Questioning and Creating "Truth Spaces" in Social Foundations Classrooms

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Social foundations courses have a unique capacity to present future researchers and practitioners with the precarious nature of “truth” in educational discourses. This symposium will wrestle with the precarity underlying the 2023 Annual Meeting’s focus on pursuing truth by examining several attempts to create what scholar Leigh Patel has named “truth spaces” (Patel, cited in San Pedro, 2017). Specifically, this symposium will bring together five university-based scholars to explore the challenges and opportunities associated with nurturing truth spaces in social foundations courses. By sharing syllabi and other course artifacts with attendees, the presenters will invite attendees to consider how to grapple with the conflictual nature of pursuing truth while trying to untap the liberatory potential of the social foundations classroom.

Sub Unit

• Division B - Curriculum Studies / Division B - Section 6: De/Colonization and Transformative Curriculum Studies

Chair

• Ed Brockenbrough, University of Pennsylvania

Papers

• A Truth Space for Challenging "Good" Neoliberal Teaching and Surveillance - Ed Brockenbrough, University of Pennsylvania

• A Truth Space for Reckoning With Race and Disability in School Discipline - Dana Morrison, West Chester University of Pennsylvania

• A Truth Space for Unpacking Violence in Schooling - Boni Wozolek, Pennsylvania State University - Abington

• A Truth Space for a Radical Commitment to the Social Foundations of Education - John J. Lupinacci, Washington State University

Discussant

• Leigh Patel, University of Pittsburgh