T. Philip Nichols

Funding provided by:
The National Academy of Education
The Spencer Foundation

Making “Innovation”: Literacy and Technoscience in Urban Public School Reform

A social history of "innovation" in urban public school reform - and its impacts on literacy education. Pairing archival and ethnographic research, the study traces changing meanings of "innovation" - from its rise in Cold War science and political economy to its present associations with STEM and entrepreneurship - and maps how these shifts inflect the spatial, technological, and instructional order of "innovative" learning design. I ground this history in Philadelphia public schools, from the founding of a district Innovation Office in the mid-1960s to the present, where I conducted a 9-month ethnography of The Innovation School - a non-selective high school organized around making and design thinking. Following the school's first cohort as it navigated the asynchronous, project-based literacy curriculum, the study shows how the braided histories of "innovation" exert competing pressures when grafted onto formal learning environments, and explores how students and teachers reconciled these demands with their own purposes for literacy learning. In this way, the study wrests "innovation" from elite experts and policymakers and relocates it in the lived dynamics of classroom praxis.

BOOKS

Nichols, T.P. (2022). Building the Innovation School: Infrastructures for equity in today’s classrooms. Teachers College Press.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Nichols, T.P., Maton, R., & Simon, E. (2023). Opposing innovations: Race and reform in the West Philadelphia Community Free School, 1970-1977. History of Education Quarterly.

Ferguson, D.E., & Nichols, T.P. (2021). Schools sites and the haunting of history: Unmasking the past in field-based research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2021.1942301.

Nichols, T.P. (2021). Innovating from the ground up. Educational Leadership, 33-37.

Stornaiuolo, A., & Nichols, T.P. (2020). Makerspaces in K-12 schools: Six key tensions. In J. Rowsell, & C. McLean (Eds.), Making futures: Maker literacies and maker identities in the digital age. New York: Routledge.

Nichols, T.P. (2020). Innovation from below: Infrastructure, design, and equity in literacy classroom makerspaces. Research in the Teaching of English, 55(1), 56-81.

Salisbury, K., & Nichols, T.P. (2020). School makerspaces: Beyond the hype. Phi Delta Kappan, 101(8), 49-53.

Nichols, T.P., & Coleman, J.J. (2020). Feeling classroom worlds: Affective imaginaries and the making of “democratic” literacy classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly. DOI: 10/1002/rrq.305.

Maton, R., & Nichols, T.P. (2020). Mobilizing public alternative schools for post-neoliberal futures: Legacies of critical hope in Philadelphia and Toronto. Policy Futures in Education, 18(1), 159-178.

Nichols, T.P., & O’Sullivan, B. (2020). A cosmopolitics for the English classroom. In K. Lenters & M. McDermott (Eds.)., Affect, embodiment, and place in critical literacy: Assembling theory and practice. New York: Routledge.

Nichols, T.P., McGeehan, C^., & Reed III, S.A^. (2019). Composing proximity: Teaching strategic distance to high school writers English Journal, 108(3), 67-73.

Nichols, T.P., & Lui, D. (2019). Learning by doing: The tenuous alliance of the Maker Movement and education reform. In J. Huntsinger, & A. Schrock (Eds.), Making our world: The hacker and maker movements in context. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Stornaiuolo, A., & Nichols, T.P., & Vasudevan, V. (2018). Mapping the emergence of a literacy makerspace. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 17(4), 357-370.

Stornaiuolo, A., & Nichols, T.P. (2018). Making publics: Mobilizing audiences in high school makerspaces. Teachers College Record, 120(8), 1-38.

Maton, R., & Nichols, T.P. (2017). Tracing tensions in humanization and market-based ideals: Philadelphia alternative education in past and present. In N. Bascia, M. Levin, & E. Fine (Eds.), Alternative schooling and student engagement: Democracy within bureaucracy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

Nichols, T.P., Maton, R., & Simon, E. (2023). Opposing innovations: Race and reform in the West Philadelphia Community Free School, 1969-1978. History of Education Quarterly HEQ&A Podcast. Retrieved from: https://soundcloud.com/heqanda/opposing-innovations.

Nichols, T.P. (2021). We don’t need no “innovation.” Logic Magazine. www.logicmag.io.

Nichols, T.P. (2013). Go ahead, mess with Texas Instruments. The Atlantic. Retrieved from: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/go-ahead-mess-with-texas- instruments/278899/

Funding provided by:
The Institute of Education Sciences (IES)

Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL)

The Center on Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning (C-SAIL) examines how college- and career-readiness standards are being implemented within and across states and districts - and what innovations in instruction, technology, and data-use are supporting teachers, administrators, and officials in meeting the needs of diverse learners. Goals of the larger study include: comparing standards implementation in English language arts and math across states; tracing diverse approaches to implementation in states, districts, schools, and classrooms; examining shifts in policies for English language learners and students with disability within the present wave of standards-based reform; and engaging policymakers, researchers, and practitioners in local and national discussions about the Center's work and findings. For the first two years of the study, Phil oversaw the project's partnership with Massachusetts; conducted interviews related to state and district protocols for assessment, professional development, curriculum, communication, and outreach; and contributed to cross-state analysis and report writing. He remains an affiliated researcher with the project, studying how policies related to technology, data, and English language arts circulate within and across states, districts, and schools.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Lentz, A., Desimone, L., Stornaiuolo, A., Pak, K., Flores, N., Nichols, T.P., Polikoff, M., & Porter, A. (2024). Changes that stick: Sustainable change in schools and districts is possible. Phi Delta Kappan, 105(6), 8-11.

Polikoff, M.S., Desimone, L.M., Porter, A.C., Garet, M.S., Stornaiuolo, A., Pak, K., Flores, N., Smith, T.M., Song, M., Fuchs, L.S., Fuchs, D., & Nichols, T.P. (2022). The enduring struggle of standards-based reform: Lessons for a national center on college- and career-ready standards. Annenberg Institute and Brown University EdWorkingPapers, 22-622. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.26300/00ev-gk28.

Nichols, T.P., Desimone, L., & Edgerton, A. (2021). “Smart power” in standards implementation after No Child Left Behind. American Journal of Education, 128(1), 1-23.

Desimone, L., Stornaiuolo, A., Flores, N., Edgerton, A., Pak, K., Nichols, T.P., Plummer, E., & Porter, A. (2019). Successes and the challenges of the “new” college and career readiness standards: Seven implementation trends. Educational Researcher, 48(3), 167-178.

Nichols, T.P., Plummer, E., Flores, N., Pak., K., Stornaiuolo, A., & Desimone, L. (2017). Year 1 state report: Massachusetts. Philadelphia, PA: The Center for Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning. Accessible at: www.c-sail.org.

Flores, N., Nichols, T.P., Pak., K., Plummer, E., Stornaiuolo, A., & Desimone, L. (2017). Year 1 state report: Texas. Philadelphia, PA: The Center for Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning. Accessible at: www.c-sail.org

Edgerton, A., Flores, N., Nichols, T.P., Plummer, E., Pak., K., Stornaiuolo, A., & Desimone, L. (2017). Year 1 state report: California. Philadelphia, PA: The Center for Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning. Accessible at: www.c-sail.org.

Stornaiuolo, A., Flores, N., Nichols, T.P., Pak., K., Plummer, E., & Desimone, L. (2017). Year 1 state report: Ohio. Philadelphia, PA: The Center for Standards, Alignment, Instruction, and Learning. Accessible at: www.c-sail.org