Critical Psychology And Pedagogy

The first textbook of its kind, Critical Educational Psychology is a forward-thinking approach to educational psychology that uses critical perspectives to challenge current ways of thinking and improve practice.

Psychology’s contribution to education has produced a persuasive and burgeoning literature willing to measure (e.g. intelligence quotients), categorise (e.g. learning and/or behavioural diffi culties) and pathologise (e.g. psychiatric disorders) students across learning contexts. Practices like these pervade relationships existing between psychology and education because they share in common certain views of people and the worlds in which they learn. There is however increased acknowledgement that contemporary practice demands alternate ways of working. As learning communities and educators endeavour to make a difference in peoples’ lives, they are critically questioning how their use of psychology in education constitutes future possibilities for personhood and psychosocial action. In this book, a group of respected international scholars examine controversies presently facing the enduring relationship between psychology and education. The book will appeal to readers who are interested in the innovative development and application of psychological theories and practices in/to education. The book will be of interest to transnational audiences and is accessible to scholars and students in disciplines including psychology, education, sociology, social work, youth studies, public and allied health. The volume includes contributions from: Tom Billington, Christopher Boyle, Lise Bird Claiborne, Tim Corcoran, Greg Goodman, Jack Martin, Athanasios Marvakis and Ioanna Petritsi, Jace Pillay, Isaac Prilleltensky, Anna Stetsenko, Jeff Sugarman and Stephen Vassallo with a Foreword by Ben Bradley. Tim Corcoran is Senior Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Critical Psychology at The Victoria Institute, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. He has extensive experience in educational psychology both as a school psychologist and researcher/academic. His work has involved teaching, research and professional practice in Australia, the UK, Singapore and Iraq.

This edited volume may be the 'definitive text' on methods and content in teaching psychology from an international and critical perspective. Chapters from internationally renowned contributors working clinically, educationally and in the community with a range of client groups, outline critical teaching by and for professionals and service recipients. This timely book offers a unique, research-based and philosophically coherent approach to teaching psychology including teaching methods, the lecture content of radical approaches to modern psychology and debates as to whether the aim of teaching is to liberate or control. Themes include the nature of pedagogy, the importance of teaching and learning style, the relevance of context and content and the ways in which traditional teaching forms a part of the disciplinary rather than critical project. Teaching Critical Psychology offers guidance in teaching pupils, students, peers and those on academic programmes at under-graduate and post-graduate level.

If the reader will excuse a brief anecdote from my own intellectual history, I would like to use it as an introduction to this book. In 1957, I was a sophomore at an undergraduate liberal arts college major ing in medieval history. This was the year that we were receiving our first introduction to courses in philosophy, and I took to this study with a passion. In pursuing philosophy, I discovered the area called "philosophical psychology," which was a Thomistic category of inquiry. For me, "philosophical psychology" meant a more intimate study of the soul (psyche), and I immediately concluded that psychology as a discipline must be about this pursuit. This philosophical interest led me to enroll in my first introductory psychology course. Our text for this course was the first edition of Ernest Hilgaard's Introduction to Psychology. My reasons for entering this course were anticipated in the introductory chapter of Hilgaard's book, where the discipline and its boundaries were discussed, and this introduction was to disabuse me of my original intention for enrolling in the course. I was to learn that, in the 20th century, people who called themselves psychologists were no longer interested in perennial philosophical questions about the human psyche or person. In fact, these philosophical questions were considered to be obscurantist and passe. Psychology was now the "scientific" study of human behavior. This definition of psychology by Hilgaard was by no means idiosyncratic to this introductory textbook.

Since the very first ‘co-operative’ school opened its doors in 2008, the complicated relations between ‘co-operative’ approaches to schooling and democratic subjectivity remain unexplored. This ground breaking book considers the role of ‘voice’ in co-operative schooling and its place in radical research, offering an original, critical analysis of an alternative model of ‘co-operative’ schooling set within the context of the contemporary public education sector in England. Drawing on post structural theory and critical ethnographic research, the author explores how this model might offer new ways of thinking about what education is for and who stands to benefit or lose when schools adopt co-operative ways of working together across the structures of governance, pedagogy and curriculum. The book considers how participatory ways of working in education might inform a more critical educational psychology that takes engendering equality and collective well-being as an alternative starting point to measuring individual achievement and cognitive development. This text will appeal to advanced level undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners, particularly in the field of psychology, education, politics and social research, with an interest in developing a critical appreciation of inequalities in education and in reimagining the possibilities for change.

How can psychologists incorporate recent insights about power, values and inequality in their work? What is the role of social justice in the practice of psychology? In this highly readable book Prilleltensky and Nelson tackle these questions and propose workable solutions. This is the first book to translate into action the principles of critical psychology. Using a value-based framework the authors propose guidelines for training and critical practice in clinical, counselling, educational, health, community, and work settings. The authors base their approach on a combination of values for the promotion of personal, interpersonal, and collective well-being. They propose a set of values consisting of self determination, caring and compassion, health, respect for diversity, participation, community support and social justice. Because of its wide coverage, the book should be of interest to students and practitioners in psychology, mental health, and to users of psychological services in most fields of practice. Doing Psychology Critically: - Translates critical psychology theory into practice - Applies to most fields of applied psychology - Is written in an accessible style § includes tables and diagrams that illustrate recommendations for practice - Follows a coherent framework - Is a useful resource for training programmes in health, clinical, counselling, educational, community, and organisational psychology ISAAC PRILLELTENSKY is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Wellness Promotion Unit at Victoria University in Melbourne. He is the author of The Morals and Politics of Psychology and co-editor of Critical Psychology: An Introduction (with Dennis Fox) and Promoting Family Wellness and Preventing Child Maltreatment (with Geoffrey Nelson and Leslea Peirson). GEOFFREY NELSON is Professor of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. He has served as Editor of the Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health and is the author of Shifting the Paradigm in Community Mental Health (with John Lord and Joanna Ochocka) and co-editor of Promoting Family Wellness: Fundamentals for Thinking and Action (with Isaac Prilleltensky and Leslea Peirson).

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.