The article explores the rhetorical dimensions of witnessing. We concentrate, in particular, on two groups: 1) university students at the University of San Carlos, Quetzaltenango, whose murals are dramatic reminders of the massacres that resulted in the deaths of over 200,000 indigenous people in the 1980s and early 90s and of the corrupt…

In this article, the author, who is an unqualified community worker in London, discusses the books that have influenced her thinking and practice in community work. She discusses that publications such as "In and Against the State" (1979), and Cynthia Cockburn's work, "The Local State" (1977), offered a sustainable, dialectical…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to ask how we can think about critical reflection as a pedagogical practice given the "confessional turn." By the "confessional turn," the author refers to the idea that "subjective, autobiographical and confessional modes of expression" have expanded exponentially across a wide range of social spheres,…

I begin this article at the site of the murder of Black Panther Party Leader Fred Hampton. I then visit the school where I teach and I recall elements of my life history that explain how I became aware of the political repression and murder of Fred Hampton. I then focus on how I brought a discussion of Hampton's work into the classroom and how…

This article presents the author's response to four thoughtful reviews of his article. These reviews include: (1) Steve Heyneman and Kathryn Anderson's (2008) review: "A Quarter Century of Getting It Right in Education"; (2) Annie Vinokur's (2008) review; (3) Suzanne Bergeron's (2008) review; and (4) Jerrold Kachur's review and the extensive…

Professors and politics blend uneasily in the classroom, especially in an election year. As the election cycle unfolds, professors can expect to be asked about their political views: "How do you feel about McCain?" "Do you think we're ready for a black president?" Nothing in higher-education policy explicitly precludes honest answers to those…

This article examines Reading Recovery as a microcosm for issues related to race and access. Tenets of critical race theory are presented to explore how racial biases are systemic in our ways of being, teaching, and conducting research. Specifically, I present data for African American children involved in Reading Recovery in one Midwestern…

Conflict is a natural and pervasive, but often misunderstood, force that thrives in all human societies. Conflict is an inherent part of the school environment because of the labor-intensive nature of the school setting. As district leaders, school superintendents are surrounded daily by diverse groups of people who have their own needs and…

This paper is a response to Professor Chitty's "Educational Review" Guest Lecture article, "Educating for political activity". I address the three sections of his paper: a global and national-based politics of war, corporate manipulation and parliamentary scandals. This provides a basis to draw upon empirical material from a…

The proponents of critical pedagogy criticize the earlier Neo-Marxist theories of education, arguing that they provide only a "language of critique". By introducing the possibility of human agency and resistance, critical pedagogists attempt to develop not only a pedagogy of critique, but also to build a pedagogy of hope. Fundamentally, the aim of…

Much of the sociological curriculum often represents society as tragedy. This article explores the incorporation of a society as comedy component in introductory courses at two institutions using the sociological insight and social critique of comedians. A general discussion of parallels between the comedic eye and the sociological imagination is…

This study investigates what preservice elementary school teachers assume about children's capacities to learn about equity issues and how teachers might translate teaching for social justice into actual classroom practices. Participants said they did not see the age of their students as a barrier to teaching for social justice, although their…

This study tackles the question to what extent the composition of protest events is determined by the stance of governments. Established contextual theories do not formulate propositions on how context affects individual protesters. The article engages in empirically testing whether the macro-context affects the internal diversity of the crowds…

The author explores the cultural politics of neoliberal globalization, its deformations of critical facets of public culture as it has returned home, and he explores the politics of emergency. Rather than seeing the politics of emergency as something indicative of an emerging "emergency regime" attendant to the terror war, he argues that the…