66.032 - Pondering Pedagogies of Teacher Activism: Purpose, Power, and Possibility

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Without question, critical pedagogy calls upon teachers to be activist agents of change. However, whether people imagine ranting ideologues at the front of classrooms who forcefully indoctrinate students or rowdy crowds of teachers at protest rallies screaming their grievances through bullhorns, our collective imagination has a hard time moving beyond these superficial (at best) and stereotypical (at worst) notions of what it means to be a teacher activist. This session will complicate, but also concretize, teacher activism by offering analyses of teacher activist pedagogy drawn from empirical studies of teacher praxis. The session will not offer any prescribed formula for teacher activism, but instead will paint multifaceted layers of pedagogy that undergird teachers’ efforts to change and transform the world.

Sub Unit

• Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education / Division K - Section 3: Focus on the Lives of Teachers (knowledge, thinking, dispositions, perspectives, ideology, reflective practice, and the moral dimensions of teaching)

Chair

• Rita Kohli, University of California - Riverside

Papers

• AAH! Apprehension, Agency, and Hope Make Me a Teacher Activist - Keith C. Catone, Roger Williams University

• Teacher Activism in the Math Classroom: Profiles of Two Social Justice Mathematics Educators - Kari Kokka, University of Pittsburgh

• It's Time to Act: Reflecting and Unpacking Racism to Reimagine Possibility Through Theater - Natalia Ortiz, City University of New York

Discussants

• Bree Picower, Montclair State University

• Christopher Emdin, Teachers College, Columbia University