Author: Linda Thompson

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Book Review: Problematizing Public Pedagogy

The Work: Problematizing Public Pedagogy. Jake Burdick, Jennifer A. Sandlin and Michael P. O’Malley (Eds.) Routledge, New York, 2014, 212 pages

Reviewer: Karen Charman, Victoria University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

In Brief:  The breadth of this edited collection on public pedagogy is testimony to the richness of the field. As the title suggests one of the appeals of this book is the very problematisation of the terms public and pedagogy. The editors begin in ‘Breaking without Fixing’ by……..

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Remaking education from below: the Chilean student movement as public pedagogy

Author: Jo Williams, Victoria University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  This article considers the Chilean student movement and its ten-year struggle for public education as an example of public pedagogy. Secondary and university students, along with the parents, teachers, workers and community members who have supported them, have engaged in the most sustained political activism seen in Chile since the democratic movement against the Pinochet military dictatorship between 1983 and 1989. The students have successfully forced a nationwide discussion on education, resulting not only in significant educational reform, but also a community rethinking of the relationship between education and social and economic inequality in a neoliberal context. Framed through Giroux’s conceptual definition of public pedagogies and drawing on field
research conducted throughout 2014 as well as existing literature and media sources, this article considers the role of the student movement in Chile in redefining the concept of ‘public’ and the
implications for radical perspectives on learning and teaching.

Keywords: students, activism, Chile, public pedagogy

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Older adult education: new public pedagogy in 21st Century Taiwan

Author: Ya-hui Lee, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  The lifelong learning concept of “never too late to learn” advocated by Confucius has gradually become rooted in the lives of Taiwanese adults and seniors. In response to the impact of population ageing and low fertility rates, numerous elementary schools, junior high schools, and universities have allocated resources and space to establish learning centers and learning camps for senior citizens, providing them with the opportunity to learn. Older adult education extends beyond the
classroom and into society, forming a new public pedagogy in Taiwan. Its important elements include: (1) the changes in population structure and the rising number of older adults, (2) the government’s formulation of older adult education policies based on learning enhancement, (3) the joint promotion of older adult education activities by numerous academic institutions, and (4) the theoretical bases of program design to help senior citizens achieve active ageing and popularise older adult education in communities. Future challenges to older adult learning becoming the new public pedagogy include (1) the public’s skepticism concerning the necessity of older adult education and its efficiency, (2) the need to establish diverse sources of funding to ensure the sustainable development of older adult education, (3) the necessity to develop various program designs to satisfy senior citizens’ needs due to the heterogeneity of senior citizens, and (4) the urgent necessity for research to confirm the effectiveness of older adult education.

Keywords: Lifelong learning, new public pedagogy, older adult education

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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“Come in and look around.” Professional development of student teachers through public pedagogy in a library exhibition

Authors: Anne Hickling-Hudson & Erika Hepple, Queensland University of Technology

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  This paper describes a public pedagogy project embedded into The Global Teacher, a subject within the Bachelor of Education program for student teachers at an Australian university. The subject provides a global perspective on socio-political issues that shape education. In 2013, The Global Teacher introduced an approach that asked student teachers to create a museum-style exhibition depicting six global education themes. This exhibition was displayed in the State Library and the public were invited to engage with the installations and the student teachers who created them.

Our paper describes how the project was implemented by means of close collaboration between the QUT teacher educators, curators at the State Library of Queensland (SLQ), and student groups working
on visually translating their understandings of global educational issues into a public exhibition. We discuss what was learned by our students and ourselves, as teacher educators, by engaging in this public pedagogy.
Keywords: global education, public library, group work, transformative learning, social justice, public learning space.

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Protest music as adult education and learning for social change: a theorisation of a public pedagogy of protest music

Author: John Haycock, Monash University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  Since the 1960’s, the transformative power of protest music has been shrouded in mythology. Sown by musical activists like Pete Seeger, who declared that protest music could “help to save the planet”, the seeds of this myth have since taken deep root in the popular imagination. While the mythology surrounding the relationship between protest music and social change has become pervasive and persistent, it has mostly evaded critical interrogation and significant theorisation. By both using the notion as a theoretical lens and adding to scholarship in the field, this article uncovers understandings of the public pedagogical dimensions of protest music, as it takes place as a radical practice and critical form of contemporary mass culture. In doing this, this article provides a theorisation of public pedagogy as it encapsulates protest music, and those who are conceptualised as the critical and radical public pedagogues who produce this mass cultural form.

Keywords: public pedagogy, protest music, adult learning, education for social change

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Reaching for the arts in unexpected places: public pedagogy in the gardens

Author: Ligia Pelosi, Victoria University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  What constitutes public pedagogy? The term is broad and can be applied in so many situations and settings to the learning that occurs outside of formal schooling. In this article, the author explores how a community event – a painting competition held in a Melbourne suburb’s botanic gardens – constitutes public pedagogy. The event centres on appreciation of the gardens, and on fostering the arts in the community. Local schools and residents have shown their appreciation
of the competition through increased participation over the past five years. However, there is much learning that is unexpected and far less tangible, which flourishes beneath the surface of the event. Capturing a collective memory of the suburb is one aspect of such learning that is historically significant. The author argues that the event can also be seen as activist in a political sense, through the way it has restored the arts to the community in a way that education in a neo-liberal climate is currently unable to do.

Keywords: Arts, curriculum, community, public pedagogy

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Visual Communication Design as a form of public pedagogy

Author: Meghan Kelly, Deakin University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  This paper identifies visual communication design as a form of public pedagogy. Communication design practices aim to achieve the successful transmission of a message to a recipient in a visual mode. Understanding the theories and practices of visual communication design can assist in enhancing the reception of the communication, as these practices become a tool to increase the effectiveness of learning in a public space. To demonstrate this, I will use the example of museums
as an informal place of public learning, and argue design, and in particular visual communication design strategies, are extremely important in the creation of successful learning. If participants are
not engaged or entertained, their capacity for learning will diminish. Engagement depends on the representation of the information and the successful interpretation of that information by the visitor. Further, this paper will emphasise the vital role communication design plays in all forms of public pedagogy, not just within the museum context. However, non-designers create many public learning environments and although this paper argues the benefits of communication design to increasing the effectiveness of learning, it recognises the narrow opportunities of applying this knowledge.

Keywords: public space, visual communication design, museum, public learning

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Literacy mediation in neighbourhood houses

Author: Sally Thompson

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  Interactions between staff in Neighbourhood Houses, and the socially and educationally disadvantaged community members who visit Neighbourhood Houses, have been viewed through many lenses, including community development, social support, caring and compassion. This paper looks at Neighbourhood Houses as sites of pedagogical practice. More specifically, it explores the role of Neighbourhood House administrative staff as literacy mediators — as people who assist others with reading and writing.

Literacy mediation has gained attention as part of a focus amongst New Literacy Studies researchers on the social uses of literacy. In this case study of four staff members working across two neighbourhood houses, I identify that literacy mediation in the neighbourhood houses
is common, complex and growing in demand.

A further area of focus of the paper is the invisibility of the literacy mediation in Neighbourhood Houses — to funding bodies, committees of management and even to other staff. It also identifies the role of emotional labour in both facilitating mediation but also as a contributing factor to the lack of recognition of informal literacy work in Neighbourhood Houses.

Keywords: adult literacy, literacy mediation, neighbourhood houses,
informal learning

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Memories in Motion: learning, process, history and art in public space

Author: Debbie Qadri, Victoria University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  This essay presents an art project as an example of two aspects of public pedagogy. The first, is that the project critically examined how history is made, and through art-making and installation it performed an alternative publishing of history. Secondly, the art project was utilised as both a process and outcome within public space, and through this contributed to raising awareness for both participants and audience about the politics of public space. Through both aspects the project shed light on acts of public pedagogy as a process of questioning our normal relationships with history and public space. Memories in Motion was a project where learning took place within a particular public space by moving through, documenting and researching it. This learning was generated into artworks, which were then taken and placed back into that space. These actions disrupt the normal conventions of learning about history and of public space, and shift the agency of telling history and using public space to the students.

Keywords: public art, history, community, public pedagogy

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A space for memory

Author: Karen Charman, Victoria University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  In this article I examine the possibilities of reparation in an era of privatisation and de-industrialisation. I examine the effect of a recent project Sunshine Memory Space, a space, designed to evoke memories of a de-industrialised urban Melbourne suburb Sunshine. This project offered the opportunity for the effects of industrial change to be publically represented, remembered and valued. I offer an analysis of the significance of relational localised curatorial work.

Keywords: memory, de-industrialistion, curation, psychoanalysis.

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.