Responses to the Abyss: Problematizing Conceptualizations of Public Pedagogy

• In Event: Public Pedagogies: Torture, Paranoia, and Popular Culture

Abstract

Public pedagogy is a concept focusing on various forms, processes, and sites of education occurring beyond formal schooling. Public pedagogy scholarship has greatly increased in the past decade. However, despite this growth and the increased variety of approaches scholars have employed in their work on public pedagogy, the authors of this paper have identified a widespread practice in which scholars cite the term without adequately explicating its meaning, context, or location within differing and contested articulations, diminishing its usefulness as a sensitizing concept for researchers. Within this paper, we provide a conceptual overlay of the meanings and problematics of public pedagogy so that stronger, more nuanced scholarship might reposition the term to avoid the potential abyss of its own “unmeaning.”

Authors

• Jake Burdick, Purdue University

• Jennifer April Sandlin, Arizona State University

• Michael Patrick O'Malley, Texas State University

• Glenn Clifton Savage, The University of Melbourne