Critical Pedagogy for Social Justice

Description

We live in a time when those who wield unrestrained power believe they have the inalienable right to determine the destiny, nature and shape of social institutions like schools. Critical Pedagogy for Social Justice challenges this arrogance by showing how teachers, students, parents, communities, and researchers can develop narratives that amount to working with and for those who are increasingly being silenced, marginalized and excluded. John Smyth sets out to revisit critical pedagogy from a number of key leverage points. The overarching aim of this book is to unmask the deforming and distorting way power operates, while at the same time revealing how a commitment to a more socially just world can exist in the everyday lives and narratives of people who have a passion for transformative possibilities. His clear, concise, and persuasive book is ideal for those who are dissatisfied with the current turn in education and who are seeking an alternative set of views that emerge from the grounded experiences and practices ion schools struggling with the most disadvantaged circumstances.

John Smyth is Research Professor of Education at the University of Ballarat, Australia. He was formerly the Mitte Endowed Chair in School Improvement, Texas State University-San Marcos, USA. He is Emeritus Professor, Flinders University of South Australia, where he held the Foundation Chair of Teacher Education, was Associate Dean of Research, and Director of the Flinders Institute for the Study of Teaching. Among his twenty published books are: 'Dropping Out', Drifting Off, Being Excluded; Teachers in the Middle (2004); Critical Discourses in Teacher Development (1995); Activist and Socially Critical School and Community Renewal (2008); Critically Engaged Learning (2008); Hanging in with Kids in Tough Times (2010).