Liberation Praxis in Schools: Teaching for Social Justice

By Paul C. Gorski White Privilege Conference April 2008 1

Introduction: Warm-Up

The Awareness Quiz 2

Intro: Who We Are

1.

2.

Who is in the room?

My background and lenses 3

Intro: Agenda

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Introductory Blabber (in progress) Starting Assumptions Approaches to Social Justice Education Key Concepts Pitfalls: The Withering Away of Critical Liberation Praxis 4

Intro: Agenda Cont’d

6. Dimensions of Praxis in Schools 7. Social Justice Education in Practice 8. Shifts of Consciousness for the Critical Practitioner 5

1.

2.

3.

Introduction: Primary Arguments

Social justice education starts with creating equitable learning environments for all students SJE also includes preparing students for the struggle Critical liberation praxis involves shifts of consciousness that inform shifts in practice 6

Introduction: Primary Arguments

4. Much of the work we call “SJE” creates more inequity than it eliminates 5. There is something we can do about it 7

Introduction:

Warning!!!

I do not have any of the following:  “The” SJE formula or workbook,   A tidy set of activities for you to implement in your classroom tomorrow, or A single book or poster or video that will make any school “just.” 8

Introduction:

However…

I do have all of the following:    A framework for thinking complexly and critically about praxis and SJE, Strategies for creating just learning environments based on your curricular and pedagogical expertise, and Some difficult, sometimes even uncomfortable, questions about what is and what could be in education.

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Starting Assumptions 10

Starting Assumption #1 □ All students deserve the best possible education regardless of: □ Socioeconomic status or class □ □ □ □ □ □ □ Gender Identity Religion (or lack thereof) Citizenship status (Dis)ability Race or ethnicity Sexual Orientation Etc.

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Starting Assumption #2 □ Critical liberation praxis requires more than simply diversifying curricula; it requires the transformation of □ Pedagogy □ Assessment □ Classroom/School Climate □ National Social and Educational Policy □ Etc.

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Starting Assumption #3 □ Education is NOT politically neutral □ And political neutrality is the same thing is supporting the status quo □ First step for all of us: understand the politics in play (that’s the “critical”) and what they mean for us and our students.

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Starting Assumption #4 □ The problem of educational inequity is one of consciousness, not only one of practice □ Impossibility of being a critical liberation practitioner if I do not think in critical, liberatory ways 14

Starting Assumption #5 □ The “achievement gap” is not as much an “achievement gap” as an “opportunity gap” 15

Starting Assumption #6 □ A single teacher or administrator cannot undo systemic inequities in the entire school system or larger society. □ But at the very least we can make sure we’re not replicating those inequities in our own spheres of influence 16

Starting Assumption #7 □ Education is a microcosm of bigger social conditions, and those conditions are increasingly neoliberal □ Welfare “reform” □ Globalization (of poverty) □ Concentration of media ownership □ What else?

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Starting Assumption #8 □ These conditions increasingly are embedded in education policy and practice □ Corporatization and privatization of public schools □ NCLB and the Business Roundtable □ “Choice” and vouchers □ Prescribed curricula □ What else?

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Starting Assumption #9 □ Gross inequities exist in our schools □ And these inequities, and the resulting opportunity gap, will not be eliminated by Taco Night, the International Fair, or other activities that, however fun, do not address injustices head-on 19

Starting Assumption #9: Gross Inequities

Compared with low-poverty U.S. schools, high-poverty U.S. schools have:

□ More teachers teaching in areas outside their certification subjects; □ □ □ More serious teacher turnover problems; More teacher vacancies; Larger numbers of substitute teachers; 20

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ Starting Assumption #9: Gross Inequities (cont’d) More dirty or inoperative bathrooms; More evidence of vermin such as cockroaches and rats; Insufficient classroom materials Less rigorous curricula; Fewer experienced teachers; Lower teacher salaries; Larger class sizes; and Less funding.

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Starting Assumption #9: Gross Inequities Barton, P.E. (2004). Why does the gap persist? Educational Leadership 62(3), 8-13.

Barton, P.E. (2003). Parsing the achievement gap: Baselines for tracking progress. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.

Carey, K. (2005). The funding gap 2004: Many

states still shortchange low-income and

minority students. Washington, D.C.: The Education Trust.

National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (2004). Fifty years after Brown Board of

Education: A two-tiered education system.

Washington, D.C.: Author.

Rank, M.R. (2004). One nation, underprivileged: 22 Why American poverty affects us all. New York,

Conceptualizing Authentic SJE 23

Conceptualizing Authentic SJE

Important Concepts • Hegemony • The Hidden Curriculum • Deficit Theory • Neoliberalism 24

Conceptualizing Authentic SJE

Important Concept #1

Hegemony

• What is it?

• Where do we see it?

– White supremacy, Christian-centrism, consumer culture, hetero-normativity – connections among these 25

Conceptualizing Authentic SJE

Important Concept #2

The Hidden Curriculum

• What is it?

• Relationship with hegemony – Three curricula: Official, Explicit, Hidden 26

Conceptualizing Authentic SJE

Important Concept #3

Deficit Theory

• What is it? • Example: Hurricane Katrina • Relationship with hegemony 27

Conceptualizing Authentic SJE

Important Concept #4

Neoliberalism

• What is it? (see handout) • Where do we see it in schools?

• Relationship with hegemony 28

Conceptualizing Authentic SJE

Approaches to SJE 1. Heroes and Holidays 2. Intercultural Education 3. Human Relations Education 4. Reactive Equity Programming 5. Systemic Equity a. Where is your school or department?

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Conceptualizing Authentic SJE

Approach: Heroes and Holidays

• Celebrating diversity • Surface-level cultural exploration • Additive; tokenistic • Examples?

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Conceptualizing Authentic SJE

Approach: Intercultural Education

• Learning about “other” cultures • Essentializing (“culture of poverty”) • Focus on tolerance and appreciate of difference • Examples?

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Conceptualizing Authentic SJE

Approach: Human Relations

• Intergroup/intercultural dialogue • Sharing our personal stories • Anti-bias focus • Interpersonal, missing bigger issues • Examples?

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Conceptualizing Authentic SJE

Approach: Reactive Programming

• Connections with bigger issues – But reactive, not proactive • Program-based, not transformational • Examples?

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Conceptualizing Authentic SJE

Approach: Critical Liberation

• Understand education in larger sociopolitical context • Focus on system equity and social justice – consciousness informs practice • Examples?

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PITFALLS:

Withering of SJE, or

Un-Critical

Liberatory Praxis 35

Withering SJE: Changing Hearts, Not Systems  Focus exclusively on changing hearts and minds while ignoring systemic issues (this is the un-critical praxis)  How does this approach —anti-bias, tolerance, etc.

—serve hegemony? Who does it serve and who does it protect?

 Examples: anti-bias workshops, cultural plunges, etc.

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Withering SJE: Equity Issues —Cultural Solutions  Trying to address injustices, such as racial or class inequity, with

cultural

programming, such as multicultural festivals or learning about the “culture of poverty”  Who or what does this approach protect? 37

Withering SJE: Whitening of Education Activism  Candy-coating the discourse to be consumable to privileged audiences; pacing classes or workshops for the most resistant participants  “Change takes time,” “Start where they are,” fear of causing discomfort 38

Withering SJE: Ruby Payne Syndrome  Latching onto ideas and models of hot new voices without critical analysis of their work  Professional development focused more on entertainment value than educational value  Use of resources that contribute to stereotypes and deficit perspective  Examples: Payne, PLCs 39

Withering SJE: Regressive Programming  Minimizing social justice to co- or extra curricular programming; ignoring policy, systems, and structures   Student clubs Service learning that maintains social and political hierarchies  Dances, food fairs, cultural plunges, arts and crafts 40

Dimensions of Equitable Education

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Dimensions of Equitable Education

1. What our students bring to the classroom 2. What we bring to the classroom 4. Pedagogy 3. Curriculum content Adapted from the work of Maurianne Adams and Barbara J. Love (2006).

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Dimensions of Equitable Education

1. What Students Bring to the Classroom  Past educational experiences (it’s not always all about us)  Complex identities, socializations  Expectations about the roles of students and teachers  Varying learning styles, intelligences, ways of illustrating learning 43

Dimensions of Equitable Education

2. What We Bring to the Classroom  Complex socializations, identities, biases,  Notions about the purposes of education and our roles as teachers  A teaching style, often related to our own preferred learning styles and how we’ve been taught 44

Dimensions of Equitable Education

3. Curriculum Content  Course materials: Who’s represented in readings, examples, illustrations  Perspective and worldview: Whose voices are centered, whose are “other”ed   Is content relevant to the lives of the students?

What is the “hidden curriculum”?

 Are social justices issues addressed explicitly?

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Dimensions of Equitable Education

4. Pedagogy  Focus on critical thinking     Paying attention to inequity in classroom

processes

Attending to sociopolitical relationships (power and privilege) and hegemony in the classroom Acknowledging student knowledge through problem-posing, dialogue, and general student centeredness Using authentic assessment 46

Student Outcomes and Critical Praxis

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Student Outcomes

Clarifications 1.

2.

We can work toward these outcomes in individual classes, but usually they’re reachable only through systemic reform. So the question for all of us is,

How can I within my context contribute to moving students toward these outcomes?

Because SJE is as much about

unlearning

as about learning, it’s a process, not an immediate transformation.

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Student Outcomes

Outcome #1 Students will think critically, particularly about those things about which they’ve been taught previously

not

to think critically.

Examples: Consumer culture, US foreign policy, compulsory schooling

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Student Outcomes

Outcome #2 Students will have considered their own biases and prejudices, worked to understand where those biases and prejudices come from (hegemony), and identified strategies for continued reflective learning.

Examples: Racism, sexism, US-centrism

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Student Outcomes

Outcome #3 Students will understand how every field of knowledge can be used both to oppress people and to promote social justice.

Examples: Eugenics vs. environmental justice movement; the Eurocentric literary canon vs. critical studies

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Student Outcomes

Outcome #4 Students will understand how to apply skills and knowledge to real-world human rights issues.

Examples: Applying arts to social activism; applying computer science to political organizing

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Student Outcomes

Outcome #5 Students will feel empowered to continue seeking knowledge related to course content.

Examples: Taking additional classes in an area of interest, pursuing their own growth, etc.

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Student Outcomes

Outcome #6 Students won’t see their identities as detrimental to a possible interest in a particular field.

Examples: Girls identifying as future engineers; boys identifying as future teachers; students of color identifying as future scientists

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Student Outcomes

Outcome #7 Students will see their lives and work as interconnected to the lives of the full diversity of humanity.

Examples: Wealthy US students recognizing the connection between their consumption and poverty in other parts of the world.

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How We Get There: The Equitable Learning Environment

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The Equitable Learning Environment

Part 1: What Your Students Bring to the Classroom 57

The Equitable Learning Environment

1. What Students Bring into the Classroom A. Find ways to challenge stereotypes (both in society and your own field) Example: Albert Einstein as a white, male scientist who wrote very progressive essays about racism, imperialism, etc.

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The Equitable Learning Environment

1. What Students Bring into the Classroom B. Watch for and challenge student behaviors and relationships that reflect stereotypical roles Example: Young men assuming the lead in lab activities, young women being “note taker” in small groups 59

The Equitable Learning Environment

1. What Students Bring into the Classroom C. Be thoughtful about how you create cooperative teams or small groups Example: Avoid temptation to “distribute” people from under-represented groups (tokenism) 60

The Equitable Learning Environment

1. What Students Bring into the Classroom D. Understand students’ reactions to you and your social identities in context Example: Even if you don’t think much about your whiteness (for example), it may mean something significant to students of color who may only rarely not have white teachers 61

The Equitable Learning Environment

1. What Students Bring into the Classroom E. Help students un-learn the ways of being and seeing that lend themselves to prejudice Example: Dichotomous thinking, competitive nature of learning (NOTE: this also means WE have to un-learn) 62

The Equitable Learning Environment

Part 2: What You Bring to the Classroom 63

The Equitable Learning Environment

2. What You Bring into the Classroom A. Identify and work to eliminate your biases, prejudices, and assumptions (yes, you do have them) about various groups of students Example: Race/ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic status, (dis)ability, first language, etc.

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The Equitable Learning Environment

2. What You Bring into the Classroom B. Identify and work to broaden your teaching style (which, according to research, probably suits style)

your

learning Note: Research shows that two elements most effect how somebody teaches: (1) their preferred learning style, and (2) how they were taught what they’re teaching 65

The Equitable Learning Environment

2. What You Bring into the Classroom D. Provide students with periodic opportunities to share anonymous feedback Note: Students already feeling disempowered and disconnected are not likely to approach you about your teaching or curriculum 66

The Equitable Learning Environment

2. What You Bring into the Classroom E. Share examples of when you’ve struggled to climb out of the box and to see the world and your field in their full complexities Note: When we make ourselves vulnerable we make it easier for students to do the same 67

The Equitable Learning Environment

2. What You Bring into the Classroom F. Consider the significance of the teacher/student power relationship and what this means re: student learning Question: What might it mean to be a white male computer science teacher teaching a young African American woman in a field historically hostile to African American women (hegemony)? 68

The Equitable Learning Environment

2. What You Bring into the Classroom G. Identify the gaps in your knowledge about social justice issues and pursue the information to fill those gaps Point: I cannot be a critical liberatory practitioner if I’m not liberated in my own thinking 69

The Equitable Learning Environment

2. What You Bring into the Classroom H. Build the skills necessary to intervene effectively when injustice happens (with students or colleagues) Examples: Heterosexist joke or comment, sexual harassment, men talking over women 70

The Equitable Learning Environment

2. What You Bring into the Classroom I. Mind your compliments Point: Research indicates that educators, regardless of gender, are most likely to compliment male students on their intelligence. Female students? 71

The Equitable Learning Environment

Part 3: Curriculum Content 72

The Equitable Learning Environment

3. Curriculum Content A. Assign tasks that challenge traditional social roles Example: Assign men to be note-takers, women to be group facilitators, then discuss why you did so 73

The Equitable Learning Environment

3. Curriculum Content B. Disturb the master narrative. Try centering the sources you previously may have used as supplements Example: Slave narratives as central history texts instead of supplements to a more Eurocentric framing of history 74

The Equitable Learning Environment

3. Curriculum Content C. Avoid

other-ing

; weave diverse voices and sources seamlessly together instead of having separate sections or units Example: No units on “women poets” or “Latino voices,” etc. 75

The Equitable Learning Environment

3. Curriculum Content D. Discuss ways people in your field have used (and continue to use) their scholarship and platforms to advocate for social justice Examples: Leontyne Price, Howard Zinn, Stephen J. Gould, Ida B. Wells, Mark Twain 76

The Equitable Learning Environment

3. Curriculum Content E. Discuss ways people in your field have used (and continue to use) their scholarship and platforms to support inequity and injustice Examples: “Science”: eugenics; “journalists”: refusal to critique Bush foreign policy during war-time; etc.

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The Equitable Learning Environment

3. Curriculum Content F. Discuss the history of oppression and exclusion in your field and

how this has affected knowledge bases

in your field Examples: Women and STEM fields (and law, business, etc.) 78

The Equitable Learning Environment

3. Curriculum Content G. Introduce the concept of cognitive dissonance and its relationship to hegemony 79

The Equitable Learning Environment

3. Curriculum Content H. Encourage students to raise critical questions, not only about the content itself, but about how the content is presented in educational materials Example: Use of male anatomy as “standard”; differentiation between “American literature” and “African American literature” (and misuse of the term “American”) 80

The Equitable Learning Environment

Part 4: Pedagogy 81

The Equitable Learning Environment

4. Pedagogy A. Be very clear about how you expect students to participate (open discussion, raised hands, etc.) Related suggestion: Avoid first-hand-up, first-called-on approach 82

The Equitable Learning Environment

4. Pedagogy B. Never, under any circumstance, invalidate or allow other students to invalidate concerns of inequity raised by students from disenfranchised groups 83

The Equitable Learning Environment

4. Pedagogy C. Avoid putting students from disenfranchised groups in positions to have to teach people from privileged groups about their privilege 84

The Equitable Learning Environment

4. Pedagogy D. Develop your facilitation skills so that you can effectively facilitate “difficult dialogues” about racism, sexism, poverty, heterosexism, etc.

Note: When these dialogues happen, be comfortable advocating for equity 85

The Equitable Learning Environment

4. Pedagogy E. Design assignments that encourage students to apply what they’re learning to a human rights issue 86

The Equitable Learning Environment

4. Pedagogy F. Allow students, when possible, to choose how they will be assessed (as people don’t demonstrate understanding and application in the same ways) Example: Choice between an essay or an application project 87

The Equitable Learning Environment

4. Pedagogy G. Invite a colleague to observe your teaching and provide feedback on a variety of concerns 88

The Equitable Learning Environment

4. Pedagogy H. Use peer teaching, peer feedback, and other peer interactions to provide students an opportunity to learn content through a variety of lenses —and to be more active in knowledge construction 89

Shifts of Consciousness for SJ Educators 90

Shifts of Consciousness Shift #1 I must acknowledge that SJE is about creating just learning environments for all students, so I must be against

all

injustice 91

Shifts of Consciousness Shift #2 I must understand injustices as systemic (hegemonic) and not just individual acts (and what this means in the context of my classroom) 92

Shifts of Consciousness Shift #3 I must transcend the idea of equity education as “learning about

other

cultures” and “celebrating diversity” 93

Shifts of Consciousness Shift #4 I must be willing to discomfort and unsettle myself and my colleagues Institutional likeability 94

Shifts of Consciousness Shift #5 I must shift from an

equality

orientation toward social justice to an

equity

orientation 95

Shifts of Consciousness Shift #6 I must move beyond the “objective facilitator” role and actively advocate for justice 96

Shifts of Consciousness Shift #7 I must understand SJE as a comprehensive approach, not additional activities or slight shifts in an otherwise monocultural, hegemonic school or classroom climate 97

Shifts of Consciousness Shift #8 I must be able to see the

hidden

or

implicit

curriculum as clearly as the

explicit

curriculum —and teach my students to do the same 98

Shifts of Consciousness Shift #9 I must reject deficit theory. And I must never, under any circumstance, make an assumption about any student, parent, or colleague based on a single dimension of their identity 99

Shifts of Consciousness Shift #10 I must never attempt to address injustice through cultural programming 100

What I Can Do: Critical Liberation Praxis

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What I Can Do

Strengthen the choir. Stand up and sing.

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What I Can Do

Use our institutional likeability. Name inequity when and where we see it.

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What I Can Do

Know and work to eliminate our own biases —the ways in which we’ve been socialized into U.S. hegemony.

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What I Can Do

Fight to ensure students of color and low-income students are not placed unfairly into low tracks.

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What I Can Do

Eliminate tracking altogether.

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What I Can Do

Remember, it’s about more than race and class: home language, (dis)ability, sexual orientation…

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What I Can Do

Refuse the corporatization and privatization of public schools.

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What I Can Do

Teach students about racism, poverty, heterosexism, imperialism, and other atrocities, and how they operate in schools.

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What I Can Do

Make parent involvement more accessible to low-income families and families with home languages other than English.

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What I Can Do

Insist that every student has access to an equitable share of the resources.

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What I Can Do

Take a break from talking about the achievement gap, and start talking about the opportunity gap.

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What I Can Do

Refuse to blame the students for simply responding to the cards they’ve been dealt.

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What I Can Do

Do an equity audit.

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What I Can Do

Never minimize “achievement” to test scores.

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What I Can Do

Uncover hegemony in school policies and work to change them.

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What I Can Do

Finally, and most importantly: Empower the SJ advocates, who too often feel particularly disempowered.

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Thank you.

Paul C. Gorski [email protected]

http://www.edchange.org

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