Call for Articles on Teaching and Social Difference for Issue #58 of Radical
Teacher: “Beyond Identity Politics”
Historically, American educational institutions have served, or attempted to
serve, as mechanisms of assimilation, blending diverse groups of students
into a united national citizenry in which social differences take a back seat
to cultural and ideological homogeneity. A variety of social movements --
the civil rights and social liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and
the “multiculturalist” movement of the 1980s and 1990s -- have challenged the
ways in which educational workers and institutions address questions of
social difference and inequality. How are today’s teachers teaching across
boundaries of social difference and teaching about issues of social
inequality and injustice? What are the institutional contexts that shape
this teaching? How are progressive educators addressing these thorny issues?
Radical Teacher invites articles that explore the possibilities and pitfalls
of teaching across boundaries of social difference. Some of the questions
this issue of Radical Teacher seeks to address include: How does teaching
students who have significantly different ethnic, racial, gender, and class
identities from ourselves (or from one another) affect the way that teachers
teach? What strategies have radical educators developed for coping with --
and perhaps taking advantage of -- these challenging teaching situations?
Other topics could include:
• What kinds of dilemmas are created and what kinds of solutions are
fashioned by gay teachers in predominately straight classrooms? By Latino/a,
African American, or Asian American teachers in predominately white
classrooms? By white teachers in primarily “minority” classrooms? By
middle-class teachers in predominately working-class institutions? How can
education bridge, rather than reinforce, social stratification?
• How do teachers address the challenges of teaching in schools with
particularly divided or segregated bodies (for example, teaching in regional
magnet schools with a mix of urban “minority” students and white, suburban
students)?
• How do teachers teach about issues of social inequality and tolerance in
settings with decidedly homogeneous student bodies?
• How are current legal and social struggles changing the contexts in which
teaching can address issues of social difference and inequality?
• How do teachers address problems of authority and/or “authenticity” when
teaching across boundaries of social difference?
• What kinds of student and/or teacher activism are addressing issues of
social inequality (on institutional or curricular levels) in schools or
college?
• How have recent changes in “special education” policies affected classroom
and school-wide social dynamics and educational possibilities?
Please send brief proposals, draft manuscripts, or correspondence by
September 1, 1999 to:
Sophie Bell/Joseph Entin, 114 Harvey Street, Cambridge, MA 02140,
joseph.entin@yale.edu or bellso@aol.com
for more information about Radical Teacher, see our website at
www.wpunj.edu/radteach
===============================================
From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
CFP@english.upenn.edu
Full Information at
http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/
or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu
===============================================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 09 2000 - 13:50:36 EST