Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften Controlling Our Children: Hegemony and Deconstructing the Positive Behavioral Intervention Support Model

Controlling Our Children: Hegemony and Deconstructing the Positive Behavioral Intervention Support Model represents the first steps in a protest movement. It is a microscopic look into a system that educators take for granted as a positive force for children. In a thorough and detailed fashion, Thomas David Knestrict deconstructs the troubling history, development, and eventual embrace of a ubiquitous system of control that our public schools and government now mandate for use. Knestrict uses a powerful social justice lens to reconstruct the framework of a more responsive and just system of supports that result in autonomy, not scripted control. Controlling Our Children is perfect for pre-service teachers learning how to manage a classroom that fosters autonomy and an internal locus of control. It is also a perfect book for a graduate-level course in discipline discourse or disability studies. This book is for anyone who is at all worried about imposed systems of control that hinder the development of free will, freedom of choice, and personal autonomy in an age of false news, political manipulation, and control. Review " Controlling Our Children provides a critical analysis of our current educational system with regard to how to best meet the needs of all students in a socially just way. By disrupting the hegemonic discourse on behavioral interventions, and the related aspects of control, Thomas David Knestrict interrogates an accepted and ubiquitous system to ask the difficult questions about how we are helping and hurting students. Not one to shy away from challenging the status quo, Knestrict takes the important subsequent step of providing hope by offering more socially just alternatives. This is an essential read for anyone working in--and with--schools today and should be a required text for all pre-service and in-service teachers." --Laney Bender-Slack, Xavier University "This is the right text at the right time as the pendulum is shifting in public education to where there is a realization that social emotional skills training and development is relevant and important. Moving beyond testing culture and building classrooms that are formative and focused on more than control, Thomas David Knestrict makes a convincing argument that we must equip students to think creatively and build autonomy." --Trevor Dunlap, Executive Director of the Nuhop Center for Experiential Learning About the Author Thomas David Knestrict received his Ed.D. in 2000 from the University of Cincinnati and has been an associate professor in the School of Education at Xavier University for 15 years. Prior to that he was a special educator for 15 years in Ohio. He has received several awards for his teaching, including teacher of the year at Xavier University in 2013. Knestrict is a highly published author in the areas of behavioral interventions and parenting of special needs children. He has also produced several education films dealing with these subjects including the documentary Welcome to Holland.