From a Levinasian perspective, the interaction between two people is an ethical encounter, a face-to-face interaction that calls the subject into question and renders them vulnerable to the ritual of rupture. But what if your embodiment renders you, in the moment of encounter, less than human? How can we bring the imperative of pre-ontological…

I discuss White American students' experiences of reading racism-themed young adult literature (YAL), addressing the issue of police brutality, and using the concept of intersectionality to promote social justice awareness. Based on analysis of their written reflections and classroom discussions, I argue reading racism-themed YAL with an…

This paper examines Henry Giroux's critical pedagogy, and explores the interconnections among education, democracy, and hope. Whereas critical pedagogy rejects foundationalism, it still requires a normative foundation to criticise oppressive situations and pose a vision of the future. Giroux rejects foundationalism and regards oppressive force…

The work of Hardt and Negri offers the field of education important theoretical resources for reconceptualizing subjectivity as a site of politics. Yet recent shifts on the Left toward more articulated mobilizations, along with the emergence of new decolonizing movements that interrogate the undifferentiated character of the common, partly affirm…

This article interrogates a key feature of anarchist education; focusing on a problem with implications not only for anarchist conceptions of education, but for anarchist philosophy and practice more broadly. The problem is this: if anarchism consists in the principled opposition to all forms of coercive authority, then how is this to be…

This paper begins by revisiting my earlier critical review of the international scholarship on Japanese schooling (Takayama, 2011). In this work, I critiqued three books on Japanese schooling, by Ryoko Tsuneyoshi (2001), Nancy Sato (2004), and Peter Cave (2007), along with other English-language scholarships on Japanese education. Drawing on a…

With increasing threats to democracy, we call for communication educators to renew and re-examine their commitment to advancing civic engagement in the basic course. Given recent scholarly criticism that civic engagement pedagogies falsely present democratic practice as neutral or apolitical and reinforce the status quo, we set an agenda for basic…

This article offers insights into partnerships that support refugee teachers to adapt and sustain teaching and learning despite multiple compounding obstacles spurred by political and economic crises, disaster, and COVID-19. Drawing from a 3-year study of Syria refugee education in Lebanon (2018-21), I focus on one dimension of partnership that…

Recent debates among scholars in Literature education have led to polarizing views about the aims of the subject. The debate reignites ancient quarrels about the aesthetic and political values of literary study and relatedly, the different pedagogical approaches to teaching. In the first part of this paper, I explore the aesthetic-political divide…

This paper considers the sociology of education (SOE) as a modern human science. It suggests that the SOE is mired in a set of unreflexive, redemptive, Enlightment rationalities, and explores the messy relationships of the sociology with education that result from this. It is argues that the sociology of education has consistently failed to…

Voice has become a common goal of educational research and pedagogical practices aimed at equity and social justice. That is, bringing marginalized groups "to" voice, allowing diverse students to "have" a voice, and setting up classrooms that privilege silenced voices are frequent goals in educational research and practice. In…

As part of a larger study, through this research I examined the ideological foundations of public school teachers' interpretations of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I discovered that White teachers in this study talked about oppression in ways that implied it was a natural part of life, and even in some cases necessary for learning.…

This paper focuses on the limitations of the Eurocentric modernist framework that undergirds Freirean theory and critical pedagogy in relation to critical peace education, highlighting in particular the contributions of post-colonial and decolonial thinking. The paper posits that critical approaches to peace education need to consider these…

Given societal calls for transformational leadership that will lift people to higher levels of motivation and critical consciousness, this paper critiques existing student leadership education efforts and proposes that leadership educators adopt core tenets of feminism in order to prepare students to be engaged, change-oriented leaders in their…

In this article we discuss the practice and politics of translanguaging in the context of deaf signers. Applying the translanguaging concept to deaf signers brings a different perspective by focusing on sensorial accessibility. While the sensory orientations of deaf people are at the heart of their translanguaging practices, sensory asymmetries…