14: “Phelps also embraced Ann Berthoff’s notion (taken up as well by Knoblauch and Brannon, 1984, and John Mayher, 1990) that “Writing is an act of making meaning for self and for others” (70). Related to activity theory and to cultural context, Marilyn Cooper and Michael Holtzman (1989) proposed that “Writing is a form of social action. It is part of the way in which some people live in the world. Thus, when thinking about writing, we must also think about the way that people live in the world” (xii). They reflected Brian Street’s (1984) and Harvey Graff’s (1987) arguments that all language use is socially situated, against what Street called the myth of autonomous literacy, that is, language falsely posed as independent of its social context.”
8: “Critical literacy involves questioning received knowledge and immediate experience with the goal of challenging inequality and developing an activist citizenry. The two foundational thinkers in this area are certainly Dewey and Freire, but the work of Lev Vygotsky is also central. Some contemporary critical educators have made exceptional contributions: theorists and practitioners like Elsa Auerbach, Jim Berlin, Bill Bigelow, Patricia Bizzell, Stephen Brookfield, Linda Christensen, Jim Cummins, Nan Elsasser, Marilyn Frankenstein, Henry Giroux, Patricia Irvine, Donaldo Macedo, Peter Mayo, Peter McLaren, Richard Ohmann, Bob Peterson, Arthur Powell, Roger Simon, and Nina Wallerstein; feminists like Carmen Luke, Jennifer Gore, and Kathleen Weiler; and multiculturalists like Jim Banks, Antonia Darder, Deborah Menkart, Sonia Nieto, Nancy Schniedewind, and Christine Sleeter.” ***Berthoff not mentioned here.
10: “By inviting students to develop critical thought and action on various subject matters, the teacher herself develops as a critical-democratic educator who becomes more informed of the needs, conditions, speech habits, and perceptions of the students, from which knowledge she designs activities and into which she integrates her special expertise. Besides learning in-process how to design a course for the students, the critical teacher also learns how to design the course with the students (cogovernance). A mutual learning process develops the teacher’s democratic competence in negotiating the curriculum and in sharing power. Overall, then, vis a vis the Freirean addition to the Vygotskian zone, the mutual development ethic constructs students as authorities, agents, and unofficial teachers who educate the official teacher while also getting educated by each other and by the teacher.” **Difference b/w teaching children and teaching adults is the place of co-governance.
10: “That is, on the one hand, students and teachers were not free to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, and on the other hand, the conceptual knowledge of the teacher was not denied but rather posed as a necessary element. The teacher must be expert and knowledgeable to be a responsible critical educator, Freire thought. ” **Very interesting: Montessori. What constitutes ‘expertise’? (See Berlin, too.) What constitutes ‘knowledgeability’? Montessori would say observation; paying attention. This resonates with Berlin’s “know your students” (Rhetorics, Poetics, Cultures 113).
11: “Dewey saw cooperative relations as central to democratizing education and society. To him, any social situation where people could not consult, collaborate, or negotiate was an activity of slaves rather than of a free people. Freedom and liberty are high-profile ‘god-words’ in American life, but, traditionally, teachers are trained and rewarded as unilateral authorities who transmit expert skills and official information, who not only take charge but stay in charge. At the same time, students are trained to be authority-dependent, waiting to be told what things mean and what to do, a position that encourages passive-aggressive submission and sabotage.” ***This speaks loudly to the Kilpatrick misunderstanding of ‘freedom’ in the Montessori classroom!
**Super interesting critique of critical pedagogy by Dale Jacobs, 1997 : “Beginning Where They Are…”
12: The discussion of “praxis” (theory/practice, practice/theory) is so interesting. Hello Montessori! Boy does she do it better and more interestingly than these folk. Dewey recognized this.
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