10-11:15 a.m.
Stream A: Critical Schooling (Curriculum Dialogues)
The Power of Subversive Education: Freedom Schools Past and Present
Caroline Whitcomb, Georgia Southern University
Abstract: Recent events further indicate a consideration of education’s future while maintaining its current trajectory is futile. We must now ask ourselves what knowledge is of value for students today and how might they best experience it. Freire (1970) writes, “Education is the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” (p. 16). Historically and presently, schools, as Althusser suggests, are part of the ideological state apparatus, maintaining systemic racism and the ongoing exploitation of the poor and working class. Altering the nation’s approach to education from indoctrinational to liberatory within the current framework is a bootless errand. Alternatively, a consideration of successful, liberatory, and democratic educational movements within, but not necessarily limited to, the United States casts light on the successful work of freedom and citizenship schools, grassroots efforts with significant and ongoing positive individual and societal impact.
Keywords: education, freedom schools, citizenship schools, grassroots
Retrieval or Deconstruction? Re-reading Marx Biographically
Daniel Skidmore-Hess, Georgia Southern University
Abstract: Some authors take to their pens occasionally, allowing their thoughts to develop before committing them to written form. Others write through their developing thought processes, working out their conclusions in the process of revision. To be sure, all writers draft but not all writers redraft equally. Along the continuum of constant revision versus occasionalism we must understand Marx as one of the most active practitioners of critical intellectual development in the daily act of written self-expression. His body of work represents over four decades of this practice and as such in approaching the study of Marx’s writings it is crucial to recognize the tentative quality of much of it, the conjectural dimension inherent in his method, and pay close attention to when the work achieves a certain completeness, when it does not, and even when it is later abandoned. This includes paying attention to what Marx himself chose to publish, what he “abandoned to the gnawing criticism of the mice” and indeed what he emphasized by way of later comment on his writings. When approached in this biographically grounded manner, the Marx who emerges is quite different from the images produced by present day academic philosophy and party orthodoxies of the past, a Marx above all engaged in the class struggles of nineteenth century Europe (primarily) and who produced analyses thereof that arguably remain valuable and incisive today.
Keywords: Marx, Writing, Intellectual Development, Theory and Practice, Biography, Class Struggle, Eurocentrism
Caroline Whitcomb, Georgia Southern University
Abstract: Recent events further indicate a consideration of education’s future while maintaining its current trajectory is futile. We must now ask ourselves what knowledge is of value for students today and how might they best experience it. Freire (1970) writes, “Education is the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” (p. 16). Historically and presently, schools, as Althusser suggests, are part of the ideological state apparatus, maintaining systemic racism and the ongoing exploitation of the poor and working class. Altering the nation’s approach to education from indoctrinational to liberatory within the current framework is a bootless errand. Alternatively, a consideration of successful, liberatory, and democratic educational movements within, but not necessarily limited to, the United States casts light on the successful work of freedom and citizenship schools, grassroots efforts with significant and ongoing positive individual and societal impact.
Keywords: education, freedom schools, citizenship schools, grassroots
Retrieval or Deconstruction? Re-reading Marx Biographically
Daniel Skidmore-Hess, Georgia Southern University
Abstract: Some authors take to their pens occasionally, allowing their thoughts to develop before committing them to written form. Others write through their developing thought processes, working out their conclusions in the process of revision. To be sure, all writers draft but not all writers redraft equally. Along the continuum of constant revision versus occasionalism we must understand Marx as one of the most active practitioners of critical intellectual development in the daily act of written self-expression. His body of work represents over four decades of this practice and as such in approaching the study of Marx’s writings it is crucial to recognize the tentative quality of much of it, the conjectural dimension inherent in his method, and pay close attention to when the work achieves a certain completeness, when it does not, and even when it is later abandoned. This includes paying attention to what Marx himself chose to publish, what he “abandoned to the gnawing criticism of the mice” and indeed what he emphasized by way of later comment on his writings. When approached in this biographically grounded manner, the Marx who emerges is quite different from the images produced by present day academic philosophy and party orthodoxies of the past, a Marx above all engaged in the class struggles of nineteenth century Europe (primarily) and who produced analyses thereof that arguably remain valuable and incisive today.
Keywords: Marx, Writing, Intellectual Development, Theory and Practice, Biography, Class Struggle, Eurocentrism
Stream B: Works in Progress: Rethinking Teaching
Tyler through the lenses of liberation and philosophy and psychology: Implications for teacher education
Rupert Collister, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education; University of New Brunswick; & Yorkville University
Abstract: In 1949 Ralph Tyler released his book “Basic Principles of curriculum and instruction” (1949/2013). It contained what became known as the “Tyler Rationale”. Tyler himself believed that the curriculum development process should start at the local level. He identifies four sources of what we would now call, data that should inform the curriculum. Those sources are the learners themselves, societal issues, educational values, and subject matter. Tyler placed these sources in relation to one another rather than in competition to each other, something else that has often been lost in Tyler-influenced curriculum development over the years, but that reflects Schwab’s commonplaces (1969) of twenty years later. Tyler also asserted that once learning objectives have been determined they should be reviewed through the lens of philosophy and psychology.
In this paper, I will explore the Tyler rationale as a model for curriculum development in initial teacher education, considering the learners, societal issues, educational values, and subject matter as I see it in North America today and considering the lenses of liberation philosophy and psychology as a way to shift the Tyler rational from the transmission and transactional approach to curriculum development it has become (Miller & Seller, 1985) to one of transformation.
Keywords:teacher ed’, holistic ed’, curriculum, Tyler rationale, transformation, liberation.
What are we doing to our students? The abuse of accountability
Michael Crosby, Georgia Southwestern University
Abstract: This power point presentation will focus on the accountability nightmare our schools have been forced to comply with and is being played out daily despite a global pandemic. I investigate the damages associated with the one-size-fits-all curriculum implemented initially through the No Child Left Behind legislation in 2002. Through the lenses of my past experiences as a Christian school principal and as an educator, I share with the reader impacts on Christian schools and its primary constituents, middle class families. I argue for schools to reexamine their priorities and develop a curriculum of caring which includes the importance of relationships and bonding between teachers and students. Within such a context, the student and teacher have a greater potential to learn from each other beginning at the kindergarten level. Students having opportunities to bond with teachers (e.g., Noddings, 2005) is at the core of such a curriculum where relationships and trust replace the current trend of teaching to the test. This presentation will identify possibilities and ideas moving forward beyond this critical time in our nation's history. The presentation concludes by addressing current inhibiting forces conflicting with implementing this child-centered format for learning.
Keywords: Neoliberalism, Critical pedagogy, Speculative essay, High-stakes testing School to prison pipeline
The Role of Elementary and Middle School Teachers on the Enduring Efficacy of Writing Instructors
Julie Kimble, University of West Georgia
Abstract: A teacher’s own early experiences with writing, whether positive or negative, have a significant effect on the students that they teach, especially those who go on to become teachers. Sometimes these memories are latent, buried in years of pain of the rejection or humiliation from those initial experiences; at other times, mentors step in and create a more positive environment in which young writers thrive. In our master's program for education and reading instruction at the University of West Georgia, we ask our teachers through a writing biography assignment to explore these memories of their earliest writing experiences and determine how those experiences fit into their current teaching careers. For this qualitative project, the researcher analyzed eighteen of twenty-eight submitted essays that were submitted for the “Writing Autobiography” assignment for this graduate level writing class for educators. Narrative coding was used to determine the effect of these early writing experiences on this set of teachers, based on their own reflections and memories submitted for this assignment, and to what degree these experiences affect their writing identity and current teaching of writing. This study established that these teachers’ early experiences with writing significantly affected their efficacy in writing and in teaching writing for their current students. In some cases, the participants were still learning handwriting when feelings of writing inadequacies were established through teacher criticism. While middle and high school also were listed as turning points in writing efficacy for these participants, the most common climatic moment for the participants—for better or worse—occurred in third, fourth, or fifth grades. Mentors, both teachers and family members, contributed to the recovery from early negative writing experiences in school.
Rupert Collister, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education; University of New Brunswick; & Yorkville University
Abstract: In 1949 Ralph Tyler released his book “Basic Principles of curriculum and instruction” (1949/2013). It contained what became known as the “Tyler Rationale”. Tyler himself believed that the curriculum development process should start at the local level. He identifies four sources of what we would now call, data that should inform the curriculum. Those sources are the learners themselves, societal issues, educational values, and subject matter. Tyler placed these sources in relation to one another rather than in competition to each other, something else that has often been lost in Tyler-influenced curriculum development over the years, but that reflects Schwab’s commonplaces (1969) of twenty years later. Tyler also asserted that once learning objectives have been determined they should be reviewed through the lens of philosophy and psychology.
In this paper, I will explore the Tyler rationale as a model for curriculum development in initial teacher education, considering the learners, societal issues, educational values, and subject matter as I see it in North America today and considering the lenses of liberation philosophy and psychology as a way to shift the Tyler rational from the transmission and transactional approach to curriculum development it has become (Miller & Seller, 1985) to one of transformation.
Keywords:teacher ed’, holistic ed’, curriculum, Tyler rationale, transformation, liberation.
What are we doing to our students? The abuse of accountability
Michael Crosby, Georgia Southwestern University
Abstract: This power point presentation will focus on the accountability nightmare our schools have been forced to comply with and is being played out daily despite a global pandemic. I investigate the damages associated with the one-size-fits-all curriculum implemented initially through the No Child Left Behind legislation in 2002. Through the lenses of my past experiences as a Christian school principal and as an educator, I share with the reader impacts on Christian schools and its primary constituents, middle class families. I argue for schools to reexamine their priorities and develop a curriculum of caring which includes the importance of relationships and bonding between teachers and students. Within such a context, the student and teacher have a greater potential to learn from each other beginning at the kindergarten level. Students having opportunities to bond with teachers (e.g., Noddings, 2005) is at the core of such a curriculum where relationships and trust replace the current trend of teaching to the test. This presentation will identify possibilities and ideas moving forward beyond this critical time in our nation's history. The presentation concludes by addressing current inhibiting forces conflicting with implementing this child-centered format for learning.
Keywords: Neoliberalism, Critical pedagogy, Speculative essay, High-stakes testing School to prison pipeline
The Role of Elementary and Middle School Teachers on the Enduring Efficacy of Writing Instructors
Julie Kimble, University of West Georgia
Abstract: A teacher’s own early experiences with writing, whether positive or negative, have a significant effect on the students that they teach, especially those who go on to become teachers. Sometimes these memories are latent, buried in years of pain of the rejection or humiliation from those initial experiences; at other times, mentors step in and create a more positive environment in which young writers thrive. In our master's program for education and reading instruction at the University of West Georgia, we ask our teachers through a writing biography assignment to explore these memories of their earliest writing experiences and determine how those experiences fit into their current teaching careers. For this qualitative project, the researcher analyzed eighteen of twenty-eight submitted essays that were submitted for the “Writing Autobiography” assignment for this graduate level writing class for educators. Narrative coding was used to determine the effect of these early writing experiences on this set of teachers, based on their own reflections and memories submitted for this assignment, and to what degree these experiences affect their writing identity and current teaching of writing. This study established that these teachers’ early experiences with writing significantly affected their efficacy in writing and in teaching writing for their current students. In some cases, the participants were still learning handwriting when feelings of writing inadequacies were established through teacher criticism. While middle and high school also were listed as turning points in writing efficacy for these participants, the most common climatic moment for the participants—for better or worse—occurred in third, fourth, or fifth grades. Mentors, both teachers and family members, contributed to the recovery from early negative writing experiences in school.
Stream C: Theorizing and Reflecting on Representation in Film, Texts, and Schooling: Applications of Qualitative Approaches. (Works in Progress)
Chair: Peggy Shannon-Baker, Georgia Southern University
Session Recording
"I'm just like you": Queering Gay Representation in Love, Simon
Thomas Weeks, Georgia Southern University
Teachers’ Experiences with Multicultural Literature: A Conversation Starter
Louise Anderson, Georgia Southern University
On the Incorporation of Chinese Traditional Opera into Chinese Language Teaching in an American College - A Case Study in Georgia
Yining Zhang, Georgia Southern University.
Role Playing: Actualizing the IEP Meeting
Courtney Toledo, Georgia Southern University.
Seeking Imaginative and Intellectual Freedom: Using the Speculative Essay to Critique the Mythology of Educational Standardization
Andrea Cramsey, Georgia Southern University.
Abstract: Qualitative researchers have a wealth of approaches available to them. From case study, cross-cultural narrative inquiry, and phenomenology to arts-informed inquiry, creative writing, and critical media studies, qualitative research offers visual, textual, theoretical, applied, critical, and imaginative perspectives. This panel showcases the theorizing and application of qualitative approaches from emerging qualitative researchers. Situated in critical youth studies, Weeks sets a foundational question about representation in his analysis of the film Love, Simon. He uses a queer theory framework to explore how "gay representation" interacts with heteronormativity and homonormativity. Anderson takes up this question of representation in her investigation into two first-grade teachers’ use and selection of multicultural literature. She explores how their intrinsic motivation leads their self-reflective practices. Zhang similarly asks about representation but in a college Chinese language classroom setting. Her case study of a Chinese language university teacher in Georgia explores the interconnected relationship between language and culture in teaching using Chinese traditional operas. Toledo then shifts our focus to students’ perspectives about their own experiences and learning in her multiple case study analysis of a simulated Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting with pre-service special education teachers. In the final paper, Cramsey uses an arts-based speculative essay approach to understand, critique, and suggest hopeful alternatives to the problem of the mythologized status of educational standardization. As a whole, this panel invites us to ask larger questions about standardization, normativity, and majoritarian narratives and the need for hopeful reimaginings about media, schooling, and intellectualism.
Session Recording
"I'm just like you": Queering Gay Representation in Love, Simon
Thomas Weeks, Georgia Southern University
Teachers’ Experiences with Multicultural Literature: A Conversation Starter
Louise Anderson, Georgia Southern University
On the Incorporation of Chinese Traditional Opera into Chinese Language Teaching in an American College - A Case Study in Georgia
Yining Zhang, Georgia Southern University.
Role Playing: Actualizing the IEP Meeting
Courtney Toledo, Georgia Southern University.
Seeking Imaginative and Intellectual Freedom: Using the Speculative Essay to Critique the Mythology of Educational Standardization
Andrea Cramsey, Georgia Southern University.
Abstract: Qualitative researchers have a wealth of approaches available to them. From case study, cross-cultural narrative inquiry, and phenomenology to arts-informed inquiry, creative writing, and critical media studies, qualitative research offers visual, textual, theoretical, applied, critical, and imaginative perspectives. This panel showcases the theorizing and application of qualitative approaches from emerging qualitative researchers. Situated in critical youth studies, Weeks sets a foundational question about representation in his analysis of the film Love, Simon. He uses a queer theory framework to explore how "gay representation" interacts with heteronormativity and homonormativity. Anderson takes up this question of representation in her investigation into two first-grade teachers’ use and selection of multicultural literature. She explores how their intrinsic motivation leads their self-reflective practices. Zhang similarly asks about representation but in a college Chinese language classroom setting. Her case study of a Chinese language university teacher in Georgia explores the interconnected relationship between language and culture in teaching using Chinese traditional operas. Toledo then shifts our focus to students’ perspectives about their own experiences and learning in her multiple case study analysis of a simulated Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting with pre-service special education teachers. In the final paper, Cramsey uses an arts-based speculative essay approach to understand, critique, and suggest hopeful alternatives to the problem of the mythologized status of educational standardization. As a whole, this panel invites us to ask larger questions about standardization, normativity, and majoritarian narratives and the need for hopeful reimaginings about media, schooling, and intellectualism.
11:30 a.m. -12:45 p.m.
Stream A: The Virtual Pandemic Curriculum (Curriculum Studies and the Pandemic)
Chair: William Reynolds, Georgia Southern University
Session Recording
Decolonizing my curriculum during remote learning: An autoethnographic study
Nadia Khan-Roopnarine, Molloy College
Abstract: The American institution of schooling was shaped around a colonial center wherein the legacy of white Supremacy, racism, and capitalism endure (Tuck & Yang, 2012). Colonial power structures are duplicated especially in the classrooms of students who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of color (BIPOC). In the sudden switch to remote learning during the
COVID 19 pandemic, teachers were tasked with reimagining virtual schooling, but often did so using long entrenched hegemonic expectations, assumptions and standards. In a continuous effort to decolonize my classroom and work against reproducing oppressive power structures, I seized the unique opportunity presented in the shift to remote learning to interrogate the practices that shape my curriculum. In my autoethnographic study, conducted in an urban public high school in New York, I critically examined the ways in which I make and unmake colonial oppression in my practice as an educator and teacher leader through a process of critical reflection. Using guiding questions adapted from Lyiscott’s Fugitive Literacies framework (2019), I
interrogated and examined the curricula I created and taught in my English classroom. I center my experiences as an educator during the COVID-19 pandemic working to create more equitable, democratic virtual and physical classroom environments by anchoring my research in decolonizing theory (Smith, 1999), critical constructivism (Kincheloe, 1991), womanism (Walker, 1979), and Indo-Caribbean feminism (Hosein & Outar, 2016). In this presentation, I will share the findings from my autoethnographic study, including reflections on my own researching, teaching and learning process over the last year.
Keywords: Decolonizing curriculum, Critical pedagogy, Autoethnography, English Education, Teacher Leadership
Pandemic Pedagogy and Coronavirus Capitalism
William M. Reynolds, Georgia Southern University
Abstract: This paper is an introduction to and an example of forthcoming chapters in a new volume in the Critical Understanding in Education series, tentatively entitled Critical Pedagogy in the 21st Century, co-edited by the presenter of this paper. The (paper) presentation, entitled, Critical Pedagogy in the Network Society during the Pandemic will discuss the differences between networks and communities and the ways in which critical pedagogy operates in both. How can a dialogical education be developed and encouraged in various forms of networks where participants can fail to learn “real social skills” (Bauman & Haffner, 2020)? The limitations of online learning as a critically oriented venue will be discussed. Issues such as but not limited to the inequality of access to technology, the orientation toward a banking and instrumentalist manner of educating and the disembodiment of learning will be analyzed (see Boyd, 2016). Questions will be addressed such as: Is the curriculum of critical pedagogy a possibility in the digital era of Zoom? How can Freire’s concepts of criticality and critical embodied engagement with the world that were developed in pre-internet times, operate in an overwhelming digital culture exacerbated by a global pandemic?
Key Words: critical pedagogy, community, networks, dialogical education, instrumentalism, criticality
Syllabus Audit EDUC 1300: Pre- and Post-COVID Shifts Toward Supporting Community College Students
A. Yolanda Lopez, Sam Houston State University
Abstract: This paper will audit the EDUC 1300 Learning Framework 1st Year Experience course syllabus from a community college. This compulsory course is completed by all first-time-in-college students attending the institution. Specifically, the paper will audit the course syllabus pre- and post-COVID to understand what changes, if any, have been made to accommodate the different students, faculty, and institutional needs as most instruction previously provided face-to-face moved to a hybrid or online instruction modality.
The paper will also provide information gathered through faculty interviews. As faculty must use a universal syllabus for this course, the interviews seek to examine the role professors play to support the diverse student population attending these classes. For example, professors might implement innovative ideas to accommodate students' needs while at the same time complying with the use of a universal syllabus.
Keywords: First-year Experience, first-time-in-college, EDUC 1300 Course Syllabus Audit
Session Recording
Decolonizing my curriculum during remote learning: An autoethnographic study
Nadia Khan-Roopnarine, Molloy College
Abstract: The American institution of schooling was shaped around a colonial center wherein the legacy of white Supremacy, racism, and capitalism endure (Tuck & Yang, 2012). Colonial power structures are duplicated especially in the classrooms of students who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of color (BIPOC). In the sudden switch to remote learning during the
COVID 19 pandemic, teachers were tasked with reimagining virtual schooling, but often did so using long entrenched hegemonic expectations, assumptions and standards. In a continuous effort to decolonize my classroom and work against reproducing oppressive power structures, I seized the unique opportunity presented in the shift to remote learning to interrogate the practices that shape my curriculum. In my autoethnographic study, conducted in an urban public high school in New York, I critically examined the ways in which I make and unmake colonial oppression in my practice as an educator and teacher leader through a process of critical reflection. Using guiding questions adapted from Lyiscott’s Fugitive Literacies framework (2019), I
interrogated and examined the curricula I created and taught in my English classroom. I center my experiences as an educator during the COVID-19 pandemic working to create more equitable, democratic virtual and physical classroom environments by anchoring my research in decolonizing theory (Smith, 1999), critical constructivism (Kincheloe, 1991), womanism (Walker, 1979), and Indo-Caribbean feminism (Hosein & Outar, 2016). In this presentation, I will share the findings from my autoethnographic study, including reflections on my own researching, teaching and learning process over the last year.
Keywords: Decolonizing curriculum, Critical pedagogy, Autoethnography, English Education, Teacher Leadership
Pandemic Pedagogy and Coronavirus Capitalism
William M. Reynolds, Georgia Southern University
Abstract: This paper is an introduction to and an example of forthcoming chapters in a new volume in the Critical Understanding in Education series, tentatively entitled Critical Pedagogy in the 21st Century, co-edited by the presenter of this paper. The (paper) presentation, entitled, Critical Pedagogy in the Network Society during the Pandemic will discuss the differences between networks and communities and the ways in which critical pedagogy operates in both. How can a dialogical education be developed and encouraged in various forms of networks where participants can fail to learn “real social skills” (Bauman & Haffner, 2020)? The limitations of online learning as a critically oriented venue will be discussed. Issues such as but not limited to the inequality of access to technology, the orientation toward a banking and instrumentalist manner of educating and the disembodiment of learning will be analyzed (see Boyd, 2016). Questions will be addressed such as: Is the curriculum of critical pedagogy a possibility in the digital era of Zoom? How can Freire’s concepts of criticality and critical embodied engagement with the world that were developed in pre-internet times, operate in an overwhelming digital culture exacerbated by a global pandemic?
Key Words: critical pedagogy, community, networks, dialogical education, instrumentalism, criticality
Syllabus Audit EDUC 1300: Pre- and Post-COVID Shifts Toward Supporting Community College Students
A. Yolanda Lopez, Sam Houston State University
Abstract: This paper will audit the EDUC 1300 Learning Framework 1st Year Experience course syllabus from a community college. This compulsory course is completed by all first-time-in-college students attending the institution. Specifically, the paper will audit the course syllabus pre- and post-COVID to understand what changes, if any, have been made to accommodate the different students, faculty, and institutional needs as most instruction previously provided face-to-face moved to a hybrid or online instruction modality.
The paper will also provide information gathered through faculty interviews. As faculty must use a universal syllabus for this course, the interviews seek to examine the role professors play to support the diverse student population attending these classes. For example, professors might implement innovative ideas to accommodate students' needs while at the same time complying with the use of a universal syllabus.
Keywords: First-year Experience, first-time-in-college, EDUC 1300 Course Syllabus Audit
Stream B: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (Curriculum Dialogues)
Chair: Daniel Chapman, Georgia Southern University
Session Recording
What Does Equitable Access to Education Look Like in Pluralistic Societies?
Shauna Martin, University of North Carolina Wilmington
Abstract: By now educators are at least familiar with the term equity as it has now become a buzzword among policy makers, leaders, and practitioners alike (Hytten & Bettez, 2011). Despite the awareness of the term, however, education advocates and researchers of equitable access in education would argue that there is very little in-depth understanding of equity, and in spite of school leaders and teachers being cognizant of the concept, few are able to successfully provide equitable access to students who are part of marginalized groups (Gay 2002; Hytten & Bettez, 2011; Paris & Alim, 2017). In fact, we continue to ask questions around equity that are no longer relevant (Paris & Alim, 2017). The questions around equity that we ask today are rooted in wondering why students who are part of marginalized communities are not being successful by homogenized, hegemonic standards that reflect whiteness. In fact, students of color have outnumbered white students in public schools since 2014 (Howard, 2003; Paris & Alim, 2017). As Paris and Alim (2017) point out, the question we should be asking now is what does equitable access look like by the standards of pluralistic societies?
Keywords: equity, equitable access, culturally sustaining pedagogy, critical consciousness, representation
Only Connect: Belonging, Community and Inclusion
Lorie Catherine Wright, Yorkville University, New Brunswick, Canada
Abstract: Only Connect: Belonging, Community and Inclusion explores the narratives of adult literacy learners who experienced transformative learning within an atypical pedagogical framework. This paper explores the importance of encouraging bicultural literacy through providing access to Indigenous ways of knowing and learning, creativity, and embodied learning. It also highlights the importance of allowing trauma and shame into the classroom to imagine literacy spaces as places where care work and transformative learning can occur. Holistic approaches to literacy that incorporate embodied, self-directed learning, valuing a limited suspension of rigid outcome requirements and culminating task completion, often provide entranceways that allow for connection, dialogue, deep learning transfer and learner growth. This paper links a personal and professional narrative to explore how hegemony in learner/instructor relationships, shame, creativity, meditation, presence, and place are all components that impact or support learners as they attempt literacy development. This paper asserts a valuable means we can understand and rebuild ourselves is through embodied and holistic learning. A less logic-determined curriculum, combined with creative methodologies, opportunities to connect with nature, and meditation, allow for learner voices to become audible and included within society. Learner narratives describe experiences of learners who participated in post-secondary after incarceration in addition to ESL and diaspora student challenges in virtual learning environments.
Keywords: Holistic learning, creativity, dialogue, connection, bicultural literacy, shame, embodied learning.
Culturally Responsive, Relevant and Sustaining Pedagogical Endorsement (WIP)
Lisa Augustine-Chizmar, Georgia Southern University
Abstract: The need for an endorsement for high risk students is equally as important as the gifted endorsement touted by our school districts; however, the language makes this unattractive. By focusing on the issues of culture and disengagement within the school system, I am able to deliver the same message in a disarming manner. This paper explores how understanding the culture and challenges of the student creates connections that inspire success. The practices are founded in developmental and culturally relevant literature as well as 15 years of practice with students with varying risk factors.
Keywords: culturally relevant practices, culturally sustaining pedagogy, high risk, endorsement
Stream C: Curriculum Improvements (Curriculum Dialogues)
Recess: A Right or a Privilege?
Kirsten Abel, Clemson University
Abstract: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define recess as “a regularly scheduled period in the school day for physical activity and play that is monitored by trained staff or volunteers.” According to the CDC, “during recess, students are encouraged to be physically active and engaged with their peers in activities of their choice, at all grade levels, kindergarten through 12th grade” (CDC.gov).In a recent qualitative study examining the experiences of newcomer elementary age students, interviews and visual image data revealed that lunch, recess, and other non-instructional activities that are all part of a typical elementary school day are often favorites among children. “Lunch and recess are normally the most fun part of the day,” stated one student, while another exclaimed, “I love recess because you can play and be free” (Abel, 2020). The importance of recess is not just supported by students. In 2019, the U.S. Play Coalition, in collaboration with the American Association for the Child’s Right to Play (IPA/USA) and the Alliance for Childhood, published A Research-Based Case for Recess: Position Paper (Jarrett, 2019). The purpose of the position paper was to explore the current state of recess, identify best recess practices, and disseminate effective ways to advocate for recess. Yet, as a faculty member in higher education supporting preservice teachers, I am frequently engaged in dialogue surrounding the topic of classroom management and where recess fits in as a punitive consequence for misbehavior. These teachers-in-training are grappling with what they know to be best for students based on theories learned in coursework, and the reality of classroom and behavior management in their practicum experiences. It is my desire to continue this inquiry in collaboration with my colleagues to develop a new focus for research surrounding approaches to supporting preservice teachers with best practices while doing what is best for students’ social and emotional well-being.
Title: The Importance of Explicit Instruction in Literacy Strategies in History Classes: An Examination of Student Performance and Motivations
Mallory Swanson, University of North Georgia
Abstract: The present quasi-experimental study investigated the effects of explicit instruction of historical literacy strategies in eighth grade history classes including measuring content knowledge, critical thinking skills, and changes in motivation to learn history content. Participants (N = 106) were tasked with completing three pre-assessments and three post assessments in their history classes in order to measure the effect of explicit instruction in historical literacy strategies. One assessment measured content knowledge of history content, one measured critical thinking skills, and the other measured motivations for learning history content. Two main assignments centered around critical thinking skills were implemented with the use of scaffolding and modeling. Explicit instruction of historical literacy strategies was used with an experimental group while traditional instruction was used with a control group. The study aimed to investigate if a significant difference exists in the students’ levels of content knowledge after using explicit instruction in historical literacy strategies while also investigating
a change in critical thinking skills and motivation to learn history content.
Keywords: historical literacy, content knowledge, literacy strategies, middle school, eighth grade, social studies
Kirsten Abel, Clemson University
Abstract: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define recess as “a regularly scheduled period in the school day for physical activity and play that is monitored by trained staff or volunteers.” According to the CDC, “during recess, students are encouraged to be physically active and engaged with their peers in activities of their choice, at all grade levels, kindergarten through 12th grade” (CDC.gov).In a recent qualitative study examining the experiences of newcomer elementary age students, interviews and visual image data revealed that lunch, recess, and other non-instructional activities that are all part of a typical elementary school day are often favorites among children. “Lunch and recess are normally the most fun part of the day,” stated one student, while another exclaimed, “I love recess because you can play and be free” (Abel, 2020). The importance of recess is not just supported by students. In 2019, the U.S. Play Coalition, in collaboration with the American Association for the Child’s Right to Play (IPA/USA) and the Alliance for Childhood, published A Research-Based Case for Recess: Position Paper (Jarrett, 2019). The purpose of the position paper was to explore the current state of recess, identify best recess practices, and disseminate effective ways to advocate for recess. Yet, as a faculty member in higher education supporting preservice teachers, I am frequently engaged in dialogue surrounding the topic of classroom management and where recess fits in as a punitive consequence for misbehavior. These teachers-in-training are grappling with what they know to be best for students based on theories learned in coursework, and the reality of classroom and behavior management in their practicum experiences. It is my desire to continue this inquiry in collaboration with my colleagues to develop a new focus for research surrounding approaches to supporting preservice teachers with best practices while doing what is best for students’ social and emotional well-being.
Title: The Importance of Explicit Instruction in Literacy Strategies in History Classes: An Examination of Student Performance and Motivations
Mallory Swanson, University of North Georgia
Abstract: The present quasi-experimental study investigated the effects of explicit instruction of historical literacy strategies in eighth grade history classes including measuring content knowledge, critical thinking skills, and changes in motivation to learn history content. Participants (N = 106) were tasked with completing three pre-assessments and three post assessments in their history classes in order to measure the effect of explicit instruction in historical literacy strategies. One assessment measured content knowledge of history content, one measured critical thinking skills, and the other measured motivations for learning history content. Two main assignments centered around critical thinking skills were implemented with the use of scaffolding and modeling. Explicit instruction of historical literacy strategies was used with an experimental group while traditional instruction was used with a control group. The study aimed to investigate if a significant difference exists in the students’ levels of content knowledge after using explicit instruction in historical literacy strategies while also investigating
a change in critical thinking skills and motivation to learn history content.
Keywords: historical literacy, content knowledge, literacy strategies, middle school, eighth grade, social studies
1-2:15 p.m.
Stream A: Curriculum Studies and Race (Curriculum Dialogues)
Afropessimism investigates curriculum studies
Michael Baugh, Auburn University @ Montgomery
Abstract: It is crucial for the Black scholar who wishes to engage in any meaningful interaction with the field of curriculum studies to mediate heavily on both curriculum’s preservation and its multicultural appeals. But why does one mediate on specific items such as these? It is because a purposeful focus on such matters will assist many a Black scholar in awakening themselves to the scorching inequitable, unethical, and metaphysical threads attempting to enforce already populated disciplining regimes. Necessary it becomes to return to Debora Britzman’s question: What does curriculum bury in order to preserve itself? For the Afropessimist must both ponder on such while simultaneously seeking to exceed the many answers to this question. Additionally, we return as well to many a scholar whose call for a multicultural curriculum deserves Afropessimistic interrogation.
Keywords: Afropessimism, Black, multicultural
Mothering through My Pain (WIP)
Yolanda Surrency, Georgia Southern University
Abstract: Black women’s voices and historical contributions have been dismissed, and even excluded, making it difficult for their cultural knowledge to be transmitted to future generations. Black women battle with an unsettled consciousness from subscribing to the normalization of what dominant culture defines as good mothering. This study uses Black feminism to examine single Black mothers who navigated the negative images of the welfare queen and the matriarch. This narrative study used Black feminism to examine the stories from single, Black mothers and their daughters. The purpose was to investigate Black mothers and their daughters lived experience to understand their struggles and resistance. Purposeful sampling was used to select seven single, Black mother-daughter dyads, both agreeing, to participate in the study. The participants answered semi-structured questions. Using Black feminism as a guide to explore participants’ stories, the researcher identified that Black women may shift through the childhood, teen, and womanhood stages. In each stage, the mother-daughter shared oppressions presented noticeable changes in their mother-daughter relationship. The analysis further revealed that a single, Black mother-daughter dyads managed their household through various levels of interdependence as the daughter aged.
Keywords: Black Feminism, Narrative Study, Black women, Single Black mothers, Mother/Daughter relationships, Legacy of Struggle, Epistemic privilege, Resilience, Strength
Title: Leading for Change: Implementing an Anti-Racist Curriculum in a K-12 Public School System
Shauna Martin, University of North Carolina Wilmington
Abstract: During the summer of 2020, and at the height of the pandemic as well as civil unrest across the country, I interned with the Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS). I applied strategic and instructional leadership to the development of a district-wide initiative for implementing an anti-racist, equity-focused curriculum in high school United States history courses for the 2020-2021 school year. In practical terms, I developed a district-wide plan for implementing an anti-racist, equity-focused curriculum in 6-12 humanities classes for the 2020-2021 school year. The OEI wanted to implement Nikole Hannah Jones’s The 1619 Project, sponsored by The New York Times and The Pulitzer Center. Over the course of the summer, I collaborated with district-level leaders from the OEI and the Instructional Services Division (ISD) to create a curriculum implementation plan and a professional learning plan that would foster the effective implementation of The 1619 Project and other anti-racist curricula.
Keywords: anti-racist curriculum, The 1619 Project, strategic leadership, instructional leadership, reflection, pandemic
Michael Baugh, Auburn University @ Montgomery
Abstract: It is crucial for the Black scholar who wishes to engage in any meaningful interaction with the field of curriculum studies to mediate heavily on both curriculum’s preservation and its multicultural appeals. But why does one mediate on specific items such as these? It is because a purposeful focus on such matters will assist many a Black scholar in awakening themselves to the scorching inequitable, unethical, and metaphysical threads attempting to enforce already populated disciplining regimes. Necessary it becomes to return to Debora Britzman’s question: What does curriculum bury in order to preserve itself? For the Afropessimist must both ponder on such while simultaneously seeking to exceed the many answers to this question. Additionally, we return as well to many a scholar whose call for a multicultural curriculum deserves Afropessimistic interrogation.
Keywords: Afropessimism, Black, multicultural
Mothering through My Pain (WIP)
Yolanda Surrency, Georgia Southern University
Abstract: Black women’s voices and historical contributions have been dismissed, and even excluded, making it difficult for their cultural knowledge to be transmitted to future generations. Black women battle with an unsettled consciousness from subscribing to the normalization of what dominant culture defines as good mothering. This study uses Black feminism to examine single Black mothers who navigated the negative images of the welfare queen and the matriarch. This narrative study used Black feminism to examine the stories from single, Black mothers and their daughters. The purpose was to investigate Black mothers and their daughters lived experience to understand their struggles and resistance. Purposeful sampling was used to select seven single, Black mother-daughter dyads, both agreeing, to participate in the study. The participants answered semi-structured questions. Using Black feminism as a guide to explore participants’ stories, the researcher identified that Black women may shift through the childhood, teen, and womanhood stages. In each stage, the mother-daughter shared oppressions presented noticeable changes in their mother-daughter relationship. The analysis further revealed that a single, Black mother-daughter dyads managed their household through various levels of interdependence as the daughter aged.
Keywords: Black Feminism, Narrative Study, Black women, Single Black mothers, Mother/Daughter relationships, Legacy of Struggle, Epistemic privilege, Resilience, Strength
Title: Leading for Change: Implementing an Anti-Racist Curriculum in a K-12 Public School System
Shauna Martin, University of North Carolina Wilmington
Abstract: During the summer of 2020, and at the height of the pandemic as well as civil unrest across the country, I interned with the Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) for Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS). I applied strategic and instructional leadership to the development of a district-wide initiative for implementing an anti-racist, equity-focused curriculum in high school United States history courses for the 2020-2021 school year. In practical terms, I developed a district-wide plan for implementing an anti-racist, equity-focused curriculum in 6-12 humanities classes for the 2020-2021 school year. The OEI wanted to implement Nikole Hannah Jones’s The 1619 Project, sponsored by The New York Times and The Pulitzer Center. Over the course of the summer, I collaborated with district-level leaders from the OEI and the Instructional Services Division (ISD) to create a curriculum implementation plan and a professional learning plan that would foster the effective implementation of The 1619 Project and other anti-racist curricula.
Keywords: anti-racist curriculum, The 1619 Project, strategic leadership, instructional leadership, reflection, pandemic
Stream B: Pandemic: Interruptions (Curriculum Studies and the Pandemic)
Solastalgia and the Curriculum of Place
Laura Jewett & Lizzie Kittleman, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Abstract: The purpose of this presentation is to explore the curricular landscape of the recent pandemic characterized by, among other aspects, displacement and solastalgia--a term used to describe a form of psychic or existential distress caused by ongoing or episodic environmental change (Smith, 2010; MacSuibhne, 2009; Albrecht(2007, et al., 2007: Albrecht, 2005). In this paper, we use a curricular lens to examine the “course of life” jointly embodied by the displaced students, teachers and researchers and their deep desire for educational places rendered dangerous in new ways events . Curricular discussions of the significance of place in the south often make use of the notion of nostalgia (Casemore (2008), Kincheloe & Pinar (1991); Manathunga (2018) ;Slattery & Daigle (1994); Pinar (2019); Whitlock (2007). In contrast, this paper uses the notion solastalgia, as an interpretive place of dislocation from which subjective and “socially legible meanings can be and are forged”(Bauman, 2007, p. 42). Solastalgia, writes, Albrecht (2007), “is not about looking back at some golden past, nor is it about seeking another place as ‘home’ (p, 96). Rather, solastalgia is the‘lived experience of the breakdown of the normal relationship between psychic identity and home (Albrecht, 2011.p. 225) or “the loss of the present as manifest in a feeling of dislocation; of being undermined by forces that destroy the potential for solace to be derived in the present”(Albrecht et all, 2007, p.96). Displacement becomes for this paper an epistemological landscape of sorts from which to re-build our understandings- of or at least (re) place a pandemic curriculum of place in relation larger structures that shape the way we find our place in it.
Keywords: Pandemic Curriculum of place, solastalgia
Unsettling Curricula: A Critical Gathering of Fragmented Gestures
Caitlin M. Spencer, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Abstract: This piece was created from desires to attend carefully to varied forms of pedagogy and curricula that have emerged, accumulated, and shifted over the course of the pandemic. Given the many interruptive and the at-times unpredictable contours of temporality throughout the past year, I seek to inhabit methodologies that do not presume or produce a seemingly distanced academic, seamless text, definitive outcome, and/or linear narrative. Rather than falsely depicting this year as continuous, I seek
methodological possibilities that may be found through choreographing a gathering of fragments of different felt senses, embodied encounters, and shifting sites of knowledge.
As a methodological gesture, I draw from a broad pedagogical archive born in and throughout this past year, including sound recordings, curriculum, receipts, poems, medical texts, notes, excerpts from my dissertation draft and journal, and citations of
virtual talks/readings. Rather than seeking to shore up any pretense of “universal” experience, certainty, or continuity, my aim is to honor intimate, unresolvable, and relational ways grieving, teaching, writing, dreaming, struggling, and creating form, un-form, and reform ideas of bodily knowledge. This rumination on and with “the body” as a site of colliding curricula and dreams, seeks to honor the critical importance of multiple ways of knowing/being in the world, critically attending to many contradictory, fleeting, and fragmented pedagogical encounters.
Keywords: Gesture, Fragmented Curricula, Choreography, Methodology, Bodily Knowledge)
Missed Opportunity for Disruptive Education: Lies, Exclusion, and Resilience
Roymieco A. Carter, NCA&T University ; Leila E. Villaverde, University of North Carolina Greensboro
Abstract: In March 2020 we were told hop online and keep moving. In the sea of worry, uncertainty, and fear for our health everyone jumped. We made due, shared grace, and took note. By fall we were zooming and fine-tuning synchronous and asynchronous learning, yet the entire time there was this growing sense this wasn’t good enough. Folks yearned nostalgically for whatever we knew as normal and in the process lost sight of the proleptic moment right before us. It seemed the value of human life evaporated as the government failed everyone and police took the lives of too many black and brown folk. Strong narratives pervaded to ignore what we knew was evident, to return to in-person learning. States blurred the lines between law and guides, ignored gains in learning, hoping to sell the learning loss brand. Educators and administrators were excluded from not only making decisions over their schools and classrooms, but were also excluded from being vaccinated before need to return. What we learned is that brick and mortar doesn’t contain learning or teaching. Educators, administrators, and students accomplished some pretty amazing things. This is but the beginning of what could be and should be, a disruptive education squarely situating student and educator agency. We can speak from three local institutions, 1 k-8 school and 2 universities where students and teachers showed up, built community, and made great strides. This year and some of pandemic learning exposed many shortfalls and mostly a dire need to make curriculum responsive to the learner and educator, to understand curriculum as a living inquiry and *in-the-making.
Keywords: pandemic, curriculum *in-the making, teaching/learning
Laura Jewett & Lizzie Kittleman, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Abstract: The purpose of this presentation is to explore the curricular landscape of the recent pandemic characterized by, among other aspects, displacement and solastalgia--a term used to describe a form of psychic or existential distress caused by ongoing or episodic environmental change (Smith, 2010; MacSuibhne, 2009; Albrecht(2007, et al., 2007: Albrecht, 2005). In this paper, we use a curricular lens to examine the “course of life” jointly embodied by the displaced students, teachers and researchers and their deep desire for educational places rendered dangerous in new ways events . Curricular discussions of the significance of place in the south often make use of the notion of nostalgia (Casemore (2008), Kincheloe & Pinar (1991); Manathunga (2018) ;Slattery & Daigle (1994); Pinar (2019); Whitlock (2007). In contrast, this paper uses the notion solastalgia, as an interpretive place of dislocation from which subjective and “socially legible meanings can be and are forged”(Bauman, 2007, p. 42). Solastalgia, writes, Albrecht (2007), “is not about looking back at some golden past, nor is it about seeking another place as ‘home’ (p, 96). Rather, solastalgia is the‘lived experience of the breakdown of the normal relationship between psychic identity and home (Albrecht, 2011.p. 225) or “the loss of the present as manifest in a feeling of dislocation; of being undermined by forces that destroy the potential for solace to be derived in the present”(Albrecht et all, 2007, p.96). Displacement becomes for this paper an epistemological landscape of sorts from which to re-build our understandings- of or at least (re) place a pandemic curriculum of place in relation larger structures that shape the way we find our place in it.
Keywords: Pandemic Curriculum of place, solastalgia
Unsettling Curricula: A Critical Gathering of Fragmented Gestures
Caitlin M. Spencer, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Abstract: This piece was created from desires to attend carefully to varied forms of pedagogy and curricula that have emerged, accumulated, and shifted over the course of the pandemic. Given the many interruptive and the at-times unpredictable contours of temporality throughout the past year, I seek to inhabit methodologies that do not presume or produce a seemingly distanced academic, seamless text, definitive outcome, and/or linear narrative. Rather than falsely depicting this year as continuous, I seek
methodological possibilities that may be found through choreographing a gathering of fragments of different felt senses, embodied encounters, and shifting sites of knowledge.
As a methodological gesture, I draw from a broad pedagogical archive born in and throughout this past year, including sound recordings, curriculum, receipts, poems, medical texts, notes, excerpts from my dissertation draft and journal, and citations of
virtual talks/readings. Rather than seeking to shore up any pretense of “universal” experience, certainty, or continuity, my aim is to honor intimate, unresolvable, and relational ways grieving, teaching, writing, dreaming, struggling, and creating form, un-form, and reform ideas of bodily knowledge. This rumination on and with “the body” as a site of colliding curricula and dreams, seeks to honor the critical importance of multiple ways of knowing/being in the world, critically attending to many contradictory, fleeting, and fragmented pedagogical encounters.
Keywords: Gesture, Fragmented Curricula, Choreography, Methodology, Bodily Knowledge)
Missed Opportunity for Disruptive Education: Lies, Exclusion, and Resilience
Roymieco A. Carter, NCA&T University ; Leila E. Villaverde, University of North Carolina Greensboro
Abstract: In March 2020 we were told hop online and keep moving. In the sea of worry, uncertainty, and fear for our health everyone jumped. We made due, shared grace, and took note. By fall we were zooming and fine-tuning synchronous and asynchronous learning, yet the entire time there was this growing sense this wasn’t good enough. Folks yearned nostalgically for whatever we knew as normal and in the process lost sight of the proleptic moment right before us. It seemed the value of human life evaporated as the government failed everyone and police took the lives of too many black and brown folk. Strong narratives pervaded to ignore what we knew was evident, to return to in-person learning. States blurred the lines between law and guides, ignored gains in learning, hoping to sell the learning loss brand. Educators and administrators were excluded from not only making decisions over their schools and classrooms, but were also excluded from being vaccinated before need to return. What we learned is that brick and mortar doesn’t contain learning or teaching. Educators, administrators, and students accomplished some pretty amazing things. This is but the beginning of what could be and should be, a disruptive education squarely situating student and educator agency. We can speak from three local institutions, 1 k-8 school and 2 universities where students and teachers showed up, built community, and made great strides. This year and some of pandemic learning exposed many shortfalls and mostly a dire need to make curriculum responsive to the learner and educator, to understand curriculum as a living inquiry and *in-the-making.
Keywords: pandemic, curriculum *in-the making, teaching/learning
Stream C: The Curriculum Genealogy Podcast (Pushing Methodological Boundaries)
The Curriculum Studies Genealogy Podcast
Shirley Steinberg, University of Calgary
Marla Morris, Georgia Southern University
John Weaver, Georgia Southern University
Daniel Chapman, Georgia Southern University
Denise Taliaferro-Baszile, Miami University
Rob Helfenbein, Mercer University
Abstract: Attending to the genealogy of Curriculum Studies is necessary in securing the field’s future. Our own education about education has a history and evolution that should be traced in order to locate the social influences on our own thinking. As times change and generations change, Curriculum Studies also changes. Marla Morris and Daniel Chapman host a podcast that address these concerns – The Curriculum Studies Genealogy Podcast. They talk with curriculum scholars about their own genesis in the field and their perspectives about what the field is and where it is going. In this Pushing Methodological Boundaries session, some of the first scholars on the podcast will discuss their experiences of reflecting on their early influences and discuss what a genealogy can mean to the field and where the project can go in the future.
Shirley Steinberg, University of Calgary
Marla Morris, Georgia Southern University
John Weaver, Georgia Southern University
Daniel Chapman, Georgia Southern University
Denise Taliaferro-Baszile, Miami University
Rob Helfenbein, Mercer University
Abstract: Attending to the genealogy of Curriculum Studies is necessary in securing the field’s future. Our own education about education has a history and evolution that should be traced in order to locate the social influences on our own thinking. As times change and generations change, Curriculum Studies also changes. Marla Morris and Daniel Chapman host a podcast that address these concerns – The Curriculum Studies Genealogy Podcast. They talk with curriculum scholars about their own genesis in the field and their perspectives about what the field is and where it is going. In this Pushing Methodological Boundaries session, some of the first scholars on the podcast will discuss their experiences of reflecting on their early influences and discuss what a genealogy can mean to the field and where the project can go in the future.
2:30-3:45 p.m.
Stream A: Queering Curriculum (Curriculum Dialogues)
The Ethics of Queer Intersubjectivity
Thomas C. Weeks, Georgia Southern University
Abstract: In Nikki Giovanni’s poem “We Marched,” she writes, “The Suffragettes did not want us/ Offering only the back of the March/ Our other did not understand us so we went/ Our separate ways/…We are great/ Our Sisterhood remains Strong and Committed” (pp. 64-65). The poet evokes the separation of womanhood on the color line—the white Suffragettes did not want the Black women. The legacy of Black womanhood is one of rejection by other women because of their skin color, by Black men because they are women. Her use of “We” in the poem constructs a community of subjective experience, one which rests on the collective lived experiences of embodying gendered, Black identities. Shared understandings of their race, class, and gender, among other subjective identities, connect each individual subject. Thus, we could say that Giovanni speaks of the intersubjectivity of racialized, gendered bodies in the world. How can we understand the idea of intersubjectivity in this context? I believe that to understand how intersubjectivity functions in the Othered body, we can turn toward the notion of a queer intersubjectivity central to work in recent queer studies, and in queer phenomenology specifically. A queer understanding and exploration of intersubjectivity can be a way to interrogate and “queer” our interpretations of lived realities which veer from the “straight path.” These new queer intersubjective realities can help open a world of meaning beyond the surface and set a new path to rethink the structures of our schools, communities, and worlds.
Keywords: queer intersubjectivity; intersubjectivity; queer theory; queer phenomenology; embodiment; lived experience
Thomas C. Weeks, Georgia Southern University
Abstract: In Nikki Giovanni’s poem “We Marched,” she writes, “The Suffragettes did not want us/ Offering only the back of the March/ Our other did not understand us so we went/ Our separate ways/…We are great/ Our Sisterhood remains Strong and Committed” (pp. 64-65). The poet evokes the separation of womanhood on the color line—the white Suffragettes did not want the Black women. The legacy of Black womanhood is one of rejection by other women because of their skin color, by Black men because they are women. Her use of “We” in the poem constructs a community of subjective experience, one which rests on the collective lived experiences of embodying gendered, Black identities. Shared understandings of their race, class, and gender, among other subjective identities, connect each individual subject. Thus, we could say that Giovanni speaks of the intersubjectivity of racialized, gendered bodies in the world. How can we understand the idea of intersubjectivity in this context? I believe that to understand how intersubjectivity functions in the Othered body, we can turn toward the notion of a queer intersubjectivity central to work in recent queer studies, and in queer phenomenology specifically. A queer understanding and exploration of intersubjectivity can be a way to interrogate and “queer” our interpretations of lived realities which veer from the “straight path.” These new queer intersubjective realities can help open a world of meaning beyond the surface and set a new path to rethink the structures of our schools, communities, and worlds.
Keywords: queer intersubjectivity; intersubjectivity; queer theory; queer phenomenology; embodiment; lived experience
Stream B: Rethinking Research (The Emergent Scholar)
Book Talk Holistic Teacher Education: In Search of a Curriculum for Troubled Times
Rupert Collister, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education; University of New Brunswick; & Yorkville University
Dr. Greg Cajete
Dr. Alan Cockerill
Dr. Jeffry King
Dr. Peggy Larrick
Dr. Jennifer Markides.
Dr. John P Miller
Abstract: The purpose of this collection is to bring together approaches (actual or conceptual) to initial and/or ongoing teacher education/preparation curriculum that can be described as holistic (however we understand that). This is a text in curriculum studies but also, of course, a text in teacher education. We asked for chapters that highlight teacher education curricula for a variety of formal and informal contexts not just K-12 education. We also looked for approaches to teacher education curricula that are reconstructionist/reconceptualist in nature. That is, they seek to shift the trajectory of society through teacher education. This panel discussion will explore general themes and specific chapters in the in-press book Holistic Teacher Education: In Search of a Curriculum for Troubled Times to be published by Cambridge Scholars press from the UK.
Keywords: Book talk, teacher ed’, holistic ed’, curriculum.
Rupert Collister, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education; University of New Brunswick; & Yorkville University
Dr. Greg Cajete
Dr. Alan Cockerill
Dr. Jeffry King
Dr. Peggy Larrick
Dr. Jennifer Markides.
Dr. John P Miller
Abstract: The purpose of this collection is to bring together approaches (actual or conceptual) to initial and/or ongoing teacher education/preparation curriculum that can be described as holistic (however we understand that). This is a text in curriculum studies but also, of course, a text in teacher education. We asked for chapters that highlight teacher education curricula for a variety of formal and informal contexts not just K-12 education. We also looked for approaches to teacher education curricula that are reconstructionist/reconceptualist in nature. That is, they seek to shift the trajectory of society through teacher education. This panel discussion will explore general themes and specific chapters in the in-press book Holistic Teacher Education: In Search of a Curriculum for Troubled Times to be published by Cambridge Scholars press from the UK.
Keywords: Book talk, teacher ed’, holistic ed’, curriculum.
Stream C: Media, Images, and Youth (Pushing Methodological Boundaries)
Practicing Epistemic Disobedience through Embodying Slow Photography
Reyila Hadeer, Michigan State University
Abstract: Academic discussion about epistemic disobedience tends to stay at the historical, conceptual, and theoretical level. Few studies discuss how to delink, and who has the power to practice epistemic disobedience. This article, along with the photo exhibition, provides an example of how a doctoral student from the Global South at a Western higher education institution is reclaiming her power for epistemic disobedience by delinking herself from the official knowledge and epistemology situated in her doctoral program.
Specifically, the Slow Photography project aims to observe all photos in my smartphone and reflect on the deeper meaning embedded in those photos. I use a website, https://slowphoto.weebly.com/, as a digital space to organize these slow photos, record my feelings, and materialize my embodying process.
The name of Slow Photography comes from my childhood memory about photography. Back then, taking photos was slow, waiting to see the photos was slow, and the process of appreciating the photos was slow.
In an academy that values speed and production, my Slow Photography project is giving me the means to look differently at what counts as a “productive” qualitative inquiry process and what counts as an educational researcher training process.
Throughout this paper, I have included several photos from my Slow Photography website as a mini photo exhibition. Since I started my doctoral program, I have always been drawn to the wildflowers that escaped from the fence. In these photos, wildflowers do not always respect the human-made boundary of wire fences. They are attempting, disrupting, and blooming.
Keywords: Visual Inquiry, Photography, Delink, Higher Education, Methodology, Epidemiology
Sources of Stylization: Mass Politics and Conformity in Youth Popular Culture and Politics
Julie Webber, Illinois State University
Abstract: Youth popular culture and politics react to the larger adult environment in which they are limited and contained, usually through stylized uses of popular culture and technology. This paper explores what exactly Gen Z and those below millennials are responding to when they assert both the self and a political style seemingly incompatible with “street” politics. The use of irony and misdirection form a large part of contemporary youth strategies to attract the attention of elites and adult populations.
Reyila Hadeer, Michigan State University
Abstract: Academic discussion about epistemic disobedience tends to stay at the historical, conceptual, and theoretical level. Few studies discuss how to delink, and who has the power to practice epistemic disobedience. This article, along with the photo exhibition, provides an example of how a doctoral student from the Global South at a Western higher education institution is reclaiming her power for epistemic disobedience by delinking herself from the official knowledge and epistemology situated in her doctoral program.
Specifically, the Slow Photography project aims to observe all photos in my smartphone and reflect on the deeper meaning embedded in those photos. I use a website, https://slowphoto.weebly.com/, as a digital space to organize these slow photos, record my feelings, and materialize my embodying process.
The name of Slow Photography comes from my childhood memory about photography. Back then, taking photos was slow, waiting to see the photos was slow, and the process of appreciating the photos was slow.
In an academy that values speed and production, my Slow Photography project is giving me the means to look differently at what counts as a “productive” qualitative inquiry process and what counts as an educational researcher training process.
Throughout this paper, I have included several photos from my Slow Photography website as a mini photo exhibition. Since I started my doctoral program, I have always been drawn to the wildflowers that escaped from the fence. In these photos, wildflowers do not always respect the human-made boundary of wire fences. They are attempting, disrupting, and blooming.
Keywords: Visual Inquiry, Photography, Delink, Higher Education, Methodology, Epidemiology
Sources of Stylization: Mass Politics and Conformity in Youth Popular Culture and Politics
Julie Webber, Illinois State University
Abstract: Youth popular culture and politics react to the larger adult environment in which they are limited and contained, usually through stylized uses of popular culture and technology. This paper explores what exactly Gen Z and those below millennials are responding to when they assert both the self and a political style seemingly incompatible with “street” politics. The use of irony and misdirection form a large part of contemporary youth strategies to attract the attention of elites and adult populations.
4-5:15 p.m.
Stream A: Praxes of Transformation (Curriculum Dialogues)
Praxes of Transformation: Envisioning Futures of Critical Pedagogy in Teaching and Learning
Hope Kitts, The University of New Mexico
Jennifer Martin, University of Illinois at Springfield
Craig Wood, Queensland Teachers’ Union of Employees
Christiana Succar, Independent Researcher
Patricia Virella, Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut
Mairi McDermott, University of Calgary
Abstract: This session is guided by a desire to bring about better futures through social justice education. Guided by Paulo Freire’s philosophy of critical pedagogy, the panelists in this session bring forth unique expressions of light, love, and life to provide new pathways toward humanization through teaching and learning. Panelists in this session offer reflective/reflexive vision and praxes of their past and present, to open up possibilities for critical pedagogy in the future. Specific topics explored by panelists include: 1) the utility of Freire's concept of utopia for the realization of critical pedagogy in the sphere of teacher education, 2) the work of trans-Pacific “transgressive scholars” (Kincheloe, as cited in Freire, 2005) who apply Freirean lessons by examining themselves, their practice, their relationship to students, and their profession to resist the impact of neoliberalism on praxis, 3) a scholar-practitioner’s journey toward cultural relevance and sustainability, 4) the role of hope in a teacher education course, and 5) reflections on epistemic responsibility and solidarity as praxis.
Keywords: teacher education, higher education, critical pedagogy, social justice education, Paulo Freire, solidarity, hope, praxis
Hope Kitts, The University of New Mexico
Jennifer Martin, University of Illinois at Springfield
Craig Wood, Queensland Teachers’ Union of Employees
Christiana Succar, Independent Researcher
Patricia Virella, Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut
Mairi McDermott, University of Calgary
Abstract: This session is guided by a desire to bring about better futures through social justice education. Guided by Paulo Freire’s philosophy of critical pedagogy, the panelists in this session bring forth unique expressions of light, love, and life to provide new pathways toward humanization through teaching and learning. Panelists in this session offer reflective/reflexive vision and praxes of their past and present, to open up possibilities for critical pedagogy in the future. Specific topics explored by panelists include: 1) the utility of Freire's concept of utopia for the realization of critical pedagogy in the sphere of teacher education, 2) the work of trans-Pacific “transgressive scholars” (Kincheloe, as cited in Freire, 2005) who apply Freirean lessons by examining themselves, their practice, their relationship to students, and their profession to resist the impact of neoliberalism on praxis, 3) a scholar-practitioner’s journey toward cultural relevance and sustainability, 4) the role of hope in a teacher education course, and 5) reflections on epistemic responsibility and solidarity as praxis.
Keywords: teacher education, higher education, critical pedagogy, social justice education, Paulo Freire, solidarity, hope, praxis
Stream B: Asian Diaspora (Curriculum Studies and the Pandemic)
Chair: Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern University
Session Recording
Asian Diaspora Curriculum Theorizing during the Historical Anti-Asian Racism and Pandemic in the U. S.
Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern University
Suniti Sharma, Saint Joseph’s University
Dinny Risri Aletheiani, Yale University
Min Yu, Wayne State University
Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis, Pennsylvania State University
Discussants:
Nirmala Erevelles, The University of Alabama
Cheryl E. Matias, University of Kentucky
Abstract: In this panel, we, a group of Asian diaspora curriculum workers/educators, engage in diaspora curriculum theorizing where we will critically examine ourselves, our works, and our lives in the midst of anti-Black/anti-Latinx/anti-Indigeneity/anti-Asian/anti-People of Color/anti-diaspora racism and pandemic that plague schools, institutions, and societies in the United States. We live in a historical moment when white supremacy, anti-Black/anti-Latinx/anti-Indigeneity/anti-Asian/anti-People of Color/anti-diaspora racism and pandemic, xenophobia, misogyny, homobophia, transphobia, Islamophobia, and settler colonialism are perpetuated by hatred of differences. We live in the land that has perpetuated in history anti-Asian violence over 200 years, anti-Black violence over 400 years, and anti-Indigeneity violence over 500 years. Amidst escalating hate crimes and terrorizing violence, hate marches, mass shootings, and increased bigotry within the context of historical and systemic violence against minoritized individuals and groups, and immigration concentration camps in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we, as curriculum workers, can easily be engulfed in hopelessness and powerlessness. We question: How do we situate Asian diaspora/Asian American experiences within broader historical and ongoing conditions of exclusion, disposability, and dehumanization in the US? What are we doing to confront anti-Black/anti-Latinx/anti-Indigeneity/anti-Asian/anti-People of Color/anti-diaspora racism and pandemic? What responsibilities do we have in inventing socio-political spaces for building multiracial coalitions to fight against the anti-Black/anti-Latinx/anti-Indigeneity/anti-Asian/anti-People of Color/anti-diaspora racism that is on the rise with the pandemic in the United States. How do Asian diasporas stand in solidarity with Asian Americans and other minoritized individuals and groups to turn our racial grief, that is often ignored in mainstream and education frameworks of discrimination and inequity, into multiracial protest that engender humility, solidarity, and justice? What can we do to foreground the power of multiracial diasporic imaginary communities to assert our agency, defy internal racism, colonialism, cultural and linguistic nihilism, and work in coalition with Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other communities of color for multiracial and intersectional justice. We call for diaspora curriculum workers to work with other curriculum and educational workers such as researchers, educators, teachers, administrators, parents, students, community workers, and policy makers to heal the soul of humanity and planet with “shared principles and visions” for “desirable collective futures” in “a world of increasing complexity, uncertainty, and fragility.”
Keywords: Asian diasporas, curriculum theorizing, anti-Black/anti-Latinx/anti-Indigeneity/anti-Asian/anti-People of Color/anti-diaspora racism and pandemic
Session Recording
Asian Diaspora Curriculum Theorizing during the Historical Anti-Asian Racism and Pandemic in the U. S.
Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern University
Suniti Sharma, Saint Joseph’s University
Dinny Risri Aletheiani, Yale University
Min Yu, Wayne State University
Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis, Pennsylvania State University
Discussants:
Nirmala Erevelles, The University of Alabama
Cheryl E. Matias, University of Kentucky
Abstract: In this panel, we, a group of Asian diaspora curriculum workers/educators, engage in diaspora curriculum theorizing where we will critically examine ourselves, our works, and our lives in the midst of anti-Black/anti-Latinx/anti-Indigeneity/anti-Asian/anti-People of Color/anti-diaspora racism and pandemic that plague schools, institutions, and societies in the United States. We live in a historical moment when white supremacy, anti-Black/anti-Latinx/anti-Indigeneity/anti-Asian/anti-People of Color/anti-diaspora racism and pandemic, xenophobia, misogyny, homobophia, transphobia, Islamophobia, and settler colonialism are perpetuated by hatred of differences. We live in the land that has perpetuated in history anti-Asian violence over 200 years, anti-Black violence over 400 years, and anti-Indigeneity violence over 500 years. Amidst escalating hate crimes and terrorizing violence, hate marches, mass shootings, and increased bigotry within the context of historical and systemic violence against minoritized individuals and groups, and immigration concentration camps in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we, as curriculum workers, can easily be engulfed in hopelessness and powerlessness. We question: How do we situate Asian diaspora/Asian American experiences within broader historical and ongoing conditions of exclusion, disposability, and dehumanization in the US? What are we doing to confront anti-Black/anti-Latinx/anti-Indigeneity/anti-Asian/anti-People of Color/anti-diaspora racism and pandemic? What responsibilities do we have in inventing socio-political spaces for building multiracial coalitions to fight against the anti-Black/anti-Latinx/anti-Indigeneity/anti-Asian/anti-People of Color/anti-diaspora racism that is on the rise with the pandemic in the United States. How do Asian diasporas stand in solidarity with Asian Americans and other minoritized individuals and groups to turn our racial grief, that is often ignored in mainstream and education frameworks of discrimination and inequity, into multiracial protest that engender humility, solidarity, and justice? What can we do to foreground the power of multiracial diasporic imaginary communities to assert our agency, defy internal racism, colonialism, cultural and linguistic nihilism, and work in coalition with Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other communities of color for multiracial and intersectional justice. We call for diaspora curriculum workers to work with other curriculum and educational workers such as researchers, educators, teachers, administrators, parents, students, community workers, and policy makers to heal the soul of humanity and planet with “shared principles and visions” for “desirable collective futures” in “a world of increasing complexity, uncertainty, and fragility.”
Keywords: Asian diasporas, curriculum theorizing, anti-Black/anti-Latinx/anti-Indigeneity/anti-Asian/anti-People of Color/anti-diaspora racism and pandemic
Stream C: Resistant, Transnational, and Translanguaging Traditions of Aztlán, Gran México (Works in Progress)
Nora Luna, Classroom Teacher IDEA Schools
Spreading the Word on the Effectiveness of Translanguaging
Verbal abuse through microinsults, microassaults, and even physical attacks in extreme cases can happen in American schools. This is sadly a common occurrence at school. Informal ‘no Spanish in the classroom’ policies too often promote prejudices against Mexican American students. LatCrit exposes the interpersonal and institutional discrimination and how Mexican American students in Aztlán experience it in the classroom. The frameworks of border crossings and LatCrit are used as a lens to expose the minimization of children’s connection to the Spanish language or culture. Through text analysis as a mode of inquiry, the use of translanguaging can inform educators and administrators of the legitimacy as an effective strategy for learning the English language faster. The common use of translanguaging as a cognitive and linguistic engagement in the construction of knowledge can positively affect students through the promotion of social justice by providing spaces for innovation and reform.
Raul Garza, Lecturer, UTRGV
Decolonizing the curriculum via Gloria Anzaldua
The purpose of this paper is to draw out the use of decolonization efforts in children’s literature to deterritorialize and reterritorialize what counts as knowledge through the writings of Gloria Anzaldua. Anzaldúa exhibits what Paraskeva might describe as an itinerant curriculum theory (ICT) which typically employs the use of multiple epistemological frameworks in addressing issues of social and cognitive justice. Via critical content analysis, I outline some critical components of Anzaldúa’s two children’s books that were published in 1993 and 1995. This critical analysis of Anzaldúa’s books follows the analytical process illustrated by Mathis. A careful analysis of Friends from the Other Side/Amigos del Otro Lado and Prietita and the Ghost Woman/Prietita y La Llorona resulted in the identification of three overarching themes across both storybooks. These themes speak to the decolonial nature of resistant traditions in the RGV as a vehicle for cultural and linguistic sustainability. By harnessing other knowledge and other perspectives on what constitutes knowledge, students in the region can bring more of their experiences into the classroom as leverage for engaging with other systems of knowledge.
Raul Garza, Gricelda Eufracio, Jim Jupp; UTRGV
Resistant, Transnational, and Translanguaging Traditions of the Rio Grande Valley, Aztlán:
Advancing the Decolonizing Imperative in Critical Pedagogies
Our essay sketches resistant, transnational, and translanguaging traditions of the Rio Grande Valley (RGV), Aztlán and conjugates them with our critical curricular-pedagogical praxis. After an introductory section, we frame our essay between transnational intellectual traditions and critical place-based pedagogies. Following our framings, we provide a brief overview of resistant RGV traditions and render three of the tradition’s books. These books include Américo Paredes’ With his Pistol in his hand, Rolando Hinojosa’s The Valley, and Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands. Each of these works provide key content for critical curricular-pedagogical praxis in our region by providing contextualized critical content. These works provide examples of resistant, transnational, and translanguaging traditions from our region. The analysis of these resources provided in our discussion draws out a trio of historicized bioregional concepts that inform our learning, teaching, and research in the RGV, Aztlán. These analytical concepts include the historicity of decolonial praxis, mestizx conceptualization, and bioregional communality. Finally, in our conclusion, we return to the notion of critical curricular-pedagogical praxis to advance the decolonizing imperative in critical pedagogies.
Spreading the Word on the Effectiveness of Translanguaging
Verbal abuse through microinsults, microassaults, and even physical attacks in extreme cases can happen in American schools. This is sadly a common occurrence at school. Informal ‘no Spanish in the classroom’ policies too often promote prejudices against Mexican American students. LatCrit exposes the interpersonal and institutional discrimination and how Mexican American students in Aztlán experience it in the classroom. The frameworks of border crossings and LatCrit are used as a lens to expose the minimization of children’s connection to the Spanish language or culture. Through text analysis as a mode of inquiry, the use of translanguaging can inform educators and administrators of the legitimacy as an effective strategy for learning the English language faster. The common use of translanguaging as a cognitive and linguistic engagement in the construction of knowledge can positively affect students through the promotion of social justice by providing spaces for innovation and reform.
Raul Garza, Lecturer, UTRGV
Decolonizing the curriculum via Gloria Anzaldua
The purpose of this paper is to draw out the use of decolonization efforts in children’s literature to deterritorialize and reterritorialize what counts as knowledge through the writings of Gloria Anzaldua. Anzaldúa exhibits what Paraskeva might describe as an itinerant curriculum theory (ICT) which typically employs the use of multiple epistemological frameworks in addressing issues of social and cognitive justice. Via critical content analysis, I outline some critical components of Anzaldúa’s two children’s books that were published in 1993 and 1995. This critical analysis of Anzaldúa’s books follows the analytical process illustrated by Mathis. A careful analysis of Friends from the Other Side/Amigos del Otro Lado and Prietita and the Ghost Woman/Prietita y La Llorona resulted in the identification of three overarching themes across both storybooks. These themes speak to the decolonial nature of resistant traditions in the RGV as a vehicle for cultural and linguistic sustainability. By harnessing other knowledge and other perspectives on what constitutes knowledge, students in the region can bring more of their experiences into the classroom as leverage for engaging with other systems of knowledge.
Raul Garza, Gricelda Eufracio, Jim Jupp; UTRGV
Resistant, Transnational, and Translanguaging Traditions of the Rio Grande Valley, Aztlán:
Advancing the Decolonizing Imperative in Critical Pedagogies
Our essay sketches resistant, transnational, and translanguaging traditions of the Rio Grande Valley (RGV), Aztlán and conjugates them with our critical curricular-pedagogical praxis. After an introductory section, we frame our essay between transnational intellectual traditions and critical place-based pedagogies. Following our framings, we provide a brief overview of resistant RGV traditions and render three of the tradition’s books. These books include Américo Paredes’ With his Pistol in his hand, Rolando Hinojosa’s The Valley, and Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands. Each of these works provide key content for critical curricular-pedagogical praxis in our region by providing contextualized critical content. These works provide examples of resistant, transnational, and translanguaging traditions from our region. The analysis of these resources provided in our discussion draws out a trio of historicized bioregional concepts that inform our learning, teaching, and research in the RGV, Aztlán. These analytical concepts include the historicity of decolonial praxis, mestizx conceptualization, and bioregional communality. Finally, in our conclusion, we return to the notion of critical curricular-pedagogical praxis to advance the decolonizing imperative in critical pedagogies.
5:30-6:45 p.m. (EDT)
Special Session: Dr. Clayborne Carson
Session Recording
Title: Where Do We Go From Here, King's Unanswered Questions
Dr. Clayborne Carson is the founder of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, where he is also the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor Emeritus of History and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has devoted most of his professional life to the study of Martin Luther King Jr. and the movements the iconic orator inspired. Dr. Carson’s scholarly publications have focused on African-American protest movements and political thought of the period after World War II. In 1985, Coretta Scott King invited Dr. Carson to edit and publish the papers of her late husband. Under Carson’s direction, the King Papers Project has produced seven volumes of The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr. He has served as a consultant on several documentary films and has appeared on many national TV and radio programs.
Session Recording
Title: Where Do We Go From Here, King's Unanswered Questions
Dr. Clayborne Carson is the founder of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, where he is also the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor Emeritus of History and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has devoted most of his professional life to the study of Martin Luther King Jr. and the movements the iconic orator inspired. Dr. Carson’s scholarly publications have focused on African-American protest movements and political thought of the period after World War II. In 1985, Coretta Scott King invited Dr. Carson to edit and publish the papers of her late husband. Under Carson’s direction, the King Papers Project has produced seven volumes of The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr. He has served as a consultant on several documentary films and has appeared on many national TV and radio programs.