Giroux argues that challenge gives new meaning to the importance of resistance, the relevance of pedagogy, and the significance of political agency.

This text is a provocative investigation of the political, social, and economic factors underlying classroom practices, offering a unique introduction to the contemporary field of critical pedagogy.

Henry A. Giroux is one of the most respected and well-known critical education scholars, social critics, and astute observers of popular culture in the modern world. For those who follow his considerably influential work in critical pedagogy and social criticism, this first-ever collection of his classic writings, augmented by a new essay, is a must-have volume that reveals his evolution as a scholar. In it, he takes on three major considerations central to pedagogy and schooling.The first section offers Giroux's most (...) widely read theoretical critiques on the culture of positivism and technocratic rationality. He contends that by emphasizing the logic of science and rationality rather than taking a holistic worldview, these approaches fail to take account of connections among social, political, and historical forces or to consider the importance of such connections for the process of schooling.In the second section, Giroux expands the theoretical framework for conceptualizing and implementing his version of critical pedagogy. His theory of border pedagogy advocates a democratic public philosophy that embraces the notion of difference as part of a common struggle to extend the quality of public life. For Giroux, a student must function as a border-crosser, as a person moving in and out of physical, cultural, and social borders. He uses the popular medium of Hollywood film to show students how they might understand their own position as partly constructed within a dominant Eurocentric tradition and how power and authority relate to the wider society as well as to the classroom.In the last section, Giroux explores a number of contemporary traditions and issues, including modernism, postmodernism, and feminism, and discusses the matter of cultural difference in the classroom. Finally, in an essay written especially for this volume, Giroux analyzes the assault on education and teachers as public intellectuals that began in the Reagan-Bush era and continues today. (shrink)

This fascinating book explores the interface between global processes, identity formation and the production of culture. Examining ideas ranging from world systems theory to postmodernism, Jonathan Friedman investigates the relations between the global and the local, to show how cultural fragmentation and modernist homogenization are equally constitutive trends of global reality. With examples taken from a rich variety of theoretical sources, ethnographic accounts of historical eras, the analysis ranges across the cultural formations of ancient Greece, contemporary processes of Hawaiian cultural (...) identification and Congolese beauty cults. Throughout, the author examines the interdependency of world market and local cultural. (shrink)

_The State and the Politics of Knowledge_ extends the insightful arguments Michael Apple provided in _Educating_ _the "Right" Way_ in new and truly international directions. Arguing that schooling is, by definition, political, Apple and his co-authors move beyond a critical analysis to describe numerous ways of interrupting dominance and creating truly democratic and realistic alternatives to the ways markets, standards, testing, and a limited vision of religion are now being pressed into schools.

This ground breaking text explores the intersection between dominant modes of critical educational theory and the socio-political landscape of American Indian education. The proposed new Red Pedagogy is an insurgent but poetic vision for education, one that is dedicated t the principles of sovereignty, emancipation and equity - for all human beings and the rest of nature.

Books reviewed:Michael F. D. Young, The Curriculum of the Future: From the ‘New Sociology of Education’ to a Critical Theory of LearningHarry Torrance and John Pryor, Investigating Formative Assessment: Teaching, Learning and Assessment in the ClassroomDorothy Faulkner, Karen Littlejohn and Martin Woodhead (eds), Learning Relationships in the ClassroomCathie Holden and Nick Clough (eds), Children as Citizens: Education for ParticipationJo Boaler, Experiencing School Mathematics: Teaching Style, Sex and SettingMarie Larochelle, Nadine Bednarz and Jim Garrison (eds), Constructivism and EducationChris Gaine and Ros (...) George, Gender, ‘Race’ and Class in Schooling: a New IntroductionM.K Flude and S. Siemenski (eds), Education Training and the Future of Work IITony Townsend (ed), The Primary School in Changing Times: the Australian ExperienceKathleen Weiler and Sue Middleton (eds), Telling Women’s Lives: Narrative Inquiries in the History of Women’s EducationDiane Reay, Class Work: Mothers’ Involvement in Their Children’s Primary SchoolingRonald S. Laura and Matthew C. Cotton, (ed), Empathetic Education. An Ecological Perspective on School KnowledgeRobert A. Roth (ed), The Role of the University in the Preparation of TeachersFrances Christie and Ray Mission (eds), Literacy and SchoolingM. Woodhead, D. Faulkner and K. Littlejohn, Cultural Worlds of Early ChildhoodRichard Edwards, Roger Harrison and Alan Tait (eds), Telling Tales. Perspectives on Guidance and Counselling in Learning. (shrink)