Explorations of Educational Purpose – serie

One is always struck by the brilliant work of George Sefa Dei but nothing so far has demonstrated his pedagogical leadership as much as the current project. With a sense of purpose so pure and so thoroughly intellectual, Dei shows why he must be credited with continuing the motivation and action for justice in education. He has produced in this powerful volume, Teaching Africa, the same type of close reasoning that has given him credibility in the anti-racist struggle in education. Sustaining the case for the democratization of education and the revising of the pedagogical method to include Indigenous knowledge are the twin pillars of his style. A key component of this new science of pedagogy is the crusade against any form of hegemonic education where one group of people assumes that they are the masters of everyone else. Whether this happens in South Africa, Canada, United States, India, Iraq, Brazil, or China, Dei’s insights suggest that this hegemony of education in pluralistic and multi-ethnic societies is a false construction. We live pre-eminently in a world of co-cultures, not cultures and sub-cultures, and once we understand this difference, we will have a better approach to education and equity in the human condition.

This book takes up the challenge of examining the thorniest educational issue from a global perspective. It contributes to the evidence-based conversation among policy makers, educators, and researchers around the world about what works to improve the education outcomes and what can make a bigger difference for the education of diverse students. The eleven countries included — the United Kingdom, Austria, Canada, the United States, South Africa, Ghana, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand are unique, and yet overlap in the sense that they all face similar challenges of teaching diverse students. The authors, being education and cultural insiders, discuss country-specific policies, efforts, and best practices in the education of diverse students; share stories of success and failure; and explore current best practices from global, social, political, and economic perspectives. Built on previous theories and research, it describes diverse students’ experiences in theglobal and information age, and searches for effective policies and practices that help these students to perform better in school and in life.Readers are forced to step outside of their own experiences and commonly held beliefs about education. Conscious recognition that there are other ways of doing things may result in new approaches that we have not explored before. We hope the insights, lessons, and conclusions drawn from examining this pressing education issue from a global perspective will help nations to better understand and deal with it in their own educational system.

In a globalized neo-colonial world an insidious and often debilitating crisis of knowledge not only continues to undermine the quality of research produced by scholars but to also perpetuate a neo-colonial and oppressive socio-cultural, political economic, and educational system. The lack of attention such issues receive in pedagogical institutions around the world undermines the value of education and its role as a force of social justice. In this context these knowledge issues become a central concern of critical pedagogy. As a mode of education that is dedicated to a rigorous form of knowledge work, teachers and students as knowledge producers, anti-oppressive educational and social practices, and diverse perspectives from multiple social locations, critical pedagogy views dominant knowledge policies as a direct assault on its goals. Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction takes scholars through a critical review of the issues facing researchers and educators in the last years of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Refusing to assume the reader’s familiarity with such issues but concurrently rebuffing the tendency to dumb down such complex issues, the book serves as an excellent introduction to one of the most important and complicated issues of our time.

Critical Pedagogy addresses the shortcomings of mainstream educational theory and practice and promotes the humanization of teacher and student. Where Critical Pedagogy is often treated as a discourse of academics in universities, this book explores the applications of Critical Pedagogy to actual classroom situations. Written in a straight-forward, concise, and lucid form by an American high school teacher, drawing examples from literature, film, and, above all, the everyday classroom, this book is meant to provoke thought in teachers, students and education activists as we transform our classrooms into democratic sites.From grading to testing, from content area disciplines to curriculum planning and instruction, from the social construction of knowledge to embodied cognition, this book takes the theories behind Critical Pedagogy and illustrates them at work in common classroom environments.

Most would agree that a learning community of practice cultivates social and intellectual development in educational settings but what are the other benefits and what does a learning community actually look like in practice? This book explores such questions as: “Are learning communities essential in education?” “How are they designed and developed?” “What difference do they make in learning?” The book contains contributions of educators who share their research and practice in designing and implementing learning communities in school, university, and professional network settings. It presents their experiences, and the “how to” of these educators who are passionate about building and sustaining learning communities to make a real difference for students, teachers, faculty, and communities. Combining scholarly and practitioner research, the book offers practical information to teachers, school and university administrators, teacher educators, and community educators.

Renita Schmidt and P. L. Thomas The guiding mission of the teacher education program in the university where we teach is to create teachers who are scholars and leaders. While the intent of that mission is basically sound in theory—we instill the idea that teachers at all levels are professionals, always learning and growing in knowledge—that theory, that philosophical underpinning does not insure that the students who complete our program are confident about the act or performance of teaching. In our unique program, students work closely with one teacher and classroom for the entire senior year and then are supervised and mentored during their first semester of teaching; the program is heavily field-based, and it depends on the effectiveness of mentoring throughout the methods coursework and the first semester of full-time teaching. Students tell us this guidance and support is invaluable, and yet we feel the disjuncture between university and school just as many of you in more traditional student teaching settings. Students hear “best practice” information from us in methods classes and they receive ample exposure to the research supporting our field, but have a hard time implementing research-based practices in their cla- room settings and an even harder time finding it in the classrooms around them.

Susan L. Groenke and J. Amos Hatch It does not feel safe to be critical in university-based teacher education programs right now, especially if you are junior faculty. In the neoliberal era, critical teacher education research gets less and less funding, and professors can be denied tenure or lose their jobs for speaking out against the status quo. Also, we know that the pedagogies critical teacher educators espouse can get beginning K–12 teachers fired or shuffled around, especially if their students’ test scores are low. This, paired with the resistance many of the future teachers who come through our programs—predominantly White, middle-class, and happy with the current state of affairs—show toward critical pedagogy, makes it seem a whole lot easier, less risky, even smart not to “do” critical pedagogy at all. Why bother? We believe this book shows we have lots of reasons to “bother” with critical pe- gogy in teacher education, as current educational policies and the neoliberal discourses that vie for the identities of our own local contexts increasingly do not have education for the public good in mind. This book shows teacher educators taking risks, seeking out what political theorist James Scott has called the “small openings” for resistance in the contexts that mark teacher education in the early twenty-first century.

Indigenous education is one of the great challenges facing humanity in the historic quest for a democratic and peaceful future. The 370 million Indigenous peoples of the world demand that the racist and colonial wrongs of the past be recti ed and that they stand as equals in confronting the social, political and cultural problems that surround us all. Education offers a way forward, whether concerned with the public good, schooling for all citizens including universal primary education and expanding secondary education, the education of women regardless of background, the inclusion of local cultures, literacy and numeracy for all as a democratic right and the provisionof comprehensiveeducationthat enables both personal aspiration, cultural satisfaction and economic pathways. What this means is that all children no matter where they live, no matter what theirbackgroundorthecolouroftheirskinshouldexpecttohaveaccesstoeducation of the highest quality. This does not impose a particular style of education for local communitiesbut respects that educationaldirections must be decidedindependently by countries themselves. Within this general context, there is also something most profound about Indigenous knowing, of appreciating Indigenous perspectives and applying these across all knowledge, across all subjects of a curriculum. Rather than accepting the one often highly conservative and dominant view of knowledge, teaching and learning for all schools, Indigenous perspectives offer other insights and means of analysis, re ection and critique. These can open up elds of creative and critical learning for all children, including the dispossessed, marginalised and disenfranchised.

Almost a decade in, Empire remains the 21st Century's dominant mode of cultural production, and North America remains at the apex of the colonial imperative. The contributors to this volume argue that, far from being a post-colonial world, the struggle for independence of polity and culture is still alive and relevant.The book brings together relevant examples of anti-colonial discourse and struggle from across the US and Canada, providing unique perspectives on resistance, activism, scholarship and pedagogy. Anti-colonialism is an evolving framework to which this book hopes to make a unique contribution, with the range, depth and analytical approach of the chapters it contains.The emphasis on anti-colonial resistance here is significant, as it consistently reveals the personal commitment required for the undoing of domination, as well as the ways in which people can collectively pursue radical politics in their aim of bringing about social justice. The book examines a multitude of actions which could be termed anti-colonial, from student walkouts along the US/Mexico border, to interrogations of the relationship between indigenous and anti-racist struggles in North America, to analyses of the implications of anti-colonialism for community unionism as well as disability rights struggles.Chapters also look at the movement for Africentric schools in Toronto, provide an annotated and comparative look at the myriad struggles for and by the Fourth World and Fourth World nations, and analyze the creation of an anti-colonial classroom in a Montreal university. They also explore the colonial underpinnings of multicultural education in the US.With contributions from leading thinkers such as Henry Giroux, Ward Churchill, and Peter McLaren, as well as fresh perspectives from junior academics, this book provides a diverse and varied survey of anti-colonialism in the US and Canada. It will be a thought-provoking read for those working in a widevariety of disciplines, from Sociology to Politics.In daring and incisive ways, Arlo Kempf's collection further positions anti-colonialism as the necessary educational project for the colonizer and colonized within us all; it reflectively re-sets the radical education agenda, with telling historical and current instances that are used by the book's authors to move constructively forward in critical ways. John Willinsky, Stanford University, USA

This book pays special attention to the impact that a student's early childhood and socioeconomic status has on his or her educational achievement. It argues that discussions of education reform need a broader scope, one that encompasses a student's background as well as standardized testing, merit pay for teachers, and other issues regarding the quality of the teaching and learning. Education Reform: the Unwinding of Intelligence and Creativity features cases and examples from schools in Australia, the USA, and Britain. It offers a breadth of coverage, from early childhood to effective teaching and learning to teacher pay and conditions, standardized testing and public and private (independent) schooling and universities as well as creativity. It also includes summaries of educational policies in many developed countries.Reforms which emphasize concern for early childhood, school leadership and respect for teachers are contrasted with ones based on standardized tests, private schools and sacking bad teachers.

Almost a decade in, Empire remains the 21st Century's dominant mode of cultural production, and North America remains at the apex of the colonial imperative. The contributors to this volume argue that, far from being a post-colonial world, the struggle for independence of polity and culture is still alive and relevant.The book brings together relevant examples of anti-colonial discourse and struggle from across the US and Canada, providing unique perspectives on resistance, activism, scholarship and pedagogy. Anti-colonialism is an evolving framework to which this book hopes to make a unique contribution, with the range, depth and analytical approach of the chapters it contains.The emphasis on anti-colonial resistance here is significant, as it consistently reveals the personal commitment required for the undoing of domination, as well as the ways in which people can collectively pursue radical politics in their aim of bringing about social justice. The book examines a multitude of actions which could be termed anti-colonial, from student walkouts along the US/Mexico border, to interrogations of the relationship between indigenous and anti-racist struggles in North America, to analyses of the implications of anti-colonialism for community unionism as well as disability rights struggles.Chapters also look at the movement for Africentric schools in Toronto, provide an annotated and comparative look at the myriad struggles for and by the Fourth World and Fourth World nations, and analyze the creation of an anti-colonial classroom in a Montreal university. They also explore the colonial underpinnings of multicultural education in the US.With contributions from leading thinkers such as Henry Giroux, Ward Churchill, and Peter McLaren, as well as fresh perspectives from junior academics, this book provides a diverse and varied survey of anti-colonialism in the US and Canada. It will be a thought-provoking read for those working in a widevariety of disciplines, from Sociology to Politics.In daring and incisive ways, Arlo Kempf's collection further positions anti-colonialism as the necessary educational project for the colonizer and colonized within us all; it reflectively re-sets the radical education agenda, with telling historical and current instances that are used by the book's authors to move constructively forward in critical ways. John Willinsky, Stanford University, USA

This book takes up the challenge of examining the thorniest educational issue from a global perspective. It contributes to the evidence-based conversation among policy makers, educators, and researchers around the world about what works to improve the education outcomes and what can make a bigger difference for the education of diverse students. The eleven countries included — the United Kingdom, Austria, Canada, the United States, South Africa, Ghana, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand are unique, and yet overlap in the sense that they all face similar challenges of teaching diverse students. The authors, being education and cultural insiders, discuss country-specific policies, efforts, and best practices in the education of diverse students; share stories of success and failure; and explore current best practices from global, social, political, and economic perspectives. Built on previous theories and research, it describes diverse students’ experiences in theglobal and information age, and searches for effective policies and practices that help these students to perform better in school and in life.Readers are forced to step outside of their own experiences and commonly held beliefs about education. Conscious recognition that there are other ways of doing things may result in new approaches that we have not explored before. We hope the insights, lessons, and conclusions drawn from examining this pressing education issue from a global perspective will help nations to better understand and deal with it in their own educational system.

Critical Pedagogy addresses the shortcomings of mainstream educational theory and practice and promotes the humanization of teacher and student. Where Critical Pedagogy is often treated as a discourse of academics in universities, this book explores the applications of Critical Pedagogy to actual classroom situations. Written in a straight-forward, concise, and lucid form by an American high school teacher, drawing examples from literature, film, and, above all, the everyday classroom, this book is meant to provoke thought in teachers, students and education activists as we transform our classrooms into democratic sites.From grading to testing, from content area disciplines to curriculum planning and instruction, from the social construction of knowledge to embodied cognition, this book takes the theories behind Critical Pedagogy and illustrates them at work in common classroom environments.

Most would agree that a learning community of practice cultivates social and intellectual development in educational settings but what are the other benefits and what does a learning community actually look like in practice? This book explores such questions as: “Are learning communities essential in education?” “How are they designed and developed?” “What difference do they make in learning?” The book contains contributions of educators who share their research and practice in designing and implementing learning communities in school, university, and professional network settings. It presents their experiences, and the “how to” of these educators who are passionate about building and sustaining learning communities to make a real difference for students, teachers, faculty, and communities. Combining scholarly and practitioner research, the book offers practical information to teachers, school and university administrators, teacher educators, and community educators.

Renita Schmidt and P. L. Thomas The guiding mission of the teacher education program in the university where we teach is to create teachers who are scholars and leaders. While the intent of that mission is basically sound in theory—we instill the idea that teachers at all levels are professionals, always learning and growing in knowledge—that theory, that philosophical underpinning does not insure that the students who complete our program are confident about the act or performance of teaching. In our unique program, students work closely with one teacher and classroom for the entire senior year and then are supervised and mentored during their first semester of teaching; the program is heavily field-based, and it depends on the effectiveness of mentoring throughout the methods coursework and the first semester of full-time teaching. Students tell us this guidance and support is invaluable, and yet we feel the disjuncture between university and school just as many of you in more traditional student teaching settings. Students hear “best practice” information from us in methods classes and they receive ample exposure to the research supporting our field, but have a hard time implementing research-based practices in their cla- room settings and an even harder time finding it in the classrooms around them.

Indigenous education is one of the great challenges facing humanity in the historic quest for a democratic and peaceful future. The 370 million Indigenous peoples of the world demand that the racist and colonial wrongs of the past be recti ed and that they stand as equals in confronting the social, political and cultural problems that surround us all. Education offers a way forward, whether concerned with the public good, schooling for all citizens including universal primary education and expanding secondary education, the education of women regardless of background, the inclusion of local cultures, literacy and numeracy for all as a democratic right and the provisionof comprehensiveeducationthat enables both personal aspiration, cultural satisfaction and economic pathways. What this means is that all children no matter where they live, no matter what theirbackgroundorthecolouroftheirskinshouldexpecttohaveaccesstoeducation of the highest quality. This does not impose a particular style of education for local communitiesbut respects that educationaldirections must be decidedindependently by countries themselves. Within this general context, there is also something most profound about Indigenous knowing, of appreciating Indigenous perspectives and applying these across all knowledge, across all subjects of a curriculum. Rather than accepting the one often highly conservative and dominant view of knowledge, teaching and learning for all schools, Indigenous perspectives offer other insights and means of analysis, re ection and critique. These can open up elds of creative and critical learning for all children, including the dispossessed, marginalised and disenfranchised.

Issues related to gender and sexual diversity in schools can generate a lot of controversy, with many educators and youth advocates under-prepared to address these topics in their school communities. This text offers an easy-to-read introduction to the subject, providing readers with definitions and research evidence, as well as the historical context for understanding the roots of bias in schools related to sex, gender, and sexuality. Additionally, the book offers tangible resources and advice on how to create more equitable learning environments. Topics such as working with same-sex parented families in elementary schools; integrating gender and sexual diversity topics into the curriculum; addressing homophobic bullying and sexual harassment; advising gay-straight alliances; and supporting a transgender or gender non-conforming student are addressed. The suggestions offered by this book are based on recent research evidence and legal decisions to help educators handle the various situations professionally and from an ethical and legally defensible perspective.

The primary mission of this text is clarifying many of the misconceptions about Paulo Freire’s theories, concepts and his implications for education. It revisits his ideas and explains more fully the philosophical influences that shaped concepts such as problem posing, conscientization and praxis.The fundamental thesis, then, is that the present absence of in-depth philosophical analysis leaves an unacceptable void in the literature addressing Freire’s work, while also promoting frequent misconceptions and superficial understandings about his relationship to contemporary education. Indeed, the philosophical assumptions contributing to Freire’s critical pedagogy require identification, unravelling and ultimately evaluation on the basis of their epistemic and moral tenability. Most existing applications of Freire’s pedagogy are unfortunately superficial because they simply sloganize terms such as banking education, conscientization, praxis, and humanization. A slogan in education popularizes a concept or idea in a positive way, but offers very little in terms of critical reflection or analysis. In order to understand these terms and their origin and apply them as Freire intended, a far richer and more in depth examination of Freire is desperately needed. This text will provide precisely that type of examination.

This volume captures the spirit of collaboration and innovation that its authors bring into the classroom, as well as to groundbreaking undergraduate programs and initiatives. Coming from diverse points of view and twenty different disciplines, the contributors illuminate the often perplexing debates about what matters most in higher education today. Each chapter tells a unique story about creating vital pedagogical arenas that have the potential to transform teaching and learning for both faculty and students. These exploratory spaces include courses under construction, cross-college and interdisciplinary collaborations, general education reform initiatives, and fresh perspectives on student support services, faculty development, freshman learning communities, writing across the curriculum, on-line degree initiatives, and teaching and learning centers.All these spaces lend shape to an over-arching, system-wide project bringing together the often disconnected silos of undergraduate education at The City University of New York (CUNY), America’s largest urban public university system. Since 2003, the University’s Office of Undergraduate Education has sponsored coordinated efforts to study and improve teaching and learning for the system’s 260,000 undergraduates enrolled at 18 distinct colleges. The contributors to this volume present a broad spectrum of administrative and faculty perspectives that have informed the process of transforming the undergraduate experience. Combined, the voices in these chapters create a much-needed exploratory space for the interplay of ideas about how teaching and learning need to matter in evolving notions of higher education in the twenty-first century. In addition, the text has wider social relevance as an in-depth exploration of change and reform in a large public institution.

In a globalized neo-colonial world an insidious and often debilitating crisis of knowledge not only continues to undermine the quality of research produced by scholars but to also perpetuate a neo-colonial and oppressive socio-cultural, political economic, and educational system. The lack of attention such issues receive in pedagogical institutions around the world undermines the value of education and its role as a force of social justice. In this context these knowledge issues become a central concern of critical pedagogy. As a mode of education that is dedicated to a rigorous form of knowledge work, teachers and students as knowledge producers, anti-oppressive educational and social practices, and diverse perspectives from multiple social locations, critical pedagogy views dominant knowledge policies as a direct assault on its goals. Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction takes scholars through a critical review of the issues facing researchers and educators in the last years of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Refusing to assume the reader’s familiarity with such issues but concurrently rebuffing the tendency to dumb down such complex issues, the book serves as an excellent introduction to one of the most important and complicated issues of our time.

Shift happens: Emerging technologies and globalization have resulted in political, social and cultural changes. These changes have a profound impact on all aspects of human life, including education. Yet while society has changed and continues to change, schools are slow to keep up. This book explores issues related to transforming and modernizing our educational systems, including the impact of societal shifts on education, the efforts at various levels to bring schools into the 21st century, the identification of 21st century skills, the reformation of the curriculum, the creation of alternative models of schooling, the innovative use of technology in education, and many others. It addresses questions like the following: Should schools systems adapt to better meet the needs of tomorrow’s world and how should this be accomplished? How can society better prepare students for a changing and challenging modern world? What skills do students need to lead successful lives and become productive citizens in the 21st century? How can educators create learning environments that are relevant and meaningful for digital natives? How can the school curriculum be made more rigorous to meet the needs of the 21st century?This book encourages readers to transcend the limits of their own educational experience, to think beyond familiar notions of schooling, instruction and curriculum, to consider how to best structure learning so that it will benefit future generations. It encourages a deeper analysis of the existing education system and offers practical insights into future directions focused on preparing students with 21st century skills.

Issues related to gender and sexual diversity in schools can generate a lot of controversy, with many educators and youth advocates under-prepared to address these topics in their school communities. This text offers an easy-to-read introduction to the subject, providing readers with definitions and research evidence, as well as the historical context for understanding the roots of bias in schools related to sex, gender, and sexuality. Additionally, the book offers tangible resources and advice on how to create more equitable learning environments. Topics such as working with same-sex parented families in elementary schools; integrating gender and sexual diversity topics into the curriculum; addressing homophobic bullying and sexual harassment; advising gay-straight alliances; and supporting a transgender or gender non-conforming student are addressed. The suggestions offered by this book are based on recent research evidence and legal decisions to help educators handle the various situations professionally and from an ethical and legally defensible perspective.

There are an estimated forty-eight million Latinas/os living in the United States, roughly sixteen percent of the population. Not only are they the largest minority group in the country but also the youngest: one out of five children is Latina/o. The rise in the Latina/o population has caused for panic in some areas of the country, resulting in hostile and sometimes violent racism and xenophobia, and yet, much of that hatred is fueled not on facts but rather on myths about immigration.To date, most studies on immigration have been data driven, focusing on migrating groups or policy analyses. Latina/o Hope is different. It incorporates salient theories on migration as it moves toward a new theorizing, one that views immigration from the immigrant's perspective. Thus, it integrates research into the depiction of various slices of immigrant experience—the young women disappearing in the city of Juarez, the various students at various stages of their educational journeys,the young children in need of ESL programs, the ethnically-mixed immigrants, the undocumented workers, and others. Latina/o Hope discusses the impact of neoliberal policies and global capitalization on the daily lives of Latina/o immigrants, serving as an inspiration for dialogue, praxis and imagination to love and serve one another.

This book simultaneously contributes to the fields of critical pedagogy and educational psychology in new and innovative ways by demonstrating how critical pedagogy, postformal psychology, and Enlightenment science, seemingly separate and distinct disciplines, are actually part of the same larger, contextualized, complex whole from the inner most developmentally-fixed biological context of human faculties to the perpetually shifting, socially and politically constructed context of individual schema and human civilization.  The text’s uniqueness stems from its bold attempt to connect the postformal critical constructivist/pedagogy work of Joe Kincheloe and others to Western science through a shared, although previously misunderstood, critique and rejection of crude forms of social control, which the psychologists call behaviorism and Western scientists identify as mechanical philosophy. This book therefore argues that critical pedagogy— which includes, among others, anarchist, Marxist, feminist, Indigenous (globally conceived), Afro-Caribbean/American, and postmodern traditions—and critical/constructivist educational psychology have much to gain by engaging previously rejected work in critical solidarity, that is, without compromising one’s values or democratic commitments. The goal of this book is therefore to contribute to this vision of developing a more transgressive and transformational educational psychology.

This personal, creative, critical work from a leading scholar of psychology is rooted in three novel concepts and aims to share critical pedagogy in the spirit of nascent potential found in the context of a colonial Puerto Rico. First comes the idea of ‘pedagogy in (e)motion’, or the emotional matrix of the teaching and learning process. Secondly, the author explores the notion of ‘street pedagogy’ as a genuine and powerful professional tool. And thirdly, the book underscores what Zambrana-Ortiz calls ‘the interconnection of the artscience within the political and biographical act of teaching’.The purpose is to inform education teaching practice with the radical framework that, like the neurosciences, believes emotions to be a vital precursor to the planning of action, the process of decision-making and the broadening of our cognitive parameters. The chapters focus on different and yet complementary dimensions of a college teaching initiative boasting a unique interplay between a transgressive narrative, reinvented methodology and authentic samples of students’ contributions to the project.  Traditionally, emotional and visceral experiences have been downplayed and rejected as fundamental components of knowledge. This book makes the case for their reinstatement, and proposes that the pleasure and commitment of teaching itself can be seen as resistance given the challenging social and political context, the bureaucracy of the Puerto Rican higher education system, and the cynicism of the self-confessed cognoscenti who think that little political progress can come from within the university system. Such resistance has proved for the author a source of inspiration and has contributed to her creation and reconceptualization of approaches to critical and useful pedagogy.D edicationTo my students who inspire many stories and provoke many emotions and challenge my capacities…To  Aura, Ignacio and Jaime for their unconditional love and their everyday  lessons… A cknowledgmentsMany friends, mentors and colleages from the University of Puerto Rico and United States were very important pieces to my creative work.  Thanks to Donaldo Macedo who encouraged the initial proposal and to Joe Kincheloe for accepting it and bringing guidance in the right moment. Colleages like Roamé Torres and Angeles Molina, from their directive positions, were extremely supportive while Sandra Macksoud, José Solís, Pedro Subirats, and Ada Prabhavat gave me guidance and constant insights in editing and translation, as well as crucial material for my narrative.  Juan Vadi enhanced my graphic elements with his talent; while college mentors, current colleages, teachers, and former graduate and undergraduate students allowed me to write their stories and reflections binging fresh accents and life to the book. Thanks for ever!

Political progressives in Canada and the United States are deeply concerned by the manner in which their countries treat their poor. They are dismayed at the dismantling of the social welfare state, the weakening of public education systems and the grotesque and ever-growing inequality of wealth. To remedy this problem, citizens need to be more aware of how political ideology influences attitudes and actions, and they need to better comprehend the effects of hegemonic discourses in the corporate media and school curriculum. This book informs educators how to develop context-specific pedagogy that will help achieve a more enlightened citizenry and, as a result, a stronger democracy. Teaching about Hegemony: Race, Class and Democracy in the 21st Century promotes a progressive agenda for teaching that is rooted in critical pedagogy, it explains why ideological critique is necessary in raising political consciousness, it deconstructs white, middle-class hegemony in the formal school curriculum, and it examines corporate media and school curriculum as hegemonic devices. It also covers recent theory and research about race, class and democracy and how best to teach about these topics. Combining theory and sociological research with pedagogical approaches and classroom narratives, this book is fundamental for progressive educators interested in developing a politically conscious, progressive and active citizenry hungry for a stronger civil society.

In this accessible combination of post-colonial theory, feminism and pedagogy, the author advocates using subversive and contemporary artistic representations of women to remodel traditional stereotypes in education. It is in this key sector that values and norms are molded and prejudice kept at bay, yet the legacy of colonialism continues to pervade official education received in classrooms as well as ‘unofficial’ education ingested via popular culture and the media. The result is a variety of distorted images of women and gender in which women appear as two-dimensional stereotypes.The text analyzes both current and historical colonial representations of women in a pedagogical context. In doing so, it seeks to recast our conception of what ‘difference’ is, challenging historical, patriarchal gender relations with their stereotypical representations that continue to marginalize minority populations in the first world and billions of women elsewhere. These distorted images, the book argues, can be subverted using the semiology provided by postcolonialism and transnational feminism and the work of contemporary artists who rethink and recontextualize the visual codes of colonialism. These resistive images, created by women who challenge and subvert patriarchal modes of representation, can be used to create educational environments that provide an alternative view of women of non-western origin.

Critical Praxis Research (CPR) is a teacher research methodology designed to bridge the divide between practitioner and scholar, drawing together many strands to explain the research process not just as something teacher researchers do, but as a fundamental part of who teacher researchers are. Emphasizing the researcher over the method, CPR embraces and amplifies the skills and passions teachers naturally bring to their research endeavours. Emerging from the tradition of critical pedagogy, Critical Praxis Research: Breathing New Life into Research Methods for Teachers transcends longstanding debates over quantitative vs. qualitative and scholar vs. practitioner research. The text examines the histories and current applications of common methodologies and re-conceptualizes the ways that these methodologies can be used to enhance teachers’ identities as practitioners and researchers. It also provides a critical examination of the role of Institutional Review Boards, and explores the complexity and ethics of data collection, data analysis, and writing. Through guiding questions and writing prompts, the author encourages readers to think through the process of design and conducting CPR. The text is theoretically rich, but written in an accessible style infused with metaphor, irony, and humour. Critical Praxis Research: Breathing New Life into Research Methods for Teachers is both instructive and uplifting, sending the message that research is difficult but also joyful, like life itself.