Critical Pedagogy In Hong Kong

This book chronicles the author’s application of critical pedagogy in Hong Kong secondary schools serving students from working-class families of South Asian heritage, so-called ‘ethnic minorities’ in the local context. Soto used concepts such as banking pedagogy, generative themes, liberatory dialogue, and transformative resistance, to first understand students’ school, online, and community experiences, and then to reshape his teaching of English and humanities subjects to address the students’ academic, social, and emotional needs. This critical ethnography is set against educational reforms in Hong Kong, which re-orientated schools towards developing a knowledge-economy workforce, increased privatization and competition in the school system, aimed to build national identification with China, and sought to address growing inequality in a territory known for wealth disparity. While these reforms opened opportunities for implementing student-centered pedagogies in schools and increased student access to tertiary education, ethnic minority youth faced ongoing economic and social marginalization on top of academic difficulties. The central narrative captures everyday struggles and contradictions arising from intersections of neoliberal reforms, institutional school histories, students’ transnational realities, and collective efforts for equity and social justice. In the course of the book a parallel story unfolds, as the author explores what it means to be a critical teacher and researcher, and is reborn in the process. The book’s ‘on the ground’ story is hopeful, yet tempered, in discussing the limits and possibilities for critical pedagogy. It will be of a great resource for researchers, teacher educators, and pre-service and in-service teachers who are interested in the topic.

Presenting cutting-edge research from around the world, this book demonstrates how critical pedagogy is shaped by social-political contexts and ideological constructions of knowledge and power. The edited collection brings together a global author team using critical pedagogy to synthesise political and theoretical ambitions with the complex realities of classroom practice. The book addresses two key questions: what does critical pedagogy look like in educative work with young people around the globe? And how can critical praxis enacted in schools and classrooms push the core tenets of critical pedagogy so that they are more responsive to the complex power relations of the real world? Bringing together chapters that create a nuanced understanding of some of the challenges involved in the intersection of ideologies, systems and institutions, the authors offer a set of resources which respond to claims that critical pedagogy is often little more than emancipatory rhetoric with limited practical application. Spanning almost two decades of pedagogical thinking, practice, outreach, community development and activism, this robust volume will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students investigating critical education, curriculum, creative thinking and pedagogies.

The book addresses issues related to the education of ethnic minority individuals in the multilingual Asian region. It features recent research and practices of scholars aiming to rethink educational policy and practice surrounding the education of ethnic minority students with a variety of language scenarios in Hong Kong and other Asian contexts. It documents how ethnicity and inequality are played out at policy, school, and individual levels, and how these affect the education of ethnic minorities in their host societies. Using a range of methods, from surveys to interviews and document analysis, this book describes the links between language, identity and educational inequality related to ethnic minorities in Asian contexts.

This volume applies the critical pedagogical approach to the area of language learning, and in doing so, it addresses such topics as critical multiculturalism, gender and language learning, and popular culture.

This collection discusses and analyzes the efficacy of media education around the world, paying particular attention to whether and how it improves the critical thinking skills of students. Many books describe the importance of media education, but few evaluate its effectiveness. Implicit is a belief that without a thorough understanding of the extent to which media education achieves its aims, or fails to do so, its potential cannot be fulfilled.

In the current climate of extreme nationalism and fear-mongering, a new politics for a socially just world is needed more than ever. Featuring internationally-renowned scholars, Applied Linguistics and Politics explores how innovative theories, methodologies and pedagogies in applied linguistics can address the political challenges and issues arising in the 21st century. Adopting a Gramscian theoretical framework, the five parts of this volume focus on the various ways in which the political is discursively and materially realized in its dialogic co-constructions within the media, the economy, culture and identity, affect, and education. Examining the power instantiations of sociolinguistic and semiotic practices in society from a variety of critical perspectives, this book questions how applied linguists can respond to, and challenge, current discourses of issues such as militarism, nationalism, Islamophobia, sexism, racism and the free market, and suggests future directions for research. Making use of a range of methodologies from discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, semiotics and political science, Applied Linguistics and Politics demonstrates how linguistics can intervene in the political and help mobilize and organize for an economically and socially just society.

The Handbook of Critical Literacies aims to answer the timely question: what are the social responsibilities of critical literacy academics, researchers, and teachers in today’s world? Critical literacies are classically understood as ways to interrogate texts and contexts to address injustices and they are an essential literacy practice. Organized into thematic and regional sections, this handbook provides substantive definitions of critical literacies across fields and geographies, surveys of critical literacy work in over 23 countries and regions, and overviews of research, practice, and conceptual connections to established and emerging theoretical frameworks. The chapters on global critical literacy practices include research on language acquisition, the teaching of literature and English language arts, Youth Participatory Action Research, environmental justice movements, and more. This pivotal handbook enables new and established researchers to position their studies within highly relevant directions in the field and engage, organize, disrupt, and build as we work for more sustainable social and material relations. A groundbreaking text, this handbook is a definitive resource and an essential companion for students, researchers, and scholars in the field.

Provides examples & analysis of the negotiation of critical literacy in specific pedagogical sites (actual classrooms-elementary through adult). Practical classroom focus appropriate for teachers and professional development. International scope.