Journal of Curriculum Theorizing
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Critical Literacy: Bringing Theory to Praxis
No full textThis article takes an activist approach to the discussion of critical literacy in theory and in praxis. Critical literacy has long been considered a powerful schema for critical pedagogical pursuits both inside and outside of schools. First, I address the need to negotiate the language around literacy for activist educational pursuits. I then move to define critical literacy, tracing the history of the topic through its theoretical and practical morphology. Finally, I address contemporary examples of critical literacy research, highlighting the limitations of school-based approaches and proffering actionable elements of critical literacy praxis beyond the boundaries of formal educational contexts. In the end, I recommend conceiving of critical literacy as a learning theory to be applied to the study of youth social and political activist organizing outside of schools
Toward a Posthumanist Education
No full textThe text of our manifesto will introduce posthumanism to a curriculum studies audience and propose new directions for curriculum theory and educational research more broadly. Following a description of what is variously called the “posthuman condition” or the “posthuman era,” our manifesto outlines the main theoretical features of posthumanism with particular attention to how it challenges or problematizes the nearly ubiquitous assumptions of humanism. In particular, we focus on how posthumanism responds to the history of Western humanism’s justification and encouragement of colonialism, slavery, the objectification of women, the thoughtless slaughter of non-human animals, and ecological devastation. We dwell on the question of how posthumanism may alter our understanding of the claim “education is political,” since humanism has shaped our very notions of “education” and “politics.” After outlining posthumanist discourse generally, and detailing the conceptual challenges it poses for education, we propose a list of possible new avenues for curriculum studies research opened up by posthumanism
Object Lesson
No full textThe physical environment and objects are actors in the curriculum of everyday life. Because of the seemingly static nature of built structures, the implicit boundaries they manifest from prior design decisions are often overlooked. The objects and place in which one operates inherently affects the understandings of self and world. Said another way, learning always exists as action with pre-constructed curricular objects and within pre-constructed curricular environs. However, the participant and environment are never completely pre-defined prior to the learning event. Instead, through (re)iteration and translation, realities are produced. Continuous learning, production, and inhabitation occur through disruption and perpetuation of subject, object, other, and environ. It is through our minute adjustments, our micro-learnings, our daily living, that we re-produce a self and world
Reterritorializing Locations of Home: Examining the Psychopolitical Dimensions of Race Talk in the Classroom
No full textIn this paper I theorize how notions of psychoanalytic grief and its connections with sociopolitical characteristics of oppression shape students’ and teachers’ emotional responses to having conversations about race. I posit that in order to have generative exchanges about race in the classroom, curricular approaches should take into account the inherently unsafe and traumatic discourses created by the United States’ violent racial past and, subsequently, institute procedures that enable students to grapple with the difficult emotions that are tethered to it. Ultimately, reconceptualizing the idea of safety in race talk to account for the presence of racial suffering can lead to productive discussions about race in the classroom. I conceive of a curricular device that enables students to safely experience unsafe learning through the concept of “home” as a location for cross-racial cooperation, healing, and resistance. This notion of home can assist students, as well as teachers, in grappling with the racial trauma conjured from talking about race in the classroom.
A Brief and Personal History of Post Qualitative Research: Toward “Post Inquiry”
No full textIn this paper, the author explains her difficulty with the disconnect between the concepts and practices of “conventional humanist qualitative methodology” and postmodern and poststructural theories, especially the disconnect between their ontologies. She describes her own history as an academic researcher who studied humanist qualitative methodology and post theories simultaneously but separately, illustrating the too-common separation of qualitative methodology from the epistemology and ontology with which it is entangled. She encourages scholars to actually use the ontological critiques offered by the “posts” and to engage the new empiricisms of the ontological turn, perhaps using futural concepts as methods in post qualitative inquiry or “post inquiry.
Attraction Theory: Revisiting How We Learn
No full textInstead of teaching curriculum, it is time that pedagogs teach children with instructional techniques in accordance with how the human brain functions. This theoretical discussion provides a strong footing for structural and systemic educational change. Though reflecting on cognitive functionality has been central to the field of cognitive psychology/science, it has not led towards improvements in daily curricular practices. This paper attempts to connect how learning occurs with curricular policy and practice
Tactics, Resistance, and Bad-Ass Teaching in a Generation 1.5 Basic Writing Classroom
No full textThis ethnographic narrative recounts a small piece of a larger story of a full-time temporary ESL developmental writing instructor and self-styled bad-ass named Roberta whose charge was to prepare “not-American English speakers” for college level writing courses in North Georgia. Focusing on a critical incident I witnessed early in our relationship involving a spoof of the five-paragraph essay, I theorize the event through neo-Vygtoskian understandings of tactics (Wertsch, 2002) to argue the need for more nuanced representations of ESL developmental writing faculty and their complex and conflicted agency in the face of high stakes testing and institutional policies that perpetuate the notion of ESL writers as inherently inferior to their “native” counterparts
Pedagogical Change and Mourning in Elementary Teacher Education
No full textLearning and mourning both entail renegotiating the sense of self in a changed world. We reflect on the "Science Semester", an inquiry-based course for prospective elementary teachers, by drawing on theories of mourning to address students' resistance to inquiry pedagogies not as deficits in students or curriculum, but as students meaningfully grieving the perceived loss of their good-student selves and dreams of being loving teachers. Questioning the impulse to make learning unproblematic, we consider possibilities for caring and renewal in inquiry pedagogies that elicit deeper inquiries into loss and mourning as conditions of teaching and learning
Ride or Get Rode On: Battling for the Soul of Public Education
No full textIn August of 2012, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) went on strike for the first time in 25 years and stood up against Rahm Emmanuel and his elected school board. This article briefly outlines the neoliberal context of Chicago and incorporates the stories of Xian Barrett, a teacher-activist and Sarah Jane Rhee, a movement documentarian and parent-activist to share their perspectives from the frontlines. Their experiences and stories best tell the story of the context and conditions of Chicago schools that forced 26,000 teachers to stand up for their rights as educators. Lastly, I offer some reflection points to think about the engagement of morality and humanity in the movement