Critical Pedagogy & the Arts

Book Review 2011: Conducting Educational Research: A Primer for Teachers and Administrators, P.D. Morrell &J.B. Carroll

critpedagogy — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 17:59:03 +0000

Conducting Educational Research: A Primer for Teachers and Administrators is designed to provide the step-wise, content-specific information masters students must possess to design, conduct, and disseminate a qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods classroom or school research study. The text will help school professionals to see both the value of being life-long critical consumers of educational research and the merit of using research in helping them to become teacher leaders and/or change agents in their own professional settings.

Specifically, the text would provide master level students with:
the background they need to see the importance of educational research in their daily professional lives instruction in all aspects of a typical five-chapter research design (introduction/literature review/methodology/results/conclusion, discussion, implications)
the tools needed to locate and critically review published educational research instruction on common qualitative methodologies instruction on the types of quantitative methodologies that master level candidates would be most likely to use knowledge of the importance of being intelligent consumers of existing research ways to engage the student in a reflection plan for the future.-From the publisher.

Book Review 2011: A Carpenter’s Daughter, Renny Christopher

critpedagogy — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 17:37:12 +0000

A Carpenter’s Daughter is the story of the difficulties and rewards of the educational system for one who was not meant to go through it. The single most reliable predictor of whether someone will earn a BA is whether at least one of their parents has one-yet, today, there are an increasing number of first-generation college students.

A Carpenter’s Daughter is both a memoir of the author’s experiences growing up, going to school, and becoming an academic and a thoughtful commentary on the meaning of class in American culture. By connecting her own story with ideas from scholarly works on class and identity, Christopher shows how her individual experiences reflect common struggles that people of working-class background face when their education, profession, income, and lifestyles change. This work reminds us forcefully that “moving up” isn’t necessarily good and that changing one’s class isn’t as simple as going to class or even becoming the teacher of the class.
–Sherry Linkon, author of Teaching Working Class

The work is stellar, merging the tangled and complex webs of social mobility through education in ways that leave lots of loose ends dangling just the way it should. No pretty bows adorning carefully wrapped packages here. No straight and narrow trajectory toward a mainstream version of success. Instead, readers will be pulled along by nuanced narratives portraying the warped nature of society’s construction of success and a careful crafting of the book in its entirety as a disjointed text presenting shards of a life that can never be visible in a tidied-up tale. -From the publisher.

Book Review 2011: Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation, Christopher Emdin

critpedagogy — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:35:13 +0000

Christopher Emdin is an assistant professor of science education and director of secondary school initiatives at the Urban Science Education Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. He holds a Ph.D. in urban education with a concentration in mathematics, science and technology; a master’s degree in natural sciences; and a bachelor’s degree in physical anthropology, biology, and chemistry.

His book, Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation is rooted in his experiences as student, teacher, administrator, and researcher in urban schools and the deep relationship between hip-hop culture and science that he discovered at every stage of his academic and professional journey. The book utilizes autobiography, outcomes of research studies, theoretical explorations, and accounts of students’ experiences in schools to shed light on the causes for the lack of educational achievement of urban youth from the hip-hop generation.- Editorial Review, Amazon.com

Book Review 2011: The Elements Of Creativity And Giftedness In Mathematics, Bharath Sriraman & Kyeonghwa Lee

critpedagogy — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:24:40 +0000

he Elements of Creativity and Giftedness in Mathematics edited by Bharath Sriraman and KyeongHwa Lee covers recent advances in mathematics education pertaining to the development of creativity and giftedness. The book is international in scope in the “sense” that it includes numerous studies on mathematical creativity and giftedness conducted in the U.S.A, China, Korea, Turkey, Israel, Sweden, and Norway in addition to cross-national perspectives from Canada and Russia.

The topics include problem -posing, problem-solving and mathematical creativity; the development of mathematical creativity with students, pre and in-service teachers; cross-cultural views of creativity and giftedness; the unpacking of notions and labels such as high achieving, inclusion, and potential; as well as the theoretical state of the art on the constructs of mathematical creativity and giftedness. The book also includes some contributions from the first joint meeting of the American Mathematical Society and the Korean Mathematical Society in Seoul, 2009.

Topics covered in the book are essential reading for graduate students and researchers interested in researching issues and topics within the domain of mathematical creativity and mathematical giftedness. It is also accessible to pre-service and practicing teachers interested in developing creativity in their classrooms, in addition to professional development specialists, mathematics educators, gifted educators, and psychologists.- From the publisher.

Book Review 2011: Key Works in Critical Pedagogy, Joe L. Kinchelo

critpedagogy — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:09:49 +0000

Joe L. Kincheloe comprises sixteen papers written within a twenty-year period in which Kincheloe inspired legions of educators with his incisive analyses of education. Kincheloe was a prolific thinker and writer who produced an enormous number of books and chapters and journal articles.In a career cut short by his untimely death, Kincheloe led the way with an approach to research and pedagogy that incorporated multiperspectival approaches that examined a wide range of topics including schooling, cultural studies, research bricolage, kinderculture, Christotainment, and capitalism. In these works Kincheloe used accessible, elegantly produced language to capture his emotional yet scholarly ways of engaging with the world.

He was a champion of the disenfranchised and his writing consistently examined social life from the perspective of participants who were often treated harshly because of their marginalization. The articles in this book were selected to encompass Kincheloe’s impressive scholarly career and to draw attention to the necessity for educators to take a critical stance with respect to the enactment of education to reproduce disadvantage. Among the theoretical frameworks included in the works are critical pedagogy, research, hermeneutics, phenomenology, cultural studies, and post-formal thought.- From the publisher

October Meeting

critpedagogy — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:31:21 +0000

Submitted by Karen Frostig: As co-facilitator of critical pedagogy’s most recent meeting in October, I’ve been invited to write a blog, not be confused with a summary report of the meeting.
The meeting’s agenda was to solicit sample vignettes from faculty, where issues of power and oppression, racism, sexism and exclusions of all kinds, became the focal point of classroom discourse. One faculty discussed an incident and named her experience as an “ouch” moment, where one or more people experienced pain, shame, discomfort, rage, while others scrambled to find language to further critical reflection and collective investigation. A few more examples were also presented.
It might be useful to think about these moments in a broader context, as opportunities rather than collision sites or blind spots. I left the meeting wondering whether faculty were looking for intervention techniques that would be culturally responsive, as well as aid in circumventing the likelihood of future “ouch” moments, erupting in the classroom.
While empathy is wedded to imagination, emerging in the development of a young child–often in response to how the child was treated by parents and caregivers– critical thinking is a conceptual process, seen as the culmination of cognitive development. It is not necessarily a given. Students working with young children are immersed in educational environments where literal thinking and concrete thinking dominate classroom experience. Critical thinking can often appear as unfamiliar terrain.
In addition to these developmental considerations, I am a firm believer that as long as we have privilege and oppression in the world, we will have “ouch” moments, where the pretend game comes to a screeching halt. These are wake up calls that provide educators with a rich opportunity to develop real conversations about things that matter between people in the room. The task-at-hand is to create safety, so that exploration can unfold. The dialogue is not to become so facile so as to eliminate these moments of great import.
At the same time, we need to consider students’ contracts and program expectations. For example, Creative Arts and Learning is marketed as an educational program. The line between education, critical pedagogy, citizenship, consciousness-raising, personal growth and therapy can quickly become quite dynamic, overwhelming some students who just bargained for a little “curriculum enhancement” packaging. How do web sites represent programs? What kind of training should be in place for faculty to tackle difficult topics that may emerge from any number of directions? How do these unruly moments mirror what teachers face day-to-day in the classroom?
_________

Coincidentally, from the news desk…
An item concerning the very topic that touched off the discussion in our meeting, was broadcast on CNN the morning we met. The story concerned the cover image on French Vogue Magazine, where a white model’s face was painted black for a photo shoot. An international debate quickly ensued, examining whether this was a racist or, at the very least, a culturally insensitive act…take a listen…

We are back!

critpedagogy — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:46:40 +0000

The Critical Pedagogy & the Arts Committee convened on September 23, 2009 after a summer hiatus. We welcomed new members Lisa Donovan, Delores Goode, Dalia Llera and Karen Frostig.

Topics of interest for this year include: faculty teaching in isolation in relationship to their students; teachers taking “risks”; permission to state discomfort; detangling issues of race, class, immigration status, ethnicity, minority status; religion; tokenism; assumptions; age of students, their level of experience; etc.

Committee members suggested topics for discussion:
a. October meeting – Wed. October 14th, 10:30 AM -12 PM, University Hall 2-129: Karen Frostig and Aziza Bey will facilitate discussion concerning teaching vignettes that stirred discomfort or confusion around diversity issues. Committee members will bring in stories from the field to share.

b. November meeting – Monday November 16th , 10:30 – 12, 2-129: Marjorie Jones will present The Transformative Power of Music: the Negro Spiritual.

c. December meeting – Thursday December 17th 1:00 – 2:30 PM: Eleanor Roffman and Dalia Llera will present a developmental overview of psycho-social issues concerning diversity.

Two guest will be coming to Aziza Bey’s Critical Pedagogy class this fall.
Oct. 6th – Paula Cantor Special Education Specialist and fifth grade teacher.

Oct. 27th – Three Arrows Keeper of the firer for the Tsalagi Cherokee –. This event is a part of the C.P. Committee’s Guest Lecture Series and will be open to the public.

Summer Hiatus

critpedagogy — Sat, 30 May 2009 23:26:07 +0000

We would like to thank everyone who has been reading this blog over the past year. Our last meeting of the school year was today so we are putting the blog on hiatus over the summer. Our next meeting will be in September and we hope to see everyone there and have the blog running again at that time.

Some ideas we are exploring for meeting topics next year include:
The idea of post-racism and post-feminism
Bicultural teaching teams
Online dialogues in teaching with technology
Other identities in the classroom: disability, men
Environmental art

In the meantime, please make use of the various resources we have compiled on the website that you can visit through the right-hand navigation.

Have a great summer and we will see you in the fall!

Digital Storytelling and Bicultural Identities

critpedagogy — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:40:23 +0000

At today’s meeting we enjoyed learning about the recent work one of our members, Young Song, has done with young immigrant students to help them express their dual identities through the arts. She has worked with Korean American, Japanese American, Haitian American, and Chinese American students thus far. She shared a DVD of the process of her work, including examples of the students’ art, on exploring Korean and American identities through various art projects. They made art from recycled materials, books that showed inward and outward appearances, and finally videos to explore digital storytelling. Art allowed them to move out of their comfort zones, take risks, and look at things in new ways so they can learn to move back and forth gracefully between their two cultures.

We also wanted to mark the recent passing of two great critical pedagogues. Joe Kincheloe, who edited the recent book Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now? and was a leader in forming the theory of critical pedagogy. Also Augusta Boal, author of Theatre of the Oppressed, passed away recently.
You can read their obituaries online: Joe Kincheloe and Augusta Boal.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring

critpedagogy — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:23:40 +0000

At today’s meeting we briefly discussed the 2003 Korean movie Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring. Several people were interested in this. The movie should be available to rent from a video store or Netflix. You can watch the tailer here: