Rachael Shapiro

So my goal here is to keep track of the ways in which the authors from my “Globalization, Democracy, Pedagogy” exam lay out particular claims/ideas related to 1) the goals or vision of education, 2) the role of, portrayal of, or vision for students and 3) the same for teachers. In this way I believe I’ll be able to note trends, reflect upon my own writing and practice, and construct informed critiques, while also preparing for some cross-disciplinary comparison.

Joe Kincheloe, The Critical Pedagogy Primer.

Goal/Vision for Education:

Do we want socially regulated workers with the proper attitudes for their respective rund on the workplace ladder? Or do we want empowered, learned, highly skilled democratic citizens who have the confidence and the savvy to improve their own lives and to make their communities more vibrant places in which to live, work, and play? If we are unable to articulate this transformative, just, and egalitarian critical pedagogical vision, then the job of schooling will continue to involve taming, controlling, and/or rescuing the least empowered of our students. Such students do not need to be tamed, controlled, and/or rescued; they need to be respected, viewed as experts in their interest areas, and inspired with the impassioned spirit to use education to do good things in the world. (8)

Knowing and learning are not simply intellectual and scholarly activities but also practical and sensuous activities infused by the impassioned spirit. Critical pedagogy is dedicated to addressing and embodying these affective, emotional, and lived dimensions of everyday life in a way that connects students to people in groups and as individuals. (11)

Conception of the Student/Image of the Teacher:

Critical teachers, therefore, must admit that they arein a position of authority and then demonstrate that authority in their actions in support of students. One of the actions involves the ability to conduct research/produce knowledge. The authority of the critical teacher is dialectical; as teachers relinquish the authority of truth providers, they assume the mature authority of facilitators of student inquiry and problem posing. In relation to such teacher authority, students gain their freedom–they gain the ability to become self-directed human beings capable of producing their own knowledge. (17)

Means:

• Power literacy 9-11
• Bricolage: The task of the bricoleur is to attack this multicultural complexity, uncovering both the visible and invisible artifacts of multiple forms of power, and documenting the nature of its influence on not only their own but on scholarship and knowledge production in general. In this process, bricoleurs

Michael Apple, et. al. Global Crisis, Social Justice, and Education. (Kindle Edition)

Goal/Vision for Education:

Paraphrased from Apple’s introductory framework at locations 420-431:

1. Bear witness to negativity-the relationship between education and domination
2. Locate spaces of contratiction, which make action possible (see loc 700 for politics of interruption)
3. change what “research” means- non-reformist reforms, thick descriptions
4. defend knowledges with socially just aims, “mutually pedagogic dialogues”
5. be both critical and supportive
6. Rhetoric! context, message, etc
7. Act in accordance with politics of recognition and redistribution
8. mentor/role model of critical community member
9. Use privileged position/voice/access

From Chapter Two: “New Literacies and New Rebellions in the Global Age”

…In many instances, practices of literacy and processes of schooling are functioning more and more as flows in important global networks and as a means by which workers add or learn to add value in economies driven in powerful ways by the generation, assessment, and application of new knowledge. (loc 694)

Conception of the Student/Image of the Teacher:

More generally, it is the case that students who use digital tools to participate in the pro-immigration movement–whether through digital storytelling or by using mobile phones or networked computers to disseminate information and rallied and walkouts–acquire and further develop aspects of the general intellect of technologically advanced socioeconomic systems and enlist this knowledge in a project that challenges these systems in part by exposing their dependence on the wages and unwaged labor of immigrant groups and other marginalized communities. In pursuing such strategies, then, immigrant students and other activists exploit key tensions in high-tech global capitalism so as to advance the causes of social justice. (1305-1309)

Means:

By examining the specifics of two interacting sets of transformations, we are much more able to think through the issues associated with a politics of interruption. That is, we can begin to point to ways in which the politics of globalization point to ways in which the politics of globalization might be altered at both the macro and micro levels. Overly general portraits of globalization–those that do not focus directly on the nuances and details of particular dynamics–make this more difficult. (697-702)

Nancy Welch, Living Room.

Goal/Vision for Education: She essentially argues that toward the goal of a greater democracy, through “living room.” She writes:

Of course, my hope in this book and in my teaching is that we can turn to twentieth-century mass social movements–movements that raised the demands of health care, housing, retirement pensions, and full civil rights; movements that have said  no to lynch mobs, fear-mongering, and false populist prophets [***cough...Sarah Palin.....cough***] as historical examples of effective, from-below action.

As comp teachers, we can educate students in the power of public writing, demonstration, and activism as a way to encourage them to revive the ethos of individual and collective citizens in their cause of public-making.

Synthesis

Thinking about the connections between these three, very different, texts, I’m seeing that among the most important properties of both a teacher and scholar is a sense of what’s happening in our current climate. For Kincheloe it has to do with an awareness of the whole person involved in every aspect of the teaching situation, and the forces that contribute to the whole person’s make-up. Affect is a constant theme in his work. He defines critical researchers as those who study the invisible (142), what he earlier refers to as power literacy. So, together with acknowledging all that’s in front of us, Kincheloe wants us to take into account all that we cannot see as well. Education, as noun and verb, is a sort of process of learning to see. Welch, meanwhile, advocates the empowerment of students as public citizens capable of articulating their needs, wants, and concerns as they see them. This too involves to some extent the teaching of the whole person, and she emphasizes that one must have a deep understanding of political history in this country and of rhetorical strategies. Teachers and students work together toward the goal of staking out and expanding the public sphere. Finally, Apple and Collins in chapter two of Global Crises emphasize the need for students and teachers to work together to seize opportunities to exploit the tensions in high-tech global capitalism toward the goal of greater freedom, democracy, and civil rights. Such a politics of interruption is only made possible, however through methods like thick description, which allow us to see what specific tensions exist in these complex and dynamic times.

Collaboration, teacher-as-facilitator, and multiple and flexed literacies seem central to the goal when we take the three together like this.