Troubling Education

Kevin Kumashiro is Assistant Professor at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.

"Today, teachers find themselves mandated to address social and cultural difference in their policies and classroom practices. Yet, the question of how to address difference is far from clear. Troubling Education offers a rare alternative to oversimplified, highly abstract, or technologizing approaches to this question. Kumashiro grapples with concrete questions of classroom practice in context--a task informed throughout by his innovative take on theorizing difference and social change." -- Elizabeth Ellsworth, author of Teaching Positions: Difference, Pedagogy, and the Power of Address. She is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison."Like no other text I have seen, Troubling Education asks us to imagine human relations and educational practices that do not depend on tangible knowledge as such. This is a book that will be discussed for years." -- Susan Talburt, author of Subject to Identity: Knowledge, Sexuality, and Academic Practices in Higher Education"Troubling Education offers a rare alternative to oversimplified, highly abstract, or technologizing approaches to social and cultural difference. Kumashiro grapples with concrete questions of classroom practice in context-a task informed throughout by his innovative take on theorizing difference and social change." -- Elizabeth Ellsworth, author of Teaching Positions: Difference, Pedagogy, and the Power of Address"Engaging, lucid, and thought-provoking, Troubling Education is as theoretically illuminating as it is grounded to the practical. Integrating feminist, postructuralist, and psychoanalytic ideas with narratives from queer activists and poetry this is a must-read book for anti-oppressive educators and post-modern scholars. Kumashiro exemplifies the neXt generation of queer educational theorists and Troubling Education is the new benchmark." -- James T. Sears, Editor, Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education"...he situates the reader as an active interpreter of the experiences of these queer activists as he invites the reader to think alongside him, to put their own lives into dialog with the activists' stories, and to question his interpretations and seek alternative understandings of these activists' lives and actions.." -- P.F.A, Harvard Educational Review'Using the poetry and vignettes of queer activists' stories of their experiences Kumashiro presents an illuminating and emotional image of what it is to be a queer activist and how sexual, racial and social class oppression can affect individuals in different ways. It is well organised into the different sections which in themselves present the story of how we can challenge antiopressive resistance in education. This book is thought-provoking, interesting and stimulating in many ways.' - Gender and Education

• Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Introduction Queer Desires in Education Troubling Educational Research Calling Activists Feminist, Activist, and Collaborative Interviews Re-Presenting the Stories Vignette 1 Chapter 2: Toward a Theory of Anti-Oppressive Education Education For the Other Education About the Other Educating that is Critical of Privileging and Othering Education that Changes Students and Society Looking to Activism Vignette 2 Chapter 3: Reading and Re-readings of Identity, Culture, and Oppression Reading My Experiences in Anti-Oppressive Ways First Route: Re-reading Difference in Pab's Stories Second: Re-reading Normalcy in Christopher's Stories Third Route: Re-reading Intersections in Matthew's Stories Fourth Route: Reading Beyond Beth's Stories The Possibilities of Different Routes Vignette 3 Chapter 4: Addressing Resistance through Queer Activism First Route: Doing Homework when Re-reading Sue's Stories Second Route: Inverting and Exceeding Binaries in Debbie's Stories Third Route: Juxtaposing Matthew's Stories to Other Cultural Texts Fourth Route: Reading Pab's Stories as Catalysts for Action and Change Vignette 4 Chapter 5: Conclusions Vignette 5 References Index About the Author