CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland
Power Relations And Classroom Practice Sessions
Organiser: John D. Kitchens
Power Relations And Classroom Practice: The Teacher
and Classroom Practice
Bragg, Sara (Institute of Education,
London, and University of Sussex, United Kingdom) PEDAGOGIES OF THE REPRESSED:
RETHINKING CLASSROOM ETHICS
Critical and 'liberatory' pedagogies assume too readily that their worthy
intentions are sufficient todissipate established hierarchies within educational
institutions. Drawing on research with working class teenage students in UK
Media Studies classrooms, this paper will illustrate the power effects of
textual analysis - a familiar strategy in progressive teaching - showing how it
is culpably unreflexive about pedagogic power dynamics and the hierarchical
roles it assigns to both teachers and students. However,careful interpretation
of students' responses, which are effectively 'repressed' in such practices, can
yield insights into youth audiences' existing strategies for managing their
media and classroom environments and of the affective, relational and desiring
dimensions of learning and teaching. In turn, we can learn from these about how
to connect pedagogically to young people's experiences of and pleasures in the
media whilst also enhancing accountable and socially just educational practices.
Hakala, Katariina (University of
Helsinki, Finland) INSTITUTION IN A BODY. ANALYSING TEACHER'S POSITION IN
CLASSROOM PRACTICES
The paper is about the practices of organizing classroom activities of four
teachers at a primary school in Helsinki. I have conducted a short ethnographic
study at one primary school following the teachers'days at school; in the
classrooms, staff room, teachers'weekly meetings, school yard when they had the
supervising turn etc. I also discussed with them while moving from a place to
another, commented and asked about some situations and interviewed them both
individually and as a group. I will present some interpretations of the
classroom practices and of the teachers' reflections to those practices. I ask
what position the teacher takes in relation to pupils. My initial interpretation
is that, in taking that position, a teacher embodies the cultural construction
of a school as an institution and that this istitution makes the position
tightly framed. What kind of power relations are possible in the classroom?
Osmond, Christopher (University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED: AN ALTERNATE
CONCEPTION OF RISK AND SAFETY IN CLASSROOM PRACTICE
This paper reconceptualizes institutional responses to "risky"
teachers through the lenses of post-Foucauldian conceptions of risk,
contemporary performance theory, and mythology. Beginning with a definition of
risk derived from the insurance industry, the standardized definition of the
"safe/unrisky" teacher that informs administrative assessment and
valorization will be established. Examples of teachers who are "risky"
to school success according to the hegemonic definition are presented. Bertolt
Brecht''s theory of alienation, Lewis Hyde''s exploration of the trickster
figure in mythology, and Elizabeth Bell''s pleasure-based economy of performance
are explored as sources of alternate schema for establishing the value of a
teacher''s unorthodox or excessive practice. The rich interplay of multiple
stakeholders' conceptions of "safety" and "risk" is
foregrounded. The conclusion presents a more holistic conception of the
"safe" teacher, one that values the factors of successful classroom
practice that existing administrative assessments exclude.
Saikkonen, Tuija-Leena (University of
Jyväskylä, Finland) DIALOGUE IN THE ART CLASS?
In this paper, relations of culture, knowledge and power are addressed by
acknowledging not only the different perspectives of teachers and pupils in
classroom life, but their institutionally unequal positioning as children and
adults. The aim is to explore possibilities for dialogic interaction in the art
education classroom. According to Bakhtin, polyphony may emerge when people in a
dialogical relationship relate to the world from their different perspectives,
e.g. from the positions of an adult vs. a child. Therefore, the teacher wishing
to initiate and sustain dialogical interaction in her classroom will need to
consider children's social and cultural world, and the ways in which children
may enter into and participate in classroom interaction. Conditions and
possibilities of dialogue are studied by analysing ethnographic data collected
in a school class of children aged 11 and 12.
Kalogiannakis, Michail (University Paris
5, France) MULTIMEDIA AND NEW POWER RELATIONS IN THE CLASSROOM: THE NEW ROLE OF
TEACHERS
In this paper we attempt to identify the new roles that some French teachers of
physical sciences develop in their class practice when they use communication
technologies. Considering Internet and communication technologies as a life long
learning tool, important questions are raised about power relations in class
practice, culture and pedagogy. Based on content analysis of e-mails in the
physical mailing list of the French ministry of education and individual
interviews with physical sciences teachers, this research elicits the new role
of teachers. New models of teaching seem to be constructed by teachers who feel
more active and more dynamic when using communication technologies. They
question the traditional role of the teacher who used to be the only source of
knowledge. Therefore, new roles of teachers and new power relations emerge with
the introduction of these tools.
Power Relations And Classroom Practice: Culture and
Classroom Practice
Kitchens, John (University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) CULTURAL STUDIES AND CURRICULA: THE HISTORY OF
POWER AND THE POWER OF HISTORY
Principally based on educational theory inspired by the work of Walter Benjamin,
this paper proposes a certain cultural studies approach to curricula that
presupposes a notion of historical materialism as well as a concentration to the
everyday life of students. Regardless of area content, infusing the curriculum
with this historical context requires relating it to the present and immediate
experience of the students in addition to generating more complex
representations of power in classroom dialogue. This establishes a dialectical
conception of curricula that must remain permanently mutable to the specific
conditions of any classroom. Not only does this approach promote a
student-centered concept of learning, it also provides the material history that
relates to the students' lived experiences with the hope that a better
understanding of their place in a specific historical reality creates
opportunities for personal praxis.
Helfenbein, Robert (University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) NEW TIMES, NEW STAKES: MOMENTS OF TRANSIT,
ACCOUNTABILITY AND CLASSROOM PRACTICE
This paper analyzes the recent move to implement high-stakes consequences to a
regime of controlled curriculum and standardized testing in public school
education. Using Stuart Hall's description and theoretical construction of 'New
Times' as a beginning, the conjunctures of contemporary manifestations of late
capitalism in the United States will be exposed in the hope of an understanding
that leads to activism. To understand the processes of interaction between the
highly visceral connection of people to schools and the political interests
functioning on the creation of public meaning, it is essential to recognize both
the impact of practice on audience and audience's empowering of practice. This
"affective economy of everyday life," manifest in the lives of
classroom teachers under the climate of high stakes testing, serves as the
practice under analysis.
Taylor, Hill (University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA) POWER AND LITERACY IN SUBURBIA
The aesthetic attitude encouraged by suburbanization has fostered the
entrenchment of dominant sanctioned literacies, which have surreptitiously
worked to occlude other hidden or vernacular literacies while encouraging a
corrupted and egocentric conception of identity and community. This project
highlights the impact of contemporary suburban existence on socio-cultural
literacy and discourse in secondary schools in the American South. Working from
the supposition that the most recent waves of suburbanization in the American
South have drastically altered specific social relations and that since "…literacy
is essentially social, and it is located in the interaction between people"
(Barton, p.3) discursive practice has been fundamentally changed. Also of note
is how students use literacy and text in their social practices and everyday
activities outside of school (contrasted by what is included in the curriculum
of the English/Literature classroom).
Cruz, Ana (St. Louis Community College,
USA) IMPROVING THE INSTRUCTION OF CULTURALLY HETEROGENEOUS STUDENT POPULATIONS
BY USING INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DIALOGUE
There has been a marked increase in the number of culturally diverse students
attending college and a concomitant increase in the demand for instructors who
can work effectively with these populations. Instructors are being called upon
to re-examine the attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions that underlie their
teaching, to monitor the process by which they continuously re-define themselves
as teachers, and to think critically about their classroom practices.
Considering that how/what we teach is a reflection of who we are, the need for
an internal dialogue to reflect upon the experience of teaching culturally
heterogeneous students is crucial. In addition, the instructors' reflection and
re-definition of self through internal dialogue are marked by the
role-negotiation and communication that occur with their students (i.e.,
external dialogue). The process through which an instructor engages in internal
and external dialogue, and its results, is discussed in this presentation using
a "partial-thematic" autobiographical discourse model.
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