Jennifer A. Sandlin

Mapping the Complexity of Public Pedagogy Scholarship 1894–2010

The term public pedagogy first appeared in 1894 and has been widely deployed as a theoretical construct in education research to focus on processes and sites of education beyond formal schooling, with a proliferation of its use by feminist and critical theorists occurring since the mid-1990s. This integrative literature review provides the first synthesis of public pedagogy research through a thematic analysis of a sample of 420 publications. Finding that the public pedagogy construct is often undertheorized and ambiguously presented in education research literature, the study identifies five primary categories of extant public pedagogy research: (a) citizenship within and beyond schools, (b) popular culture and everyday life, (c) informal institutions and public spaces, (d) dominant cultural discourses, and (e) public intellectualism and social activism. These categories provide researchers with a conceptual framework for investigating public pedagogy and for locating future scholarship. The study identifies the need for theoretical specificity in research that employs the public pedagogy construct and for empirical studies that investigate the processes of public pedagogy, particularly in terms of the learner’s perspective.

“Mixing Pop (Culture) and Politics”: Cultural Resistance, Culture Jamming, and Anti-Consumption Activism as Critical Public Pedagogy

Abstract Culture jamming, the act of resisting and re-creating commercial culture in order to transform society, is embraced by groups and individuals who seek to critique and (re)form how culture is created and enacted in our daily lives. In this article, we explore how two groups—Adbusters and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping—use culture jamming as a means of resisting consumerism. We theorize how culture jamming as practiced operates as critical public pedagogy, through the ways in which it (1) fosters participatory, resistant cultural production; (2) engages learners corporeally; (3) creates a (poetic) community politic; and (4) opens transitional spaces through détournement (a “turning around”). We propose that when viewed as critical public pedagogy, culture jamming holds potential to connect learners with one another and to connect individual lives to social issues—both in and beyond the classroom. However, we also posit that culture jamming as critical public pedagogy is not a panacea nor without problems. We also discuss how culture jamming may in fact at times hinder critical learning by imposing a rigid presence on the viewer-learner that limits creativity and transgression, and how it risks becoming co-opted by the very market forces of capitalism it opposes.

Reexamining Theories of Adult Learning and Adult Development through the Lenses of Public Pedagogy.

The authors examine the modernist underpinnings of traditional adult learning and development theories and evaluate elements of those theories through more contemporary lenses. Drawing on recent literature focused on “public pedagogy,” the authors argue that much learning takes place outside of formal educational institutions. They look beyond modernist narratives of adult development and consider the possible implications for critical adult learning occurring in and through contemporary fragmented, digital, media-saturated culture.

Netnography as a Consumer Education Research Tool

Netnography is a research methodology in use since the late 1990s in the fields of consumer behaviour and marketing, but not fully utilized by researchers in the field of consumer education. This article argues that netnography is a helpful research tool for consumer education researchers who are interested in capturing and critically examining the education and learning occurring in informal sites of consumer education, especially in online communities. This article also presents an example of recent research conducted using netnography to understand how readers of the informal consumer education lifestyle magazine Budget Living created their own interpretations of meaning from the magazine.

Literacy for what? Literacy for whom? the politics of literacy education and neocolonialism in Unesco- and World Bank sponsored literacy programs

This article explores literacy education, especially the kinds practiced and promoted by organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), as a form of neocolonialism. Although researchers in other educational contexts have examined how schooling and education operate as a form of neocolonialism, little research has been conducted exploring this connection within adult literacy education. Using postcolonial theory and Thomas and Postlethwaites framework for analyzing neocolonialism in educational systems, the authors present findings from a qualitative textual analysis of UNESCO- and World Bank—sponsored publicity and policy documents in which they examined two dimensions of literacy programs sponsored by UNESCO and the World Bank: (a) the purposes of literacy and (b) the funding of programs. Despite progressive shifts in how literacy is defined and practiced from colonialist Western control to local governance, for these shifts to continue, financial structures must be reorganized.

Deviance, Dissonance, and Détournement Culture jammers` use of emotion in consumer resistance

Because emotion plays such a large part in the creation of the hegemony of consumerist ideology, we contend that any complete understanding of consumer resistance movements must also take into account the role of emotion in fighting against consumerist ideologies and global corporate control. In this article, we theorize about the role emotion plays in consumer resistance social movements — especially those using the resistance tactic of culture jamming. Drawing upon the frameworks of emotional hegemony and emotion management, we present an emotion cycle of resistance associated with consumer resistance activism. We illustrate the cycle by using examples from culture jamming enacted by groups such as Adbusters and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping.

The Art of Creating Leaders: Popular Culture Artifacts as Pathways for Development

The problem and the solution. Leadership development is arguably one of the most important activities undertaken by human resource development (HRD) professionals.The process of leadership development has implications for each of the three primary categories of action that characterize the field of HRD: career development ; training and development; and organization development. Thus, exploring alternative and innovative approaches to understanding leadership should take a prominent role in the practice of HRD. Although not a new concept, popular culture is one such innovative approach to teaching leadership. Although there has been increasing interest in techniques of leadership development in HRD, the field of HRD has not fully explored how popular culture artifacts—such as film, television, and fiction/nonfiction books—can be used in leadership development. This article explores the literature regarding popular culture as it relates to shaping audience perceptions, the role of popular culture as a teaching tool, and key characteristics for choosing effective popular culture artifacts for leadership development.

Complicated Simplicity: Moral Identity Formation and Social Movement Learning in the Voluntary Simplicity Movement.

This article examines the learning occurring within the voluntary simplicity social movement, focusing specifically on the learning and development of identity via “moral agency” in those individuals who embrace and practice voluntary simplicity. Four key findings are discussed. First, simplifiers craft new identities in a consumption-driven world that reject societys normative subjectivities and re-create more ethical ones. Second, simplifiers develop and reinforce their moral identities through participating in particular practices of the self and self-regulation. Third, simplifiers struggle with trying to balance an ethic of nonjudgment with the very real feelings of being morally superior. Finally, simplifiers face the difficulty of managing collective group identity because of their decentralized and stratified participant base and highly individualistic moral codes. Because collective identity is so closely linked to social movement success, it holds implications for the politics of social movements and their effectiveness in bringing about social change.

Inquiry as answerability: Toward a methodology of discomfort in researching critical public pedagogies

In this article, the authors argue that inquiry into critical public pedagogies, public sites of counterhegemonic educational activity, requires that researchers’ epistemological, representational, and ethical obligations extend to examine how their practices might undermine the political possibilities of these sites, diminish the transformative potential that public pedagogies hold, and ultimately reinscribe normative, limiting notions of educational possibility. Interweaving a framework from postcolonial thought, poststructural feminist and performative methodologies, and the literary contributions of Mikhail Bakhtin, the authors posit that critical public pedagogies offer us glimpses of the pedagogical Other—forms and practices of education that exist independently of, even in opposition to, the commonsense of education. Without this careful approach to researching sites of learning outside of the known, researchers risk adopting an institutionalized, colonial gaze, applying reductive logics to or even failing completely to experience phenomena that are not easily resolved in existing cultural meanings of teaching and learning.

Culture, Consumption, and Adult Education: Refashioning Consumer Education for Adults as a Political Site Using a Cultural Studies Framework

The field of adult education exists within a context of consumer capitalism, although adult educators have failed to acknowledge how central consumption is to today’s society. Traditional consumer education has typically focused on technical skills, and thus positions itself outside the social, political, and cultural realms. In this article, the author retheorizes consumer education into a more critical enterprise using the framework of cultural studies. She argues that consumer education is a political site that creates consumers with a range of reactions to consumer culture. From this perspective, consumer education for adults is reconceived to include a variety of informal sites of learning including those focusing on curbing consumption, fighting consumer capitalism, and “jamming” corporate-sponsored consumer culture.