Fostering Democratic Patriotism through Critical Pedagogy

When I was a high school US history teacher in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, I sometimes wondered about the relationship between patriotism and critique of one’s nation. Specifically, I questioned just how critical students could be without becoming disaffected toward the United States. I tried to be honest with my students about the nation’s mixed record of democracy—how the country was founded on ideals of equality and yet stole land from Native Americans, kidnapped millions of Africans as part of a massive system of chattel slavery, and denied the vote to women until 1920. But I wondered if these realities, paired with enduring inequalities, would make students want to dissociate themselves from this country and participation in political life. I had one student who made me think that perhaps the inverse was true: that the more students understood American failures to promote equality, the more motivated they would be to engage in fighting for it. He was the son of Nigerian immigrants. In ninth grade, he threw ketchup packets at his global history teacher, skipped class, and was regularly suspended. But in 11th grade English class, he read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and became a different student, seemingly overnight. He adopted a serious demeanor, wore a tie to school each day, and became a leader in class discussions. In reading about the injustices that drove Malcolm X to lead a movement for Black civil rights, this student saw a reason not for despair but for pursuing education so that he too could contribute to that movement. From that moment on, I wondered whether it was in fact impossible for schools to develop the type of citizens needed to protect and improve our democracy unless students were taught to be critical of the nation’s flaws

Presenting Precious Knowledge: Using Film to Model Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Youth Civic Activism for Social Studies Teachers

In this paper, I examine the potential for developing preservice social studies teachers’ understanding of transformational resistance, Latin@ civil rights movements, and culturally sustaining pedagogy through a project using the film Precious Knowledge. This documentary depicts high school students in a Mexican American Studies (MAS) program using civil disobedience to protest Arizona’s ban of the program. The teachers prepared for the screening by reading and responding to scholarly articles on Latin@ school engagement and Chican@ student activism. After viewing the film and engaging in small group and whole class discussions, participants reported that they learned about current and past Chican@ student movements and gained an appreciation for the transformational potential of civic activism. The project serves as an example of how methods instructors could use school documentaries or other films as pedagogical tools, and more specifically it suggests readings and instructional activities to pair with such films

Lessons on Citizenship and Democratic Power Literacy from Undocumented Youth

To create a society in which power is more equally accessible, we must teach our youth not only about civics and government, but also how to use political tools in order to effect social change. In this essay, I argue for teaching power literacy in place of traditional citizenship education on the grounds that the former has greater potential for increasing students’ political efficacy and their abilities to apply knowledge of civics to the real-world issues that affect them. To illustrate the concept of power literacy, I draw on a case study of a grassroots, undocumented youth activist organization fighting for in-state tuition legislation in North Carolina. Members of this group, which was entirely youth-founded and youth-led, taught themselves lobbying, civil disobedience, and other political strategies that far surpass the knowledge and skills typically presented in school-based citizenship education. Their work exemplifies the type of power literacy that we should teach all youth if we wish them to have the skills necessary to address the social inequalities that currently undercut American democracy

Fostering Democratic Patriotism through Critical Pedagogy

When I was a high school US history teacher in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, I sometimes wondered about the relationship between patriotism and critique of one’s nation. Specifically, I questioned just how critical students could be without becoming disaffected toward the United States. I tried to be honest with my students about the nation’s mixed record of democracy—how the country was founded on ideals of equality and yet stole land from Native Americans, kidnapped millions of Africans as part of a massive system of chattel slavery, and denied the vote to women until 1920. But I wondered if these realities, paired with enduring inequalities, would make students want to dissociate themselves from this country and participation in political life. I had one student who made me think that perhaps the inverse was true: that the more students understood American failures to promote equality, the more motivated they would be to engage in fighting for it. He was the son of Nigerian immigrants. In ninth grade, he threw ketchup packets at his global history teacher, skipped class, and was regularly suspended. But in 11th grade English class, he read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and became a different student, seemingly overnight. He adopted a serious demeanor, wore a tie to school each day, and became a leader in class discussions. In reading about the injustices that drove Malcolm X to lead a movement for Black civil rights, this student saw a reason not for despair but for pursuing education so that he too could contribute to that movement. From that moment on, I wondered whether it was in fact impossible for schools to develop the type of citizens needed to protect and improve our democracy unless students were taught to be critical of the nation’s flaws

Patriotism as critique: Youth responses to teaching about injustice

The view that patriotism is characterized by unquestioning loyalty to one’s country remains common in the United States despite its anti-democratic implications. From this standpoint, classroom discussions of past and present injustices are a threat to patriotism because they raise doubts about national superiority and exceptionality. Through an ethnographic study in two critical, culturally diverse US history classrooms, I investigated students’ attitudes towards their country and the notion of patriotism. As opposed to fomenting disaffection among students, candid discussions of injustices led students to view their teachers and curriculum as more trustworthy than what they had encountered in prior classrooms. Moreover, they believed that this approach to curriculum was necessary for fostering the type of critical democratic patriotism that they advocated

“Calling Out” in Class: Degrees of Candidness in Addressing Social Injustices in Racially Homogenous and Heterogeneous U.S. History Classrooms

Teaching for social justice requires an ability to address sensitive issues such as racism and sexism so that students can gain critical consciousness of these pervasive social realities. However, the empirical literature thus far provides minimal exploration of the factors teachers consider in deciding how to address these issues. This study explores this question through ethnographic case studies of two urban, 11th grade U.S. History classrooms. Differing classroom racial demographics and teacher instructional goals resulted in two distinct pedagogical approaches to social justice teaching. Despite differences in class makeup and teaching approach, students in both classrooms developed intellectual confidence and critical citizenship skills related to their growing sociopolitical awareness

“We\u27re Rags to Riches”: Dual Consciousness of the American Dream in Two Critical History Classrooms

Within the United States, wealth disparities are growing and upward social mobility is becoming increasingly difficult to attain. These trends call into question the American Dream ideology that anyone can succeed through hard work. This meritocratic ideal has traditionally been one of the unifying ideologies promoted through the public school curriculum. The topic of economic inequality, on the other hand, is largely absent from most social studies curricula. When teachers do address this issue, they tend to omit discussions of causes or potential policy solutions. Students are thus left with few resources with which to develop positions on policies related to inequality that would help them become more informed voters and contributors to public discourse on this issue

Critical Pedagogy in U.S. History Classrooms: Conscientization and Contradictory Consciousness

Critical pedagogy has been a significant interest area for education researchers and practitioners over the past fifty years because of the promise it offers not only for more equitable, democratic, and student-centered education, but also for a more just world. Although there have been major theoretical contributions to the field of critical pedagogy, relatively little empirical research has been conducted on its use in K-12 classrooms. Furthermore, the research has tended to focus more on teachers’ dispositions and approaches than it has on students’ responses to critical pedagogy. This postcritical ethnography responds to these gaps in two ways: first, by exploring specific approaches to critical pedagogy in two 11th grade, urban U.S. History classrooms; and second, by integrating observational data with teacher and student interviews to illuminate how the teachers and students together resist traditional forms of schooling in the US. The findings suggest that the approaches used by teachers with a critical orientation included dialogue for dissent and for unfixing opinions, teaching oppression but pairing it with examples of resistance, and encouraging students to take action to address contemporary injustices. Students in these classrooms demonstrated critical consciousness related to racism and their definitions of citizenship. However, dominant ideologies such as meritocracy, individualism, American exceptionalism, and a belief in inevitable progress contributed to students’ contradictory consciousness related to sexism, capitalism, and neocolonialism. Furthermore, these ideologies compromised students’ determination to take political action to address the social injustices they identified. Although students were planning to vote, they did not express a desire to engage in more transformative resistance such as through collective direct action. The implications for critical pedagogy practice is that educators should pair their teaching about past civil rights violations and victories with lessons on the more subtle ways that social structures continue to subordinate women, immigrants, racial and sexual minorities, and many others. This extension of critical pedagogy, which would include lessons on the concepts of ideology and hegemony, may help students understand how contradictory consciousness is sustained and in turn sustains the dominant social order.Doctor of Philosoph

Contexts of Cultural Diversity Professional Development in Schools

This report is part of a larger MERC study on Professional Development for Success in Culturally Diverse Schools.The goals of the larger study are (1) to understand the landscape of diversity within the schools in the MERC region, (2) to consider the implications for school policy and professional practice, (3) to review the current models of professional development that support teachers and other school professionals in regards to issues of cultural diversity, and (4) to develop and test models of professional development that have positive impacts on teacher practice, student outcomes and overall school success. With these goals in mind, this report contains three parts. Part 1 discusses demographic changes in the MERC region and provides historical, political, social, and economic contexts for understanding these changes. Part 2 describes the federal, state, and local policy contexts relevant to cultural diversity within schools, and professional development (PD) related to this topic. This section also reviews research on how policy contexts shape teachers’ decisions to participate in PD. Part 3 reviews existing studies of cultural diversity PD and describes the types of PD programs currently available in the MERC region. In the conclusion to the report, we present a list of recommendations for policy and and for future development and implementation of PD related to cultural diversity. The final section of the report also describes gaps in the existing body of knowledge and the research needed to better understand PD related to cultural diversity

Multicultural education professional development: A review of the literature

When their teachers are well equipped to foster inclusive and equitable classrooms, students from marginalized communities show higher rates of academic achievement, motivation, self-confidence, and self-efficacy. However, many teachers complete preparation programs feeling underprepared to work in culturally diverse classrooms, making high-quality professional development in this area crucial. We undertook a meta-ethnographic, systematic literature review of 40 studies of multicultural-education-focused professional development programs in order to better understand the forms and features of such programs that contribute to teachers’ self-efficacy and success in working with culturally diverse students. We found a small literature base with too much variation across types of programs studied and outcomes analyzed to draw conclusions about the factors that contribute to effectiveness. However, the extant literature does point to important questions and considerations for both providers and researchers of multicultural education professional development. One area for future research is how PD providers navigate tensions or challenges arising from resistance to discussions of diversity and equity. Another is locating the balance between providing specific knowledge about students’ cultures and guarding against promoting stereotypes or broad generalizations. Researchers and PD developers should also pay close attention to their underlying theories related to both teacher learning and multicultural education