Nepantlera Pedagogy: An Axiological Posture for Preparing Critically Conscious Teachers in the Borderlands

Latinos in U.S.–Mexican borderlands encounter language barriers and clashing cultures. If this decade is to become one of transformation, it must grapple with the uncomfortable realities of Latino students and other minorities of color. This article delineates the theoretical perspectives of the Nepantlera pedagogy, a pedagogy with an emphasis on social justice and human dignity. Paulo Freire's ( Freire, P. 1970. Cultural action for freedom, Boston, MA: Harvard Educational Review.  [Google Scholar] 2000 Freire, P. 2000. Pedagogy of the oppressed, New York, NY: Continuum. (Original work published 1970.  [Google Scholar]) conscientization, Gloria Anzaldúa's (1999 Anzaldúa, G. E. 2002. “Now let us shift … the path of conocimiento … inner work, public acts”. In This bridge we call home: Radical visions for transformation (pp. 540–578), Edited by: Anzaldúa, G. and Keating, A. New York, NY: Routledge.  [Google Scholar], 2002 Anzaldúa, G. E. 2002. “Now let us shift … the path of conocimiento … inner work, public acts”. In This bridge we call home: Radical visions for transformation (pp. 540–578), Edited by: Anzaldúa, G. and Keating, A. New York, NY: Routledge.  [Google Scholar]) path of conocimientos and concept of Nepantla, and Mikhail Bakhtin's (1981) Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The dialogic imagination: Four essays, Edited by: Holquist, M. Austin: University of Texas Press.  [Google Scholar] concepts of dialogism and ideological becoming frame this pedagogical pathway through praxis, identity formation, border epistemologies, language diversity, dialogue, and critical education.     

Engaging Latino/a Students in the Secondary English Classroom: A Step Toward Breaking the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Behavior issues in the classroom directly relate to the teaching style and the type of interactions between the teacher and students. In particular, Latino/a students need to be engaged in the curriculum content if they are to be successful, both academically and emotionally. If this does not occur, then behavioral issues will arise, which will then feed into the school-to-prison pipeline theory.     

Personal oral narratives in a special school curriculum: an analysis of key documents

Oral narrative is a critical skill for school achievement, for personal relationships and for social participation. However, it is downgraded in current and proposed National Curriculum frameworks, which fail to recognise its significance in development. Schools have flexibility to address the issue, which is of particular importance to pupils with special educational needs. This article explores the place of narrative in the policies, curriculum and assessment scheme of a special school catering for pupils across the range of ability. It is concluded that, while schools are free to prioritise according to pupils' needs, it is difficult to target oral narrative effectively in the absence of appropriate frameworks for setting goals and monitoring progress.     

The Pedagogic Beliefs of Indonesian Teachers in Inclusive Schools

This research explores, for the first time, the pedagogical orientations of Indonesian teachers in the context of inclusive education. A mixed-method approach was used for an analysis of questionnaire data from 140 teachers and qualitative interviews from 20 teachers in four inclusive schools. The findings suggest that, in general, the implicit orientation of teachers is social constructivist. This orientation is also reflected in their reported classroom practices. Although less common, more directive pedagogical approaches appear to have an impact upon the flexibility of roles within two teacher inclusive classrooms. Whilst the number of disabled pupils within each class was a significant issue for interviewees, no pupils were deemed unteachable in their classrooms. Furthermore, what is described by the teachers as a “special pedagogy” typically entailed additional teaching time and modified assessments, and consequently could be framed as “good teaching for all”. The questionnaires also contained responses from student and special school teachers and support the view that teachers’ beliefs about inclusive pedagogy are mediated by experience and occupation.     

Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices and Critical Pedagogy: The Fifth Moment in a Teacher Educator's Journey

In order to research and improve her practice, a teacher educator examined her life history and its relation to the ethical and moral discourses of society using autobiography as a self-study methodology. This critical reflection provided the basis for contextualizing praxis-oriented teacher education in an urban school. Based on the transformative framework of critical pedagogy coupled with a self-study of teacher education practices, this article explores how a teacher educator engages in research relating to the self, professional practice, and the analysis of the tensions surrounding otherness and oppression. Critical pedagogy provided the means and the methods to facilitate reflection upon her own earned and unearned privilege in society and paved the way for an agency of change in her practice.     

Teaching as Lived Experience: The value of exploring the hidden and emotional side of teaching through reflective narratives

This article discusses a process of self-inquiry that took the form of a narrative journey of transformation. The process included reflective practice deepened by focusing on the lived experience of being a teacher, and as the process unfolded I sought to discover more about classroom events as lived experiences for teacher and students. The methodology involved dialogue with self in constructing narratives around the insights gained from written reflections, as well as dialogue with others within an established community of inquiry for guided reflection. Through this process, it was hoped that the insights developed would inform practice and transform experience. The study highlighted some of the emotional aspects of the experiences of teaching and learning, and considered the importance of a teacher focusing on subjective response in order to gain awareness of self in practice. The process also revealed some uncomfortable hidden aspects of experience, an awareness of which was considered important in developing more effective and ethical practice. The study identified the value for teacher and students in gaining an understanding of how individuals within a classroom event interact, and for considering how this might affect learning and teaching.     

In Living Memory: The Dying Art of Learning Poetry and a Case for Revival

This article considers the practice of learning poems and the value of poetry in the memory, and emerges from the Cambridge Poetry Teaching Project, a small-scale research study co-ordinated through the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. Drawing on the subset of findings in relation to learning and memory, the essay locates the practice within broader cultural and educational contexts and examines it in relation to some theories of memory and cognition, especially the work of Iain McGilchrist on the divided brain, and to personal experience. The article argues that there is a largely forgotten value in learning poetry and posits five ways in which it may contribute both to our experience and understanding of the poem and to our engagement with the world. Finally, the author considers the learning process itself and suggests a strategy in accordance with the proposed theorisation.     

实习教师专业发展深层次问题探析——兼论教师教育课程改革措施

实习教师是学习"做教师"的特殊群体,其专业发展中存在一些深层次问题。导致这些问题的原因有:实习学校教师专业精神的消极影响、实习教师的基础性素养不高、实习期间的有效工作量不足、"经验-模仿"的实习指导模式、实习教师实践时对理论的疏离。为此,需要全面改革职前教师教育课程,以促进实习教师的专业发展。     

The Power of the Pen: Writing Mentorship and Chicana/o M.A. Students

This article draws on my experience as an adjunct professor in the Master's program of the Department of Mexican-American Studies at a large public university in California. Seeing my students’ struggles with writing, I conceived of a set of practices of writing mentorship anchored by a series of writing workshops held in Summer 2012. In this article, I document the pedagogy and content of these writing workshops in order to think about the unique struggles and opportunities Chicana/o Master's students face in the writing process and to provide an outline for other instructors interested in developing a practice of writing mentorship.     

Choices in the Design of Inclusive Education Courses for Pre-service Teachers: The Case of a South African University

It is expected that that pre-service teachers are adequately equipped to meet the needs of diverse students. This article discusses the choices that teacher educators must make in designing inclusive education courses. The first choice is whether inclusive education will be infused into the curriculum or presented as a stand-alone course. If the latter, the second decision is what determines the content of courses – teacher need, policy directives or the authority of the field where knowledge is produced. If teacher educators look to the field of knowledge production, they might choose among inclusive education as an issue of student diversity; teaching competence; and schools and societies. We animate these choices as we describe an inclusive education course taught in a South African university. Our conclusion suggests that pre-service teacher education for inclusive education would be strengthened by more critical appraisal of the assumptions and orientations informing the design of courses.     

Urban Poetics: Poetry, Social Justice and Critical Pedagogy in Education

Posing an alternate view to high stakes educational models, the thoughts, opinions and practices of four poetry educators are used to provide critical insights as how to infuse creative outlets in the educational process. In gathering the motivations of these poetry educators, a goal of this project is to encapsulate their philosophies through researcher observation and participation. Engaging such work with social justice at the center creates a particular disposition. It can be subjective in the sense that an understanding of improvement requires an explicit commitment to the improvement of the lives of young people in education through a participatory process.David Stovall is an Assistant Professor of Policy Studies.     

To be Heard,to be Seen,to Matter: Consequences of/for self in utilizing one's narrative

This self-study describes the development and use in a preservice literacy course of the first author's narrative of her own schooling. The introduction to that narrative is included in this paper. The full text of the narrative also describes the impact of school readiness, resource placement, transience, poverty, and teachers' responses and expectations on my school experiences and my sense of self. Methods of data collection included students' anonymous responses to the narrative, in-class discussion, students' final course papers, my research journal, field notes, and retrospective re-analysis. The perspective of a colleague who is serving as a critical friend on my journey is incorporated in the paper as dialogical insets interrogating my practices and interpretations. Writing, analyzing, and using the narrative in my teaching served to clarify my understanding of how my childhood and schooling shape my current work. Sharing it with students was built on the belief that doing so would encourage their development of understanding for students who have histories and backgrounds unlike their own.     

The Difficulty of Change: The Impact of Personal School Experience and Teacher Education on the Work of Beginning Language Teachers

This case‐study investigates the impact of personal school experience and initial teacher education on the work of six beginning language teachers. Insights into the thinking and acting of the subjects are gained through an interpretative analysis of their interviews. The findings indicate that one’s own school experience has an important role in constructing practical knowledge during the first years of teaching. Part of this experience is unconscious and difficult to express in words; nevertheless, it has an impact on the actions of the beginning language teacher. Furthermore, the ability of the teachers in the study to use knowledge learned during the teacher education is dependent on their ability to self‐reflect.     

Understanding the Lived Experience of a Sioux Indian Male Adolescent: Toward the pedagogy of hermeneutical phenomenology in education

Currently, there is a resurgence of interests in phenomenology in education. This article sheds light on the importance of hermeneutical phenomenology in teaching and learning based on the lived experience of a Sioux Indian adolescent boy, elicited from an ethnographic case study conducted at an alternative high school in the US. Employing narrative inquiry, this article seeks phenomenological ways of understanding students' lived experiences and explores the meaning of the pedagogical practice of hermeneutical phenomenology in education. I delve into how hermeneutical understanding of the phenomena of students' lived experience can catapult both students and teachers into the personal growth and development in a reciprocal way. It is my hope that such an understanding will facilitate an educational aim that focuses on the ontology of being and becoming while students' existence is brought to the center of teaching and learning.     

Tenets of Body-Soul Rooted Pedagogy: teaching for critical consciousness,nourished resistance,and healing

ABSTRACT

For marginalized communities, schooling is mired in social/bodily control, tracking, and cultural erasure circumscribing difference/culture as obstacles, as opposed to sites of wisdom, connectedness, and critical consciousness. Authors shape a transformative pedagogical framework across teacher education and partnering schools by utilizing spiritually embodied, land-based Chicana Feminist and Indigenous Epistemologies. We outline six tenets of Body-Soul Rooted Pedagogy which: 1) construct education politically, 2) enact schooling as decolonization/empowerment, 3) center epistemologies, multiliteracies of marginalized groups, 4) foster critical frameworks navigating oppression, 5) engage social action pedagogy, and 6) engender hope, well-being. Scholarship has implications for educational theory and practice at all levels.     

The Burden of Teaching Teachers: Memoirs of Race Discourse in Teacher Education

This paper presents the views and educational experiences of two African American female scholars, from a critical race and black feminist theorist perspective, teaching in the area of social justice to predominantly white female pre-service teachers. These testimonies reveal the struggles encountered by these scholars when engaging students in a historical and contemporary examination of race, privilege, and systemic inequalities. The objectives of this paper are to expand on the literary dialogue of such resistance and attempt to bring awareness into the arenas that need the most exposure, i.e. departmental, faculty, and tenure review meetings. It is commonly written and verbalized that institutions are interested in attracting and retaining faculty of color. We argue that the ways we are supported must shift. This problem of student resistance, who they resist and why, should become open for discussion on college campuses across the nation. Dawn G. Williams is an Assistant Professor of Educational Administration and Policy at Howard University. Venus Evans-Winters is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University.     

Pedagogy through the pearl metaphor: teaching as a process of ongoing refinement

Using the analytical tools of broadening, burrowing and storying and restorying, this narrative inquiry examines a middle school teachers’ knowledge of her pedagogical practices through the strand of pearls’ metaphor that she employs to explain her teaching to herself, a beginning teacher whom she mentors and ourselves as researchers. Throughout the discussion, careful attention is paid to the pearl metaphor’s emergent, novel qualities and how the metaphor is held and expressed in the teacher’s unfurling practice. In the final analysis, four significant themes are unpacked: (1) the image of teacher as curriculum maker; (2) the idea of pearls, non-pearls and yellowed pearls; and (3) the concept of metaphors and the nature of metaphorical truth. Finally, a discussion of the veracity of the strand of pearls as way to understand teaching practice concludes the article.     

Tending School: A Forum on the Experiences of Refugee and Immigrant Students in the United States System

This article contributes to the investigation of refugee and immigrant education. As one part of a comprehensive qualitative study, it showcases the school experiences of three students: Quincy, a refugee from Afghanistan who came to the United States at age thirteen; Emily, an immigrant from Poland who arrived at age six; and Maung, a political refugee from Burma who arrived at age eighteen. The school experiences of these students mirror those of many children who come from countries and communities outside the dominant culture of the United States.The framework of investigation is based on the notion that school life for minority children, in this case, refugee and immigrant students, can be examined from a critical and political perspective; that is, contextualized socially, economically, and politically (Apple, 1990). Students who are not grounded in the mainstream culture struggle to get along in school settings that are institutionalized according to the moral, social, and cultural dimensions of society. Critical theorists contend that student voice can become an organizing force to negotiate and construct multiple interpretations of school life within the reality of institutionalized ways of being in school. In this study, a focus on finding and developing student voice offers the possibility of passages between private and public (Miller, 1990) to permit the sharing and envisioning of multiple interpretations of school life for students and for those with whom they interact with in school settings.     

新加坡中学数学教师教育课程设置的特点与启示

新加坡中学数学教师教育课程具有6个特点：中学数学教师培养模式的高层次化;课程设置系列化、综合化、专题化;突出与中学数学教育的接轨;强调理论和实践的整合;教育类课程比例高,教学实践课时足;重视现代教育技术的学习与应用。其先进的经验对于我们构建数学教育类课程体系的基本指导思想、基本原则以及基本的课程体系框架具有极大的启发意义。