Paulo Freire on ‘post-literacy’ adult education

Pedagogy in ProcessPedagogy in Process - quote

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paulo Freire on ‘post-literacy’ adult education
Reading Group notes (7 May 2015)

Our session began with an overview of the life and work of Paulo Freire, with a specific focus on the extent to which Freire was influenced by Marxism, and at what particular times and places this influence had been most apparent. Participants in the room had been asked to read a section from Pedagogy in Process (1983), a commentary written by Freire during his work in Guinea-Bissau. We focused on Letter 11, which explores the relationship between the content of educational programmes and the wider social purpose of learning.

There was some concern that this attempt to enhance adult education and levels of literacy had been carried out in Portuguese, the language of the colonial power. There was also a discussion about how Freire’s theory and methods might be appropriate for the geographical and political contexts in which some of the participants are currently working, in the UK and in Africa. The point was made that Freire’s literacy education projects took place as part of national government projects, in Brazil and Chile where the ability to read and write was needed to be eligible to vote. Yet Freire’s approach to critical literacy went beyond simply learning to read the word, and extended to learning to read and interpret the world, so that it might be humanised. This is the essence of the concept of conscientization, or critical consciousness, on which much of his work was based. We left to pursue understandings of what this can mean in the contexts of our work today.

For a description of this seminar, see here.

RiCES public seminar: Decolonizing universities, decolonizing politics

Decolonizing universities, decolonizing politics: 
Place-based education in the Canadian Arctic

Dr. Darcy Leigh, University of Edinburgh

21 May | 2:30–4:30pm | Minerva Building 3203

Formal education in Canada has been a central tool of colonial assimilation. It has, crucially, been used to govern political actors and action as liberal and state-based. Today, education is a key site of anti-colonial and Indigenous struggles and of interventions into the meaning of politics itself. This talk will focus on two anti-colonial higher education projects in the Canadian Arctic. Both are using place-based pedagogy and both are combining different forms of knowledge and politics in an Arctic setting. The Akitsiraq Law School combines Inuit law with Canadian common law, while Dechinta University combines book learning with experiential learning in the bush. Both projects are claiming the authority, legitimacy and resources of ‘conventional’ universities and liberal logics of politics. Yet at the same time the projects are refusing and reworking those same logics of politics and education, as well as developing and practicing alternatives. The talk addresses how these projects are using place-based education to navigate these tensions and to decolonize both politics and education in the Canadian Arctic.

More about Darcy | Darcy Leigh is a Fellow at the Academy of Government at the University of Edinburgh, where she co-teaches the course ‘Political Work’. Her work is about how people inhabit and contest neo and late liberal narratives of political agency. She is especially concerned with the possibilities for agency that are closing and opening in universities. She recently completed her PhD, titled ‘Post-liberal agency: Decolonizing politics and universities in the Canadian Arctic’, for which she worked with Indigenous and Northern actors in a struggle for/over an Arctic university. In the past five years she has also been a Research Assistant and/or instructor with Dechinta Bush University (www.dechinta.ca), Northern Governance and Economy (www.ngec2012.com), and the Akitsiraq Law School (www.akitsiraq.ca). She teaches political, critical, feminist, queer and anti-colonial theory and action across the social sciences at the University of Edinburgh and specializes in collaborative, affective and inclusive pedagogy.

Further information | This seminar is now finished, but more information about the themes is available from the following resources referenced by Dr. Leigh in her talk.

Dechinta Center for Research and Learning (including extensive gallery)

Dechinta student blog (stories about experiential land based learning in students’ own words)

Akitsiraq Law School

Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society (fantastic blog and journal about decolonizing education)

Decolonization: Special issue on Indigenous land-based education (including perspectives from Dechinta’s creators and instructors)

Residential schools: if you search for ‘residential schools Canada testimony’ on YouTube you will find people who went to residential schools telling their stories to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CReISnQDbBE) [CONTENT WARNING: of these stories contain descriptions of childhood sexual and physical abuse]. See also a brief history of residential schools and deaths in residential schools.

Work with us! Lecturer in Education (12 months)

The School of Education is hoping to recruit a Lecturer in Education, working across our post-graduate programmes (PhD, EdD, MA, PGCE) but with a focus on our new MA Education. If you’re interested and would like to speak to someone before you apply, please contact Sarah Amsler.

Here are the details and the link to the jobs site is also below:

Location:  Brayford, Lincoln
Salary:   From £31,342 per annum
Closing Date:   Friday 08 May 2015
Interview Date:   Wednesday 03 June 2015
Reference:  CSS133

The University of Lincoln is seeking to appoint a research-active Lecturer to teach in the School of Education for a fixed term of one year from 1 July 2015 until 30 June 2016. The School is a vibrant and intellectually stimulating centre of postgraduate teaching and research. It is now broadening the range of its educational programmes through the establishment of Master’s courses for PGCE students, a Master’s degree in Education, and research and educational partnerships with secondary schools and practicing teachers. The School aims to strengthen its relationships with schools and educational groups across Lincolnshire, and to produce research that contributes to innovative educational policy and practice. Current research areas within the School include alternative and informal education, critical pedagogies, educational leadership, higher education policy, science education, technology, the politics of education, the sociology of education, and a range of interests in pedagogy and curriculum.

http://jobs.lincoln.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=CSS133

New paper on co-operative higher education

A new journal article by Joss Winn has recently been published in Power and Education journal. For the first time, it reviews the emerging literature on co-operative higher education and offers a coherent theory of academic labour, the academic commons and critical pedagogy, based on our work on Student as Producer.

THE CO-OPERATIVE UNIVERSITY: LABOUR, PROPERTY AND PEDAGOGY

“I begin this article by discussing the recent work of academics and activists to identify the advantages and issues relating to co-operative forms of higher education, and then focus on the ‘worker co-operative’ organisational form and its applicability and suitability to the governance of and practices within higher educational institutions. Finally, I align the values and principles of worker co-ops with the critical pedagogic framework of ‘Student as Producer’. Throughout I employ the work of Karl Marx to theorise the role of labour and property in a ‘co-operative university’, drawing particularly on later Marxist writers who argue that Marx’s labour theory of value should be understood as a critique of labour under capitalism, rather than one developed from the standpoint of labour.”

You can download this article from the journal, Power and Education.

A pre-print version of this article is available from the University of Lincoln research repository.

An earlier and expanded version of this paper given at the ‘Governing Academic Life’ conference is also available from the University of Lincoln research repository.

A Short History of Hacking: Values and principles for co-operative higher education

Joss Winn recently gave a keynote talk at Newcastle College’s ‘Student as Producer’ conference. You can read the full script of his talk on his blog.

“Newcastle College should be commended for recognising the need to involve students in the governance of your institution. In your own HE Partnership Strategy you state that “meaningful partnership working is reliant upon the equal distribution of democratic power.” You argue rightly that this isn’t just achieved by listening to the so-called ‘student voice’ but by “empowering students to drive and implement change.” And “this will involve redistributing power across our HE communities up to and including HE Academic Board through engaging students in all stages of the decision making process.” My question to you is how do you intend to constitute this form of democracy. You say that you will embed it “throughout all aspects of the HE learning experience” but what constitutional form will that take and how will you hold each other to account? These are not questions unique to your own stated objectives, but are being asked all the time by people who desire democracy in their work as they do in their politics.

The question I am interested in then, is what steps might we take to reconstitute and transform our institutions into member-run, democratically controlled co-operatives? Institutions that enable us to reflect deeply on the conditions of present day knowledge production and truly put Student as Producer into practice?”