Culture, Curriculum and Education

0 publications

Ecological Pedagogy, Curriculum and Scholarship

0 publications

Critical Praxis and Curriculum Guides

The Critical Praxis and Curriculum Guides is a curriculum-based series reflective of theory creating praxis. The series targets not only undergraduate and graduate audiences, but also tenured and “experienced” teachers of all disciplines. Research suggests that teachers need to have well-designed, thematic-centered curricula and lessons at their disposal. This is accomplished when the school works as a community to meet their own needs. Community in this sense includes working collaboratively with students, parents, and local community organizations to help build the curriculum. Practically, this means that time is devoted to professional development workshops, not exam reviews or test preparation pointers, but real learning. Together with administrators, teachers form professional learning communities (PLCs) to discuss, analyze, and revise curricula and share pedagogical strategies that meet the needs of their particular school demographics. This communal approach was found to be more successful than requiring each individual teacher to create lessons on her/his own. Ideally, we would love it if each teacher could create their own authentic lessons because only s/he truly knows her/his students – and we encourage it, because it is possible! However, as educators ourselves, we understand the realities our colleagues in public schools face, especially when teaching in high needs areas. The Critical Praxis and Curriculum Guides provides relief for educators needing assistance in preparing their lessons. When possible, and in the spirit of communal practices, the series welcomes co-authored books by theorists and practitioners or solo-authored books by an expert deeply informed by the field. Because we strongly believe that theory guides our practice, each guide will blend theory and curriculum chapters creating a praxis. All, of course, in a critical pedagogical framework. Ultimately, the guides will serve as resources for teachers to use, expand upon, revise, and re-create.

13 publications

LaCuLi. Language Culture Literacy

In the LaCuLi. Language Culture Literacy series, studies in foreign language research and intercultural communication will be published, as well as studies in foreign-language didactics. Research on the processes of language acquisition and language teaching, with a special focus on language awareness, cultural awareness and learner perspectives, is central to the series. It focuses on empirical research in intercultural foreign didactics as well as on cultural aspects of the workplace. Multi-perspective, multi-language and multi-cultural comparative approaches are highlighted. Fields of application are comparative analyses of political speeches, news, ads and business communication in an international context, as well as in learner texts in multi-language and multi-cultural learning environments. In der Reihe LaCuLi. Language Culture Literacy erscheinen Studien zur Fremdsprachenlehr- und -lernforschung und Interkulturellen Kommunikation sowie zur Fremdsprachendidaktik. Im Zentrum stehen Forschungsergebnisse im Bereich von Spracherwerbs- und -vermittlungsprozessen mit den Schwerpunkten Language und Cultural Awareness und Lernerperspektivität, ebenso empirische Untersuchungen zur interkulturellen Fremdsprachendidaktik sowie zu kulturellen Aspekten des Arbeitsplatzes. Im Fokus stehen mehrperspektivisch, mehrsprachig und mehrkulturell vergleichende Herangehensweisen. Anwendungsfelder sind vergleichende Analysen von politischen Reden, Nachrichten, Werbetexten und Businesskommunikation im internationalen Kontext sowie von Lernertexten in mehrsprachigen und multikulturellen Lernumgebungen.

20 publications

Critical Studies in Democracy and Political Literacy

ISSN: 2166-5036

Why do so few people vote? What is political engagement? How does education intersect with democracy and political literacy? What can be learned from interdisciplinary studies on democracy? How do we cultivate political literacy? What is the relevance of elections in light of war, poverty, discrimination, social inequalities, etc.? What are the alternatives to the traditional electoral, representative, party-politics models that have characterized our societies? Is the mainstream media holding government to account, disseminating propaganda or fuelling the need to pacify the population? How do international systems, approaches and realities related to democracy compare, and what can we learn from others? These are some of the questions that are addressed through this book series. Seeking to fill an important gap in the literature, this book series takes on the theme of democracy in a multi-/inter-disciplinary, comprehensive, and critical way. Some books have democracy in the title but do not make it the focus, and often books that address more directly, for example, multiculturalism, media studies, or school reform may delve into the area of democracy without fully deconstructing what it is, how it functions, how people can shape and intersect with it, and how it is used (or misused) to distort power relations, which is at the base of teaching, learning and action. Thus, a broader range of materials specifically tailored to teacher-education and scholars within the education field is desirable. Similarly, the overlapping and interdisciplinary nature of the study of democracy bleeds naturally into the areas of media studies, sociology, political science, peace studies, multiculturalism, feminist studies, and cultural studies, etc., all of which have a natural and inextricable relationship to and within education.

6 publications

Complicated Conversation

ISSN: 1534-2816

Reframing the curricular challenge educators face after a decade of school deform, the books published in Peter Lang's Complicated Conversation Series testify to the ethical demands of our time, our place, our profession. What does it mean for us to teach now, in an era structured by political polarization, economic destabilization, and the prospect of climate catastrophe? Each of the books in the Complicated Conversation Series provides provocative paths, theoretical and practical, to a very different future. In this resounding series of scholarly and pedagogical interventions into the nightmare that is the present, we hear once again the sound of silence breaking, supporting us to rearticulate our pedagogical convictions in this time of terrorism, reframing curriculum as committed to the complicated conversation that is intercultural communication, self-understanding, and global justice.

93 publications

Critical Literacies and Language

4 publications

New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies

ISSN: 1523-9543

New literacies emerge and evolve apace as people from all walks of life engage with new technologies, shifting values and institutional change, and increasingly assume 'postmodern' orientations toward their everyday worlds. Despite many efforts to take account of such changes, educational institutions largely remain out of touch with the range of new ways of making and sharing meanings that increasingly mediate and shape the lives of the young people they teach and the futures they face. This series aims to explore some key dimensions of the changes occurring within social practices of literacy and the educational challenges they present, with a view to informing educational practice in helpful ways. It asks what are new literacies,how do they impact on life in schools, homes, communities, workplaces, sites of leisure, and other key settings of human cultural engagement, and what significance do new literacies have for how people learn and how they understand and construct knowledge? It aims to challenge established and 'official' ways of framing literacy, and to ask what it means for literacies to be powerful, effective, and enabling under current and foreseeable conditions. Collectively, the works in this series will help to reorient literacy debates and literacy education agendas.

120 publications