Mairi McDermott – författare

This book explores the impact of sensation, affect, ethics, and place on literacy learning from early childhood through to adult education. Chapters bridge the divide between theory and practice to consider how contemporary teaching and learning can promote posthuman values and perspectives.By offering a posthuman approach to literacy research and pedagogy, Affect, Embodiment, and Place in Critical Literacy re-works the theory-practice divide in literacy education, to emphasize the ways in which learning is an affective and embodied process merging in a particular environment. Written by literacy educators and international literacy researchers, this volume is divided into four sections focussing on: Moving with sensation and affect; becoming worldmakers with ethics and difference; relationships that matter in curriculum and place; before drawing together everything in a concise conclusion.Affect, Embodiment, and Place in Critical Literacy is the perfect resource for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of literacy education and philosophy of education, as well as those seeking to explore the benefits of a posthumanism approach when conceptualising theory and practice in literacy education.

This book explores the impact of sensation, affect, ethics, and place on literacy learning from early childhood through to adult education. Chapters bridge the divide between theory and practice to consider how contemporary teaching and learning can promote posthuman values and perspectives.By offering a posthuman approach to literacy research and pedagogy, Affect, Embodiment, and Place in Critical Literacy re-works the theory-practice divide in literacy education, to emphasize the ways in which learning is an affective and embodied process merging in a particular environment. Written by literacy educators and international literacy researchers, this volume is divided into four sections focussing on: Moving with sensation and affect; becoming worldmakers with ethics and difference; relationships that matter in curriculum and place; before drawing together everything in a concise conclusion.Affect, Embodiment, and Place in Critical Literacy is the perfect resource for researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of literacy education and philosophy of education, as well as those seeking to explore the benefits of a posthumanism approach when conceptualising theory and practice in literacy education.

Mapping the Terrains of Student Voice Pedagogies is an autoethnography of McDermott’s experiences with student voice reforms. Ultimately, the author is concerned with better understanding the possibilities for student voice as a transformative teaching and learning practice within the context of neoliberal education. The discussion is anchored in two past student voice projects in which McDermott was involved, one as a researcher and one as a facilitator. As method, the author revisits these experiences through memory and various artifacts to unpack embodied voices of difference. More specifically, McDermott is concerned with how teachers take up student voice in their pedagogies, how teachers come to understand themselves and their students in terms of student voice, and how social differences contour student voice pedagogies. The author queries: How do experiences with student voice inform teacher <-- --> student relationships? And, how are student voice practices shaped, organized, and inscribed through social difference? Grounding this inquiry is post-structural feminist anti-racism as an interwoven discursive orientation and politics for troubling and transforming schooling and education. Analyses address how McDermott’s presence as an individual and as a member of socio-historical groups in the student voice initiatives affected the projects’ dynamics. The findings amplify the necessity of time and space for educators to critically reflect on their practices when implementing reforms, time and space that were provided by engaging autoethnography. The book contributes important strategic processes towards realizing the necessary goals of critical reflexive practices in teaching and learning, addressing the question of ‘how’ one might do critical reflection through autoethnography.

Mapping the Terrains of Student Voice Pedagogies is an autoethnography of McDermott’s experiences with student voice reforms. Ultimately, the author is concerned with better understanding the possibilities for student voice as a transformative teaching and learning practice within the context of neoliberal education. The discussion is anchored in two past student voice projects in which McDermott was involved, one as a researcher and one as a facilitator. As method, the author revisits these experiences through memory and various artifacts to unpack embodied voices of difference. More specifically, McDermott is concerned with how teachers take up student voice in their pedagogies, how teachers come to understand themselves and their students in terms of student voice, and how social differences contour student voice pedagogies. The author queries: How do experiences with student voice inform teacher <-- --> student relationships? And, how are student voice practices shaped, organized, and inscribed through social difference? Grounding this inquiry is post-structural feminist anti-racism as an interwoven discursive orientation and politics for troubling and transforming schooling and education. Analyses address how McDermott’s presence as an individual and as a member of socio-historical groups in the student voice initiatives affected the projects’ dynamics. The findings amplify the necessity of time and space for educators to critically reflect on their practices when implementing reforms, time and space that were provided by engaging autoethnography. The book contributes important strategic processes towards realizing the necessary goals of critical reflexive practices in teaching and learning, addressing the question of ‘how’ one might do critical reflection through autoethnography.

This collection of essays invites readers to think through critical questions concerning anti-racism education, such as: How does anti-racism education centre race as an analytic and simultaneously work with multiple sites of oppression, without reifying hierarchies of difference?