Negotiating Curriculum, Authority, and Humanizing Pedagogy: A Microethnographic Analysis of Tensions in Literacy Conferring

• In Event: 32.083 - Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: 32.083-3 - Culturally Responsive Praxis Across Sites of Education

Abstract

As teachers and students seek to construct critical humanizing pedagogies in the classroom, these approaches frequently come into tension with standardizing, banking pedagogies encouraged by neoliberal educational reforms. Exploring how teachers and students can negotiate the tensions that arise between these approaches, this paper uses microethnographic analysis to examine a series of literacy conferences between Isaiah, a second grade student, and his teacher Ms. R. First identifying the tensions that arise around questions of curriculum, instruction, and relationship within these conversations, this paper then focuses on a single conference, considering how Isaiah and Ms. R collaboratively construct a humanizing pedagogy in their interactions. The findings suggest how teachers and students might find moments of critical pedagogy even in constraining contexts.

Author

• Laura A Taylor, Rhodes College