This essay discusses how Foucault's study of power relates to more general reexamination of the foundations of critical traditions, especially decentering of the subject as part of a broader consideration of social epistemology. The paper explores two concepts of power (sovereignty/repression and deployment/production of power) and examines the…

Pepi Leistyna's book "Presence of Mind" discusses how schools of education deter teachers from understanding the world's complex political, historical, social, and economic realities. Educators must develop what C. Wright Mills called the "sociological imagination." Developing critical consciousness and varied, multicultural…

This book provides alternative answers to those questions about the American educational system that have been answered until now by an outmoded, conservative educational agenda. Following the introduction that describes the rationale for a postmodern deconstruction of educational narratives, 13 chapters present essays on the following questions:…

This book describes the important theoretical ideas of critical pedagogy and explains how to put strategies consistent with them into practice. Chapter 1 explores Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society (1970) and his work highlighting ways in which institutions and conventional approaches to education are failing ordinary men and women. In contrast,…

Research has increasingly highlighted the importance of children's social and cultural experiences for understanding about learning, what is learned and what is perceived as being important for learning. The development of literacy learning begins well before children start school as they engage in the literate practices of their homes and…

Presents a psychoanalytic critique of an advertisement for the Getty Center for Education in the Arts multicultural program. Applying principles derived from Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, reveals basic racist, sexist, and elitist assumptions embedded in the advertisement. Includes a reproduction of the advertisement and extensive footnotes. (MJP)

In an experimental writing course we taught at a northeastern state university, we explored "queer" and "writing," hoping to discover what students could create by merging these terms. How might queer theory help students use writing to reimagine and rearticulate various identity categories in ways that allowed them to reconfigure the mental map…

In this article, I offer a new interpretation of non-Maori parents' claim that a Maori/English bilingual school unit in Aotearoa/New Zealand is separatist. I show that while some use such a claim to defend monoculturalism and white hegemony, others use it to come to terms with Aotearoa/New Zealand's postcolonial nationhood, globalization, and a…

This paper considers the legacy of racism that marks our society, arguing that critical race theory provides a framework for challenging the genetic and cultural deficit theories. Specific recommendations, based on critical race theory, to help teacher educators challenge racism and stereotyping in the classroom are presented. (SM)

Many feminists have written about working within a tension between poststructuralist theories and activist work based on more "modern" imperatives associated with "taking a stand" against oppression. These discussions of a praxis of "willful contradiction" are helpful in thinking about the theoretical bases of poststructural approaches to…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of an alternative, transformative pedagogy that may assist us in responding to the urgent call for changes in the way educational leaders are prepared and developed. Within the contextual loom of preparation programs, the two theoretical perspectives of Transformative Learning Theory and Critical…

In investigating the place of consumption in education it is necessary to question both critical theory's language of manipulation and neo-liberalism's language of rational action as ways of explaining the significance of consumption in people's lives and where it has assumed a central status in the contemporary social order. This paper argues…

Asserts that the sociology of education is fraught with noncommunicating paradigms. Outlines this paradigm split from a critical theory perspective. Discusses the use of history to support education reform efforts. (CFR)

Examines the concept of popular culture in social and educational theory in the context of developing nations, particularly Latin America. Using a poststructuralist literary theory, the article elaborates a notion of the popular that offers a new conceptualization by incorporating a sense of competing identities and ideologies that form it. (SM)

Critically reflexive practice embraces subjective understandings of reality as a basis for thinking more critically about the impact of our assumptions, values, and actions on others. Such practice is important to management education, because it helps us understand how we constitute our realities and identities in relational ways and how we can…