Transformative Pedagogical Practice Research Articles

Teaching practice and the use of open educational resources to hope for a transformative education

In the teaching routine, technologies are increasingly observed as an instrument of pedagogical mediation, which can favor new educational. The general objective of the research was to analyze together with doctoral professors, who attend the stricto sensu, the pertinence of using technologies and open educational resources as a learning object for the construction of knowledge based on a new educational conception. And as a problem: What is the importance of using technologies and open educational resources for a transformative pedagogical practice? The research used a qualitative action-research approach, with doctoral students in education at a large private institution in Curitiba, in which we sought to investigate the pertinence of building a pedagogical practice using technologies and open educational resources for a transformative education. As a result, it was possible to observe in the set of participants' reports that innovative pedagogical practices involve the student's protagonism and a teaching action based on dialogue through methodologies with the use of open educational resources that accompany and are part of this evolution. Keywords: Pedagogical practices; Digital Technologies; Open educational resource; Transformative education

Plugging in translanguaging: thinking across theory for methodological innovation in English learner and multilingual education

ABSTRACT A translanguaging lens in educational research focuses on social, cultural, and power dynamics of language and multilingualism in practice. It also represents a potentially transformative pedagogical practice that centers the languaging practice, power, and agency of multilingual learners to transgress classroom language borders. However, translanguaging research that focuses on only the social aspects of classroom languaging can be subject to critique for failing to disrupt material inequities related to language and power in the classroom. This conceptual paper explores how thinking across multiple frameworks can generate innovative methodological approaches to knowledge production for translanguaging inquiry in the context of EL and multilingual education. Exploring how translanguaging can be plugged into Blumer’s Symbolic Interactionism, Foucault’s Discourse, and Barad’s Agential Realism, this paper thinks within and against these frameworks to highlight important analytic provocations for now only how translanguaging relations emerge, but also what methodological territory is claimed in the process. A central concern of this paper is the methodological implications of posthumanist theories to develop material-discursive translanguaging inquiry.

Transformative Pedagogy via Digital Technology in Undergraduate Mathematics Education

The main purpose of this paper is to review the different papers and theories regarding transformative pedagogy used in mathematics education at the undergraduate level and draw transformative praxis used and unfold the gaps for further research betterment. Also, this paper explores the philosophical theory/idea that guides the transformative pedagogical practices via Digital Technology in education over the globe and analyzes digital boundaries in higher education in Nepal.

Note from the Editor

Note from the Editor Shauna M. Morgan In celebrating and chronicling the first fifty years of CLAJ publications, Dana A. Williams noted "the significant and unparalleled role the journal has played in publishing scholarship by and about people of color and our literatures and languages" (2). Williams's introduction to issue 57.1 served as both a comprehensive historiography and as a re-grounding of the values upon which CLA was built. Her observation that "CLA has always been fully aware of present realities, all the while looking to the future" rings true for the organization's journal even today (7). It is in that spirit that we offer this issue. CLAJ remains ambitious in its endeavors as we chart a new path in the 21st century. In addition to scholarly essays, readers will now find papers engaged with the kind of critical and transformative pedagogical practices that have been at the heart of CLA's work since its founding, and in honoring a tradition which began with the publication of the first issue of CLAJ, our pages will now also feature creative works across genre. This inclusive approach offers a fuller view of the cultural productions of our expanding membership, and it creates space for the innovative and imaginative works currently shaping our literary landscape. Jacob Pagano's "One Must Say Yes: Poetic Acts of Affirmation in Works by Baldwin, Fanon, and Ellison" examines Black speech acts and the ways in which they are represented in order to affirm the complexities of Black subjectivity even as the writers accomplish aims beyond the literary projects. The essay positions the writings (both fiction and non-fiction) of James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, and Ralph Ellison as constructing communal affirmations and presenting language as a means for understanding community and one's place in it. Pagano's analysis of the seemingly basic affirmation of yes uncovers the innumerable possibilities of questioning extant understandings of canonical Black writing. "Stories to Tell: Family and Reality in Hip-Hop Autobiographies" by John Paul Meyers examines the life writing of three very different hip-hop artists and firmly situates their work in the long tradition of African American autobiography. Exploring the thematic elements which emerge in these texts, Meyers offers us a look at the aesthetic and narrative intersections of these artists lived experiences and lyrical work, and he invites scholars and artists to consider the possibilities of what we can learn about the craft of hip hop by studying autobiographical writings. In his essay, "'Cause that's the way the world turns': John Edgar Wideman's Sent for You Yesterday and the Mnemonic Jukebox, Jurgen E. Grandt asserts that "[r]ecorded music resonates within a suspension of time—or, more precisely, the spiral grooves of records revive a past event in the present, a repeatable action that riffs, however briefly, upon the (ostensibly) linear progression of history." This point [End Page 191] brings us immediately into the environment of the novel as Grandt thoroughly articulates the ways in which Wideman's Homewood is not only infused with music, but in addition to the world of the text, the language of the novel itself employs the aesthetic of the music that touches the character's lives. The pedagogical study presented in Nathaniel Norment Jr,'s "Some Results of Using Culture-referenced Prompts for Pre and Post-Test Writing Examinations at an HBCU" is both a reminder of CLA's roots and historical focus and a call for us to critically evaluate and enhance our pedagogy whether we are rooted at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) or plowing the earth at a Predominantly/Historically White Institution. As Monique L. Akassi asserts in the brief commentary which precedes this essay, "the need for more pedagogical attention in the CLAJ is more relevant now than ever." doris davenport's brief reflection on CLAJ's creative writing section reminds us that, in addition to being provisions for the exhilarating exercise of literary criticism, literary arts give us "meaning and inspiration" and help us move through a perpetually troubled world. The gathering of poems and creative non-fiction reflects an innerness and calls us to consider our connections to...

Reflections on Pedagogical Practices for Online Teaching

This article is a reflection on my online teaching at the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to provide strategies to integrate transformative pedagogical practices with online teaching platforms. The methodological framework for the article is reflective practice. I reflect on my online teaching of an English language module, pay critical attention to the practical values that inform self-directed learning, engage with student reflections on challenges experienced during the lockdown, and aim for developmental insight. The article advocates for self-directed learning and engagement with pedagogical foundations of e-learning to counter the common technical perspective to online teaching. Uploading course material and limiting facilitation to giving directions on assignments and providing technical resources is inadequate. The imperative is critical engagement with knowledge underpinned by self-directed learning within social and emancipatory frameworks. Traditional student dependence on lectures should shift to them assuming responsibility for the cognitive (self-monitoring) and contextual (self-management) process of learning. The article calls for vigorous dialogue to counter feelings of depersonalisation and isolation, intense intellectual relationships, transformative pedagogies, innovative thinking around teaching time, and organisation and advanced communication skills for online classrooms. The student, the nature of learning, learning strategies, phases of the learning process, and the knowledge project should be taken into account in mapping the process of self-directed learning.

Contributions of the digital portfolio for the evaluative praxis in higher education

This article presents a qualitative research of the exploratory type carried out with 21 masters students who work in different levels of education and in different areas of knowledge - always having as background, the investigation of possible ways for a critical, reflexive and transformative pedagogical practice and aimed to analyze the contributions of a lived experience with the digital portfolio as an evaluation strategy with Masters students in Professional and Technological Education in Network of a Professional and Technological Education Institution in Curitiba given in the first half of 2018. The data were collected from a questionnaire that allowed to perform the Content Analysis from the perspective of Bardin (2011). It is concluded that the Digital Portfolio promoted the opportunity for the development of an innovative practice for evaluation of learning, based on the construction, reflection and self-evaluation of the process, in fostering creativity, in establishing a partnership between students and researchers and in development of the autonomy of teaching and learning among all involved.

Transgender Population under the Bioethics Perspective: a Panorama of the Curricula and Bioethics Courses of Medical Schools of the State of São Paulo

Abstract: Introduction: Transgender people are subject to discrimination and illness due to social marginalization and lack of access to basic rights, especially health care. They suffer from the inadequacy of care directed to basic health demands, high incidence of diseases and non-fulfillment of specific demands. The vulnerability of these people reaches a disturbing level due to disrespectful attitudes that lead trans people to avoid seeking help. Understanding that medical education geared to the needs of marginalized populations is the basis for universal access and adequate care, it is essential that medical schools define contents and pedagogical strategies for vulnerable groups. The aim of this study was to investigate and discuss how (and if) the topic of transgender people healthcare is contemplated in the undergraduate curriculum of medical schools in the state of São Paulo. Method: Exploratory, descriptive-analytical study based on data collected from medical schools in São Paulo, conducted in two stages: 1st, documentary research on the inclusion of the topic of trans people health in the undergraduate curricula; 2nd, research with teachers of the Bioethics courses, where a questionnaire was applied to evaluate how and if the topic is approached as a programmatic content. The data obtained in the 1st stage were analyzed quantitatively and are presented as relative frequencies of the evaluated characteristics, while those of the 2nd stage were analyzed through the descriptive statistical method (closed questions) and content analysis (open questions). Results: We identified references to the trans topic in the formal curricula of only 2 of the 32 surveyed medical schools, with a total of 5 citations on the topic. Analyzing the questionnaires applied to teachers in the area of bioethics, we found reports of discussions on this topic in 5/12 (42%) schools. Although all participants consider the topic to be important, only 7/12 (58%) consider themselves prepared to address it. Conclusion: It is postulated that the evident lack of content aimed at trans health in medical schools can make it difficult to reduce transphobia and develop more dignified services within the healthcare network for these people. Based on the subsidies found in the Bioethics of Protection theoretical framework, we believe the medical curricula and Bioethics courses should create spaces to address this issue, using different and effectively transformative pedagogical practices, and respecting gender identity in all environments.

Transgender Population under the Bioethics Perspective: a Panorama of the Curricula and Bioethics Courses of Medical Schools of the State of São Paulo

Abstract: Introduction: Transgender people are subject to discrimination and illness due to social marginalization and lack of access to basic rights, especially health care. They suffer from the inadequacy of care directed to basic health demands, high incidence of diseases and non-fulfillment of specific demands. The vulnerability of these people reaches a disturbing level due to disrespectful attitudes that lead trans people to avoid seeking help. Understanding that medical education geared to the needs of marginalized populations is the basis for universal access and adequate care, it is essential that medical schools define contents and pedagogical strategies for vulnerable groups. The aim of this study was to investigate and discuss how (and if) the topic of transgender people healthcare is contemplated in the undergraduate curriculum of medical schools in the state of São Paulo. Method: Exploratory, descriptive-analytical study based on data collected from medical schools in São Paulo, conducted in two stages: 1st, documentary research on the inclusion of the topic of trans people health in the undergraduate curricula; 2nd, research with teachers of the Bioethics courses, where a questionnaire was applied to evaluate how and if the topic is approached as a programmatic content. The data obtained in the 1st stage were analyzed quantitatively and are presented as relative frequencies of the evaluated characteristics, while those of the 2nd stage were analyzed through the descriptive statistical method (closed questions) and content analysis (open questions). Results: We identified references to the trans topic in the formal curricula of only 2 of the 32 surveyed medical schools, with a total of 5 citations on the topic. Analyzing the questionnaires applied to teachers in the area of bioethics, we found reports of discussions on this topic in 5/12 (42%) schools. Although all participants consider the topic to be important, only 7/12 (58%) consider themselves prepared to address it. Conclusion: It is postulated that the evident lack of content aimed at trans health in medical schools can make it difficult to reduce transphobia and develop more dignified services within the healthcare network for these people. Based on the subsidies found in the Bioethics of Protection theoretical framework, we believe the medical curricula and Bioethics courses should create spaces to address this issue, using different and effectively transformative pedagogical practices, and respecting gender identity in all environments.

Considerações sobre o ensino de sociologia no ensino médio e a teoria histórico-cultural

Seja na formação de professores, no âmbito acadêmico ou em sala de aula, o ensino de sociologia para o ensino médio e sua prática apresentam características peculiares e desafios a serem superados; apesar do histórico da disciplina no país apresentar longa trajetória, foi através da Lei 11.684/08 que esta permaneceu de forma permanente nos currículos oficiais da última década. A preocupação em construir o campo científico e acadêmico das Ciências Sociais era prioridade e assim, a disciplina escolar sofre distinção das demais, sendo passível de descarte ou substituição. O principal argumento em relação à “fragilidade” da disciplina se refere à complexidade de conteúdos e sua possível utilidade na formação básica dos adolescentes. Nesse sentido, como podemos construir uma prática pedagógica que possibilite a adequada transposição escolar dos conteúdos, além de afirmar a relevância da Sociologia na educação básica? O presente artigo busca refletir sobre uma prática pedagógica transformadora para a disciplina escolar de sociologia, através das contribuições da Teoria Histórico-Cultural em relação ao ensino e aprendizagem. Para tal, buscou-se problematizar o papel da escola na sociedade capitalista e compreender o papel das Ciências Sociais na instituição escolar, através do dispositivo pedagógico de desnaturalização dos fenômenos sociais e a relação intermitente da disciplina com os modelos de currículos. Por fim, considera-se que os aportes teóricos oferecidos pela Teoria Histórico-Cultural na disciplina de sociologia possibilitam atividades de aprendizagem mediadas atribuídas de sentido.

Sensory autoethnography: Engaging the senses, emotions and autobiographical narrative towards a transformative pedagogical practice in higher education

By combining the sensorial and narrative ways of knowing, I consider sensory embodied experiences and autobiographical narrative as a means of producing ‘academic knowledge’, as described in Sarah Pink’s Doing Sensory Ethnography (2015). Sensory embodied experiences and autobiographical narrative not only expose us to the life of the researcher, but also to a culture and to those being researched and how they are making and remaking meaning. In this article, I explore my use of a reflexive approach and my autobiographical narrative to tell the story of my experiences of Caribbean diaspora festive culture and tradition in the United Kingdom. I consider my sensory embodied experiences in both culture and academia, seeking to discover the making of self in culture and academia.

‘You have to find your slant, your groove:’ one physical education teacher's efforts to employ transformative pedagogy

ABSTRACTBackground: Teaching for social good and inequity has been presented as needed in sport pedagogy research. However, very little is known how transformative pedagogical practices that teach for social good are implemented and sustained at the elementary level.Purpose: This digital ethnographic study sought to describe one elementary school physical education (PE) teacher's attempt to employ transformative pedagogy (TP).Method: Cochran-Smith's [1998. “Teaching for Social Change: Toward a Grounded Theory of Teacher Education.” In The International Handbook of Educational Change, edited by A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan, and D. Hopkins, 916–952. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004. Walking the Road: Race, Diversity, and Social Justice in Teacher Education. New York: Teachers College Press] pedagogical principles for social justice education (SJE) drove our data collection and analysis. Seven qualitative methods were employed to collect data about Harry's pedagogies, organizational structures, and the content he taught. These were formal and informal interviews, conversations, short films, document collection, social media accounts, and an electronic journal. Data were analyzed using both inductive and deductive methods [Patton 2015. Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage].Findings: Harry's TP and the factors that facilitated and limited his practice were uncovered within five main themes: (a) creating communities of learners through restorative practice principles, (b) building on what students bring to school with them for a democratic curriculum, (c) teaching skills, bridging gaps, and the affective component, (d), working with communities in-between social justice illiteracy, and (e) utilizing diverse forms of assessment.Conclusion: We confirmed that there is no best way to teach social justice through PE and that TP must be individual to the teacher. In addition, this study highlighted methods and pedagogies by which teachers could engage in TP. Finally, the study's findings implied how teacher educators might go about working with both preservice and inservice PE teachers with the goal that they focus on facilitating social justice through their pedagogical approach.

Appropriating WhatsApp‐mediated postgraduate supervision to negotiate “relational authenticity” in resource‐constrained environments

AbstractDespite the surging prominence of literature that explores mobile instant messaging’s (MIM) capacity to leverage transformative pedagogical practices in higher education, studies that unravel the appropriation of MIM to leverage postgraduate supervision in authentic learning contexts are less frequent. Consequently, a gap persists on the nature of postgraduate supervisees’ existential and relational authenticity as they interface with MIM and supervisors during their consultation processes. This study drew on Heidegger’s existential authenticity, a netnography of WhatsApp‐based supervisor–supervisee consultations and in‐depth interviews to unravel how WhatsApp‐mediated postgraduate supervision fosters the social construction of relational and existential authenticity in resource‐constrained contexts. The findings suggest that authentic supervision was constructed through supervisor–supervisees’ negotiation of academic hierarchies, supervisees’ self‐expression and self‐disclosure, their management of moments of anxiety and conflict deflation in ambivalent supervision scenarios. The study recommends that supervisors need to manage the significant yet unrecognised “nervous moments” in technology‐mediated supervision environments, where compression of hierarchy may be conflated with negation of the supervisor’s authority.

Addressing dualisms in student perceptions of a historically white and black university in South Africa

Normative discourses about higher education institutions may perpetuate stereotypes about institutions. Few studies explore student perceptions of universities and how transformative pedagogical interventions in university classrooms may address institutional stereotypes. Using Plumwood’s notion of dualism, this qualitative study analyses unchallenged stereotypes about students’ own and another university during an inter-institutional collaborative research and teaching and learning project. The project was conducted over 3 years and 282 psychology, social work and occupational therapy students from a historically black and white institution in South Africa, participated in the study. Both black and white students from differently placed higher education institutions display prejudices and stereotypes of their own and other institutions, pointing to the internalisation and pervasiveness of constructions and hegemonic discourses such as whiteness and classism. It is important to engage with subjugated student knowledges, in the context of transformative pedagogical practices, to disrupt dominant views and cultivate processes of inclusion in higher education.

Representation radio: digital art-making as transformative pedagogical practice in the college classroom

In this article, the authors unpack a first-year college seminar where students explored digital representations of self-afforded pedagogies of possibility for traditionally marginalized student populations, specifically students of colour and first-generation college goers. An artefact analysis model is used to trace the relationship between the design decisions we made about the course and what these decisions afforded students in terms of their understanding of the relationship between identity, narrative and digital media production. The authors found that certain key pedagogical choices – from individual assignments to the presence of an authentic audience for their radio pieces – empowered students to make informed decisions, explore personal identities and represent themselves using the digital audio medium.

Erotic Pedagogies

This article considers the role of Audre Lorde's notion of the erotic as transformative pedagogical practices that can empower teachers and students to passionate learning and community formation. I argue that the erotic has been contained within the private sphere under neoliberalism through its articulation to heterosexuality, Whiteness, and U.S. exceptionalism. Neoliberalism contains the transformative potential of queer, feminist, and antiracist movements through circumscribing the transformative power of the erotic. When the erotic appears within the realm of the public sphere, it is articulated through the pornographic—as against the seemingly progressive agenda of neoliberalism—in order to contain its transformative effects. I then consider what it may look like, as well as what pitfalls we may face, if we engage in erotic pedagogy. I argue that the healing of the mind/body split goes beyond an intellectual exercise. Therein lies transformative power to heal both the political and the spiritual body.

Beyond Babel

This article highlights the importance of the concepts of media literacy, and digital and informational literacy to understand the multimodal meaning of multiliteracies and their interfaces. An analogy with Babel is used to understand the different ways in which this concept articulates the linguistic, visual, audio, spatial, and gestural dimensions in digital culture. In this framework, the question of convergence is highlighted in learning experiences undertaken in formal and informal contexts. To qualify the meaning of this learning for the subject, the article mentions the concept of personal literacy to locate the importance of subjectivity in the interactions that the multiliteracies offer. Finally, in an exercise of representation of the components of the multiliteracies, the article presents a diagram that highlights the importance of mediation and the forms of appropriation that express concepts and experiences in search of a transformative pedagogical practice, as an opportunity to understand the multiliteracies as a condition of dialog, expression and participation in the culture.

Invisibility and In/di/Visuality: The Relevance of Art Education in Curriculum Theorizing

This article investigates how representation attaches meaning to bodies, how certain bodies are categorically misrepresented and masked from normativity, and proposes a curriculum theory affording the agency of the misrepresented to de-mask invisibility. Brief historical narratives of three kinds of invisibility are presented as they are manifested in educational practice and visual culture – masking those deemed to occupy lesser physical bodies, lesser bodies of knowledge, and bodies lesser-than-normal. The author argues the relevance of art education as a transformative pedagogical practice that can inform and promote social significance, or what the author terms as in/di/visuality, the agency to reinterpret misrepresented physical or conceptual bodies. In the face of masking practices that unleash the squalls of invisibility and inequity throughout sites of curriculum practice and contemporary visual culture, the exercise of in/di/visuality acts as a watershed, displacing invisibility and affording a greater breadth of inclusion in educational concerns.

A PRODUÇÃO DO CONHECIMENTO DAS UNIVERSIDADES E A REALIDADE ESCOLAR: uma análise crítica sobre o modelo atual de sociedade

This article aims to discuss the current knowledge production in Universities and its reflections on society, specifically, at school. The University, a major producer of knowledge, becoming a social organization instead of a social institution has elected vital characteristics in the production of knowledge, for example, the structure of quantitative assessment of scientific publications. These reviews have contributed to the understanding that this science is considered not socially relevant and the understanding of a little transformative pedagogical practice, especially when this scientific content does not reach the schools or is not targeted to changing schools. Key-words: University, knowledge production, school.

Writing Race: Making Meaning of White Racial Identity in Initial Teacher Education

Race has become one of the key defining features of contemporary society, and a considerable body of work has recently emerged in the area of white dominant racial identity and identification. This paper reports on images, experiences and understandings of white racial identity elicited from initial teacher education students by use of a process of critical autoethnographic interrogations of Self. Emphasis is placed upon the description and analysis of a particular form of critical self-reflection and (re)presentations of utoethnographically-derived understandings of racialised identities. These representations provide an insight into nascent processes of conscientisation engaged in by initial teacher education students. The paper explores possible implications for the development of racially aware teachers, and broader connections with transformative pedagogical practices. The data comprising the basis of this project were derived from a combination of learning conversations and narrative inquiry, both of which are discussed in this paper.