Discourse Wars In Gotham West

This book is one of the few scholarly works on critical pedagogy that makes use of empirical data in the specific context of analyzing both academic and sociopolitical articulations of critical student agency and agentive growth of Latino immigrant students.

We are in the midst of yet another global crisis in capitalism. In the UK, we have the most right wing and ideologically driven government since Thatcher; a ruthless cabal of millionaires intent on destroying the welfare state. In the US, President Obama, whose initial record did not live up to the expectations of many on the Left, is increasingly driven by right-wing republicanism and other corporate interests. At the same time, there are developments in Latin America, in particular Venezuela, which are heralding the dawn of a new politics, and recovering the voice of Marx, but with a twenty-first century socialist focus, thus giving hope to the lives of millions of working people throughout the world. This is why the world media is intent on discrediting President Hugo Chávez; and insisting that ordinary people have to pay the cost of the crisis in capitalism. The Arab Spring and the Occupy movement also show signs of an anti-capitalist movement in embryo. In Greece, perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe (even France), the austerity-stricken working-classes are pushing for real existing socialism. It is therefore not surprising that the ruling class of Greece is increasingly supporting the neo-Nazi, fascist Golden Dawn party threatening civil war should they lose power as a class. Now is a prescient time to bring twenty-first century socialism to the educational institutions of the world, to teach Marx across the curriculum and across the globe. Through this volume our goal was to contribute to the literature by concretely demonstrating the practical implications of Marx’s theory to curriculum. However, while this book provides concrete examples of how Marx can and has informed a revolutionary critical education, it is not intended to be prescriptive. That is, the chapters should not be read as a how to guide, but they should be taken as inspiration for new, creative approaches to Teaching Marx and interpreting and posing The Socialist Challenge.

There are only a few studies that investigate the actual small-scale classroom processes and approaches that allow for students to participate in “doing” critical science and none that compare CSE to traditional classroom contexts. In a critical science classroom student’ thoughts, beliefs, and questions serve as the starting point for scientific investigation where an underlying goal is for students to students to utilize this scientific knowledge to empower their own lives. One must ask, “What would this process look like? What would happen to the students?” Pruyn (1999) argued that the difficult nature of this type of research has limited the number of studies that investigate small-scale critical classroom approaches. These classroom interactions and approaches will provide valuable insights into the diffi cult processes that must exist for students to begin to develop transformative notions of the world.

This timely edited volume examines the education of children and youth in urban settings and offers compelling alternatives for successfully engaging them in school learning. Urban schools serve a large proportion of students who are poor, of color, and speakers of languages other than English.

Social Studies - The Next Generation broadens the imagination within social studies education by highlighting current, cutting-edge scholarship incorporating critical discourses. Drawing on postmodern, poststructural, postcolonial, and feminist theories often borrowed from cultural studies, curriculum theory, critical geography, women's studies, and queer studies, the scholars contributing to this volume ask new questions about social studies, use different methodologies to study the field, and report findings with new forms of textualization. This book is dialogic and even conversational, ending with provocative responses from established social studies scholars and the editors and disturbs the given and the taken for granted in social studies research.

This open access book focuses on how the design and use of innovative learning environments can evolve as teaching practices and education policies change. It addresses how these new environments are used, how teachers are adapting their practices, the challenges that these changes pose, and the effective evaluation of these changes. The book reports on emerging research in learning environments, with a particular emphasis on how teachers are transitioning from traditional classrooms to innovative learning environments. It offers a significant evidence-based global assessment of current research in this field by designers, architects, educators and policy makers. It presents twenty-five cutting-edge projects from researchers in fifteen countries. Thanks to the book’s comprehensive international perspective, which combines theory and practice in a single publication, readers will gain a wealth of new insights.

This fully revised and updated edition includes twelve new chapters on contemporary topics such as ecological democracy, Native studies, inquiry teaching, and Islamophobia. The Social Studies Curriculum, Fourth Edition updates the definitive overview of the issues teachers face when creating learning experiences for students in social studies. The book connects the diverse elements of the social studies curriculum—civic, global, social issues—offering a unique and critical perspective that separates it from other texts. Completely updated, this book includes twelve new chapters on the history of the social studies; democratic social studies; citizenship education; anarchist inspired transformative social studies; patriotism; ecological democracy; Native studies; inquiry teaching; Islamophobia; capitalism and class struggle; gender, sex, sexuality, and youth experiences in school; and critical media literacy. All the chapters from the previous edition have been thoroughly revised and updated, including those on teaching social studies in the age of curriculum standardization and high-stakes testing, critical multicultural social studies, prejudice and racism, assessment, and teaching democracy. Readers are encouraged to reconsider their assumptions and understanding about the origins, purposes, nature, and possibilities of the social studies curriculum.