write, and believe are sacrosanct, and that because our research is “scientific” it is beyond reproach. Academics sometimes forget that our work can have real consequences for families, students, and other educators. Given my own upbringing and experience teaching children of color living in poverty, I feel fortunate to have learned from them and their families, and later as a teacher educator, from the teachers I’ve been honored to teach. Because my parents were in many ways similar to the families of the children I taught, I was more able than others to talk with and learn from them (of course, this doesn’t mean that I didn’t have an awful lot to learn). As an intermediate and elementary school teacher, I made home visits and I invited parents to my classroom. I tried to speak respectfully with family members, remembering how my own mother felt embarrassed and out of place when she came to Open School Nights at the schools I attended. Later, my first job after completing my doctoral degree was at the Massachusetts Department of Education where I worked as a parent organizer and advocate for language minority students. I did workshops on the rights of immigrant parents and I helped organize parent advocacy conferences throughout the state of Massachusetts. These experiences gave me a profound sense of appreciation for families that are frequently invisible in our classrooms. Later, as a teacher educator, in my research I tried to take into account the thoughts, words, and experiences of young people and teachers. Because I was critical of how diversity was often represented in professional development for teachers, in my first book, Affirming Diversity (1992), I wanted to represent students of diverse backgrounds in realistic ways, not the stereotypical ways in which they were often depicted. In thinking about how to counter this trend in my book, I remember a crucial conversation I had with my friend David Bloome, a colleague at the University of Massachusetts at the time (now at OSU). David, though younger than I and who held the rank of assistant professor while I was an associate professor, was nonetheless a great mentor to me. I shared with him the idea of creating case studies of young people of diverse backgrounds for the book. He gave me advice through each step of the research process, also suggesting that I invite my graduate students to do some of …being humble about what we know and do is essential if we want to collaborate with, and learn from, those who are most impacted by injustice in education… On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 4 the interviews. Doing so would not only help me with the research, but would also be a great experience for them as developing scholars. He also suggested I meet with them weekly to review the interviews and the case studies as I crafted them. His advice proved invaluable in helping me design the case studies, which subsequently became the most significant and popular part of that book. In a similar vein, I learned a lot from my graduate students when working on my second book, The Light in Their Eyes (1999), a volume written for James Banks’s Multicultural Education Series (Teachers College Press). I was well into the writing of the book when I decided to ask a couple of my graduate students for feedback. I gave the draft to Mary Ginley, at the time a second-grade teacher, and Ann Scott, who was directing a program for older women returning to school at a local community college. Because Ann had liked the anecdotes and actual classroom events I had included in the draft, she encouraged me to add more of them. And because Mary knew that I often asked my students to keep journals for my courses, she suggested that I ask some of them if I could use excerpts from their journals throughout the text. These two recommendations made the text come alive in a way it hadn’t before, for which I owe Ann and Mary my great gratitude. After my experience with The Light in Their Eyes, I’ve always attempted to include the work of teachers in my research and writing. In one case, I collaborated with a group of high school teachers from Boston public schools to explore the question “What keeps teachers going?” a question I had been thinking about for a long time. After our year of meeting and thinking and writing together, I asked if they wanted to publish a book based on our work, and they all enthusiastically agreed. The result was What Keeps Teachers Going? (2003). Though I was the primary author, I included as data excerpts from the teachers’ writing as well as transcripts from the audiotapes we had recorded at each meeting. After the book was published, we shared the royalties equally. Though profits from most book projects don’t add up to much, sharing royalties is a concrete way of demonstrating respect and admiration for the teachers who allowed me to use their/our work. In a subsequent book, I asked teachers who had been my students or with whom I had worked to write essays about why they had chosen education as a profession (Why We Teach, 2005). The essays, written mainly by veteran teachers, but including a few novices, turned out to be a popular book that was later used in many foundations of education courses for new teachers. I should also mention that my friends Ursula Casanova and David Berliner (one of the editors of the Acquired Wisdom series) invited me to spend a few weeks of my sabbatical in 2004 at their home so that I could work on the manuscript. It was there that I wrote the first three chapters of the book. Given the monumental changes in teaching during merely one decade, I decided to do a sequel (Why We Teach Now (2015), this time reaching out to fellow On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 5 teacher educators around the country, asking them to nominate teachers who could write with both experience and a critical perspective about what was happening in the profession. In another case, and because of the tremendous demographic changes in U.S. classrooms, I asked teacher education colleagues to recommend teachers who were successful in teaching a diverse population so that I could interview them for a new book I had in mind (later published as Finding Joy in Teaching Students of Diverse Backgrounds, 2013). Working with teachers and giving them a venue for reflecting on and writing about their practice not only helped clarify my goal to make authentic teacher voices available to readers, but also the teachers frequently told me that collaborating on these projects helped them reflect more critically on their practice. In the latter three books, given that the number of teachers was large and sharing royalties would have been unwieldy for the publisher, I simply sent each teacher a check and a couple of copies of the books, a small token of my great appreciation. Developing and sustaining a sense of humility in the academy is not always easy. As scholars, we’ve been apprenticed to think of our work as a completely individual achievement and to guard it jealously; we’ve also been rewarded for doing so. I’m sure I’ve sometimes fallen into this trap as well but I’ve always tried to acknowledge the work and participation of others in my own efforts. It’s the least I could do and one of the greatest lessons I can pass on to younger scholars. Education is Political Shortly after I became a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts, I was introduced to Paulo Freire, both to his writings and to him personally as he was a visiting scholar on campus for a month for several years in the early 1980s. Though his ideas are significant and sometimes challenging to understand, they are also quite simple and profound. For example, his oft-repeated statement that “education is always political” made a deep impression on me, and it has influenced my thinking to this day. By “political,” he meant to emphasize that all decisions about educational policies and practices, both large and small, are about power, who has it, how it’s used, and for what purposes. Years later, after he died in 1997, I edited a book of teachers’ reflections on the significance of his work on their ideas about education and on their teaching practices (Nieto, 2008). I always knew that education was political but I couldn’t quite put it into words until I heard Freire say it. I had never thought of myself as either having power or as an “educational decision-maker, ” but this idea made me realize that I had in fact made countless decisions about curriculum, instruction, outreach to families, testing, and many other practices in my own classroom. Later, as a teacher educator, researcher, and writer, this idea was reflected in everything I did. Below, I give some examples of how the political nature of education has echoed throughout my work. Teaching In thinking back about how the decisions I made as a teacher and, later as a teacher educator, had reflected my ideology and values, I realized that I had taken to heart the “education is political” idea even before I first heard it articulated. As a classroom teacher, for instance, I felt constricted by the basal readers my students were forced to read so I made a deal with them: sometimes, they would still have to read their basals, but I introduced an individualized reading program so that they I’ve always tried to acknowledge the work and participation of others in my own efforts. It’s the least I could do and one of the greatest lessons I can pass on to younger scholars. On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 6 could also select books that were of greater interest to them. I became a scavenger, on the hunt for children’s books of all types and for all interests wherever I could find them. Some of these books were discarded by other teachers or libraries; others I found at sales or on the street. Years later, I realized that this was a political decision because it took into account what they wanted to learn and it gave them more power in their choices. I also decided to visit my students’ apartments not because it was a school mandate but because I wanted to know more about them so that I could become a better teacher. Those visits became a significant way for me to understand my students’ lives and helped me appreciate, more than ever, the families’ hopes and dreams for their children. I also worked hard to adapt the grade-level curriculum, attempting to make it more relevant to my students’ lives. I remember working on a unit with my fourth-grade students on the theme of “community,” a typical theme for that grade. Unlike other such units featuring fictional communities that had little to do with their lives, our unit was grounded in their reality. We made a large map of the neighborhood that took the entire back bulletin board, with the school at the center. Using that map, they traced their steps to school, the bodega, the local park, the public library, the doctor’s office, and other places they knew. It was exciting for them to see their lives visually represented on a map. Though it might seem an inconsequential activity, this unit proved to be one of their most meaningful during that year. I started my higher education profession at Brooklyn College. There, I was teaching in a bilingual teacher education program co-sponsored by the School of Education and the Department of Puerto Rican Studies, where I was based. I found that my students, most of whom were Puerto Ricans from working-class families, had little problem understanding that the public education system was unfair. Most of them had, in fact, experienced that system firsthand. They also understood, for the most part, that education, even if unfair, offered one of the only opportunities for their future students to have a consequential life. When I planned my courses for this group of students, I did so with the knowledge that many of them understood, on a visceral level, how the education they received had been inequitable. I selected my readings accordingly, and I created learning experiences with this population in mind. But I also recognized that my responsibility as a teacher and mentor was twofold: to provide the facts they needed to better understand their experiences, while at the same time encouraging them to be critical of their own perceptions and beliefs. While I wanted them to learn from their own experiences, I also hoped they would think beyond their own understandings and keep an open mind about other ideas. Later, as a teacher educator at the University of Massachusetts, I had to tread more lightly. There, as in most teacher preparation programs around the nation, the majority of preservice students were middle- class White, monolingual English speaking young women. The practicing teachers I taught there had similar backgrounds. They taught children of color living primarily in poverty, but their own experiences were generally vastly different. For the most part, they too believed that education was the best opportunity for their students but unlike prospective and practicing teachers who knew firsthand what a rigged system was like, they had swallowed the idea of meritocracy. Given how ubiquitous this As a classroom teacher and teacher educator, I learned that my job was not to fill students’ heads with my ideas, but rather to help them see reality from other than their own limited experiences and biases, and to come to their own conclusions. On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 7 myth is, it was sometimes difficult for them to believe otherwise. Consequently, I prepared my syllabi with as much information and data as I could. I also used primary and other significant sources and made certain that the readings I assigned contained information that was new for them and that also presented differing and sometimes contrary points of view. I did the same with the assignments I gave, whether they were experiential or more academic, and I followed up with in-class activities that would challenge their ideas and encourage them to think critically. (I included some of these strategies and resources in the pedagogical elements and appendices in Affirming Diversity, The Light in Their Eyes, and later, in Language, Culture, and Teaching (2002, 2010, and forthcoming, 2018), a book of previously published book chapters and journal articles). As a classroom teacher and teacher educator, I learned that my job was not to fill students’ heads with my ideas, but rather to help them see reality from other than their own limited experiences and biases, and to come to their own conclusions. As such, I relied on readings, discussions, and other activities that would open both their minds and their hearts. I continued to teach in this way until my retirement in 2006. Research and Writing The myth of meritocracy and the political nature of education were two ideas that have had a profound impact on other aspects of my academic life too, especially on my research and writing. For example, they forced me to ask questions such as: What kind of research should I do? Why? What should I write about? How do I go about creating bibliographies for my research? What research should I include in my literature reviews? I address some of these questions below, along with the decisions I’ve come to. What Kind of Research, and About Whom? Given my experience as a graduate student and the research with which I had engaged, it was fairly easy for me to decide that qualitative research was, in general, how I should focus my work. Ethnography was a perfect fit for the kind of research I wanted to do. More specifically, case studies and narrative research were both particularly suited to my research as well as to my personal inclinations. As I’ve mentioned previously, for my first sole-authored book, Affirming Diversity (1992), I selected case studies as a good way to represent interviews with students of diverse backgrounds. Even selecting the kinds of students we wanted to interview took careful thinking. Until that time, and given the historic roots of multicultural education, the general assumption had been that teaching with a multicultural perspective was most appropriate for students of color. Thus, there was a general understanding that such a perspective would be especially helpful for teachers of African American, Hispanic, Indigenous, and Asian students. In general, I agreed with the assumption that because these were the students who were most neglected (and still are) in our schools, they should be the primary focus of our work. But I also wanted to re-orient this thinking because I had come to believe that diversity was broader than just about students of color. As a result, in deciding the kind of ethnic representation I wanted in the book, I included not only the “usual suspects” in the case studies, but also added a White, biracial, and Arab American student, who at the time were rarely included in texts on multicultural education. Affirming Diversity became a popular text since its first edition, usually being among the top one or two in the field. In 2015, it was even selected by the Museum of Education as one of the 100 books “that helped define the field of education in the 20th century.” I believe that using case studies has been a major reason for its success. But the book has not only addressed issues of diversity; it has also steered clear of the simplistic view that “celebrating diversity” was enough to make On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 8 education equitable. Instead, it has focused on the sociopolitical context of education, that is, on the social, economic, historic, and political forces that also shape how education is done in our society. Affirming Diversity was responsible for catapulting my career in a way I could not have previously imagined. The fact that I have received many awards including eight honorary doctorates in the intervening years is, I believe, due in no small measure to the success of that first book. It also illustrates in stark terms the conundrum I’ve tried to address in this essay, that is, that a person whose background would make such success unlikely is what some might point to as proof positive that meritocracy exists. Yet I know that, in my case, certain conditions existed along my journey that made such success possible, including a strong family, a father who despite his meager education was able to provide for his family at a time when a strong back was more important than a formal education, teachers and, later, supervisors who were my mentors along the way, and no small number of serendipitous opportunities not available to others of my station. A few years after the first edition of Affirming Diversity was published, it was around 1995, I was speaking at a conference in St. Paul, Minnesota. After my talk, a woman approached me to thank me for including LGBT issues in my definition of diversity, something that had not been the case in most discussions of multicultural education until that time. I was feeling pretty self-satisfied until she opened the book to a specific page, saying, “Here’s the page where you mention us. Would you sign this page for me?” I felt embarrassed and ashamed, but I took this as a sign that I had to do a lot more to make it clear that diversity was not just about race and ethnicity. In fact, I had addressed numerous other differences in the book, including gender, social class, language, and immigrant status, but I hadn’t really said much about LGBT issues or homophobia. As a result of that experience with the woman in St. Paul, I decided to include a case study of a lesbian student; after that point, and especially after Patty Bode joined me as co-author for the fifth and subsequent editions (2008, 2012, and forthcoming, 2018), LGBT issues have had a much more visible presence in the book. It wasn’t only the kind of research that I decided upon when I started my academic career; it was also who would be the subjects of my research. Young people were, and continue to be, my main concern. But through my work with teachers, primarily in my teaching, it became clear to me that they too had to be central to my research and writing. Like students, teachers have little control over their work, or in education policy generally. That’s why after my second book, The Light in Their Eyes (2000) was published, I started focusing more of my research on teachers not only in my books but also in my journal articles and book chapters. All of my subsequent books and many of my journal articles have featured teachers prominently. On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 9 Just as it is important to highlight young people in writing and research, I also believe that teachers deserve to be visible in discussions of educational practice and policy. For example, because teachers rarely get credit for their work even in research in which they’ve been involved, I’ve always asked if they wanted their real names used in my publications (in all but one case, they have readily agreed). I’ve also attempted to use teachers’ real words whenever possible rather than just paraphrase their ideas. When I’ve used students’ words in my books, for instance in the case studies and “snapshots” in Affirming Diversity, Patty and I have made sure that they have at least received copies of the book and a small payment. When their artwork has been used – a terrific feature that Patty started in the fifth edition – they have been directly acknowledged. Venues for Publishing Research Where to publish is also a political decision. Of course, as a new author, I was thrilled to have my work accepted anywhere. It was only later that I could be more selective. Like most academics, I’ve had my share of rejections and, I have to admit, it hurts to be rejected. But after taking a few days to get over it, I’ve gone back to see why a particular article was rejected and I’ve usually found most reviewers’ comments both generous and helpful (but, sadly, some wrote arrogant and snide comments). Although a few of my journal articles were rejected, the same was not true of either my book manuscripts or chapters for other authors’ books. In fact, after Affirming Diversity was first published, my book proposals were always accepted. I guess the lesson is that if you have a successful book, publishers are happy to consider your new potential projects. This has certainly been the case with me. Most of the publishers with whom I’ve chosen to work have become confidants and friends. I’ve grown close to Brian Ellerbeck and Carole Saltz, my editor at Teachers College Press (TCP) and the Director of the Press, respectively. We have shared many meals, family stories, heartaches, and triumphs over the years, and they've become real friends. After The Light in Their Eyes, TCP has published three more of my books. Naomi Silverman, my first editor for Affirming Diversity, was at Longman when we met and was a wonderful friend and great supporter of my initial ideas for the book. Because of our friendship, years after the first edition of this book was published, she asked me to consider being a series editor for Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (LEA), her publishing company at the time, later acquired by Routledge (a subsidiary of Taylor and Francis). We thought together about a title and theme for the series and we came up with Language, Culture, and Teaching, with the first volumes published at the beginning of the 21st century. There are currently over 25 titles in the series. One my proudest professional achievements is that I have been able to help these books see the light of day. Selecting and Creating Bibliographies The first edition of Affirming Diversity (1992) was, until that time, my most serious attempt to confront the challenge of researching and writing about the myth of meritocracy and the reality of inequality. One way I did this was through the research I cited. I crafted my bibliographies carefully, thinking about both well-known researchers in the field, as well as those who weren’t as well known but who were doing important The best we can do is to be truthful about the limits of meritocracy, especially for disenfranchised communities, and to do what we can to advocate for those communities through our teaching, research, and writing. On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 10 work. I used references to make my arguments and also to provide readers with research and information about which they might not be familiar. I also saw this as a political commitment to developing the field, and to opening the door for like- minded scholars and other scholars of color who might not have the visibility I had. I came to realize that selecting and citing a bibliography is really a political act, not simply one of discovering some “neutral” research and authors. I used sources that supported my own ideas, but I also used work by researchers whose ideas differed from my own. It was a great way to improve my arguments and also to learn about the ideas of others. I would encourage all young scholars to do the same; like me, they might end up changing their ideas, or at least adapting them slightly. After all, continuing to learn and refine one’s thinking and actions is what education should be about. Likewise, creating literature reviews is a political act. A good number of academics have told me that they’ve used my work, particularly Affirming Diversity, as a model to follow in teaching their doctoral students to write literature reviews. Though I didn’t necessarily intend it for this purpose, I’m pleased that others have found it helpful as they’ve honed their own research skills. Final Thoughts Throughout my career, trying to reconcile hope in the promise of education with the harsh reality of inequality has been one of my greatest challenges. I have to admit that I’ve not always succeeded at doing this. I have come to the conclusion that meritocracy, though a beautiful idea, is flawed, sometimes even dangerous, in raising the expectation that everyone has an equal chance in life. A level playing field is a cruel joke played on those without the resources to make it happen. I’ve decided that these two ideas can never be truly reconciled. The best we can do is to be truthful about the limits of meritocracy, especially for disenfranchised communities, and to do what we can to advocate for those communities through our teaching, research, and writing. At the same time, while we have to be honest in our teaching and research, it does not mean that we should give in to hopelessness. This balance is what I’ve tried to achieve in my teaching and research. It is my hope that I have been successful in doing so. References Nieto, S. (1992, 1st ed). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education (New York: Longman). Subsequent editions were published by Allyn & Bacon and, later, Pearson. The 5th to 7th editions (2008, 2012, and forthcoming, 2018) have been co-authored with Patty Bode. Nieto, S. (1994). Lessons from students on creating a chance to dream. Harvard Educational Review, 64(4), 392 - 426. On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 11 Nieto, S. (1999). The light in their eyes: Creating multicultural learning communities. New York: Teachers College Press (10th anniversary edition, 2010). Nieto, S. (2002). Language, culture, and teaching. New York: Teachers College Press. Subsequent editions, 2010 and 2018. Nieto, S. (2003). What keeps teachers going? New York: Teachers College Press. Nieto, S. (2005). Why we teach. New York: Teachers College Press. Nieto, S. (Ed.) (2008). Dear Paulo: Letters from those who dare teach. New York: Routledge. (Originally published by Paradigm). Nieto, S. (2013). Finding joy in teaching students of diverse backgrounds: Culturally responsive and socially just practices in U.S. classrooms. Portland, ME: Heinemann. Nieto, S. (2015). Brooklyn dreams: My life in public education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press). Nieto, S. (Ed.) (2015). Why we teach now. New York: Teachers College Press. On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 12 About Acquired Wisdom This collection began with an invitation to one of the editors, Sigmund Tobias, from Norman Shapiro a former colleague at the City College of New York (CCNY). Shapiro invited retired CCNY faculty members to prepare manuscripts describing what they learned during their College careers that could be of value to new appointees and former colleagues. It seemed to us that a project describing the experiences of internationally known and distinguished researchers in Educational Psychology and Educational Research would be of benefit to many colleagues, especially younger ones entering those disciplines. We decided to include senior scholars in the fields of adult learning and training because , although often neglected by educational researchers, their work is quite relevant to our fields and graduate students could find productive and gainful positions in that area. Junior faculty and grad students in Educational Psychology, Educational Research, and related disciplines, could learn much from the experiences of senior researchers. Doctoral students are exposed to courses or seminars about history of the discipline as well as the field’s overarching purposes and its important contributors. . A second audience for this project include the practitioners and researchers in disciplines represented by the chapter authors. This audience could learn from the experiences of eminent researchers—how their experiences shaped their work, and what they see as their major contributions— and readers might relate their own work to that of the scholars. Authors were advised that they were free to organize their chapters as they saw fit, provided that their manuscripts contained these elements: 1) their perceived major contributions to the discipline, 2) major lessons learned during their careers, 3) their opinions about the personal and 4) situational factors (institutions and other affiliations, colleagues, advisors, and advisees) that stimulated their significant work. We hope that the contributions of distinguished researchers receive the wide readership they deserve and serves as a resource to the future practitioners and researchers in these fields. On Reconciling Divergent Ideas 13 Acquired Wisdom is Edited by Sigmund Tobias J. D. Fletcher David C. Berliner University at Albany Institute for Defense Analyses Arizona State University State University of New York Alexandria VA Tempe AZ Advisory Board Members Gustavo Fischman, Arizona State University Arthur C. Graesser III, Memphis State University Teresa l. McCarty, University of California Los Angeles Kevin Welner, Colorado State University Education Review/Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas is supported by the edXchange initiative’s Scholarly Communications Group at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review. Readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and Education Review, it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. 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