Reality Pedagogy and/as Cosmopolitan Praxis: Student-Driven Instruction in the Age of Polarization

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 7:45 am - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: The Power of Collaborative Research: Co-Contstructing Inquiries, Worlds, and Realities

Abstract

In an era marked by pandemics and political whiplash, where science is questioned, community is fractured, and education is increasingly weaponized, we ask: What does it mean to teach—truly teach—in classrooms that reflect the chaos and the beauty of the world outside their walls? This paper centers a year-long, action-research study across five urban high school science classrooms, where educators implemented the tools of Reality Pedagogy—cogenerative dialogues, coteaching, and curation—as a pathway toward building cosmopolitan classrooms rooted in shared responsibility, student voice, and cultural fluency. Through the intentional development of “weak ties” (Granovetter, 1973) and the disruption of dense social networks that limit cross-cultural exchange, this work explores how community can be cultivated without erasure, and how pedagogy can be reimagined

Authors

• Christopher Emdin, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Qiana Spellman, St. John's University