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Race, Equity, and the Learning Environment The Global Relevance of Critical and Inclusive Pedagogies in Higher Education

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: At a time of impending demographic shifts, faculty and administrators in higher education around the world are becoming aware of the need to address the systemic practices and barriers that contribute to inequitable educational outcomes of racially and ethnically diverse students. Focusing on the higher education learning environment, this volume illuminates the global relevance of critical and inclusive pedagogies (CIP), and demonstrates how their application can transform the teaching and learning process and promote more equitable educational outcomes among all students, but especially racially minoritized students. The examples in this book illustrate the importance of recognizing the detrimental impact of dominant ideologies, of evaluating who is being included in and excluded from the learning process, and paying attention to when teaching fails to consider students’ varying social, psychological, physical and/or emotional needs. This edited volume brings CIP into the realm of comparative education by gathering scholars from across academic disciplines and countries to explore how these pedagogies not only promote deep learning among students, but also better equip instructors to attend to the needs of diverse students by prioritizing their intellectual and social development; creating identity affirming learning environments that foster high expectations; recognizing the value of the cultural and national differences that learners bring to the educational experience; and engaging the “whole” student in the teaching and learning process. (From the Publisher)

Teachers Act Up! Creating Multicultural Learning Communities Through Theatre

If teachers want to create positive change in the lives of their students, then they must first be able to create positive change in their own lives. This book describes a powerful professional development approach that merges the scholarship of critical pedagogy with the Theatre of the Oppressed. Participants “act up” in order to explore real-life scenarios and rehearse difficult conversations they are likely to have with colleagues, students, administrators, and parents. The authors have practiced the theatrical strategies presented here with pre- and in-service teachers in numerous contexts, including college courses, professional development seminars, and PreK–12 classrooms. They include step-by-step instructions and vivid photographs to help readers use these revolutionary theatre strategies in their own contexts for a truly unique learning experience. (From the Publisher)

Discerning Critical Hope in Educational Practices

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: How can discerning critical hope enable us to develop innovative forms of teaching, learning and social practices that begin to address issues of marginalization, privilege and access across different contexts? At this millennial point in history, questions of cynicism, despair and hope arise at every turn, especially within areas of research into social justice and the struggle for transformation in education. While a sense of fatalism and despair is easily recognizable, establishing compelling bases for hope is more difficult. This book addresses the absence of sustained analyses of hope that simultaneously recognize the hard edges of why we despair. The volume posits the notion of critical hope not only as conceptual and theoretical, but also as an action-oriented response to despair. Our notion of critical hope is used in two ways: it is used firstly as a unitary concept which cannot be disaggregated into either hopefulness or criticality, and secondly, as an analytical concept, where critical hope is engaged and diversely theorized in ways that recognize aspects of individual and collective directions of critical hope. The book is divided into four sub-sections: - Critical Hope in Education - Critical Hope and a Critique of Neoliberalism - Critical Race Theory/Postcolonial Perspectives on Critical Hope - Philosophical Overviews of Critical Hope. Education can be a purveyor of critical hope, but it also requires critical hope so that it, as a sector itself, can be transformative. With contributions from international experts in the field, the book will be of value to all academics and practitioners working in the field of education. (From the Publisher)

Critical Approaches to the Study of Higher Education: A Practical Introduction

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Critical theory has much to teach us about higher education. By linking critical models, methods, and research tools with an advocacy-driven vision of the central challenges facing postsecondary researchers and staff, Critical Approaches to the Study of Higher Education makes a significant—and long overdue—contribution to the development of the field. The contributors argue that, far from being overly abstract, critical tools and methods are central to contemporary scholarship and can have practical policy implications when brought to the study of higher education. They argue that critical research design and critical theories help scholars see beyond the normative models and frameworks that have long limited our understanding of students, faculty, institutions, the organization and governance of higher education, and the policies that shape the postsecondary arena. A rigorous and invaluable guide for researchers seeking innovative approaches to higher education and the morass of traditionally functionalist, rational, and neoliberal thinking that mars the field, this book is also essential for instructors who wish to incorporate the lessons of critical scholarship into their course development, curriculum, and pedagogy. (From the Publisher)

Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education: Critical Theory and Practice

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: In this new collection, contributors from a variety of disciplines provide a critical context for the relationship between feminist pedagogy and academic feminism by exploring the complex ways that critical perspectives can be brought into the classroom. This book discusses the processes employed to engage learners by challenging them to ask tough questions and craft complex answers, wrestle with timely problems and posit innovative solutions, and grapple with ethical dilemmas for which they seek just resolutions. Diverse experiences, interests, and perspectives—together with the various teaching and learning styles that participants bring to twenty-first-century universities—necessitate inventive and evolving pedagogical approaches, and these are explored from a critical perspective. The contributors collectively consider the implications of the theory/practice divide, which remains central within academic feminism’s role as both a site of social and gender justice and as a part of the academy, and map out some of the ways in which academic feminism is located within the academy today. (From the Publisher)

Deconstructing Derrida: Tasks for the New Humanities

Responding to Jacques Derrida's vision for what a 'new' humanities should strive toward, Peter Trifonas and Michael Peters gather together in a single volume original essays by major scholars in the humanities today. Using Derrida's seven programmatic theses as a springboard, the contributors aim to reimagine, as Derrida did, the tasks for the new humanities in such areas as history of literature, history of democracy, history of profession, idea of sovereignty, and history of man. Deconstructing Derrida engages Jacques Derrida's polemic on the future of the humanities to come and expands on the notion of what us proper to the humanities in the current age of globalism and change. (From the Publisher)

Based on archival research, this article analyses the pedagogical gestures in Derrida’s (largely unpublished) lectures on hospitality (1995/96), with particular attention to the enactment of hospitality in these gestures. The motivation for this analysis is twofold. First, since the large-group university lecture has been widely critiqued as a pedagogical model, the article seeks to retrieve what may be of worth in the form of the lecture. Second, it is relevant to analyze the pedagogy of lectures that address the topic of hospitality, as there would be a performative contradiction in teaching inhospitably about hospitality.

Hospitality in the classroom and digital pedagogical practices encourage participatory pedagogy and collective action. This model of learning and teaching emphasizes the shared responsibility between all members to contribute to and actively further the intellectual exchange and critical inquiry of the course; indeed, this model of learning can frame how we understand subjectivity itself.

This essay examines the gap between the dominant ethical frameworks for education and ideas about subjectivity, and proposes an ethic of hospitality as a framework that assumes a decentered subjectivity. First, I provide a brief overview of the ethics of autonomy, virtue, and care and highlight the conception of the subject that informs each of them. Second, I outline some philosophical critiques of the subject, as well as misunderstandings about the “death” of the subject. It should then be clear that there is a tension between new ideas about subjectivity and the ethical frameworks of autonomy, virtue, and care. Finally, I propose an ethic of hospitality and make suggestions for how this ethic might inform educational practice. 

Critical Perspectives on Service-Learning in Higher Education

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Service-learning in higher education combines students' academic coursework with their voluntary work, enhancing students' learning and benefiting the community. The key to unlocking the connections between the theory and practice of service-learning is critical reflection, which is examined in this book along with students' academic reflective writing and assessment. The power and dynamics of service-learning are explored through the construction of a theoretical paradigm and the assertion that it can be extended further to critical pedagogy. Critical Perspectives of Service-Learning in Higher Education takes a refreshingly critical and innovative look at service-learning, employing theoretical and empirical work to shed new light on this approach to education. (From the Publisher)