Should education be transformative?

ABSTRACT

It has become commonplace within the educational research community to invoke the transformative power of education. The call to adopt a ‘transformative’ approach to teaching and learning can be heard in fields as different as adult education and school leadership and as estranged as social justice education and educational psychology. While there is undoubtedly great promise in the idea of transformative education, the fact that it involves deep psychological restructuring on the part of the student requires ethical justification. In this article, I analyze the three most pressing ethical problems that arise within a transformative educational environment: the problems of transformative consent, controversial direction and transformative trauma. In the concluding section, I argue that this ethical analysis urges us to adopt an approach to transformative education as a process of initiation.     

Disruptive events: elite education and the discursive production of violence

This paper considers the discursive production of violence in the context of educational markets. Drawing on a larger study of sexually violent incidents that occurred in an elite private boys' school in Sydney, Australia, in 2000, the paper examines disciplinary traditions and communicative practices surrounding these events. Insights from Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau inform the analysis of market‐inflected features of school cultures, and their reconfiguration in violent acts by educational consumers. The paper aims to bring the intersection of school cultures and policy contexts into the matrix of factors considered in relation to school violence, and argues that institutional and social discourses that normalise and reproduce hierarchies of status and worth are complicit in the symbolic and material production of violence.     

Multicultural Education From a Pedagogical Perspective: A Response to Radical Critiques

This paper critically reviews radical critiques of multicultural education from a pedagogical perspective. Goals for the paper are: to reveal agreement between radical and multicultural discourse about transformative pedagogy, exemplify a body of literature about pedagogical struggles not recognized by radical critics, and encourage interchange between these groups in regard to critical multicultural education.The authors are interested in transformative, multicultural pedagogy, which is associated with critical multicultural education. They seek to know the extent to which transformative multicultural pedagogy is addressed within radical critiques of multicultural education. They question the extent to which voices of teachers and students engaged in real transformative pedagogy are acknowledged by radical critics.Ideological agreement is found between radical critics and multicultural educators in regard to transformative pedagogy. However, radical critics do not acknowledge this agreement, or perceive multicultural education as transformative. In response, the authors reference a growing body of literature that portrays real, transformative, multicultural pedagogy in action in school and university classrooms. They encourage radical critics to read this literature and consider alliances between radical and multicultural theory and practice.     

Obama and the ‘Arab Spring’: desire,hope and the manufacture of disappointment. Implications for a transformative pedagogy

For a period, in the run up to the election (2007–2008) and the months after the election, the name ‘Obama’ signified hope for millions, not just in America but across the world. As the hope turned to disappointment, the financial crisis deepened and the Arab Spring renewed a call for a ‘humanity’ that could transcend the differences of nations and faiths. What can be learnt from such events about the pedagogies of hope, disappointment and public action? Are there lessons for a transformative pedagogy, an education that could underpin and continuously create the conditions for a politics of freedom and social justice? A range of print, broadcast and digital/Internet news media is analysed to explore the political/rhetorical/pedagogical strategies already set into play that ‘manufacture disappointment’ in order to undermine and negate the transformative, transgressive symbolic significance of ‘Obama’ and thus manage the theme of change to reassert the same.     

预防和制止家庭暴力的法律对策

家庭暴力是一个严重的社会问题,它侵害了家庭成员的利益,给社会发展带来了不利影响,防止家庭暴力已成为全世界的共同目标。在借鉴英、美、日等国防治家庭暴力措施的基础上,分析了我国现行反家庭暴力措施的局限性,并提出了一些预防和制止家庭暴力的法律对策。     

自我调节学习与英语写作技能的培养

自我调节学习是动机心理学研究的重要问题。自我调节学习有四个基本要素:自我效能、目标设定、自我监控和策略运用。培养学习者英语写作技能,可以从四个方面入手:客观地进行自我评价,不断提高自我效能;设置具体写作目标,合理选择学习策略;积极执行学习策略,监控自我学习过程;结合已定学习标准,比较进步调整策略。     

Teacher stories of collusion and transformation: a feminist pedagogical framework and meta‐language for cultural gender justice

This article examines data from two different studies concerning issues of social justice, gender and schooling and specifically the practices of secondary teachers, ‘Mr B’, a teacher from a school in Tasmania, Australia, and ‘Mr C’, a teacher from a school in Bedfordshire in the United Kingdom. Both teachers’ practices and relationships with students are analysed within a feminist interpretation of the Productive Pedagogies model of quality teaching and learning. The two different stories are presented as juxtapositions that serve to illuminate the capacities of pedagogy to, on the one hand, work in ways likely to re‐inscribe the discourses of entitlement and privilege that perpetuate cultural gender injustice, and on the other, transform these discourses towards more equitable and just networks of multiple and intersecting differences.     

家庭暴力的概念研究

家庭暴力已成为社会广泛关注的现象。本文针对新《婚姻法》关于家庭暴力的司法解释,对家庭暴力的界定及构成要件进行了讨论,并究其理论原因谈防治措施,以供商讨。     

Does equal access mean treat the same? From theory to practice in the classroom of English as an Additional Language learner in Ireland – towards a transformative agenda

While a substantial body of research exists on First- and Second-Language Acquisition (SLA), research on the language acquisition process that a language minority student goes through when they are acquiring a second language has been largely unexplored. Pedagogical practices that espouse language learning theories facilitate both the language development and integration of the language minority child into the classroom. This paper will look at various linguistic variables within the field of SLA which are of particular relevance to the language acquisition process of such students in an Irish context. By embedding these linguistic factors into pedagogical practices, educators can engage with a transformative framework which will not only aid their linguistic and cognitive development, but will also empower the students by developing their critical language skills and facilitate their ability to access the mainstream curriculum.