Lesley Bartlett

Dialogue, Knowledge, and Teacher‐Student Relations: Freirean Pedagogy in Theory and Practice

I would like to thank Frances Vavrus, Janise Hurtig, Aurolyn Luykx, Dana Burde, Carolyn Kissane, Fida Adely, Annette Hansen, the participants at the Association of Development Researchers in Denmark’s (FAU) 2003 conference on education and development, and the coeditors and anonymous reviewers of Comparative Education Review for their invaluable feedback on this article. 1 For example, ActionAid’s Reflect project represents an internationally renowned example of the implementation of Freirean-based literacy; see David Archer and S. Cottingham, Action Research Report on Reflect: The Experience of Three Pilot Projects in Uganda, Bangladesh and El Salvador (London: Overseas Development Association, 1996); Julia Betts, “Literacies and Livelihood Strategies: Experience from Usulutan, El Salvador,” International Journal of Educational Development 23, no. 3 (2003): 291–98; Caroline Dyer and A. Choksi, “The Reflect Approach to Literacy: Some Issues of Method,” Compare 28, no. 1 (1997): 75–87; Anna Robinson-Pant, Why Eat Green Cucumbers at the Time of Dying? Exploring the Link between Women’s Literacy and Development: A Nepal Perspective (Hamburg: UNESCO Institute of Education, 2001). 2 In Latin America, the term “popular” denotes the poor and working classes; popular education is rooted in a Marxist class critique. On popular education in Latin America, see Robert Arnove, Education and Revolution in Nicaragua (New York: Praeger, 1986), and “Education as Contested Terrain in Nicaragua,” Comparative Education Review 39, no. 1 (1995): 28–54; Celso de Rui Beisiegel, Estado e educacao popular (Sao Paulo: Pioneira, 1974); Carlos Rodrigues Brandao, A questao politica da educacao popular (Sao Paulo: Brasiliense, 1980); Anthony Dewees and Stephen Klees, “Social Movements and the Transformation of National Policy: Street and Working Children in Brazil,” Comparative Education Review 39, no. 1 (1995): 76–100; Osmar Favero, ed., Cultura popular, educacao popular: Memoria dos anos 60 (Rio de Janeiro: Edicoes Graal, 1983); Marcy Fink, “Women and Popular Education in Latin America,” in Women and Education in Latin America, ed. Nelly P. Stromquist (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 171–93; Marcy Fink and Robert F. Arnove, “Issues and Tensions in Popular Education in Latin America,” International Journal of Educational Development 11, no. 3 (1991): 221–30; Jose Willington Germano, Lendo e aprendendo: A campanha “de pe no chao” (Sao Paulo: Cortez Editora, 1982); John Hammond, Fighting to Learn: Popular Education and Guerrilla War in El Salvador (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998); Sheryl Hirshon, And Also Teach Them to Read (Westport, CT: L. Hill, 1983); Oscar Jara, Contributions to the History of Popular Education in Peru (Lima: Tarea, 1990); Liam Kane, Popular Education and Social Change in Latin America (London: Latin American Bureau, 2001); Thomas J. La Belle, Nonformal Education and Social Change in Latin America (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, University of California, Los Angeles, 1976); Thomas LaBelle, Nonformal Education and the Poor in Latin America and the Caribbean: Stability, Reform, or Revolution? (New York: Praeger, 1986); Robert Mackie, Literacy and Revolution: The Pedagogy of Paulo Freire (New York: Continuum, 1981); Valerie Miller, Between Struggle and Hope: The Nicaraguan Literacy Crusade (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1985); Vanilda Pereira Paiva, Educacao popular e educacao de adultos (Sao Paulo: Edicoes Loyola, 1973); Victoria Purcell-Gates and Robin Waterman, Now We Read, We See, We Speak: Portrait of Literacy Development in an Adult Freirean-Based Class (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2000); Carlos Alberto Torres, The Politics of Nonformal Education in Latin America

Comparative Pedagogies and Epistemological Diversity: Social and Materials Contexts of Teaching in Tanzania

This article examines how epistemological differences regarding knowledge production and material differences in the conditions of teaching influence teachers’ and teacher educators’ understandings of learner-centered pedagogy. Emerging from a 5-year collaboration between teams of US and Tanzanian teacher educators, the research focuses on six Tanzanian secondary schools whose teachers participated in a workshop on learner-centered pedagogy and pedagogical content knowledge. We find that teachers’ views of knowledge production are profoundly shaped by the cultural, economic, and social contexts in which they teach. We conclude not only that teachers’ working conditions are important contextual factors in comparative studies of schooling but that the conditions themselves need to be conceptualized more fully in theories of knowledge production and global/local reforms of teacher education.

A Speech Community Model of Bilingual Education: Educating Latino Newcomers in the USA

With the rapid increase in immigration from Latin America to the USA, many US high schools are struggling with the thorny question of how best to educate newcomer immigrant youth with low levels of English proficiency. This paper examines what some might consider an anachronistic educational model – a segregated bilingual high school for Latino newcomers. Drawing on a qualitative case study of an unusually successful high school in Washington Heights, New York City, the paper argues that the schools vision of second language acquisition as a social process building on the speech community itself, and not just as the individual psycholinguistic process of students, is the key to its success. The paper specifies the factors characterising this speech community model of bilingual education. This schools anomalous success educating its immigrant Spanish-speaking population holds important lessons for the schooling of immigrant youth in an era of standards.

Literacy, Speech and Shame: The Cultural Politics of Literacy and Language in Brazil.

This article examines the relationship between shame, literacy and social relations by analyzing shame narratives told to the author by youth and adult literacy students during a 24‐month ethnographic research project conducted in two Brazilian cities. Employing Bourdieu’s theoretical framework and literature from the anthropology of emotions, the article asks: What is accomplished through the micropolitics of shaming? What can it teach us about theories of literacy, language and power more broadly? The article shows how speech shaming in Brazil contributed to the cultural production of inequality by individualizing, psychologizing and embodying responsibility or blame for illiteracy. It argues that sociocultural theories of literacy, language and power need to account for the influence of emotions in communicative interactions.

Identity Work and Cultural Artefacts in Literacy Learning and Use: A Sociocultural Analysis

This paper aims to contribute a sociocultural theoretical perspective for the creative identity work involved in the ongoing process of learning and using literacies. Drawing on anthropological theories of identity formation, I argue that people employ cultural resources, such as cultural artefacts, to develop new identities and literacies. I illuminate these processes by drawing examples from interviews with adult literacy students in Brazil and current literature in sociocultural studies of literacy.

Bilingual education policy as political spectacle: educating Latino immigrant youth in New York City

Abstract To examine the ways in which high schools in New York City attend to second language acquisition is to consider everyday actions in schools, government dealings, localized policy responses, and disparate discourses on bilingualism. It is to position the circumstances of learning and teaching English in an American high school within the problems encountered and produced when multiple educational policies collide in local settings, such as individual schools. It is also to consider, and then interrogate, the ‘political spectacle’ in which educational actors associated with schools – teachers, counselors, parents, students, community members, activists, and administrators – become dramaturgically cast into political-policy roles as they enact federal, state, and district policies with regard not only to issues of language acquisition and bilingualism but also to increased accountability, mandated high-stakes testing, and other sanctions-driven approaches. Drawing on qualitative research conducted between September 2003 and May 2008, this article situates Gregorio Luperón High School, a successful bilingual school for Latino newcomers, within a web of politics and policies, grounded in the history of bilingual education in New York City. It reveals how this school, caught within a political-policy matrix of centralized federal authority under No Child Left Behind and decentralized accountability under the Citys Children First reforms, continues to emphasize second language acquisition as the ongoing work of building a bilingual speech community, even in the face of educational policies that increasingly narrow assessment of language acquisition and intensify the overall evaluation of academic achievement.

Critical Transnational Curriculum for Immigrant and Refugee Students.

ABSTRACT This article explores the curricular approaches of three public high schools in the US that serve newly arrived immigrant and refugee youth, in order to define and illustrate a critical transnational curriculum. Drawing from qualitative research over the past 10 years at the different school sites, the authors posit four tenets of a critical transnational curriculum with examples of specific school practices: (1) using diversity as a learning opportunity; (2) engaging translanguaging; (3) promoting civic engagement as curriculum; and (4) cultivating multidirectional aspirations. A curriculum that responds to students’ needs and realities as migrants, workers, and students offers not only cultural and socio-political relevance, but also recognizes the transnational lives and trajectories of immigrant and refugee youth.

Introduction Knowing, Comparatively

The field of Comparative and International Education (CIE) has long had an uneasy relationship with one of its central concepts: comparison. Scholars would likely agree that a study involving more than two countries is comparative, but what about multisited case studies in a single country? While such studies of education in Angola or Lebanon would qualify as international by North Atlantic standards, are they also comparative? Some would argue they are not. For example, in his presidential address to the Comparative and International Education Society, Carnoy (2006) asserted, “[A]lthough individual country case studies can be implicitly comparative, the best comparative research compares similar interventions, outcomes, processes, and issues across countries and uses similar methodology and data collection” (554). In contrast, others argue that qualitative research in international education entails inherent comparison because the norms from one’s own country cannot help but influence how another system is understood (see, e.g., Gingrich 2002). Further, some scholars have critiqued the ways in which rigid conceptualizations of comparison have regulated the production and uses of educational knowledge. For example, responding to Carnoy’s statement earlier, Levin (2006, 576) wrote, Comparative studies must not be a straitjacket for describing, explaining, and evaluating educational phenomena in different settings. Diversity cannot be extruded into similar methods, measures, and comparative interpretations. Does using PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] data really help us understand much about educational development in Chiapas in the south of Mexico with its rural, impoverished, largely indigenous population and Nuevo Leon in the north with its urban, relatively prosperous, industrial population and U.S. orientation? Should we restrict comparative analysis to the limited dimensions dictated by government, NGO, and multinationals with their own narrow agendas and interests?1

Teaching in tension: International pedagogies, national policies, and teachers' practices in Tanzania

In recent years, international efforts to improve educational quality in sub-Saharan Africa have focused on promoting learner-centered pedagogy. However, it has not fl ourished for cultural, economic, and political reasons that often go unrecognized by development organizations and policymakers. This edited volume draws on a long-term collaboration between African and American educational researchers in addressing critical questions regarding how teachers in one African country—Tanzania—conceptualize learner-centered pedagogy and struggle to implement it under challenging material conditions. One chapter considers how international support for learner-centered pedagogy has infl uenced national policies. Subsequent chapters utilize qualitative data from classroom observations, interviews, and focus group discussions across six Tanzanian secondary schools to examine how such policies shape local practices of professional development, inclusion, gender, and classroom discourse. In addition, the volume presents an analysis of the benefi ts and challenges of international research between Tanzanian and U.S. scholars, illuminating the complexity of collaboration as it simultaneously presents the outcome of joint research on teachers’ beliefs and practices. The chapters conclude with questions for discussion that can be used in courses on international development, social policy, and teacher education.

South-South Migration and Education: The Case of People of Haitian Descent Born in the Dominican Republic.

The world is witnessing an era of unprecedented human mobility and much of this movement entails migration between countries in the global south. This article contributes to the development of an important new line of inquiry within the field of comparative and international education: South-South migration and education. In the first section, I review the available literature to sketch the outlines of this phenomenon. I then examine a particular case: schooling for youth of Haitian descent born and living in the Dominican Republic. The qualitative data reveals two important findings: first, despite claims to the contrary, some immigrant children are still being denied access to basic education; second, once enrolled in school, children and youth of Haitian descent, and especially darker-skinned boys, are subject to intense verbal abuse and, in some cases, physical abuse. As I discuss in the conclusion, the case of Haitians in the Dominican Republic raises significant questions regarding south-south migration and education that merit further and, when possible, comparative scrutiny.