University of Winchester

Education Studies & Education Studies (Early Childhood)

 

ES2206 : Power of the Teacher

Semester 1, 2009-10,  Medecroft temporary 1.

Mondays 9.30-11.30  

 

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Last updated 14.9.09.

  

The aims and learning outcomes of this module, stated in the validated document (2003) are as follows.

 

 

Introduction

 

We will try to cover these aims by looking at modern and post-modern perspectives on the uses and abuses by teachers of their ‘power’.  Power in this module is examined largely as a political concept which manifests itself in the classroom between teacher and student.  At root we will be asking what kind of power is represented by the teacher, what it means for the teacher/student relationship, and whether pedagogy can ever liberate or emancipate students (and teachers) from their determination within these power relations.

 

There is a reading pack to accompany the lectures, and it would be very helpful for you if you could collect this before the module begins. I will leave some with Jenny in the Ed studies office as well as in my room. There is also an additional reading pack of relevant articles. These can be collected from my office on Monday mornings before the lectures.

 

Finally, chapter 4 of (my) Philosophy of the Teacher is helpful in this module but it is no substitute for you reading the primary sources yourself and quoting from these in your essays.

 

By way of introduction to the theme of the module overall we will read a paragraph from Burbules, N. (1997) ‘The Tragic sense of Education’, in Burbules, N. and Hansen, D.T., Teaching and its Predicaments, Boulder, Westview Press, p. 67. This is the first reading in the pack.

 

 

 

Programme of lectures

 

Week 1           Freire’s Critical Pedagogy

 

Paulo Freire has offered a theory of the relationship between the teacher and the student that might be read as one based on the relationship between workers and their bosses. We will look at this in our lecture, and try to find ways of teaching from Freire which oppose the power of the teacher and replace it with a teacher/student relationship which is mutual, open, democratic and liberating. He argues for a form of praxis in classrooms based on the pedagogy of problem posing which, he believes, will overcome the domination of the teacher over the student. This praxis will be mutual and dialogical. We will try to examine the extent to which he is successful in doing this. We will also read something from Freire about the love that a teacher needs for her students.

 

Reading

 

Freire P (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Harmondsworth, Penguin, chapter 2.

Figueiredo-Cowen, M (ed.) (1995) Paulo Freire at the Institute, London, University of London, chapter 2, ‘The Progressive Teacher.’

                                        

Further Reading                 

Darder, A. (2002) Reinventing Paulo Freire, Oxford, Westview Press.

Freire, P. (1996) Letters to Christina, London, Routledge.

Gur Ze’ev, I. (1998) ‘Toward a Nonrepressive Critical Pedagogy,’ Educational Theory, Fall, Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 463-470. note: this whole article is in the articles reading pack as we will use different parts from it in different seminars!

Gur Ze’ev, I. (2007) Beyond the Modern-Postmodern Struggle in Education, Rotterdam, Sense Publishers, chapter 4.

McLaren, P. L. and Lankshear, C. (eds.) (1994) Politics of Liberation: Paths from Freire, London, Routledge, chapter 5.

Morrow, R.A. and Torres, C.A. (2002) Reading Freire and Habermas, New York, Teachers College Press.

Shor, I. (1993) ‘Education is Politics’ in McLaren, p. and Leonard, P. (1993) Paulo Freire; a critical encounter, London, Routledge.

Taylor, P.V. (1993) The Texts of Paulo Freire, Buckingham, Open University Press.

Tubbs, N. (1997) Contradiction of Enlightenment, Aldershot, Ashgate, pp. 17-22.

Tubbs, N. (2003) ‘The Concept of “Teachability”,’ Educational Theory, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 80-82.

Weiler, K. (1996) ‘Myths of Paulo Freire’, Educational Theory, vol. 46, no. 3

 

Also: http://www.comminit.com/changetheories/ctheories/changetheories-41.html

 

 

 

 

 

Week 2           Alienation, ideology and revolution

 

This week we have to put Freire’s work into the proper context. Freire was writing within a broadly Marxist perspective. This means that it was based within the work of the 19th century political theorist Karl Marx. You will come across his work again in ES 2301 later this semester, but this will not be in time for our first essay, so we have to have our own introduction to him. In the next four weeks of our present module we will look at ways that Marxism has sought different means by which to use schools and radical teachers to emancipate students from the kind of alienation and ideology that Marx and Freire described. Let us see if what Marx says about the boss and the worker this week can also be said of Freire’s thoughts last week on the teacher and the student.

 

Reading

 

Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, pp. 3-5.

Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, pp. 70-79, (on alienation).

Marx, The German Ideology, pp. 172-3.

Marx, The German Ideology, pp. 192-3 (on revolution).

Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, pp. 82-85 (on communism).

(These references are all from the Tucker book called The Marx-Engels Reader. The full reference for this book is Tucker, R.C. (1978) The Marx-Engels Reader, London: W.W. Norton).

 

 

 

Week 3           Marxism and Teaching

 

We know that Marx saw human consciousness to be deeply affected by the bourgeois social relations of modern capitalist society and that individuals within it are alienated, and that this alienation is reproduced by capitalist ideology. Over the next few weeks we will look at the impact of this upon education and at a few attempts to introduce a revolutionary pedagogy which would emancipate students from their domination in and by these bourgeois social relations. This week we explore the Marxism of Althusser who, in our reading, has a bleak outlook for teachers who try to address ideology and alienation in schools.

 

 

Reading         

 

Althusser, L. (1984) Essays on Ideology, London, Verso, pp 14-31

 

Further Reading                 

Bourdieu, P. And Passeron, JC, (19770 Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, London, Sage, see in particular pp. 108-114

Bowles, S. And Gintis, H. (1976) Schooling in Capitalist America, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Hill, D. and Cole, M. (2001) ‘Social Class’ in D. Hill and M. Cole, (eds.) Schooling and Equality: Fact, Concept and Policy, London: Kogan Page.

Marx, K. (1975) Early Writings, Harmondsworth, Penguin, in particular the Theses on Feuerbach

Sarup, M. (1978) Marxism and Education, London, RKP, chapters 10 and 11

Sharp, R. (1980) Knowledge, Ideology  and the Politics of Schooling, London, RKP.

Small, R, (2005) Marx and Education, Aldershot, Ashgate.

 

 

 

 

 

Week 4           Habermas

 

Jurgen Habermas has tried to offer an optimistic and modernist theory that can challenge ideology in ways that Althusser, as we saw last week, did not hold out much hope for. It is Habermas’s view that there is a structure of critical reason beneath bourgeois abstract reason which can be known, and which represents the kind of consensus about humanity which was such an important part of the idea of enlightenment. In his early work this announced itself as the emancipatory interest, but later became grounded in and as the idea of communicative reason. We will briefly explore both of these concepts and then at the way Carr and Kemmis, and Young, among others, have tried to turn them into an emancipatory pedagogy for reforming the teacher/student relation. If we are to understand Habermas’s work and its relation to critical education then we have to understand what he means by ‘knowledge-constitutive interests’, critique, communicative competence and the ‘ideal speech situation’. The readings address these themes.

 

Reading

 

Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986) Becoming Critical,  Lewes, Falmer Press, pp. 131-143

Outhwaite, W. (1994) Habermas: A Critical Introduction, Cambridge, Polity, pp. 26-31.

Roderick, R. (1986) Habermas and the Foundation of Critical Theory, Basingstoke, Macmillan, pp. 82-87.

Young, R.E. (1989) A Critical Theory of Education: Habermas and our children’s future, London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp. 118-123.

Tubbs, N. (1996) ‘Becoming Critical of Critical Theory of Education’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 42-54.

 

 

Further Reading

Abbinnett, R. (1998) Truth and Social Science, London, Sage, pp. 93-99.

Blake, N. (1995) ‘Ideal Speech Conditions, Modern Discourse and Education’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp. 355-367.

Braaten, J. (1991) Habermas's Critical Theory of Society, New York, SUNY.

Burbules, N. (1993) Dialogue in Teaching , New York, Teachers College Press, pp. 73-6.

Craib, I. (1992) Modern Social Theory; From Parsons to Habermas, Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Critchley, S. and Schroeder, R. (1999) A Companion to Continental Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell, chapter 34

Dews, P. (ed.) (1999) Habermas: A Critical Reader, Oxford, Blackwell.

Heslep, R.D. (2001) ‘Habermas on Communication in Teaching’, Educational Theory, Spring, Vol. 51, No. 2, pp. 191-207.

McCarthy, (1986) The Critical theory of Jurgen Habermas, Cambridge, Polity

Papastephanou, M. (2001), ‘Estranged but not Alienated: A Precondition of Critical Educational Theory’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 35, no. 1.

Peukertruth, H. (1993) ‘Basic Problems of a Critical Theory of Education’, in Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 27, no. 2.

Solomon, R.C. and Sherman, D. (eds.) (2003) The Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell, chapter 10.

Winter, R. (1988) ‘Finding a voice- Thinking with Others: a conception of action research’, in Educational Action Research, vol. 6, no. 1

Young R.E. (1989) A Critical Theory of Education, London, Harvester Wheatsheaf.

 

Note also that in the 4th century BC Aristotle made a point similar to Habermas that participants in an argument must share more than they differ about; see Aristotle, Metaphysics, book XI, chapter 5, lines 1062a 10 – 1062a 16.

 

 

Week 5           Recent Critical Pedagogy

 

This week we look at critical theory and critical pedagogy, and in particular the work of three thinkers, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren and Ilan Gur Ze’ev. These are contemporary thinkers and are still teaching and writing today. Giroux has written a great deal but we will only look at two pieces from him, one which describes some of his own critical pedagogy as a university teacher, and one an interview with him in which he gives some helpful definitions of key concepts. With McLaren we look at some recent work which brings critical pedagogy into the 21st century. Our final theorist is Ilan Gur Ze’ev. This article has already been included in the further reading for week 4 on Freire. Today we will read his ideas for what he calls a nonrepressive counter-education against the ‘violent practises of normalization, control and reproduction’ (463). His conclusion, which likens critique to prayer, points towards issues we will raise next week

 

Reading

 

Giroux H.A. (1994) Disturbing Pleasures  London, Routledge, pp. 133-140, and 153-171.

McLaren, P. (1997) Revolutionary Multiculturalism, Colorado, Westview, pp. 13-14.

Gur Ze’ev, I. (1998) ‘Toward a Nonrepressive Critical Pedagogy,’ Educational Theory, Fall, Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 463 and 483-486.

 

Further Reading

Giroux, H. (1983) Theory and Resistance in Education, London, Heinemann.

Giroux, H. (1992) Border Crossings, New York, Routledge.

Gur-Ze’ev, I. (1998) ‘Toward a Nonrepressive Critical Pedagogy,’ Educational Theory, Fall, Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 470-475 (see above, week 4).

Gur-Ze’ev, I. (2003) Destroying the Other’s Collective Memory, New York, Peter Lang, the Introduction.

Gur Ze’ev, I. (2005) Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy Today: toward a new critical language in education, Haifa, University of Haifa. These are recently published essays on the state of critical pedagogy at the moment.

Kanpol, B. (1994) Critical Pedagogy, an introduction, Westport, Bergin and Garvey.

McLaren P. Note: there are 8 titles in the library for McLaren.

Masschelein, J. (1998) ‘How to Imagine Something Exterior to the System: Critical Education as Problematization’, Educational Theory, Fall, Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 521-529.

Lather, P. (1998) ‘Critical Pedagogy and its Complicities: A Praxis of Stuck Places’, Educational Theory, Fall, Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 487-497.

Lovlie, L. Mortensen, K.P. and Nordenbo, S.E. (2003) Educating Humanity, Bildung in Postmodernity, Oxford, Blackwell, especially chapter 5.

Luke, C. (1996) ‘Feminist Pedagogy Theory: Reflections on Power and Authority’, Educational Theory, Summer, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 283-302.

Peters, M. Lanshear, C. and Olssen, M. (eds.) (2003) Critical Theory and the Human Condition: Founders and Praxis, New York, Peter Lang.

Trifonas, P. (2000) Revolutionary Pedagogies: cultural politics, instituting education and the discourse of theory, New York, RoutledgeFalmer.

 

 

 

Week 6           Critical theory

 

In our final week on critical education in the Marxist tradition we look at some very worrying implications that arise from what we have read previously. In some ways, having spent five weeks looking at how radical educators might resist and change the system, this week we see the system strike back! The critical theory of Theodor Adorno warns us that it may not be just what we make that we are alienated from. It might also be what we think. If so, ideology is a total system that incorporates everything into it, including critique and radical education. Does this leave us despairing and hopeless of change?

 

 

Reading

 

Adorno. T.W and Horkheimer, M. (1979) Dialectic of Enlightenment, London, Verso, Introduction.

Adorno, T.W. (1983) ‘Cultural Criticism and Society’, in Prisms, Massachusetts, The MIT Press, pp. 19-20.

Adorno, T.W. (1973) Negative Dialectics, London, RKP, p. 4.

Rose, G. (1978)  The Melancholy Science: an introduction to the thought of Theodor W. Adorno, Basingstoke, Macmillan, pp. 30-1 & 46-9.

Adorno, T.W. (1976) The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, Aldershot, Avebury, p. 24.

Moisio OP, (2005) ‘Max Horkheimer on The Mimetic Element in Education, pp. 262- 266, in Ilan Gur Ze’ev (ed.) Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy Today, Haifa, University of Haifa.

 

Further Reading

Adorno T.W. (1967) Prisms, Massachusetts, MIT Press.

Adorno TW (1976) The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, Aldershot, Avebury.

Adorno, T.W. (1991) The Culture Industry, London, Routledge.

Arato A and Gebhardt E (1978) The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, Oxford, Blackwell.

Benjamin, W. (1973) Illuminations, London, Fontana,  ‘The Storyteller’.

Benjamin, A. (ed ) (1991) The Problems of Modernity: Adorno and Benjamin, London, Routledge, chapter 1, Peter Dews on Adorno.

Blake, N. and Masschelein, J. (2003) ‘Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy’, in The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Education, Blake, N., Smeyers, P., Smith, R. and Standish, P. (eds.), pp. 38-56.

Bottomore T (1984) The Frankfurt School, London, Tavistock.

Bronner S E and Kellner D M (1989) Critical Theory and Society, London, Routledge.

Bronner, S.E. (1994) Of Critical Theory and its Theorists, Oxford, Blackwell, chapter 9 on Adorno.

Brunkhorst, H, (1999) Adorno and Critical Theory, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, try chapter 2.

Dews, P. (1995) The Limits of Disenchantment, Essays on Contemporary European Philosophy, London, Verso, chapter 1.

Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press, chapters 1 and 6.

Habermas (1985) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity   Press, chapter XI

Held D (1980) Introduction to Critical Theory, California, University of California Press.

Horkheimer (1947) Eclipse of Reason, New York, Continuum.

Horkheimer (1992) Critical Theory Selected Essays, Continuum, New York.

Ingram, D. and Simon-Ingram, J. (eds.) (1991) Critical Theory: the essential readings, New York, Paragon House.

Kellner, D. (1989) Critical Theory, Marxism and Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press.

Lukacs (1963) Theory of the Novel, London, Martin Press.

Lukacs (1971) History and Class Consciousness, London, Martin Press, pp 83-110.

Marx, K. (1976) Capital Volume 1, Harmondsworth, Penguin, pp. 163-165 on the fetishism of commodities.

Rasmussen, D.M. (ed.) (1999) The Handbook of Critical Theory, Oxford, Blackwell.

Rose, G. (1978) The Melancholy Science, London, Macmillan, chapter 3.

Sim, S. and van Loon, B. (2004) Introducing Critical Theory, Royston, Icon Books (its got pictures!).

Solomon, R.C. and Sherman, D. (eds.) (2003) The Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell, chapter 9.

Tucker, R.C. (1978) The Marx-Engels Reader, London: W.W. Norton, pp. 319-321 on the fetishism of commodities.

Wellmer, A. (1991) The Persistence of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press, chapter 2.

Wiggershaus R (1994) The Frankfurt School, Cambridge, Polity.

 

 

 

Week 7           What is Postmodernity?

 

Critical theory can itself be criticised for its utopian models of emancipation and freedom. One such argument can be found in Biesta below, week 9 (1998). Some see all radical teaching as just another ‘grand narrative’ which tries to impose one world view upon all students. This criticism leads us into a different way of viewing the power of the teacher, a way that can be labelled ‘post-modern.’ You may already have come across this way of thinking in other modules, and you will definitely do so next semester in ES2302. In the next two lectures we will look at the ways different theorists have criticised the modernist project. Our guides through these sessions will be firstly Jean-François Lyotard (1984 and 1992) and then, next week, Bauman (1989 and 1992) and Foucault (1980), all of which are listed below in the readings for this and further weeks. We will see that the modernist project, the one that aims to enlighten and emancipate the people, is criticised as being transcendental, and as a grand narrative. Indeed, enlightenment itself and the critical pedagogies that spring from it are seen as forms of imperialism and domination. In the following weeks we will see how this perspective has been applied to education and to teaching in particular.  

 

Reading

Lyotard, JF. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester, Manchester University Press, introduction.

Lyotard, JF. (1992) The Postmodern Explained to Children, London, Turnaround, pp. 24, 29-30, 61, 97 and 110-111.

 

Further Reading                 

Abbs, P. (2003) Against the Flow, London: RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 18-24.

Anderson, P. (1980) The Origins of Postmodernity, London: Verso.

Browning, G. (2000) Lyotard and the end of grand narratives, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, chapter 1.

Elliott, A. (2001) Concepts of the Self, Cambridge, Polity Press, chapter 5.

Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism or the cultural logic of late capitalism, London: Verso.

Kennedy, D. ‘The Child and Postmodern Subjectivity,’ Educational Studies, Spring 2002, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 155-167.

Lyon, D. (1994) Postmodernity, Buckingham, Open University Press, chapters 2 and 3.

Lyotard, JF, (1984) The Postmodern Condition Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Mourad, R.P. (1997) Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education, Westport: Bergin and Harvey, pp. 27-37.

Parker S (1997) Reflective Teaching in the Postmodern World (Milton Keynes: Open University Press) chapter 5 (but chapters 6-8 will also give you much that is useful in thinking about postmodern thinking in education).

Peters, M. ‘Education and the Postmodern Condition; revisiting JF Lyotard’ in Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 29, no. 3, 1995, pp. 355-367.

Rorty, R. (1980) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Oxford: Blackwell.

Sarap, M. (1993) An introductory guide to post-structuralism and postmodernism, London, Harvester Wheatsheaf, chapters 4, 5 and 6.

Solomon, R.C. and Sherman, D. (eds.) (2003) The Blackwell Guide to Continental Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell, chapter 13.

Standish, P. ‘Postmodernism and the Education of the Whole Person,’ Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 29, no. 1, March 1995, pp. 121-135.

Theory, Culture and Society, (1988) Postmodernism, London, Sage; 1 article on Lyotard, and 1 interview with him.

 

 

Week 8                     Postmodern Critique

 

Following the previous lecture looking at Lyotard’s critique of the project that is modernity, this week we will look at two ways in which theorists have argued that the effects of grand narratives have been and continue to be highly problematic.  Foucault, in his book Power/Knowledge, argues that the voices of minorities are subjugated within and by dominant knowledge paradigms. We will extend this insight to education, and by implication to the classroom through a short piece from Usher and Edwards (1994). This book is very helpful for the remaining weeks.  Finally, Bauman has written a most influential book called Modernity and the Holocaust in which he argues for a direct causal link between modernist thinking and the death camps of World War II.

 

Reading

         

Usher R  and Edwards R (1994) Postmodernism and Education London: Routledge, chapter 1.

Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge London: Harvester, pp. 78-108

Bauman, Z. (1989) Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 88-95.

 

Further Reading              

Bauman Z (1992) Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge) Introduction and Ch. 9.

Bauman, Z. (1997) Postmodernity and its Discontents, Cambridge: Polity.

Cherryholmes, C.H. (1988) Power and Criticism (New York: TCP) chapter 3

Critchley, S. and Schroeder, W.R. (1998) A Companion to Continental Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell, chapter 52.

Donald, J. (1992) Sentimental Education, London: Verso, chapter 5 (on vampires!!)

Hogan, P. (1995) The Custody and Courtship of Experience: western education in philosophical perspective, Blackrock: The Columba Press, pp. 109-113.

Jennings, L.E. and Graham, A.P. (1996) ‘Postmodern Perspectives and action Research: reflecting on the possibilities’ in Educational Action Research, vol. 4, no. 2.

Lyotard, J.F. (1992) The Postmodern Explained to Children, London: Turnaround.

Mourad, R.P. (1997) Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education, Westport: Bergin and Harvey, Introduction.

Peters, M. (ed.) (1995) Education and the Postmodern Condition (Connecticut: Bergin and Harvey)

Peters, M. (2001) Poststructuralism, Marxism and Neoliberalism: Between Theory and Politics, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 49-53 (p/c available from me)

Usher, R. and Edwards, R. (1994) Postmodernism and Education, London: Routledge, chapter 8.

Wyschogrod, E. (1985) Spirit in Ashes, New Haven, Yale University Press, pp. 23-9.

 

 

Week  9        Postmodern ‘undecideability’

 

Does the inevitability of the power of the teacher mean that the project of education intervening in the world in the cause of justice and freedom, as Plato advocated, can now be said to be impossible? And if so, should we despair? Ellsworth offers a way of interpreting this dilemma. She sees the paradox of power as containing an ‘uncontrollable fecundity’ (p. 142) for the teacher in which it is precisely the creativity and possibility of this ‘undecideability’ where education and teaching can really begin.

 

Reading

         

Ellsworth, E. (1997) Teaching Positions; difference, pedagogy and the power of address, New York: Teachers College Press, pp. 50-53 and 136-8, 140-2.

 

Further reading

Barnett, R. (1997) Higher Education: A Critical Business, Buckingham: Open University Press.

Barnett, R. and Griffin, A. (eds.) (1997) The End of Knowledge in Higher Education, London: Cassell.

Biesta, G.J.J. (1998) ‘Say you want a revolution… suggestions for the impossible future of critical pedagogy’, Educational Theory, Fall, Vol. 48, No. 4, pp. 499-510.

Burbules, N. (1993) Dialogue in Teaching, New York: Teachers College Press

Donald, J. (1992) Sentimental Education, London: Verso

Nicholson, C. ‘Postmodern Feminisms’, in Peters, M (ed.) (1995) Education and the Postmodern Condition, Connecticut: Bergin and Harvey.

Vanderstraeten, R. and Biesta, G.J.J. (2001) ‘How is education possible? Preliminary investigations for a theory of education’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 7-21 (read in columns!!).

 

 

Week 10       Parker’s Postmodern Education Manifesto

 

Looking at the recent work of Parker we can try to ascertain what a post-modern educational manifesto might consist of, and how it would be different from, and avoid the utopianism of, traditional enlightenment thinking and critical theory. Contradictions may arise in our attempt to do so, contradictions which may in themselves be of much greater educational significance than the theories themselves.

 

Reading

         

Parker, S. (1997) Reflective Teaching in the Postmodern World, Buckingham: Open University Press, chapter 9.

 

Further reading                               

Allam, J. (2004) ‘Deterritorializations: Putting postmodernism to work on teacher education and inclusion’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 36, no. 4.

Cherryholmes, C.H. (1988) Power and Criticism, New York: TCP, chapter 8.

Blake, N. , Smeyers, P., Smith, R. and Standish, P. (1998) Thinking Again, Education After Postmodernism, Westport, Bergin and Garvey, pp. 185-190. For a series of comments on this book, see Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 32, no. 3, 2000.

Marshall, J.D. (2000) ‘Education and the Postmodern world: rethinking some educational stories’, Educational Theory, vol. 50, no. 1.

Trifonas, P. (ed.) (2003) Pedagogies of Difference: rethinking education for social change, New York: RoutledgeFalmer, try chapter 10 on deconstruction and ‘difference’.

 

 

Week 11       Are we ready for ‘posthumanism?

 

To help (I hope) with the essay I thought it might be useful to end the module by setting up a confrontation between a theorist from each camp – Freire from critical theory and Spanos from postmodernism. We have not looked at Spanos yet, largely because his book uses Heideggerian language which we are not familiar with. However, we will see that he represents much of what we have already been looking at in the last few weeks of the module, offering something called a decentred paideia in a posthumanist culture. Against this we will set the emancipatory perspective of Freire and critical theory in general. In a sense, against both of these, we will briefly look at the argument by Louis McCarty that the postmodern be reinterpreted in the more modernist philosophical language of the ‘human spirit.’

 

Reading

 

Freire, P. (1972) The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Harmondsworth; Penguin, chapter 2.

McCarty, L.P. (1997) ‘Experience and the Postmodern Spirit’, Educational Theory, Summer, Vol. 47, No. 3, pp. 377-394.

Spanos, W.V. (1993) The End of Education, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 11, and 187 – 221.

 

Further Reading

You might try:

Biesta, G. J. J. (2006) Beyond Learning; democratic education for a Human Future, Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.

Burbules, N.C. (1986) ‘A Theory of Power in Education’, Educational Theory, Spring, vol. 36, no. 2, by way of a conclusion (I have a copy).

Burbules, N.C. and Torres, C.A. (eds.) Globalization and Education: critical perspectives, New York: Routledge, chapter 13.

Carr, D. (ed.) (1998) Education, Knowledge and Truth: beyond the postmodern impasse, London, Routledge, try the Introduction, and chapters 2 and 7.

Derrida, J. (1988) Limited Inc, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, p. 93.

McLaren, P.L. and Lankshear, C. (eds.) (1994) Politics of Liberation: Paths from Freire, London: Routledge, chapter11.

Tubbs, N. (2003) 'The Concept of Teachability,' Educational Theory, Vol. 53, No. 1.

 

It is also the case that the kind of debates that currently are offered for and against the postmodern are not really new. See, for example, Book XI, chapter 5, lines 1062a 20 – 1062b 11 of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

 

 

Assessment

 

The module is assessed by two essays, worth 50% each.

 

The first essay is:

 

In what ways do critical educators believe education can be a tool for emancipation?

(2000 words)

 

Due in to Jenny by 3.30 on 6th November which is Friday week 6. (I know this makes it difficult to include the stuff from week 6, but if you read ahead and plan carefully you should be OK). I hope to mark these and get them back to you in 3 weeks!

 

The second essay we will talk about later as to some extent it always depends on the way the module progresses. The deadline will be Friday week 11, which is 11th December, so be prepared.

 

Nigel.