Tag: public pedagogy

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On the borders of Pedagogy: Implementing a critical pedagogy for students on the Thai Burma Border

Author: Jen Couch

Australian Catholic University

Edition: Volume 57, Number 1, April 2017

Summary: This article uses an auto-ethnographic approach to explore the reflections and insights that occurred during my teaching of a subject in adolescent development on the Thai Burma border. This paper adopts a relatively descriptive style to a personal reflection of teaching on the border and how it transformed the way I teach and made me look at the pedagogy that underpins my teaching practice. I found a lack of congruence between the pedagogical theories that are espoused and how I could apply these to a border setting. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to explore some of the ways I began to develop a Thai Burma classroom praxis that drew on the theoretical underpinnings of a humanising critical pedagogy.

Keywords: refugee, Burmese, critical pedagogy, transformation, collaboration

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 57_1. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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

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

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

 

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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.