Educational Pluralism and Democracy: A Conversation with Ashley Berner
Date: October 30, 2024
Time: 3:30pm - 4:30pm ET
Location: Zoom
Are you concerned about the increasing polarization that characterizes democracies? Tired of the culture wars?
Our ability to have constructive conversations across lines of disagreement seems increasingly rare. How can we rebuild a conversation toward a hopeful future? What role might our education systems have to play in that conversation?
Join us as Ashley Rogers Berner explores these questions and offers concrete solutions for K-12 educators, policymakers, and researchers alike to consider. Drawing from her recently published book, Educational Pluralism and Democracy: How to Handle Indoctrination, Promote Exposure, and Rebuild America’s Schools, Ashley will join Cardus Education for a conversation on how best to prepare the next generation for democratic society.
Ashley Berner
Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and Associate Professor of Education
Ashley Berner is Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and Associate Professor of Education. She served previously as the Deputy Director of the CUNY Institute for Education Policy and as an administrator at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia. Palgrave MacMillan released Pluralism and American Public Education: No One Way to School (2017), and Harvard Education Press will publish her next book, Educational Pluralism and American Democracy: Exposure versus Indoctrination, in early 2024.
Dr. Berner has published articles, book chapters, and op-eds on citizenship formation, academic outcomes, pluralism, and the political theories of education in different national contexts. She led the design of the Institute’s School Culture 360™ and ELA and Social Studies Knowledge Maps™. Her teaching experience took place in a Jewish pre-school, an Episcopal secondary school, and an open university in Louisiana; she currently advises doctoral students at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Berner represents the Institute’s work across the United States and consults regularly with international, federal, and state-level agencies, non-governmental organizations, and school systems. She held a five-year fellowship at the Center for the Study of Law & Religion at Emory University School of Law and currently serves as an advisor to the Educating for American Democracy project, the Johns Hopkins Undergraduate Debate Program, and CivXNow!’s Research and Best Practices Affinity Group, and holds a fellowship at the Mercatus Pluralism and Civil Exchange Program.
Dr. Berner holds degrees from Davidson College (Honors A.B.) and from Oxford University (M.Litt. and D.Phil. in Modern History).