New Disciplinary Perspectives on Education – serie

This book is the first to focus specifically on the highly original contribution to the field of Critical Pedagogy made by the sometimes «irritable» French philosopher Jacques Rancière. The book represents a significant addition to the growing body of work on Rancière as well as to the field of Critical Pedagogy. While introducing and contextualising Rancière for those unfamiliar with him, the book also develops an understanding of the singularity of his conception of pedagogy for those already acquainted with his work. Central to the book is Rancière’s vision of education as a «practice of equality» – a method grounded in an assumption of intellectual equality between students and teachers. Throughout the chapters of the book, the contemporary relevance of this vision is drawn out for educators in schools and universities, adult and popular educators, as well as for political activists. For anyone and everyone with an interest in teaching and learning, this book contains vital insights for the survival and development of education as a democratic, critical and emancipatory project.

«I am deeply grateful to the author for clarifying the task of education reform in South Korea by capturing the distorted framing of ‘political neutrality of education’ as the core problem of Korean education, and empirically exploring its anti-educational consequences.»(Minjung Kang, Member of the 21st Parliament of South Korea)«The Neutral Education Trap provides a fascinating insight into how the laws and ideologies of teacher neutrality or educational neutrality have made students and citizens de-political and conformist.»(Dongchoon Kim, Professor of SungKongHoe University in South Korea)Despite the remarkable growth of Korean education, this book sheds light on ‘repressive’ Korean education where critical thinking and action, which are essential for living in a democratic society, are considered as threats to society and thus regulated.Drawing on research findings and many case examples, the author particularly highlights that the concept of educational neutrality has been used by conservative forces as a means of shrinking space for the critical in the field of education, which mirrors the very Korean war-political situation.

In this book, David Ridley argues that John Dewey’s theory of collective intelligence provides a unique critical social theory that speaks directly to the present moment. Escaping some of the dead ends of Frankfurt School critical theory, whilst also representing a continuity of the Marxist ‘philosophy of praxis’ tradition, the book reconstructs Dewey’s ‘method of democracy’ to reveal a forgotten alternative to both left-wing pessimism and neoliberal populism. Since the 2007-8 Financial Crisis, neoliberal governments, for example in the UK, have turned to higher education to kick-start a stagnating economy. Marketisation has turned English universities into multi-national corporations and students into consumers. Academics now have no choice, Ridley insists, but to join with the public in the political struggle against ‘third wave neoliberalism’. In the final part of the book, Ridley applies Dewey’s theory of collective intelligence to the reconstruction of UK higher education, concluding with a vision of radical democracy supported by ‘socially useful’ universities and a democratic academic and sociological profession.

Whither the seminal thinking and practice of Paulo Freire in contemporary times? If Covid 19 is the most seismic health crisis in living memory, it is also just as much an unprecedented crisis for education and society. While Paulo Freire’s work so often calls attention to the deprivations and exploitations suffered by the weakest in our society, at no stage does Freire’s work succumb to a negativism or a pessimism about the possibilities of transformation. To the contrary, Freire’s work is always animated by a strong and fundamental affirmative spirit which calls on people to join together to make change, as opposed to simply waiting around for it to happen.This text on Freire’s contemporary importance thus seems a timely intervention. Originally a conversation between engaged interlocutors at a University of Catania symposium, this discussion then broadens out to include connection to the particular rendering of these issues across different national and international contexts.Including essays by established and new thinkers in the Critical Pedagogy perspective, the book also includes up to date and exciting interviews with contemporary practitioners of Theatre of the Oppressed and related social-therapeutic approaches in Italy.

An extraordinary tribute to the visions of Joyce Canaan, a vibrant academic activist who touched so many with her intellect, her acuity, her humanity and her love. Anyone interested in critical pedagogy has to read this inspiring book that takes so many slices on what the university has become and what it still might be.(Professor Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley)This Festschrift is a beautiful tribute to Joyce Canaan, a woman whose revolutionary intellect and commitment should be treasured and studied, not only remembered. Each contribution illuminates her voice and expands on her spirit. The result is a volume that traces how we learn in the pursuit for justice, through building and sharing knowledge within a community of struggle. This is an important volume for any student of revolutionary and feminist education.(Sara Carpenter, Department of Educational Studies, University of Alberta)After the great global «pause», this volume presents an exciting look forward through the memory of boundary crosser, Joyce Canaan, whose life’s work scrutinized the impact of neoliberal regimes of accountability and the academy’s compliance with these processes. Collectively, the contributors warn of cultural myopia: that cultural near-sightedness that stands in the way of critical engagement with exclusionary mechanisms at both the pedagogic and economic levels.(Sheila Landers Macrine, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth)Joyce Canaan’s life illustrates what it means to be angry at social injustice and to challenge it through theory and practice, spirit and emotion, intellectual rigour, love and humour. This collection movingly and rigorously celebrates her personal contribution through engaging with contemporary issues for critical pedagogy today.(Jim Crowther, Honorary Fellow, University of Edinburgh)Critical Pedagogy and Emancipation: A Festschrift in Memory of Joyce Canaan offers its readers a powerful vision of how radical educational praxis based on genuine dialogue and solidarity can «humanise» both learners’ and teachers’ experience of education and invigorate revolutionary and socialist democratic politics of the Left. The book is written as a celebration of the legacy of Professor Joyce Canaan (1950–2018), a radical intellectual and feminist. The contributors take her project of critical pedagogical scholar-activism as their common point of departure, developing themes – drawing in particular on public sociology, social movement and popular education, as well as critical pedagogy – around critiques of the neoliberal university, popular and working-class educational movements, feminism, anti-racism, climate justice, critical theory and politically engaged teaching, learning and research.

Recent years have seen educationalists turning to Emmanuel Levinas when considering the relationship between ethics and education. While it is true that Levinas never speaks of ethics in relation to the practice of classroom education, nonetheless, for Levinas, ethics is a teaching, and learning can only take place in the presence of the Other. This book considers how, within the constraints of the Irish primary school education system, teachers can develop a Levinasian approach to teaching, that affords both them and the children they teach multiple opportunities throughout the school day to take up their ethical responsibility for each other as Other. Beginning from a Levinasian understanding of learning and teaching as constituting primordially relational and ethical events, and weaving the philosophies of Levinas, and the educationalists he inspires, into the approaches of philosophy with children, restorative practice, and PAX, this book suggests a unique approach to ethics in Irish primary school classrooms. The focus of this book, then, is on both the philosophical underpinnings that anchor teaching as a Levinasian, and a consideration of what practical approaches could be employed by the Levinasian teacher.

«In a world where environmental challenges, education and activism converge, this is an important addition to the field of art and early childhood education. It identifies a post qualitative research approach and provides an ethical alternative to the difficult and urgent challenges facing future artist educators and researchers in Ireland today.»(Dr Dervil Jordan, Emeritus Professor of Education, NCAD)«This thought-provoking book is an essential read. Lucy’s aesthetic lens offers a fresh perspective for early years professionals’ as it reveals the infinite richness of children’s learning with materials. It is full of AHA moments on the artfulness of everyday moments, you will think differently about the material world.»(Mary Skillington, Lecturer, Atlantic Technical University, Ireland)This work suggests that art has more to offer education than diverting activities grounded by ideas of human exceptionalism. Posthuman perspectives of everyday playful activity in Early Childhood Education and Care, can offer alternative ways of seeing and understanding nature/culture entanglements. Tuning in to young children’s play with materials through a posthuman theoretical lens, can orientate adults’ attention toward the innate artfulness of young children’s everyday moments of learning and growth. This perspective reveals how such moments of intensity and learning always occur in complex relation with diverse others, human and non-human, natural and technological, living and non-living. This emphasises the undeniably rich, yet easily overlooked, relationship with the material and social complexities of the world, upon which all human learning and growth relies.