What is the role of politics in the classroom? How does the desire of the teacher shape the pedagogical process? Is teaching possible? Is learning possible? Pedagogy as Encounter engages with such larger issues. The majority of discussions, workshops, conference panels, articles, and books avoid meta-pedagogical issues by focusing on technique. Such “technique talk” examines schemes, methods, and procedures that do and do not work in the classroom. It answers the “how” question at the cost of ignoring these bigger queries. Pedagogy as Encounter consists of 120 vignettes arranged in eight chapters. Most of these are first person autobiographical stories that describe encounters with students and colleagues. They portray a teacher whose classroom disappointments lead him to radical experimentation. But there are also a few theoretical sections, as well as segments that are epigrammatic in nature. All of it is grounded in a Lacanian political psychology and in a critical global political economy. The theory, however, remains largely implicit and is confined to the footnotes. The body of the text is free of jargon and presented in a conversational voice.

Pedagogical Encounters demonstrates how learning spaces that are ethical, responsive, and transformable can enable students and teachers to open toward new ways of being in the world. Through collective biography, ethnography, and arts-based research, the authors - educators with experience in diverse settings - generate rich descriptions of classroom practices, and elaborate and clarify new theoretical concepts through their discussion in relation to specific sites of teaching and learning.

There is only one place where social education can occur and flourish: through the voices that create a pedagogy of change. And it is these voices where the most exciting and provocative moments can occur for those of us who are passionate about education, teaching, social justice, equity, and love. As such, social education is a journey—an endeavor that makes us savor the experience of the journey more than the destination. And social education is a journey that ins enhanced through educator and student voices because it occurs in the most important spaces of our personal and professional lives. It occurs in the hallways of the schools we teach, in the staff meetings we attend, in the mountain villages we venture to visit, in the places we work, and in the spaces we occupy. Moreover, social education is a unique kind of journey because it is a human experience that seldom occurs alone. It happens with our colleagues and our loved ones. It happens with our students, administrators, and other professionals who are fighting for the same things that we so fervently believe. In the end, social education occurs and flourishes in the trenches because it is the active pursuit of getting our hands dirty in our endless pursuit for a better and more just world. Social education is also a narrative, which takes on a different meaning for each one of us. This is because sooner or later each person that embarks into the journey of social education develops its own personal definition of what social education entails through his or her own personal landscape and knowledge. This personal landscape has been evolving since we were very young with some of the best examples of human courage and tenacity in the fight for social justice. Voices of Social Education: A Pedagogy of Change is a collection of personal stories. In this volume, academics, teachers, students, activists, and artists share their personal stories of triumph, tribulations, and courage in their daily fight for social justice and equality. The term social education is not defined as a set number of guidelines or a specific definition; we give the term an organic fluency to stress that social education is a point of encounter--a common space-- where we can share with each other our experiences, values, and culture to form a more genuine and just social experience.

In this book, teachers from a variety of backgrounds reflect upon their journeys into and within teaching to discuss the impact of their diverse experiences on the ways in which they teach. The authors adopt a variety of autoethnographic approaches in telling stories of transition and profound transformation as they each discuss how certain events in their lives have shaped their professional identities and methods of teaching. In telling their stories they also tell stories of the culture and process of education. This offers the opportunity to consider the narratives as examples of how individuals and groups respond in different ways to institutional and national policies on education. In these chapters, the authors offer illumination from a number of perspectives, of how practitioners of education make meaning of their lives and work in our changing times. By capturing these personal stories, this book will inform and support readers who are studying to become teachers and those already working in education by developing their understanding and empathy with the role. Autoethnography can develop self-knowledge and understanding in the reader and writer of such texts, offering unique insights and individual ways of being that will benefit students and staff in a range of educational settings. This book values the telling and sharing of stories as a strategy for enabling teachers to learn from one another and help them to feel more supported. The book will be useful for teachers and teacher educators, students of education, and all researchers interested in autoethnography and self-narrative.

What goes on in a classroom? can mean "Are teachers imparting knowledge that will raise test scores?" or it can mean much more. In this series of essays, Block addresses the nature of the classroom as a place for encounter and engagements: with curriculum materials and books, between teachers and students, and with the self.

Paulo Freire is one of the century's great thinkers on education and the politics of liberation. Known mostly for his literacy campaigns in Latin America and Africa, and for his seminal work Pedagogy of the Oppressed, his thinking continues to be rediscovered by generations of teachers, scholars, community activists and cultural workers in Europe and North America. While his name is synonymous with the practice of Critical Literacy' and A Pedagogy of Liberation', his work has been appropiated in many diverse fields of discipline and site-based projects of social reform. This volume represents a pathfinding analysis of Freires work and in many cases it offers an extension of his thinking in order to make it more applicable to first world contexts. Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard have brought together a divergent group of scholars widely recognized for their contributions to critical theory and critical pedagogy. Themes addressed include Freier's relation to feminist critique, his philosophical roots and an evaluation of his ideas from postmodernist and postcolonialist perspectives. The collection will be essential reading for anyone interested in the radical sociology of education and the politics of liberation.