Theorizing Critical Carceral Pedagogies: Teaching Toward the Purposes of Higher Education in and Against Prisons

• In Event: 31.042 - Disciplining Bodies, Educational Resistance, and Carceral Pedagogies

Abstract

The prison classroom is a site of political contestation and educational exploration. However, anti-oppressive teaching methods inside prison classrooms can be complicated, and are not without criticism. In order to imagine what prison-university partnerships can and should look like in an emerging new structure, this theoretical analysis proposes an expansive embodiment of critical pedagogy that pushes non-incarcerated educators to work beyond the prison classroom as a site of education and resistance. We call for teaching and learning that carefully attends to the political character of education and specifically call for a rethinking for critically-oriented non-incarcerated educators who travel into prisons to teach: rethinking of conscientiziation as emancipation, rethinking classroom power distribution, and rethinking problem-posing education in the prison.

Authors

• Shawn Richard Coon, University of Utah

• Erin L. Castro, University of Utah