Why critical literacy should turn to ‘the affective turn’: making a case for critical affective literacy

The central argument of this essay is that critical literacy with a rationalistic bent may not enable us to cope with ethical dilemmas in our responsiveness to human sufferings. I argue that critical literacy education would benefit from turning to the recent scholarship on affect/emotion studies. I draw upon the works of Sara Ahmed – one of the leading contributors to critical affect studies – to shed light on what is called a regulatory power that creates a schism in our responsiveness to violence and suffering. The key contribution of this essay is to present an actionable framework of what I describe as critical affective literacy. To delineate this framework, I present four pedagogical principles, along with examples of instructional activities.     

‘I’ve been sort of laddish with them … one of the gang’: teachers’ perceptions of ‘laddish’ boys and how to deal with them

Concerns about schoolboy ‘laddish’ anti‐learning and/or anti‐school cultures are pervasive in current education discourses. Mandates to tackle laddishness frequently assume that there is a common understanding of what laddishness means, and also that teachers will know how to tackle it. This article explores these assumptions, drawing upon data generated during interviews with 30 secondary school teachers working in England. First, it maps out the key features of laddishness identified by the secondary school teachers. Second, it explores and critically evaluates the strategies that these teachers use, or advocate, for tackling laddishness, focusing particularly on the ways in which these are gendered. The paper closes with a discussion of the different agendas that may underpin attempts to tackle laddishness, and the pitfalls to avoid if teachers are to enhance learning and promote social justice.     

The quest for an inclusive curriculum and assessment culture: The national council for vocational awards 1991–2001

This paper draws on psychoanalytic and socio-political perspectives of trauma and emotion to examine how critical emotional praxis may serve as a pedagogical tool for reconciliation education. A major challenge for teachers in traumatized societies struggling to enact reconciliation education is that emotions of trauma are often appropriated by social and political institutions, including schools, to justify particular collective narratives and ideologies. The prospects of critical emotional praxis are explored through two vignettes from an on-going ethnographic research in Cyprus, a country of protracted ethnic conflict. The first vignette focuses on how emotions of trauma are politically appropriated in a classroom while the second shows how one teacher manages to enact critical emotional praxis with her students to undermine the political appropriation of emotions of trauma. The paper concludes with a discussion of the pedagogical implications and recommendations for future research.     

Happy objects,happy men? Affect and materiality in vocational training

This article investigates the prevailing social inertia of vocational training. Previous research indicates that gendered social norms contribute to sustaining gender segregation. Few studies, however, have paid attention to how the interplay of emotional and material factors impact on gender norms in vocational training. The article builds on an ethnographic study in a Swedish upper-secondary educational programme traditionally dominated by masculinity norms, namely the Building and Construction programme. Employing Sara Ahmed's notion of happy objects, the article centres on vocational students' expressed joy in the practical work and shows how joy contributes to sustaining and challenging dominant masculinity patterns. Though students enjoyed practical work, the study indicates that a particular version of happiness was normalised which ruled out non-heterosexual and female students. The article suggests that further studies of social inertia in vocational training need to account for the interconnectedness of the emotional, material, and corporeal dimensions of gender.     

La Parte Chusca of a Pedagogical Here and Now: Oaxacan Teachers’ Heteroglossic Joking About State Repression and Educational Reform

Faced with repression and reform, humor has become tactical for public school teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico, engaged in a decades-old movement that after 2006 involved intensified street- and school-based pedagogies. This piece explores how humor adds to a political project via mocking names, images, and dictates of elite leaders to bring a here and now to what is taken as inaccessible in the teachers’ political lives. Humor forms part of an (e)sc(h)atology in which critical practices are part eschatological, a call for definite transformation, and part scatological, embodied vulgarity. La parte chusca (the funny part), its (e)sc(h)atological contribution, angles toward critical literacies in Oaxaca and beyond.     

Empowering Students Through Critical Media Literacy: This Means War

Media messages are increasingly packaged in ways that blur distinctions between genres. The U.S. Army National Guard's recent campaign incorporating rock stars and popular music to appeal to potential recruits exemplifies this trend, as commercials and music videos become one and the same. Given this increasing trend, critical media literacy education is imperative. This article posits that by introducing the meta-language for discussing media and providing a protocol for exploring the mode, audience, purpose, and situation of media messages, teachers are preparing students to autonomously read media through a critical lens.     

Teacher educators modelling their teachers?

The teacher educator is always also a teacher, and as a role model may have an important impact on student teachers’ views on teaching. However, what is the impact of these teacher educator’s own role models on their teaching views and practices? Do teacher educators simply imitate the positive role models and reject the bad? It is already clear that teachers and teacher educators learn more than how to play a role from their role models. Becoming a teacher or a teacher educator is a long‐term process of developing a professional identity, with role models being just one of the contributing factors. This study of 13 teacher educators addresses the impact of schoolteacher role models as part of the socialisation process of becoming a teacher.     

‘It’s very much taken as an insult if I say anything’: do new educators have a right to speak their mind?

This article describes the challenges beginning teachers face in schooling contexts that have become increasingly subject to direct political intervention. To tell the story it focuses on the experiences of five teachers in their first year of teaching in an urban jurisdiction in Australia, examining the ways in which they taught literacy, and were required to teach literacy. Government-driven political agendas of national testing, teacher standards and performance pay were all gaining traction as they commenced their first year of teaching. The ways in which these new educators felt they were discouraged from voicing their own opinions about these issues are examined and the consequences of silencing new educators are considered. The article concludes with recommendations for teacher education programmes to better prepare teachers for the politics of teaching.     

“We felt that electricity”: writing-as-becoming in a high school writing class

Drawing from data generated in a high school creative writing class, this article presents experiences and moments from a classroom-sited research project that were considered through the theoretical perspective of response-able pedagogies. Using postqualitative methods, this analysis addresses two framing questions: How does turning attention towards the unfolding relations in a writing class illuminate some possibilities of response-able pedagogies? What becomes possible when the teaching of writing emphasises ‘becoming’ (rather than products/achievement)? In response to the first question, turning attention towards the unfolding relations in the class context made new ways of conceptualising writing possible: writing as following energies; writing as making; and writing as producing/traversing boundaries. Considered together, these interwoven practices contributed to the response-able pedagogy of writing-as-becoming. In response to question two, the response-able pedagogy of writing-as-becoming shifted the teaching emphasis from controlled outcomes to the affective experience of connection. This study shows the potential in reconsidering our commitment to teaching writing as (only) a process and to (also) imagine it as a means by which students can experience the vitality and joy of being present with others.     

中小学科学教师专业化素养分析

公众科学素养水平低下已成为严重制约中国经济发展和社会进步的瓶颈之一。国务院发布了《全民科学素质行动计划纲要》,旨在提高公众素养,而未成年人是实施《纲要》的重中之重。要提高未成年人的科学素养,建设一支专业化素养高的中小学科学教师队伍尤为关键。中小学科学教师队伍存在种种问题,分析论证科学教师应具备科学素养、教育素养和人文素...     

“I have a little,little, little footprint on the world” and “I’m not political”: feelings of low self-efficacy and the effect of identity on environmental behaviour in educators

Abstract

Environmental educators in both formal and informal settings work to develop students’ environmental literacy, with the goal of developing adult citizens who care about the environment and are knowledgeable and prepared to engage in behaviours to address environmental issues. Yet little attention has been paid to educator environmental literacy. Here we report the findings from an interview study of formal educators from K-12 settings and informal educators from out-of-school settings. Overall, educators favoured personal-level behaviours. In addition, some educators reported poor environmental self-efficacy for three main reasons: the scale of the problem, other negative environmental behaviour that offsets positive behaviour, and the need for system-level behaviour Educators rarely engaged in system-level behaviour due to distrust of the system, inexperience, and the rejection of political or activist identity.