Springboards or boxes? Theorizing a social justice pedagogy.
Date
2002
Authors
Leighteizer, Valda Kathleen.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Dalhousie University
Abstract
Description
This dissertation is a conceptual and analytic exploration of some of the complex and multi-faceted aspects of schooling. In this work I bring together conversations about curriculum, student engagement, and the systemic operations of power and privilege, pointing to some of the tensions and contradictions in and around the complex networks of intersections within and between these concepts. I undertake the process of theorizing a/my social justice pedagogy; in that doing I reconceptualize some of the constitutive elements of schooling: curriculum, student engagement, "at-riskedness", as relational processes in their own rights. I also argue that there is a pragmatic need and an ethical requirement for people who are socially privileged to recognize their own privilege and call its operations into question, thereby beginning or enhancing their own development/theorizing of a social justice pedagogy.
My theorizing draws on an eclectic collection of philosophical and analytic frameworks, ranging from nineteenth century social theorists to late twentieth century works from sociology, philosophy, education, and feminist theory. As well, this work is informed by Foucault's (1978) analytics of the operations of power relations, and by Freire's (1998) ethics of humanization. The project of theorizing a social justice pedagogy and using that pedagogy as a foundation in and for teacher education has become my strategy for resistance to the operations of power relations which re/produce schooling as inequitable. By introducing social justice pedagogy/ies as an integral component in teacher education programs, we may find ways of subverting the processes in and through which schooling routinely re/produces the relations of power, of privilege and marginalization.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 2002.
My theorizing draws on an eclectic collection of philosophical and analytic frameworks, ranging from nineteenth century social theorists to late twentieth century works from sociology, philosophy, education, and feminist theory. As well, this work is informed by Foucault's (1978) analytics of the operations of power relations, and by Freire's (1998) ethics of humanization. The project of theorizing a social justice pedagogy and using that pedagogy as a foundation in and for teacher education has become my strategy for resistance to the operations of power relations which re/produce schooling as inequitable. By introducing social justice pedagogy/ies as an integral component in teacher education programs, we may find ways of subverting the processes in and through which schooling routinely re/produces the relations of power, of privilege and marginalization.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 2002.
Keywords
Education, Teacher Training., Education, Social Sciences., Education, Philosophy of.