Critical Pedagogies

This working group has been exploring the theories and practices behind liberatory praxis (theory and action) in pedagogical approaches in classrooms and third spaces. In an attempt to resist oppressive teaching and learning practices that are commonly used in education, we enacted a vision of critical pedagogies by breaking down the teacher-student binary, providing opportunities for the class to reflect on their own lives, and cultivating space for mindfulness, art, and embodied movement.

Student Profiles

Ryan Haas

Ryan earned his master’s degree at Penn GSE, and currently works as a research consultant. Reading at the intersections of autonomist marxism, post-structuralism, and critical literacies, Ryan intends to continue scholarship while organizing education collaboratives. His broader research interests include youth’s political geographies within-and-beyond community organizations, radical theories of power, and decolonial epistemologies of space.

Menen Stroud

Menen Stroud is completing her master’s degree in Education, Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in how schools can be transformed into sites of liberation, with a particular interest in how activism can play a role in that process. Menen is originally from Oakland, CA, and hopes to take her research and learnings back home to work with the communities in which she grew up.

Mia Shaw

Mia Shaw is a currently a PhD student in education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in examining the effectiveness of making and project-based learning (PBL) in STEAM education for Black and Brown youth, particularly in the spheres of student voice, identity development, and creativity/innovation.

Larissa Johnson

Larissa is a PhD student reading across sound, music, and Africana Studies. She thinks about the ways in which we accidentally reproduce the violences we seek to dismantle in our societies. She is invested in exploring forms of imagining and realizing better worlds that are neither ethically bankrupt nor standing to ideological inaction.

Alicia Chatterjee

Alicia Chatterjee is completing her masters in education at the University of Pennsylvania and starting her PhD in social work. She is broadly interested in intersections of engaged healing and justice. She came to Activism & Education with a background in organizing with survivors of intimate violence, especially survivors of color, and with an interest in activism as an effort towards healing.

Podcast

Art and Poetry, the Uncomfortable, the Unjust, the Personal, the Intimate, the Critical, the Hopeful. In this podcast, we explore the pedagogical underpinnings and transgressing revelations of two class sessions of activism and education. Inspired by bell hooks, Paulo Freire, and the critical pedagogies throughout cultures of resistance, we discuss the theory, practice, action and purpose of educating, weaving snippets of the class sessions together with commentary and discussion.

Week 1 - Critical Foundations

Required Readings

Freire, P. (1970). Chapter 3. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed. (30th Anniv, pp. 87–124). New York: Bloomsbury Academics.
hooks, b. (1994). Chapters 1, 4, and 11. In Teaching to Transgress (pp. 13-22; 45-58; 167-175). New York: Routledge.
Freire, P. (1976). A few notes about the word ‘conscientization’. In R. Dale, G. Esland, & M. MacDonald (Eds.), Schooling and Capitalism: A Sociological Reader (pp. 224–227). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd.
Jennings, M. E. & Lynn, M. (2005). The house that race built: Critical pedagogy, African-American education, and the re-conceptualization of critical pedagogy. Educational Foundations, 19(3–4), 15–32.

Suggestive Readings

Freire, P. (1974). Education and Consciêntização. In Education for Critical Consciousness (2005 ed., pp. 37–51; 74-78). London: Continuum.

Before Class Assignment

Journal to yourself about a limit situation (as described in Pedagogy of the Oppressed starting on p.99) experienced in your life, then share what you are comfortable sharing, on Canvas, by Sunday. Feel free to use any non-textual medium, e.g., photos, music, etc. Then, take the time to look over everyone’s posts by beginning of class on Tuesday. This will be necessary for an in-class activity. Keep in mind others’ posts that resonate with you.

Supportive Readings

Patel, L. (2016). Pedagogies of Resistance and Survivance: Learning as Marronage. Equity & Excellence in Education, 49(4), 397–401.
Shor, I. (1993). Education is Politics: Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy. In P. McLaren & P. Leonard (Eds.), Paulo Freire - A Critical Encounter (pp. 24–35). New York: Routledge.
Freire, P., & Shor, I. (1987). What is The “Dialogical Method” of Teaching? In A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education (pp. 97–119). London: MacMillan Education LTD.
Freire, P., & Shor, I. (1987). Is There Structure and Rigor in Liberating Education ? In A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education (pp. 75–96). London: MacMillan Education LTD.
Gadotti, M. (1994). The Method Which Took Paulo Freire into Exile. In Reading Paulo Freire: His Life and Work (pp. 15–27). New York: State University of New York Press.

Week 2 - Praxis and Application

At the close of Week 1, as a class we selected readings of interest from the list below. The intention was to allow each person to explore whatever applications may be useful to them, and to actively reject the siloing, separation, and segmentation of academic and practitioner fields.

Literacy

Campano, G., Ghiso, M. P., & Sanchez, L. (2013). “Nobody knows the . . . amount of a person ”: Elementary students critiquing dehumanization through organic critical literacies. Research in the Teaching of English, 48(1), 98–125.
Campano, G. (2007). “I Will Tell You a Little Bit About My People”: Narrating Immigrant Pasts. In Immigrant Students and Literacy: Reading, Writing, and Remembering (pp. 52–71). New York: Teachers College Press.
Gutiérrez, K. D. (2008). Developing a Sociocritical Literacy in the Third Space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2), 148–164.

Cultural Curriculum / Ethnic Studies

Vossoughi, S. (August, 2011). Inhabiting the Possible: Pedagogy & Solidarity at Camp Ayandeh. Jadaliyya. Webpost and Videos.
Cannella, C. (2014). Expanding on Freire: Enriching Critical Pedagogy with Indigenous Theory toward a Pedagogy of Humanization. In J. Cammarota & D. Stovall (Eds.), Raza Studies: The Public Option for Educational Revolution (pp. 171–192). University of Arizona Press.
Cammarota, J. (2014). The Social Justice Education Project: Youth Participatory Action Research in Schools. In J. Cammarota & D. Stovall (Eds.), Raza Studies: The Public Option for Educational Revolution (pp. 107–121). University of Arizona Press.

Healing

Ginwright, S. (2016). Radically Healing Schools and Communities: Healing-Centered Pedagogy and Forgiveness. In Hope and Healing in Urban Education: How Urban Activists and Teachers are Reclaiming Matters of the Heart (pp. 86–112). New York: Routledge.
Ginwright, S. (2016). La Cultura Cura: How Culture Cures and Builds Activism. In Hope and Healing in Urban Education: How Urban Activists and Teachers are Reclaiming Matters of the Heart (pp. 131–141). New York: Routledge.
Zembylas, M. (2013). Critical pedagogy and emotion: Working through “troubled knowledge” in posttraumatic contexts. Critical Studies in Education, 54(2), 176–189.
Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth & Oakland Unified School District (Producers). (2012, October 9). Restorative Justice in Oakland Schools: Tier One. Community Building Circle [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/RdKhcQrLD1w

Resistance in School

Annamma, S. A. (2018). Expansive Justice and a Pedagogy of Resistance. In The Pedagogy of Pathologization: Dis/abled Girls of Color in the School-prison Nexus (pp. 136–160). New York: Routledge.

Arts

Boal, Augusto. (1985). ‘Poetics of the Oppressed,’ in Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Theatre Communications Group. (pp. 117-156)
Flores-González, N., Rodríguez, M., & Rodríguez-Muñiz, M. (2006). From Hip-hop to Humanization: Batey Urbano as a Space for Latino Youth Culture and Community Action. In S. Ginwright, P. Nogeura, & J. Cammarota (Eds.), Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change (pp. 175–196). New York: Routledge.
John, C. (2013). Catharsis and Critical Reflection in IsiZulu Prison Theatre. In H. Barnes (Ed.), Arts Activism, Education, and Therapies: Transforming Communities Across Africa (pp. 85–96). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Odhiambo Joseph, C. (2013). In Between Activism and Education: Intervention Theatre in Kenya. In H. Barnes (Ed.), Arts Activism, Education, and Therapies: Transforming Communities Across Africa (pp. 97–106). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ. (1988). ‘The Language of African Theatre,’ in Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Suffolk: James Currey Heinemann. (pp. 34-62)

Organizing Pedagogies

Oakes, J., Rogers, J. A., & Lipton, M. (2006). Futures: Students Disrupting High School Inequality. In Learning Power: Organizing for Education and Justice (pp. 43–70). New York: Teachers College Press.
Cahill, C., Rios-Moore, I., & Threatts, T. (2006). Different Eyes, Open Eyes: Community-Based Participatory Action Research. In M. Fine & J. Cammarota (Eds.), Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion (pp. 89–124). New York: Routledge.

The (Baltimore) Algebra Project

Dsloanatmic. (2008, March 12). No Education, No Life [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/XUr_PAhry6M
Pages 35-38, from: Warren, M. R., Mira, M., & Nikundiwe, T. (2008). “Baltimore Algebra Project” section in Youth organizing: From youth development to school reform. New Directions for Youth Development, 2008(117), 27–42
Dsloanatmica. (2008, June 22). Peer 2 Peer Sleep-In [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/O4YgJU-hfqw

Kirshner, B. (2006). Apprenticeship Learning in Youth Activism. In S. Ginwright, P. Nogeura, & J. Cammarota (Eds.), Beyond Resistance!: Youth Activism and Community Change (pp. 37–58). New York: Routledge.
Stovall, D. (2006). From Hunger Strike to High School: Youth Development, Social Justice, and School Formation. In S. Ginwright, P. Nogeura, & J. Cammarota (Eds.), Beyond resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change (pp. 97–109). New York: Routledge.
Kirshner, B. (2015). Teaching without Teaching. In Youth Activism in an Era of Education Inequality (pp. 107–133). New York: NYU Press.

Black Consciousness

Biko, S., & Stubbs, A. (1987). Excerpts. In I Write what I Like: A Selection of His Writings. Oxford: Heinemann.

5. Black Souls in White Skins? (p. 19 - 26)

6. We Blacks (p. 27 - 33)

9. The Definition of Black Consciousness (p. 48 - 53)

14. Black Consciousness and the Quest for a True Humanity (p. 87 - 98)

18. Our Strategy for Liberation (p. 143 - 151)

Wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ. (1988). ‘Introduction: Towards the Universal Language of Struggle,’ in Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Suffolk: James Currey Heinemann. (pp.1-3)

Excerpts - Steve Biko - I Write What I Like.png