Critical Constructivism Primer

The Critical Constructivism Primer introduces education students to the study of knowledge; how it is inscribed by particular values and produced in problematic ways; whose interests it serves; and how it shapes the identities of those who consume it. Critical constructivism is an epistemological position that examines the process by which knowledge is socially constructed. Joe L. Kincheloe takes readers through the basic concepts and alerts them to the dangers of objectivism, reductionism, and the pathological views of self and world that emerge if students and educators are unaware of the construction of knowledge by dominant power interests. The book is essential reading for individuals who want to become researchers and educators.

The second edition of the Critical Pedagogy Primer not only introduces the topic but also provides a vision for the future of the critical pedagogy. Kincheloe's notion of an evolving criticality makes sure that critical pedagogy will continue to be a vibrant and creative force that makes a powerful difference in education and in the world in general. As it prepares readers for the challenges of the future, it focuses on the traditions and individuals who have helped construct the discipline. This attention to the past and the future provides readers with an introduction unlike most initiations into academic disciplines. In a richly textured but direct manner, Kincheloe captures the spirit of critical pedagogy in a language accessible to diverse audiences. Both the uninitiated and those with experience in critical pedagogy can learn from this unique and compelling perspective on the field.

Explores the differences and similarities between two groups: lifelong activists who have been engaged in campaigns and socials movements over many years and circumstantial activists, those protestors who come to activism due to a series of life circumstances. Outlines the pedagogy of activism and the process of learning to become an activist.

The Critical Pedagogy Primer provides a short, smart, and innovative introduction to this topic. Focusing on the traditions that helped create critical pedagogy, this primer concentrates on what the author calls an «evolving criticality». This refers both to the constantly changing and evolving nature of critical pedagogy, and to the need to keep the field on the cutting edge of scholarly innovation. These concerns are presented in a language that is designed for both uninitiated and sophisticated readers. The Critical Pedagogy Primer includes a glossary and a description of leading figures in the field of critical pedagogy. Anyone learning about critical pedagogy must read this book - it should be an assigned text at every school of education.

Action research is a term used to describe a family of related approaches that integrate theory and action with a goal of addressing important organizational, community, and social issues together with those who experience them. It focuses on the creation of areas for collaborative learning and the design, enactment and evaluation of liberating actions through combining action and research, reflection and action in an ongoing cycle of cogenerative knowledge. While the roots of these methodologies go back to the 1940s, there has been a dramatic increase in research output and adoption in university curricula over the past decade. This is now an area of high popularity among academics and researchers from various fields—especially business and organization studies, education, health care, nursing, development studies, and social and community work. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Action Research brings together the many strands of action research and addresses the interplay between these disciplines by presenting a state-of-the-art overview and comprehensive breakdown of the key tenets and methods of action research as well as detailing the work of key theorists and contributors to action research.

This book simultaneously contributes to the fields of critical pedagogy and educational psychology in new and innovative ways by demonstrating how critical pedagogy, postformal psychology, and Enlightenment science, seemingly separate and distinct disciplines, are actually part of the same larger, contextualized, complex whole from the inner most developmentally-fixed biological context of human faculties to the perpetually shifting, socially and politically constructed context of individual schema and human civilization. The text’s uniqueness stems from its bold attempt to connect the postformal critical constructivist/pedagogy work of Joe Kincheloe and others to Western science through a shared, although previously misunderstood, critique and rejection of crude forms of social control, which the psychologists call behaviorism and Western scientists identify as mechanical philosophy. This book therefore argues that critical pedagogy— which includes, among others, anarchist, Marxist, feminist, Indigenous (globally conceived), Afro-Caribbean/American, and postmodern traditions—and critical/constructivist educational psychology have much to gain by engaging previously rejected work in critical solidarity, that is, without compromising one’s values or democratic commitments. The goal of this book is therefore to contribute to this vision of developing a more transgressive and transformational educational psychology.

This book simultaneously provides multiple analyses of critical pedagogy in the twenty-first century while showcasing the scholarship of this new generation of critical scholar-educators. Needless to say, the writers herein represent just a small subset of a much larger movement for critical transformation and a more humane, less Eurocentric, less paternalistic, less homophobic, less patriarchical, less exploitative, and less violent world. This volume highlights the finding that rigorous critical pedagogical approaches to education, while still marginalized in many contexts, are being used in increasingly more classrooms for the benefit of student learning, contributing, however indirectly, to the larger struggle against the barbarism of industrial, neoliberal, militarized destructiveness. The challenge for critical pedagogy in the twenty-first century, from this point of view, includes contributing to the manifestation of a truly global critical pedagogy that is epistemologically democratic and against human suffering and capitalist exploitation. These rigorous, democratic, critical standards for measuring the value of our scholarship, including this volume of essays, should be the same that we use to critique and transform the larger society in which we live and work.

The book develops the model of institutional constructivism to aid socio-legal research and to account for patterns of socio-legal change.