Cultivating Democratic Practices Within Teacher Education in a "Post-Truth" Era

• In Event: 81.021 - Cultivating Change and Innovation in Teacher Education

Abstract

In our “post truth” era, democracy depends in part on teachers who can navigate the current accountability requirements while also creating space that allows for the collaborative and convincing construction of shared ideas. In this paper, we characterize the democratic potential of a practice called Critical Explorations in the Classroom (CEC) (Duckworth, 2006), drawing in part on research conducted in one of the author’s courses. In shifting meaningful authority for creating understandings to students, while also foregrounding the value of cogent and evidence-based reasoning within a respectful social and shared material context, the practice of CEC teaches much about challenges and satisfactions of fair and transparent knowledge construction processes, while also empowering students to become agents of their own learning.

Authors

• Mary Kay Delaney, University of Denver

• Susan Jean Mayer, Critical Exploration Press