Inglorious Pedagogy

Presenting perspectives from Australia, Canada, China, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S., this volume brings together a collection of essays from library and information science (LIS) educators from around the world who delve into difficult, unpopular, and uncommonly discussed topics.

Information and Consciousness: An Exploration connects information and consciousness in ways that will open up potential inquiry into what information is, how it works, and its relationship to human consciousness. Information has been taken to mean many things in the past; the risk has been that, if it is taken to mean everything, it may mean nothing. In this book, information’s definition is restricted to the inclusion of meaning and truth in discursive action. Consciousness, for its part, has frequently been taken to refer to the material workings of the brain. Recent inquiry has led to a broadening to embrace the human body and the environment in extended consciousness. Using these two conceptions, the connections between information and consciousness are explored. The book includes: A unique definition of information is offered that centers on discursive action, meaning, and truth. The role of sign systems—semiotics—is connected to what information is. The standard model of consciousness is critiqued, and alternatives are investigated. The alternative of embodied/extended consciousness is presented as a preferred model, and its role with respect to information is explored. The book aims to make connections between what informs humans and what humans are conscious of. Anyone who is concerned with how people identify what informs will be interested in the entirety of the work. The author provides readers with the foundation they need to understand the most common conceptions of what information and consciousness are. Information and Consciousness also looks into the future for enquiry. Presenting a different way of conceiving information and consciousness, the book shows a way forward for enquiry and education.

This book provides the first complete account of Patrick Pearse's educational work at St. Enda's and St. Ita's schools (Dublin). Extensive use of first-hand accounts reveals Pearse as a humane, energetic teacher and a forward-looking and innovative educational thinker. Between 1903 and 1916 Pearse developed a new concept of schooling as an agency of radical pedagogical and social reform, later echoed by school founders such as Bertrand Russell. This placed him firmly within the tradition of radical educational thought as articulated by Paulo Freire and Henry Giroux. The book examines the tension between Pearse's work and his increasingly public profile as an advocate of physical force separatism and, by employing previously unknown accounts, questions the perception that he influenced his students to become active supporters of militant separatism. The book describes the later history of St. Enda's, revealing the ambivalence of post-independence administrations, and shows how Pearse's work, which has long been neglected by historians, has had a direct influence on a later generation of school founders up to the present.

In this book, Clifford Mayes and his associates take archetypal pedagogy—a Jungian approach to teaching and learning—and extend it beyond just the “educational processes” that take place in classrooms, which are those spaces that a culture dedicates to the generation and acquisition of codified scholastic knowledge. It looks at the archetypal dynamics of teaching and learning as fundamental to human existence itself. From the cradle to the grave, we are involved in informing and shaping the worldviews of others, just as they are involved in impacting ours. Deep relationship, an I-Thou relationship not only allows but requires this to be the case so that the discussants can become what Martin Buber called “dialogical partners,” engaged in both mutual critique and mutual affirmation, as they reach knew planes of knowledge and even presence. Such teaching and learning are what Mayes calls “educative acts.” This book explores educative acts in a wide range of venues and concerning a variety of issues.

Critical Pedagogy, Race, and Media investigates how popular media offers the potential to radicalise what and how we teach for inclusivity. Bringing together established scholars in the areas of race and pedagogy, this collection offers a unique approach to critical pedagogy by analysing current and historical iterations of race onscreen. The book forms theoretical and methodological bridges between the disciplinary fields of pedagogy, equality studies, and screen studies to explore how we might engage in and critique screen culture for teaching about race. It employs Critical Race Theory and paradigmatic frameworks to address some of the social crises in Higher Education classrooms, forging new understandings of how notions of race are buttressed by popular media. The chapters draw on popular media as a tool to explore the social, economic, and cultural dimensions of racial injustice and are grouped by Black studies, migration studies, Indigenous studies, Latinx studies, and Asian studies. Each chapter addresses diversity and the necessity for teaching to include visual media which is reflective of a myriad of students’ experiences. Offering opportunities for using popular media to teach for inclusion in Higher Education, this critical and timely book will be highly relevant for academics, scholars, and students across interdisciplinary fields such as pedagogy, human geography, sociology, cultural studies, media studies, and equality studies.

Fischman, James W. Fraser, Guangwei Hu, Arie Kizel, Jari Lavonen, Lauren Lefty, Wei Liao, Jason Loh, Silvana Mesquita, Hannele Niemi, Lily Orland-Barak, Paula Razquin, Carol Anne Spreen, Eduard Vallory, Yisu Zhou

This book displays the striking creativity and profound insight that characterized Freire's work to the very end of his life-an uplifting and provocative exploration not only for educators, but also for all that learn and live.

The idea of fragmentation has transformed the living, convivial pursuit of knowledge into something akin to an industrial assembly line. Schooling in North America is inherently based on this idea, working against the spirit of pedagogy and the very nature of knowledge itself. Fragmentation has lead to practices that are easily recognizable in schools such as surveillance, colonization, leveling, standardization, normalization and even oppression: the logic of fragmentation has lead to the breaking apart of the living disciplines of knowledge entrusted to teachers and students in the classroom. In this profound and challenging book, David Jardine explores some of the historical and philosophical ancestries of the logic of fragmentation and then lays out how the logic of fragmentation is being interrupted by progressive contemporary thinking about the nature of knowledge and its pursuit. Jardine uses real classroom examples to show how inspiring teachers and students have stepped out from the normal rigidity of the school system to pursue a pedagogy left in peace.