Public Pedagogy Research Articles

Pop Culture Media as Curricular Text: Designing an Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Seminar Using Abbott Elementary

Abbott Elementary, the Emmy-award winning mockumentary-style comedy television show, chronicles the day-to-day efforts of a group of teachers in a Philadelphia public elementary school who, despite the odds stacked against them, are determined to help their students succeed. With humor and heart, the show also uncovers some of the larger policy issues at play in U.S. urban public education, such as teacher shortages, school funding, and school choice. This essay describes the development of an interdisciplinary Honors seminar for undergraduate students at a large, public university in the Midwest U.S. that used episodes of Abbott Elementary as a central curricular text to support students in analyzing current policy issues in urban education. Drawing on Giroux’s concept of media as public pedagogy, this essay details how the course design employed a critical intersectional multiculturalism cultural studies approach to create opportunities for students to engage in a multiperspectival analysis, including (1) an understanding of political culture, (2) textual analysis, and (3) audience reception. Implications and recommendations are made for selecting and integrating popular culture media as curricular text in interdisciplinary coursework.

LGBTQ+ themed public art: promoting an expanded view on genders and advancing gender education

This essay explores the transformative role of LGBTQ+ themed public art in promoting an expanded view of genders and advancing gender education. By engaging with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, I want to stress how public art both serves as a medium for aesthetic expression and also acts as a crucial participant in the performative act of gender identity construction. From the vibrant defiance of rainbow crosswalks to the poignant narratives of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the impactful murals by Keith Haring, LGBTQ+ themed public art challenges traditional gender roles and identities, offering alternative visions that resist binary classifications. These public artworks create inclusive spaces that foster community engagement, historical commemoration, and activism, effectively enhancing public pedagogy in gender education. By embedding diverse and non-normative expressions of gender and sexuality in public consciousness, such art prompts a reevaluation of societal norms, thereby contributing to a broader understanding and acceptance of gender diversity. This essay emphasizes the potential of LGBTQ+ -themed public art to serve as a dynamic medium for communicative pedagogy, manifesting its significance in shaping social consciousness and advancing the cause of gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights.

Doctoral memes as public pedagogy? Or, heaven knows I’m miserable now

ABSTRACT Social media afford the proliferation of doctoral memes across numerous, generally anonymous, accounts spread over multiple platforms – the timeline where the PhD candidate starts off gleaming with health and beaming in delight and ends up an overweight, dishevelled wreck. Or the exhausted cat who has managed to write one line of their thesis in an entire day. But should these memes be a cause for concern? After all, it’s just humour, albeit somewhat dark. My exploratory thematic analysis of a corpus of 292 doctoral memes and a theorisation of memes as public pedagogy, point to strong resonances between the memes and research on the doctoral experience. This enhances their credibility as a source of information. Based on the analysis, I suggest we might seriously examine doctoral meme-based learning, focusing on the potential of their gallows humour to support identity formation, community building, coping and wellbeing. Memes may be small but could potentially do useful work for both doctoral researchers and their supervisors.

Science Fiction, Global Warming and Environmental Education in the Capitalocene

Abstract This essay explores ways in which environmental educators might break with their existing traditions of research and pedagogy by critically appraising climate histories and anticipated futures depicted by SF (science/speculative fiction) in print and audio-visual media. SF has engaged the politics of climate change for at least two centuries and, as a form of public pedagogy accessible to all generations, provides alternative visualisations of the problems arising from humanity’s destructive transformations of Earth’s climate and possible ways of ameliorating them.

Hotep anti-Blackness: Misogynoir and queer exclusion in online conspiracy theorizing

Research suggests African Americans are more likely than Whites to support conspiracy theories, especially those related to the U.S. government. Locating the pedagogical practices of Black activists in the online hotep subculture, I use the concept of public pedagogy to understand how these activist influencers use social media to spread political messages in the public sphere. This essay situates hotep subculture as a conspiritualist project that uses Pan-Africanism, Afrocentricity, Black spirituality, and hip-hop culture to advance conspiracy theories among Black communities for consciousness-raising and economic independence. While hoteps have promulgated a pro-Black politic, their reliance on ethnonationalist homophobia and misogynoir promotes a form of erasure that is not only exclusionary and anti-Black but also reflects racial fears rooted in anxiety. This essay contributes to the growing literature on conspiritualism’s investment in white supremacy and the need for conspiritualist critiques to investigate how anti-Blackness shows up in discourses at the intersection of faith, spirituality, and global regimes of power. Drawing on the concepts of misogynoir and anti-Black heterotopias, Black gender and sexual minorities are framed within hotep discourse as subservient, deviant, and perilous to Black liberation.

Civil intent: Rethinking ‘the political’ in art and photography education

Recent scholarship bringing together photography, visual culture and political theory is unsettling established approaches to understanding photography beyond art-historical frameworks. This article examines the implications and potentials for education practices of this emerging new paradigm by exploring how the civil potential of photography and creative practice might be activated in learning environments. The article reflects on the collective learning arising from a series of educational experiments developed by the Doing Visual Politics network which have sought to connect cultures of socially motivated creative practice in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia; Kathmandu, Nepal and Dhaka, Bangladesh by interrogating and expanding disciplinary understandings at the intersection of photography, visual activism, social practice and public pedagogy. These learning spaces – where the expression of concern for shared world/s is prioritized – have provided useful insights into approaches capable of exceeding the limits of the conventional politics of representation.

Games4Justice: Game Reports

Four games were designed as part of an autoethnographic, teacher research study conducted from 2013-2017 on the implementation of play-, game-, and design-based teaching and assessment. The study was conducted at two urban, independent, K-12 day schools with fewer than 500 and 100 students, respectively, and supported as part of a certification program in Serious Game Design & Research. Pirate Oasis, a six-week ecological engagement, human development game, and the first developed for the Games for Social Justice Course (G4J). Friendship Is Magic, a Alternate Reality Game (Fujimoto, 2015; McGonigal, 2003, 2007, 2011) that was never played. #SaveOurGirls is a 3-hour forum game, simulation & workshop on combating human trafficking through public pedagogy. The experience is meant for 10-15 players and 30-60 audience members. Xplore LA, a location-based, geocaching, two-dimensional fighting game, designed by students to inspire young people to explore their local parks and other green- and play-spaces in park-poor communities in Los Angeles, like Boyle Heights. Xplore LA was designed as one of three projects organized to engage youth to access recreational sites near them via public transportation in the park-poor community of Boyle Heights. Through the campaign, students also developed a Ross Valencia Park Redesign, a Pocket Park Manual and the foundations for Xplore LA.

“Out of the Shadows”: Reflections on Human Trafficking Education Through a Public Pedagogy Project

Human trafficking is globally widespread, however establishing its scope and context remains difficult. With limitations on understanding human trafficking coupled with sensational media portrayals, misperceptions of the problem persist. To that end, a campus wide educational initiative to share survivor stories and offer students a more authentic understanding of human trafficking was developed. An approach driven by the principles of public pedagogy, m-learning, and the use of earned media to support messaging informed project development. Entitled “Out of the Shadows,” the project sought to engage students using unconventional public displays related to human trafficking. In this case, novel presentation of blue figures across the campus space invited curiosity, drove media interest, and encouraged viewers to explore these presentations through integrated m-learning. Project outcomes, limitations, and the viability for this approach for criminal justice education are considered.

대중문화로서 영화텍스트의 평생교육적 가능성 고찰

Purpose: This study examined popular culture, which is closely related to our daily lives, from the perspective of public pedagogy, and explored the educational possibilities of movies, especially among the various genres that make up popular culture. Based on this, the educational implications of film texts were identified and this study proposes their role in the field of lifelong education, as well as suggests implications for 'film education' currently practiced in schools. Methods: For this purpose, the relationship between our lives and popular culture and its influence were examined and a description of the audience's reactions to the movie was revealed in media articles and critical texts with three films, as well as the social repercussions of the films. Results: As a result, popular culture, especially films, reveals the public's unconscious by representing reality and also constructs discourse through the audience's critique. The study also found that films as texts enable audiences to critically reflect on “represented reality” and that their educational meaning can be interpreted in a variety of ways depending on their own experiences and life contexts. Conclusion: The meaning of film education is reconstructed according to the learner's life context and experiences, and it is in this sense that education occurs.The meaning-making of education that occurs for an individual throughout their life is holistic, including schooling. The existing film education centered on narrative analysis in public education and lifelong education should be transformed into a method that emphasizes the characteristics of the film medium.

From birth to rebirth: comeback meanings in media stories of Canadian athlete mothers’ sporting journeys

ABSTRACT Sport media is a public pedagogy that impacts sportswomen’s embodied subjectivities by circulating gender ideologies and discourses as forms of truth. In this study we used relativist narrative inquiry to build on sport media research exploring socially constructed motherhood and sport. We interrogated ‘comeback meanings’ in sport media stories of four veteran (i.e. multiple Olympic Games appearances, 32–41 years of age) Canadian athletes’ journeys to the 2020 Olympics as first time mothers. Thematic narrative analysis of 86 stories and accompanying images identified two sets of comeback meanings: second chances and redemption and coming back stronger and wiser. Second chances and redemption comebacks were linked with personal and career agency, good mother ideologies, and sacrifice narratives. ‘Hybrid athlete mother’ identities in stories of second chance redemption comebacks were also constructed as generative role models as part of an athletic rebirth. Coming back stronger and wiser in media stories troubled gendered assumptions about veteran athlete mothers as weak/past their prime through constructing their experience as valued, along with body-performance tensions. Both sets of comeback meanings resist biological and ageist ideologies in media stories of veteran athlete mothers while perpetuating neoliberal ideologies and narratives of exceptionalism. These findings show the pedagogical value of media stories for expanding understanding of nuanced shifting discourses identified in interviews and media studies on athlete mothers. The implications of these findings highlight a need for more research exploring digital media forms to learn more about veteran athlete mothers’ embodied subjectivities and implications for elite sport careers.

Cripping sex education: reflections on a public pedagogy project

ABSTRACT In response to recent calls for ‘cripping sex education’, we describe and reflect on an 11-week public pedagogy project in Canada that paired five community sexuality educators with 78 undergraduate students to make digital sexuality education tools for disabled, Deaf, and queer children and youth. From a perspective that argues for a genealogy of crip desire in childhood, we reflect on the possibilities and limitations of an intellectual partnership project, called Cripping Sex Education: Creating Digital Tools for Disabled, Deaf, and Queer Kids. This public pedagogy project centred crip theory, coalition building, and critical digital pedagogy in its aim to discover how cripping sex education might be feasible within the parameters of our institutions, vocations and lives. The work required all partners to consider new pedagogical formations of sexuality education, including through ethical engagements, relational rights, and expansive approaches to access. Interviews with three student participants reveal that cripping sex education involves thinking broadly about accessibility, challenging normalcy and, as disability justice principles attest, centring those who are most impacted. We close with recommendations for future cripping sex education pedagogical work that honours already existent crip desires, childhoods, and futures.

Power, Knowledge, the Academy and Beyond

This article brings to the fore the work of the Public Pedagogies Institute, a not-for-profit organisation, as an enactment of the public realm. This Institute stands within a lineage of education beyond formal sites of learning such as the Raphael Samuel History Centre and, prior to this, Mechanics Institutes. In each of these instances these educational sites either challenge or depart entirely from knowledge generated in authorised or elite institutions. The continuation of instances where education can occur beyond sites of formal education is becoming increasingly critical in a challenge to what and whose knowledge is considered of value. One of the central questions this article attends to is how knowledge that circulates outside of the academy, such as that which occurs within the Public Pedagogies Institute, can be recognised. An analysis of the Institute as a site for knowledge formation is undertaken through the ideas of Hannah Arendt, specifically her concept of the public realm, to critically examine the possibilities for knowledge. For Arendt, her concept of the public realm is a space where the revelation of who we are engenders the possibility of new beginnings. The significance of undertaking such an analysis through the work of Arendt is to foreground how iterations of the public can be recognised as sites of education.

Fitspiration—Inspiration or threat for adolescent girls? A qualitative investigation on fitness‐related social media content and physical education

AbstractSeveral quantitative studies have shown a negative relationship between fitspiration content (appearance‐idealized pictures related to a fit and healthy lifestyle) in social media and mental health. The current study aimed to gain a deeper understanding of fitspiration users by qualitatively assessing their perception of fitspiration content and how it affects their health‐related behaviour and well‐being. A further research question was whether fitspiration as a form of public pedagogy was addressed in participants' physical education (PE) in schools. Thirteen female students from Austria who follow fitspiration content (14–19 years) were interviewed using semi‐structured interviews. Positive effects in health behaviour, such as a higher reported physical activity, exercise motivation and conscious eating (e.g., reducing junk food) were reported. However, participants further described potentially negative consequences on mental and physical health resulting from social comparisons with influencers. As none of the students reported addressing social media fitness content in PE, including or adapting a critical media pedagogy in PE should be considered to enhance awareness of the negative effects of social media but use the positive influence on health behaviour.

Shared Anthropology: When Anthropology Meets Critical Public Pedagogy

ABSTRACT The article explores the common ground between critical public anthropology and critical public pedagogy as critically conscious, engaged, and animating practices. Through intervention in the public domain, they engage with the contested role of culture in the production, distribution, and regulation of power. These affinities are envisioned within the framework of shared anthropology, which asserts the co-authored nature of knowledge through “sharing-the-anthropology”. This approach aims to decolonize and democratize knowledge using multimodal narratives and art as mediums; not merely as “research objects or aims”, but as methods to explore “knowing-in-practice” and as strategies for mediating knowledge. To further elucidate our arguments, we will introduce the conceptual framework of the project, “Weaving Memories,” a work-in-progress in which the authors are currently involved. Aligning with the critical principles of shared anthropology, the project adopts a critical approach to problematize the subordinate condition of handmade carpet weavers within the production and distribution regime. Thus, we explore the connection between the ethico-political and epistemological frameworks established for shared anthropology and the conceptual framework envisioned for the project.

Social work: From the settlements and a casework to the theories of ecosocial work

The article presents some threads of the debate over the search for a theory of human-environment relationships for social work practice from the dawn of this work at the end of the 19th century to today, that is, from the holistic through individualistic, and psychosocial concepts to the paradigm of ecosocial work from the perspective of threats of a global catastrophe. As the examples of approaches to that paradigm green social work developed by L. Dominelli, slow social work by V. Bozalek and social work as sensitive public pedagogy by M. Mendel are presented. The issue of finding effective relationship of social ecopractice to the controversial strategies of sustainable development versus degrowth on a global scale is also highlighted. The article also includes suggestions for expanding knowledge about the theories and practice of ecosocial work, referring to specific texts available in open access on the Internet. The conclusion of the article includes an indication of some barriers to overcome for an introduction the ecosocial work theories into practice.

Exploring youth eco-literacy through lived experiences. ‘When you purchase a pair of jeans, you bear the burden of child labor in South Asia’

This study explores youth eco-literacy and its role in addressing the climate crisis, consumption, and socio-political challenges. Eco-literacy involves environmental understanding, skills, and critical perspectives, enabling active engagement and informed decision-making. Through geo-social lenses, I examine how Turkish youth participate politically, both online and offline, in climate change and consumerism dialogues, considering local, global, and planetary perspectives. The analysis focuses on young people’s interpretive agency, creatively expressing environmental ideologies and shaping values with a political stance characterized by reflexivity, agency, and commitment to daily activism and eco-friendly lifestyles. Qualitative data collection included discussions on daily environmental practices and essays on environmental citizenship, covering eco-literacy sources, responsible actors, and ecological awareness strategies. Findings illustrate how young participants address opportunities and disparities, utilizing the research environment for collective learning and action. The study further investigates young people’s showcase of their eco-literacies and advocacy for a public (eco) pedagogy beyond traditional education.

Learning mutual aid: food justice public pedagogy and community fridge organizing online

ABSTRACT This essay analyzes how participants within the community fridge movement use social media to facilitate informal learning and organize improvisational food justice through mutual aid. I offer a qualitative analysis of 20 community fridge Instagram accounts from the US and Canada over three years, with attention to how they disrupt dominant food charity discourses – scarcity, saviorism, and surveillance – and disclose tensions with sustaining their work such as uneven labor burdens and the limits of online activism alone. As such, these accounts offer entry points into critical reflexivity about neoliberal stigma and learning alternative ways to practice radical care amid compounding crises and conditions of food apartheid. Bringing together research on mutual aid organizing, food justice communication, and public pedagogies online, I offer theoretical and applied insights into the role of mediated public pedagogy in food justice activism and the contingent everyday labor of sustaining decentralized mutual aid.

Guest editorial: Methodology in the field of public pedagogy

Guest editorial: Methodology in the field of public pedagogy

One rule, three tips, five reasons: Gendered entrepreneurial learning and the construction of online advice

Our article contributes to critical perspectives on entrepreneurial learning by explicating how advice functions as an entrepreneurial product disseminated online. While academics are often critical of online advice, they nevertheless acknowledge that it is thriving. Therefore, we combine critical perspectives on entrepreneurial learning and public pedagogy to examine advice, often presented as rules, tips and reasons, on how to become a successful entrepreneur. We provide insight into how this online advice recursively reinforces who, what and how successful entrepreneurs should be. Subsequently, we demonstrate how online advice acts as public pedagogy reproducing gendered entrepreneurial ideals that shape broader understandings of the entrepreneur.

Advancing interreligious education through the principles of SeMoshoeshoe

In this theoretical article, I have expressed sympathy for the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs in Lesotho over their worries about the marginalisation and prejudice of the Islamic faith in public settings. The article also takes into account the fact that the worry highlighted in respect to Islam religion comes at a time when demands for inclusive social, political, cultural and educational systems are being considered on a global scale. Education, which is considered a public enterprise, is rife with religious exclusionary practices in Lesotho. Only Christian education is taught in public schools; other religious traditions are not, most notably Basotho traditional religion. I employed cultural approach discourse (CAD) analysis and philosophical theory of pluriversality to argue that discrimination, particularly in education and religion, is against Basotho culture as enshrined in the SeMoshoeshoe values. I advocated utilising ‘sekoele’ – or returning to SeMoshoeshoe – principles of religious border pedagogy and religious public pedagogy to counteract the teaching of religion that is biased and marginalises other religious traditions.Contribution: The general contribution of this article is to advocate for interreligious education, which plays a crucial role in creating a tolerant, empathetic and inclusive society. It emphasises the significance of people from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds living and collaborating harmoniously. The article encourages empowerment to participate in constructive dialogues, embrace diversity and actively contribute to a more peaceful and unified global community.