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January 2015 Vol. 52 No. 5

Larson (Univ. of Rochester) effectively and conclusively enlightens policy makers, professors, school administrators, educational scholars, researchers, and graduate students of school administration on why the US needs to start over in education; she proffers a new foundation and framework for that beginning.  The path to reform lies in the thinking of the French theorist Jacques Rancière on radical equality, coupled with theories about knowledge production, equipotential participation, and mass collaboration.  Larson grounds a new ontological and epistemological paradigm for a reformed educational system and argues that the purpose of schooling should be to “facilitate human learning, meaning making, and knowledge production toward just and equitable education for all.”  Larson then articulates the curricular, instructional, and assessment principles for that needed change.  This is a must read for anyone desiring a radical change in the current education system predicated on a democratic view of education and a more humanistic vision for learning. 

--H. J. Bultinck, Northeastern Illinois University

Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduate students, and above.