“Students’ resistance to things they deem too abstract and theoretical is not merely a reaction to theories that seem too elitist or overly complex. Rather, I have found that such resistances often represent a fear of having to engage in the arduous and often painful process of self-transformation. Utopias are inconvenient because they necessitate deep-seated changes in ourselves and in the ways in which we live our lives. The irony here is that such “theoretical” utopias require labor.” ~(Leela Fernandes, 2003, p. 19)

• Valuing Mental Sphere
• Question of “soul” or “holistic” human being
• What is knowledge?
• Does social reality affect the way we receive, create and disseminate knowledge?
• What does “need” look like? Whose need?
• Historical materialism
• Modernity
• Perspectives on resistances
• Assimilation: Good or Bad?
• Critical Pedagogy — Science & Math — Student Development
• Can we creation a classroom free of hegemony?
• What is border pedagogy?
• Pedagogy — what is it?

REFLEXIVE PAPER: WEEK THREE

HGED 615C: Reflexive Paper

Week Three

Iowa State University

January 31, 2008

Summarization

• Relational power is a dynamic interactional construct between people.

• Understanding how power is distributed is key to being successful within the realm of education.

• People are categorized to create a hierarchal social system.

• Categories or classifications of people are accomplished, created by a process, or socially constructed within intricate power relations.

• Over time, the power relation interactions become systemized between race, gender, class and abilities.

• The academe is able to protect them from the accountability for what occurs in their environment in and out of the higher education setting. Because of the power relations, it is not always possible to hold each other accountable for their actions.

• How the Western world academe chooses to go about the dialogue is what determines the power relations and dialogues within the educational context without considering the multiple viewpoints.

• Ignoring one voice at the table ignores all of the education available to us as a society.

• We do not necessarily treat all perspectives equally – legitimacy must be granted in order for it to a valid perspective.

• Students construct their knowledge by reconditioning reason to the worlds of their personal experience.

Reflection

In respect to the readings, I recognize that I am a product of the Western educational system. Growing up, we were not necessarily taught about all of the intricacies within the cultures of the United States. We were not privy to the global perspectives being considered as part of the academe today. Instead, it was a consistent privileged message that was taught via the banking method of education.

I only knew my way of thinking, what my family, church and education instructed me to know as a person. I did not understand that there was anything but those perspectives of the elders around me. This was until a professor in undergraduate college has us stand on our chairs and look at the way in which we were learning differently than any other course. The professor gave us permission to experiment with the way we would interpret and learn from the material he shared with us, and the information we gathered from our individual resources. The professor never said we were not valid with our way of thinking about the projects or problems. Instead, he let us learn from the entire experience.

I recognized at an early age, my parents taught me what was right and wrong in their eyes. They did not allow me to learn from my experiences. My father was very much like the character Archie Bunker – only his opinion was valid in regards to people. It was not out of the ordinary for him to expound about the people who lived in one neighborhood, or my friends who were “different” then me. I was told to not date anyone outside of my religion as race at a very young age. You should know – I did not necessarily keep those tenets as my own personal values as I grew older.

What concerns me as an educator is how do I ensure, I do not engage in the same behavior? How do I make sure that I will make a difference in what I do? How will I make sure I keep my eyes open to all of the different view of the world – and recognize although I do not believe in one perspective – does not mean it is not valid – how do I do that?

Lexicon

• Constructivism, “as a single entity; in reality, it has become fairly commonplace in discussions of constructivism to distinguish between what are often taken to be two fundamentally distinct competing types of constructivism” (Regan, 2000, pp. 7).
  
• “Ethnocentrism, refers to the tendency to view one’s own cultural group as superior to others a tendency common to most, if not all human societies” (Regan, 2000, pp. 3-4).
• Colonization, “occurs whenever any one or more species populates a new area. The term, which is derived from the Latin colere, “to inhabit, cultivate, frequent, practice, tend, guard, respect,”^[1] originally related to humans. However, 19th century biogeographers dominated the term to describe the activities of birds or bacteria, or plant species.^[2] Human colonisation is a narrower category than the related concept of colonialism, because whereas colonisation refers to the establishment of settler colonies, trading posts, and plantations with your own population, colonisalism deals with this and the ruling of existing overseas peoples”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization).
• Discourse, “is communication that goes back and forth (from the Latin, discursus, “running to and from”), such as debate or argument. The term is used in semantics and discourse analysis. In semantics, discourses are linguistic units composed of several sentences — in other words, conversations, arguments or speeches. Plato was famous for believing that any problem could be solved by rational and logical discourse” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse).
• Essentialism, “essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must have. This view is contrasted with non-essentialism which states that for any given kind of entity there are no specific traits which entities of that kind must have” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism).
• Ethnomethodology ” (literally, ‘the study of a people’s (folk) methods’) is a sociological discipline which examines the ways in which people make sense of their world, display this understanding to others, and produce the mutually shared social order in which they live. The term was initially coined by Harold Garfinkel in the 1960s. Ethnomethodology is distinct from traditional sociology, and does not seek to compete with it, or provide remedies for any of its practices” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnomethodology).
• Immutable, “: not capable of or susceptible to change” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Immutable).
• Modernism, “Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was ‘holding back’ progress, and replacing it with new, progressive and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end. In essence, the modernist movement argued that the new realities of the industrial and mechanized age were permanent and imminent, and that people should adapt their world view to accept that the new equaled the good, the true and the beautiful”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism).
• Othering, “constitutive other (also referred to as othering) is a key concept in continental philosophy, opposed to the Same. It refers, or attempts to refer to, that which is ‘other’ than the concept being considered. The term often means a person other than oneself, and is often capitalised. The Other is singled out as different” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othering).
• Phenotypical, “The phenotype is composed of traits or characteristics ^[3]. Some phenotypes are controlled entirely by the individual’s genes. Others are controlled by genes but are significantly affected by extragenetic or environmental factors. Almost all humans inherit the capacity to speak and understand language, but which language they learn is entirely an environmental matter” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenotypical).
• Reifies, to regard (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reifies).

References

Ng, R. (2003). Toward an integrative approach to equity in education. In P. Trifonas (Ed.), Pedagogies of difference: Rethinking education for social change(pp. 206-213). New York: Routledge Falmer.

Rains, F. (1999). Indigenous knowledge, historical amnesia and intellectual authority: Deconstructing hegemony and the social and political implications of the curricular “other.” In L.M. Semali & Kincheloe (Eds.), What is indigenous knowledge? Voices from the academy (pp. 317-331). New York: Falmer Press.

Regan, T. (200). An introduction to the study of non-western educational traditions: A philosophical starting point. In Non-western educational traditions: Aphilosophical starting point (pp. 1-23). Mahwah, N.J: Lawerence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Tuhiwai-Smith, L. (1999).Colonizing knowledges. In Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (pp. 58-77). London: Zed Books.

References

Erevelles, N. (2000). Educating unruly bodies: Critical pedagogy, disability studies, and the politics of schooling. Educating Theory, 50(1), 25-47.

Freire P. (2003). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. Bergman Ramos, Trans., pp. 71-86). New York: Continuum. (Originally published in 1970).

Grande, S.M. (2004). Mapping the terrain of struggle: From genocide, colonization, and resistance to red power and red pedagogy. In Red pedagogy: Native American social and political thought (pp. 11-30). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Haddad, S. (2003). The world social forum as a place for learning. Covergence 36 (3-4), 47-63.

Luhmann, S. (1998). Queering/querying pedagogy? Or, Pedagogy is a pretty queer thing. In W.F. Pinae (Ed.), Queer theory in education (pp. 141-155). Mahwah, NJ.

McLaren, P. (1989). Critical pedagogy: A look at the major concepts. In Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education (pp. 166-191). New York: Longman.

Omolade, B. (1987). A Black feminist pedagogy. Women’s Studies Quarterly 15, 32-39.

Dear Dr. Osei-Kofi and Dr. Shahjahan,

I would like to propose the utilization of this blog as the way in which I may submit my “HGED 615C Reflexive Papers” for class each week. Freire (2003) stated,

“In problem-posing education people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation” (p. 84).

This blog will provide me a way to exist to you both as faculty members. It will give the opportunity for comments through these online interactions, direct links to references and specific information. I will learn from the course experience, rather than just about it by transitioning the information into an online dialogue (Luhmann, 1998, p. 60). Needless to say, it will also be a way in which to save paper and help the environment on a local level.

If you would allow me to utilize this format, I will start this week posting the blog prior to class on Thursday, January 24, 2008.

Thank you for taking this under consideration.

Laura Bestler-Wilcox

References
Freire P. (2003). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. Bergman Ramos, Trans., pp. 71-86). New York: Continuum. (Originally published in 1970).

Luhmann, S. (1998). Queering/querying pedagogy? Or, Pedagogy is a pretty queer thing. In W.F. Pinae (Ed.), Queer theory in education (pp. 141-155). Mahwah, NJ.

• Page 1: Summarize your understanding of the readings in bullet form. What are the key points/arguments being made by the authors as a group (while you can highlight individual perspectives, your focus should be on the inter-textual reading of the materials)?
• Page 2: In paragraph form reflect how the issues raised by the authors presently impact you or have impacted you in the past. Also reflect on how these issues might impact you in the future as a social justice advocate.
• Page 3: Create a lexicon of new terms. Outline what you did not understand in the readings as well as what questions you have on the readings.

Who Am I?
Who Decides?
How Do I Resist?
Who has Power?
Who has Agency?
Who has Voice?
Who is Listening?
Whose knowing is Knowledge?
What Does History Teach Us?
What is Dissent?

Okay, so this is my first official post. It has been a pretty long few weeks. I only wish that I would know what is happening with my job soon… I also get the opportunity to re-edit my paper for one of my Ph.D. classes. I am lucky that I have that chance. It should prove to be an interesting few weeks.