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.     

Resisting “national breast cancer awareness month”: the rhetoric of counterpublics and their cultural performances

Since 1984, October has been recognized in the U.S. as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In 1997, the Toxic Links Coalition of the Bay Area, California, began organizing annual “Stop Cancer Where It Starts” tours to counter attempts to obscure the environmentally-linked causes of cancer. By drawing on research including participant observation, this essay analyzes the politics of these two publics in an attempt to illustrate the limits of a binary conceptualization of publics and counterpublics and to emphasize the rhetorical value of the cultural performances that constitute public life.     

P.S.: I Survived: An Activism Project to Increase Student and Community Trauma Awareness

Social work students created a community activism project to raise awareness about trauma prevalence and impact. Trauma theory describes silencing as the mechanism that hinders individual and community healing. Therefore, students sought to create an interactive opportunity to heighten trauma visibility on campus. They created a physical mailbox and invited community members respond to the prompt, “I am a survivor because …” and to read others’ responses. Through the project, students were able to document participants’ trauma experiences, increase community trauma awareness, and enhance their own learning. Moreover, the authors believe that this assignment successfully fostered student integration of micro and macro social work skills.     

Protest as pedagogy: Exploring teaching and learning in Indigenous environmental movements

This article reports on a recent study into the experiences of Indigenous and allied environmental activists with teaching and learning during and as a result of Indigenous environmental movements. This inquiry is grounded in a theoretical framework informed by decolonization and cultural revitalization, social movement learning, and repressive tolerance. Interviews with 10 participants across Canada produced rich insights related to significant life experiences, the tensions encountered by activist educators, the complexity of inter-activist relationships, interaction with police agencies, the plurality of protest, and the revitalization and sharing of Indigenous traditions as the ultimate form of resistance.     

The qualitative imagination: neoliberalism, ‘blind drift’ and alternative pathways

In this paper, we argue that the non-positivist origins that provided the impetus for the qualitative imagination over the past half century in educational research has undergone subtle, but nevertheless profound change and transformation as neoliberal forms of governmentality have increasingly colonised social and educational research. We examine contemporary responses and challenges to this process from within and outside the academy. It is our contention that unless educational researchers critically engage with these new methodologies, particularly as they are generated by and through social movements, qualitative research is likely to become subject to what CW Mills (Mills) referred to as ‘blind drift'.     

When Is It Democratically Legitimate to Opt Out of Public Education?

In this essay, Michele Moses and Terri Wilson explore the recent movement to opt out of state tests. They situate this activism within a diverse line of efforts to refuse aspects of public education, asking how to evaluate the democratic legitimacy of different kinds of refusal in public education. Drawing on specific examples of opting out, they point to different ethical principles at stake in conflicts over public education. They pose three sets of questions — emphasizing reasons, positionality, and consequences — to help guide local educational leaders, policymakers, and citizens in negotiating difficult cases of refusal in public education. Moses and Wilson conclude that opting out of tests may, under certain conditions, serve the public purposes of education in a democratic society. Although many opt-out activists justify their actions in terms of individual rights, others are concerned with public goals and ideals, including concerns about the narrowing of curriculum, the erosion of teacher authority, and the widening privatization of public education. Yet communicating across and between different interests in this movement remains a challenge, one that points to the need for spaces of democratic deliberation about the aims of education policy.     

Teacher Dissent in Neoliberal Times: Counter-Publics and Alternative-Publics in Teacher Activism

In this essay, Terrenda White examines distinct forms of activism by two influential organizations: the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Teach for America (TFA). Despite differences between these groups, both have created new discourses and alliances among teachers in the public sphere — what White calls “teacher publics.” These new alliances, White argues, can be conceptualized as counter-publics and alternative-publics. CTU is a counter-public because its activities counter the tradition of top-down insular unionism and embrace “social movement unionism” where teachers are part of an expansive coalition for social transformation, including contesting city and state bureaucracies for adequate resources and equitable practices on behalf of minoritized communities. TFA has also created expansive coalitions for change, embracing a “new professionalism” that rejects public contestations with state leaders for resources. As an alternative-public, TFA engages a network of private philanthropists and business leaders to generate change in public education through market-based initiatives that challenge bureaucratic control of teachers and schools and that incentivize competition, audit culture, and data-driven decision-making. These two cases, because their approaches to educational change are so different, provide fertile ground for White's evaluation of what new forms of activism mean for the democratic goals of public schools.     

Venice Biennale: The Art of Communicating Resistance,Resistance as Art

ABSTRACT

This essay examines contemporary art as a tool of political resistance against existing and emerging ideologies as well as controversial and discriminatory cultural norms. On the example of the 2017 Venice Biennale, this research project analyses art, and more specifically, selected nation-specific exhibits, as pieces of critical pedagogy, representative of ideological and cultural resistance. Concentrating on the comparative analysis of art exhibits from US-American, Russian, and German national pavilions, this research project explains what their respective art communicates, what the main messages are, and elaborates on the impact, the salience, and the affect the exhibits have on their numerous audiences today, when the sphere of international and intercultural relations is challenged like never before. This essay further demonstrates that the exhibits challenge and critique the past and the present of their respective national cultures and attempt to refocus and humanize the future in the globalized world.     

#MeToo as Connective Action: A Study of the Anti-Sexual Violence and Anti-Sexual Harassment Campaign on Chinese Social Media in 2018

ABSTRACT

In January, 2018, the global anti-sexual violence and anti-sexual harassment movement – popularly known as #MeToo – had its Chinese nascence. This study drew upon the theory of connective actions to investigate how digital technologies shift the way in which feminist activism takes place. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were employed to systematically analyse over 36,000 online articles related to the campaign. The study identified 48 cases of sexual violence and harassment allegations. Findings from time series analysis show that China's #MeToo campaign first emerged within educational institutions before gradually spreading to other sectors of society. Based on qualitative findings from the ten most controversial cases, this paper identifies a series of counter-censorship strategies. The study of how the #MeToo movement in China emerged, adapted, and grew within an authoritarian context reveals unique insights into how connective actions traverse various platforms and cultural contexts. Methodologically, this study demonstrates how mixed methods can be utilised to study connective actions on social media in China.