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Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education
Teachers’ Work: Communicating On Difficult Knowledge In Ontario Schools, Zsofia Agoston Villalba
Teachers’ Work: Communicating On Difficult Knowledge In Ontario Schools, Zsofia Agoston Villalba
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
This thesis examines how K-12 teachers in Ontario navigate the complexities of teaching "difficult knowledge"—topics such as racial and ethnic injustices, Indigenous perspectives, immigration experiences, and gender issues—within the parameters of the school and the curriculum. Utilizing an institutional ethnography approach, the study examines the curriculum as an institutional text that coordinates and shapes teachers’ practices. Working with and against the curriculum, teachers find innovative ways to engage their students on difficult knowledge topics. Based on interviews with 12 K-12 teachers, this research explores teachers’ work and pedagogical approaches. They employ diverse teaching methods like storytelling, open dialogues, and collaborative …
Difficult Knowledge And The English Classroom: A Catholic Framework Using Cormac Mccarthy's The Road, Scott Jarvie, Kevin Burke
Difficult Knowledge And The English Classroom: A Catholic Framework Using Cormac Mccarthy's The Road, Scott Jarvie, Kevin Burke
Journal of Catholic Education
In this article, the authors explore the generative possibilities of risk-taking in the Catholic school English classroom. They associate pedagogical risk with what Deborah Britzman (1998) has called “difficult knowledge”—content that causes students to consider social trauma. Incorporating difficult knowledge meaningfully requires English teachers to take significant pedagogical risks, especially in the Catholic school classroom. Drawing on critical theology and Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road (2006) as a difficult text, the authors employ a case study looking at how the traumatic difficulty of the novel could be fruitfully taught at a Catholic school. How might students reckon with The Road …