Education Commons^™

Con Respeto: A Conceptual Model For Building Healthy Community-University Partnerships Alongside Mexican Migrant Families, Miguel Zavala, Patricia A. Pérez, Alejandro González, Anna Díaz Villela

Education Faculty Articles and Research

In this paper we grapple with the question of how healthy community and university partnerships can be formed in order to support migrant students’ access to higher education. Employing autoethnographic and narrative research, and drawing from our work within the context of the migrant family conference at California State University, Fullerton from 2011 to 2013, we outline a conceptual model for building healthy partnerships. The first section of this paper offers a general overview of the literature on community-university engagement and collaboration as well as provides background information about the migrant farmworker community. The next section puts forward a new …

A Critical Patriotism For Urban Schooling: A Call For A Pedagogy Against Fear And Denial And For Democracy, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"I intend to reflect upon the tragic irony of the current crisis of education that leads to Stan Karp (2011) to characterize it as follows: “If you support testing, charters, merit pay, the elimination of tenure and seniority, and control of school policy by corporate managers you’re a ‘reformer.’ If you support increased school funding, collective bargaining, and control of school policy by educators, you’re a ‘defender of the status quo.’” Largely as a result of huge marketing campaigns in the corporate media, it is the ideological right wing who now claims the mantle of reformer and progressive teachers and …

Education As Class Warfare. An Interview With Scholar/Author Peter Mclaren, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

An interview with Peter McLaren about educational reform and how his work is influenced by Marxist theory.

Culturally Responsive Methodologies At Work In Education Settings, Mere Berryman, Suzanne Soohoo, Ann Nevin, Te Arani Barrett, Therese Ford, Debora Joy Nodelman, Norma Valenzuela, Anna Wilson

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe culturally responsive methodology as a way to develop researchers. The aim is to illuminate the dimensions of culturally responsive methodology such as cultural and epistemological pluralism, deconstruction of Western colonial traditions of research, and primacy of relationships within culturally responsive dialogic encounters. An overarching question is: “How can we maintain the original integrity of both participants and researchers and their respective cultures and co-construct at the same time something new?”

Design/methodology/approach – Five case study narratives are described in order for readers to understand the range and types of studies …

Organizing Against The Neo-Liberal Privatization Of Education In South Los Angeles: Reflections On The Transformative Potential Of Grassroots Research, Miguel Zavala

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This auto/ethnographic study narrates how members of the Association of Raza Educators (ARE), a grassroots teacher-led organization, came together in undertaking action-research within what eventually became a stalled campaign to defend South Los Angeles Elementary from corporate takeover. Most of the work within the campaign involved action-research, including what I term organic popular education. In this paper I analyze the ways in which action-research functions as public pedagogy, further arguing for studies conducted from the vantage point of people immersed in grassroots organizations.

Seeds Of Resistance: Towards A Revolutionary Critical Ecopedagogy, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The death throes of mother earth are imminent unless we decelerate the planetary ecological crisis. Critical educators, who have addressed with firm commitment topics of race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and other social justice issues are casting their eyes to the antagonism between capitalism and nature to ask themselves how we can rationally regulate the human metabolic relation with nature. As the global power complex reduces human life and mother earth to mere production and consumption, critical revolutionary ecopedagogy is developing new, unalienated forms of selfpresence. Ecopedagogy is inspired by and inspires a new social arc, rooted in practices of …

Cultivating Democracy At One High School Intervention Program For Latinos At Risk Of Dropping Out, Margaret Sauceda Curwen, Keith Howard

Education Faculty Articles and Research

In California, where this study takes place, it is estimated that 85,000 students drop out of high school annually. Consequences are often linked to economic and social issues including long term economic costs to the state and the likelihood of lesser participation in voting and civic engagement (Rumberger, 2012). This account documents one high school’s alternative intervention program that includes online academic credit recovery and socio-emotional guidance leading to graduation for Latino students who are at risk of dropping out. Findings highlight the program’s support for these students in gaining confidence in self, envisioning themselves in the community and, for …

Photographs And Stories: Ethics, Benefits And Dilemmas Of Using Participant Photography With Black Middle-Class Male Youth, Quaylan Allen

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Drawing upon research conducted with Black American middle-class youth in a secondary school, this article highlights the use of participant photography with Black male youth. Participant photography is a visual method that places the power of photo documentation in the hands of research subjects, empowering them to document and reflect on social issues and cultural phenomena important to them. This article highlights the significance of the method when exploring the understudied lives of Black middle-class males, ethical considerations of using visual methods with youth populations, as well as the benefits and dilemmas of engaging Black male youth in participant photography. …

Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy For A Socialist Society: A Manifesto, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"As advocates of revolutionary critical pedagogy, we stand at the turning point in this process. Critical pedagogy is an approach that we have chosen as a necessary (albeit insufficient) vehicle for transforming the world. The work that we do has been adapted from the pathfinding contributions of the late Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, whose development of pedagogies of the oppressed helped to lay the foundations for approaches (feminist, post-structuralist, Marxist) to teaching and learning that utilizes the life experiences of students in and outside of traditional classrooms to build spaces of dialogue and dialectical thinking. We have renamed our critical …

A Wink Or A Nod, Mr. President? A Call For The President’S Consideration Of Race, Lilia D. Monzó, Suzanne Soohoo

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"Dear Mr. President... We ask now that you pour some attention to race and racism in America, and we submit that your leadership in this area is critically important for people of all colors."

Guided By A Red Star: The Cuban Literacy Campaign And The Challenge Of History, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"I had waited a long time for a doctoral degree in critical pedagogy to be established somewhere in the US, and when I heard about the program at the University of St. Thomas, a prestigious Catholic university, I was sure that more degree programs would be in the making."

Issues In-Depth: Advancing Understanding Of Drug Addiction And Treatment, Roxanne Greitz Miller

Education Faculty Articles and Research

While most school districts utilize a drug abuse resistance curriculum, as science teachers, it is our responsibility to understand the science behind drug addiction in order to most effectively educate our students against drug abuse. In the last two decades, increases in scientific technology have permitted significant discoveries surrounding the neurobiology, genetic components, and treatment of drug addition. This article addresses the latest scientific knowledge about drug addition and treatment with information that can be used in the middle school setting, focusing on cocaine addiction to illustrate the points discussed. (Contains 2 online resources.)

Politics, Pragmatics And Passion: Three Markers On The Teacher Research Journey, Suzanne Soohoo, Chris Strople

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Th is article captures the rich collaboration between a fifth-grade teacher and a university professor in their search for the value and significance of teacher inquiry in public school classrooms. Within this action research, both individuals modified their respective classroom practices so as to accommodate each other in the pursuit of a legitimate and justifiable research question. The end result is that both parties are able to more fully engage in theorizing about the politics, pragmatics, and passion both needed and desired in order to ask relevant research questions.

Fire And Dust, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Drawing upon a Hegelian-Marxist critique of political economy that underscores the fundamental importance of developing a philosophy of praxis, the author theorizes a revolutionary Freireian critical pedagogy which seeks forms of organization that best enable the pursuit of doing critical philosophy as a way of life. The authors argues that the revolutionary critical pedagogy operates from an understanding that the basis of education is political and that spaces need to be created where students can imagine a different world outside of capitalism’s law of value (i.e., social form of labor), where alternatives to capitalism and capitalist institutions can be discussed …

We Change The World By Doing Nothing, Suzanne Soohoo

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"The focus of this essay is on what I refer to as 'bystander apathy.' Bystanderism is the response of people who observe something that demands intervention on their part, but they choose not to get involved. I write this piece to shed light on this issue for others as well as for my own self-reflection - to understand more deeply why some people act against abuses of power and others don't; why sometimes I act and sometimes I don't. What are the forces, both internal and external, that work to keep us all from speaking against and standing up to …

Teaching In And Against The Empire: Critical Pedagogy As Revolutionary Praxis, Peter Mclaren, Gregory Martin, Ramin Farahmandpur, Nathalia Jaramillo

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"All across the country, critical educators are fighting on dozens of fronts, searching in both form and content for a coherent pedagogical expression that captures their opposition to what they perceive as major developments of world-historical importance... Whilst we will mention some of these fronts in our discussion, our focus will be on expanding the concept so that it addresses both the urgency and the scope of the current crisis of capitalism in relation to the crisis of educational reform, and takes as its central aim the struggle against capitalism and imperialism."

Critical Pedagogy As Organizational Praxis: Challenging The Demise Of Civil Society In A Time Of Permanent War, Peter Mclaren, Nathalia E. Jaramillo

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The writers criticize the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the ensuing military and political occupation of the country. They suggest a link between aggressive U.S. military posture and neoliberal globalization and contend that the current situation in Iraq is a metaphor for globalized capitalism across the world. The writers then consider issues surrounding the politics of organization in the search for a socialist alternative to free market capitalism and discuss how critical educators can reinvigorate the civil societarian left at a time when elites are less accountable to civil society than ever before.

Class, Cultism, And Multiculturalism: A Notebook On Forging A Revolutionary Politics, Peter Mclaren, Ramin Farahmandpur

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The writers examine the globalization of capitalism and its implications for class, cultism, and multiculturalism. They cite the need for a revolutionary multicultural pedagogy that would connect the social identities of the marginalized and oppressed with their reproduction within capitalist production relations.

Pedagogy For Revolution Against Education For Capital: An E-Dialogue On Education In Capitalism Today, Peter Mclaren, Glenn Rikowksi

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This dialogue between Peter McLaren (UCLA) and Glenn Rikowski (University of Central England, Birmingham) was conducted by e-mail during January - February 2001. References added.

The Revolutionary Legacy Of Paulo Freire, Peter Mclaren, Valerie Scatamburlo

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"With every line, Freire's writings emanate a spirit, a sense of urgency, and an intensity which is as rare as it is refreshing. He was a passionate pedagogue and activist--someone who too the theory/practice nexus seriously, someone who was engaged in struggle all his life, someone who was much more than an armchair academic."

The Specters Of Gramsci: Revolutionary Praxis And The Committed Intellectual, Peter Mclaren, Gustavo Fischman, Silvia Serra, Estanislao Antelo

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"However, it is not the purpose of this article to map the shifting trajectories of these debates except to note one general question central to the thesis of this paper that has emerged from these debates: Given current structural and conjunctural conditions such as the capitalization of global culture, the privatization of subjectivity, free market fundamentalism, and the moral collapse of social democracy after the defeat of communism, should the role ofGramsci's "organic" intellectual primarily be restricted to practicing "cultural politics" or should the Gramscian agent challenge in a more direct manner the pernicious power of capital?"

Reclaiming Hope: Teacher Education And Social Justice In The Age Of Globalization, Peter Mclaren, Gustavo Fischman

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"Our overarching position is unashamedly and avowedly criticalist: we believe that unless teacher education locates the pedagogical education of future teachers within the context of an examination of the current glorification of global corporatism and the capitalist economy's ability for self-valorization, teacher education will remain delinked from necessary and urgent political conversations and practices."

Deconstructing Surveillance Pedagogy: Dead Poets Society, Peter Mclaren, Zeus Leonardo

Education Faculty Articles and Research

No abstract provided.

A Fairy Tale About Teacher Research In Conservative Times, Collaborative Action Researchers For Democratic Communities, Suzanne Soohoo, Lani Martin, Tom Wilson, Emily Wolk

Education Faculty Articles and Research

Collaborative action research involves creating spaces for thoughtful discussion, not only about classroom practices but about schooling in general. The fairy tale created by the authors of this piece raises questions about autonomy, control, and the need for participation in the context of the current conservative climate.

Serial Killer Pedagogy, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"I will not mince my words. We live at a precarious moment in history. Relations of subjection, suffering, dispossession, and contempt for human dignity and the sanctity of life are at the center of social existence. Emotional dislocation, moral sickness and individual helplessness remain a ubiquitous feature of our time. Our much heralded form of democracy has become, unbeknownst to many Americans, subverted by its contradictory relationship to the very object of it address; human freedom, social justice, and a tolerance and respect for difference. In the current historical juncture, discourses of democracy continue to masquerade as disinterested solicitations, and …

Moral Panic, Schooling, And Gay Identity: Critical Pedagogy And The Politics Of Resistance, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"We are living at a time in U.S. cultural history in which the autonomy and dignity of the human spirit is being threatened rather than exercised. What makes it bearable is what is hidden from us, what is repressively desublimated. The current historical juncture is precisely that perilous mixture of historical amnesia and cultural intensity in which society is attempting to reinvent itself without the benefit of knowing who or what it already is."

Critical Literacy And Postcolonial Praxis: A Freirian Perspective, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"This essay examines the relationship among language, experience, and historical agency. It does so in the context of recent work in critical literacy and critical pedagogy. My discussion takes its bearings from the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, described in a recent interview with Carlos Alberto Torres as "the prime 'animateur' for pedagogical innovation and change in the second half of this century" (12). In part this essay stands as a poststructuralist and postcolonialist rereading of Freire that, while to a certain extent "reinventing" his work in light of perspectives selectively culled from contemporary social theory, attempts to remain …

Writing From The Margins: Geographies Of Identity, Pedagogy, And Power, Henry A. Giroux, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"The excess of language alerts us to the ways in which discourse is inextricably tied not just to the proliferation of meanings, but also to the production of individual and social identities over time within conditions of inequality. As a political issue, language operates as a site of struggle among different groups who for various reasons police its borders, meanings, and orderings. Pedagogically, language provides the self-definitions upon which people act, negotiate various subject positions, and undertake a process of naming and renaming the relations between themselves, others, and the world."

Classrooms As Socialization Agents: The Three R'S And Beyond, Eva Weisz, Barry Kanpol

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The conceptualization of curriculum as more than a document, specifically, as an active negotiation and construction of knowledge, was explored in two different studies as a first step toward understanding curriculum in practice. In particular, the studies explored the "social process curriculum" which was embedded in the enacted curriculum in the classrooms. Findings showed that the enacted curriculum was comprised of many elements, i.e., a pragmatic, unofficial, masked, social, and hidden curriculum. Each of these types of enacted curriculum were interwoven within the enacted curriculum, and were socializing agents which conveyed norms, behaviors, values and meanings to students.

Broken Dreams, False Promises, And The Decline Of Public Schooling, Peter Mclaren

Education Faculty Articles and Research

The thrust of the most prominent proposals for educational reform in the 1980s has been to make the schools more efficient at servicing the needs of the dominant social order. In the meantime, a backlog of neglected social problems has developed which points up the need for schools to develop the critical faculties of their students. In fact, a wide range of telling statistics on the socioeconomic aspects of American education show that the schools themselves are severely impacted by the inequalities present in the larger society- particularly along racial lines. The need for a critical pedagogy is acute.