3,558 research outputs found

    From social justice to collaborative activism: changing the landscape of academic leadership

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    The new millennium arrived with great economic prosperity; however, currently the United State faces a weaker economy, a depressed housing market, a costly Iraq war and all the old problems of the late 20th century; power, race, identity, violence, and ethics. Current challenges for educators: 1) the increase number of charter schools; 2) voucher programs; 3) increases in immigrant populations; 4) for profit educational organizations; 5) inadequate funding for No Child Left Behind; 6) inequities regarding accountability; 7) and the re-segregation of public schools along class/racial lines. These challenges have broad implications for higher education. According to Hopkins (1997) education is considered to be the most accessible means for achieving social, political, economic, and cultural liberation in the United States (Gause, 2008, In-press). This article speaks to transforming schools by changing the landscape of academic leadership in an educational leadership preparation program in the southeastern part of the United States. The author engages discourses situated in social justice, collaborative activism and critical theory to speak to the purpose of public schools and the role of democratic education in public life

    From Social Justice to Collaborative Activism: Changing the Landscape of Academic Leadership

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    The new millennium arrived with great economic prosperity; however, currently the United State faces a weaker economy, a depressed housing market, a costly Iraq war and all the old problems of the late 20th century; power, race, identity, violence, and ethics. Current challenges for educators: 1) the increase number of charter schools; 2) voucher programs; 3) increases in immigrant populations; 4) for profit educational organizations; 5) inadequate funding for No Child Left Behind; 6) inequities regarding accountability; 7) and the re-segregation of public schools along class/racial lines. These challenges have broad implications for higher education. According to Hopkins (1997) education is considered to be the most accessible means for achieving social, political, economic, and cultural liberation in the United States (Gause, 2008, In-press). This article speaks to transforming schools by changing the landscape of academic leadership in an educational leadership preparation program in the southeastern part of the United States. The author engages discourses situated in social justice, collaborative activism and critical theory to speak to the purpose of public schools and the role of democratic education in public life

    Translanguaging and academic writing in English-only classrooms: a case-study from Bangladeshi higher education

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    The study applied a translanguaging approach in a writing skill development class in the English department of a Bangladeshi public university. Data were collected through classroom observation, a pedagogical intervention, a focus group discussion with students, and a semi-structured interview with the class teacher. The study findings challenge monolingual approaches to academic writing in particular and demonstrate how a planned translanguaging approach allows teachers to relate English content to learners' local language(s) and experience, thus promoting greater understanding and metalinguistic awareness while also affirming the bilingualism and supporting bilingual learners in their classrooms. These findings have implications for policy and practices designed to improve learning outcomes, as well as to enhance the satisfaction and self-esteem of multilingual students studying in an otherwise monolingual classroom located in multilingual countries

    Transformative expectations in research on environmental and sustainability education

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    While education in general is seen as a crucial means for creating social change and transformation, environmental and sustainability education (ESE) is especially subject to transformative expectations in tackling escalating societal problems such as the lack of sustainable development. This article explores how ESE research addresses transformative expectations and justifies the knowledge it produces and its methods. It first explores examples of this within three different categories focusing on: transformative teaching in higher education, systemic transformative change in higher education institutions, and transformative change agency formation in community settings. Thereafter follows a discussion of the interfaces between the examples when it comes to their ontological, epistemological and methodological stances. The analysis illustrates different ways of conceptualizing transformative expectations, drawing on terms such as ‘rethinking’, ‘revitalizing’, ‘disrupting’, ‘reframing’ and ‘transgressing’. It furthermore highlights two different foundations for methodological justifications in ESE research addressing transformative expectations: working for change within existing social frameworks (adaptation), or seeking improvement by transgressing norms (disruption). It is pointing out that such methodological justifications are likely to differ in terms of how they address change depending on whether the research is conducted within or outside formal education settings

    Contemplating Antiracist Mothering in the Lives of White Women in Multiracial Families

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    Although more white women live, love, and mother in multiracial contexts, there remains limited scholarship on them, particularly what role they can play in antiracism efforts. In this article, I consider what antiracist mothering means to white women in multiracial families, and how they practice antiracist mothering in their lives. I draw on data from two participant workshop discussions on antiracism and mothering, held as part of a larger qualitative study of ten white women in multiracial families in Canada. The participant dialogues reveal four key themes: facing fear, developing critical skills, finding “comfort in discomfort,” and engaging in self-reflective learning. The research findings demonstrate how white women in multiracial families can be proactive in their negotiation and resistance to dominant discourses of race and racism, especially if they are willing to participate in ongoing learning. The research study suggests using an antiracism framework to explore the perspectives and practices of white mothers in multiracial families is informative to reconceptualizing their mothering roles, and how they can cultivate their own and their children’s critical skills. Participant workshops are recommended as a method to engage issues of race and difference with white women in multiracial families

    Introduction: Anticipating feminist futures of spatial practice

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    Attentive to the spatiality of social struggles, this book can be understood within a critical feminist tradition examining how power, in the form of political hegemonies and social injustice has been resisted and reconstructed through spatial practice. Feminist Futures of Spatial Practice wants to contribute to developing new forms of activism, expanding dialogues, engaging materialisms, transforming pedagogies, and projecting alternatives. Contributing authors trace experiences and examples, theoretical dimensions and practical tools. We enquire generally and collectively: What knowledges and imaginaries are necessary for engendering social change? How do we develop and mediate these to create more gender sensitive, just and environments? What are implications for what we learn and teach in architecture and academia, what roles can education have in questions of difference and equality? How can we direct our future spatial practices to meet challenges posed by climate change, economic crises and uneven global development? Such questions require rethinking our basic assumptions and concepts as well as our practical skills and projects. We do not want to defer this necessary task to an indefinite future nor to sit back and ‘wait for the revolution’. We are concerned with exploring and shaping feminist futures in the here and now. Contributions in the book query the presence, temporalities, emergence, histories, events, durations – and futures – of feminist spatial practices. 40 established and emerging voices have contributed here, writing critically from within their institutions, professions, and their activist, political and personal practices

    ROTOĐŻ Review

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    The ROTOЯ partnership between Huddersfield Art Gallery and the University of Huddersfield was established in 2011. ROTOЯ I and II was a programme of eight exhibitions and accompanying events that commenced in 2012 and was completed in 2013. ROTOЯ continues into 2014 and the programme for 2015 and 2016 is already firmly underway. In brief, the aim of ROTOЯ is to improve the cultural vitality of Kirklees, expand audiences, and provide new ways for people to engage with and understand academic research in contemporary art and design. Why ROTOЯ , Why Now? As Vice Chancellors position their institutions’ identities and future trajectories in context to national and international league tables, Professor John Goddard1 proposes the notion of the ‘civic’ university as a ‘place embedded’ institution; one that is committed to ‘place making’ and which recognises its responsibility to engaging with the public. The civic university has deep institutional connections to different social, cultural and economic spheres within its locality and beyond. A fundamental question for both the university sector and cultural organisations alike, including local authority, is how the many different articulations of public engagement and cultural leadership which exist can be brought together to form one coherent, common language. It is critical that we reach out and engage the community so we can participate in local issues, impact upon society, help to forge well-being and maintain a robust cultural economy. Within the lexicon of public centered objectives sits the Arts Council England’s strategic goals, and those of the Arts and Humanities Research Council – in particular its current Cultural Value initiative. What these developments reveal is that art and design education and professional practice, its projected oeuvre as well as its relationship to cultural life and public funding, is now challenged with having to comprehensively audit its usefulness in financially austere times. It was in the wake of these concerns coming to light, and of the 2010 Government Spending Review that ROTOЯ was conceived. These issues and the discussions surrounding them are not completely new. Research into the social benefits of the arts, for both the individual and the community, was championed by the Community Arts Movement in the 1960s. During the 1980s and ‘90s, John Myerscough and Janet Wolff, amongst others, provided significant debate on the role and value of the arts in the public domain. What these discussions demonstrated was a growing concern that the cultural sector could not, and should not, be understood in terms of economic benefit alone. Thankfully, the value of the relationships between art, education, culture and society is now recognised as being far more complex than the reductive quantification of their market and GDP benefits. Writing in ‘Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century)’, Ernesto Pujol proposes:‘
it is absolutely crucial that art schools consider their institutional role in support of democracy. The history of creative expression is linked to the history of freedom. There is a link between the state of artistic expression and the state of democracy.’ When we were approached by Huddersfield Art Gallery to work collaboratively on an exhibition programme that could showcase academic staff research, one of our first concerns was to ask the question, how can we really contribute to cultural leadership within the town?’ The many soundbite examples of public engagement that we might underline within our annual reports or website news are one thing, but what really makes a difference to a town’s cultural identity, and what affects people in their daily lives? With these questions in mind we sought a distinctive programme within the muncipal gallery space, that would introduce academic research in art, design and architecture beyond the university in innovative ways

    Practices of conformity and transgression in an out-of-school reading programme for 'at risk' children

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    A large body of research has demonstrated that the plurilingualisms and pluriliteracies that children and youth bring to classrooms are often not those required for school success. This is even more so for students from underprivileged backgrounds, a demographic where children and youth with family backgrounds of immigration are over-represented. This article reports on ethnographic research at an after-school reading programme for primary school children considered to be at risk of school failure in the old town of Barcelona. Results suggest that the practices of pluriliteracy supported by the programme often conform with those inherent to the children's formal education; that is, with the very practices that have contributed to the children being placed in the programme to begin with. However, through the fine-grained analysis of child-volunteer interactions, certain practices that subtly transgress these norms are identified. It is in such practices that we see potential for educational transformation

    Discomfort as a Method: Language, Education, and Politics of Knowledge Production

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