Radical Teacher is soliciting articles for an issue “exploring the politics of pedagogy today.” Send manuscripts or proposals to Jackie Brady at jeblonde@aol.com and Richard Ohmann at richardohmann@earthlink.net
Radical Teaching Now
Radical Teacher solicits articles or proposals for an issue exploring the politics of pedagogy today.
This magazine was founded in1975, a time when ideas and projects from 1960s movements were taking root in universities and schools. Multicultural, feminist, and left theory challenged academic orthodoxies. New texts and voices challenged old exclusions and canons. And new pedagogies challenged traditional relations of authority in the classroom. Today we wonder to what extent radical pedagogy has survived. What has happened in 40 years to student centered teaching, teaching about race and racism, the democratic classroom, feminist pedagogies, “relevance,” collaborative methods, anti-“banking” pedagogies, and so on? What about newer radical pedagogies that focus on gender and sexuality and/or class in the classroom?
Are many radical approaches being pushed out of test-driven public schooling and commodified higher education? Are they being watered down or stripped of their political force by liberal educators fearful of maintaining neutrality? Where they persist, do they remain connected to new canons and progressive theories? Are they actually radical in the present context?
We invite contributions that address these large questions, either directly or by analysis of courses and teaching experiences that illuminate them. More specific questions include:
–Where does progressive pedagogy thrive? Primarily in K-12, and in a few college areas such as women’s studies and composition? Only in “teaching” (v. “research”) colleges?Elite schools and colleges, or does it have a broad class base?
–Is it a minor and semi-clandestine project in a few safe classrooms, or a still-lively movement?
–Where progressive teaching is firmly established, has it become routine–a set of techniques,drained of politics?
–Or is it drawing new energies from movements in and outside of education? Which movements?Is it tied to activism?
–How have progressive initiatives of 40 years ago been critiqued, modified, strengthened?
–What new approaches to radical teaching are coming forward, in K-12 or university education?
–How has radical teaching adjusted to or been changed by immigration and diasporas?
–What new obstacles loom? E.g., attacks from the right, resistance from career-oriented students, highstakes testing, No Child Left Behind…?
–What about old, durable professional structures and habits that drown out radicalism: the grading system, the teacher as cop the lecture method, the primacy of research…?
–What’s the future of radical pedagogy? How should we be trying to guide and test it? What can we expect from its enemies?
Send manuscripts or proposals to Jackie Brady at jeblonde@aol.com and
Richard Ohmann at richardohmann@earthlink.net
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