Titled "What Kind of Place Is Secondary School?," the article was written by associate professor Craig Vivian and assistant professor Monie Hayes.

The Educational Forum is published quarterly by Kappa Delta Pi, the international education honor society. It solicits manuscripts that challenge existing ideological and theoretical boundaries on national and international educational issues in order to stimulate dialogue for transforming ideas about education.

Hayes explained that the article, originally suggested by Vivian, turned into a collaboration that articulated "some of our aims for the education program at Monmouth College." She said it followed a line of interdepartmental conversations about retooling the program’s conceptual framework and the ambition that MC graduates will be agents of positive change in the school communities they enter.

"More specifically, the article is an interrogation of assumptions of elementary schools as private spaces and secondary schools as public spaces," said Hayes, who called that contrast "the neighborhood vs. the agora."

She continued, "In particular, if public spaces are ostensibly beneficial as marketplaces of ideas and are thus apt scenes for intellectual growth, why do theory and research in school settings suggest that such interpersonal-institutional settings are in fact discursive scenes that work against sharing and exploration through their witnessed nature?"

Vivian and Hayes suggest that posing such questions to Monmouth College’s secondary school teaching candidates will support them in working to establish classroom environments in which adolescents "feel free to take risks as they explore new concepts with one another."

The pair is planning another article that discusses the metaphors people use for teaching and the beliefs they reveal. One example, said Hayes, is the teacher as a symphony conductor, as teachers and conductors both work with individuals with a variety of talents who are using a common text.