Emancipatory pedagogies in a grade 11 social studies classroom

This study aimed to uncover the incorporation of transformative pedagogies into the social studies curriculum. This educational approach aims to educate students about a variety of forms of oppression based on race, gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and culture, through the use of dialogue to uncover the students' understanding and personal experience with these concepts. This study examined the impact of discussing these topics in a grade 11 class of 22 White students (of various cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds). The teacher, Kelvin, and two of his students were interviewed and his class was observed on four occasions over a 2-week period. Based on the data I collected, I argue that a range of emancipatory teaching approaches should be used in critical classroom discourse. These different approaches emphasize the importance of critical thinking, the ability to recognize and combat oppression, the understanding and respect of different cultures, and the ability to recognize the impact of gender and sexuality on the past and present. These are life skills that extend beyond the curriculum (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1988; hooks, 1994). This study fills a theory to practice gap in the research literature on transformative practice within Canadian contexts. The findings are important for several reasons. Firstly, they illustrated how the teacher's ideology and personal history affect hislher teaching and learning philosophies and approach to teaching. This has implications for the overall classroom environment, what students learn, and how teachers are trained. Secondly, this study provided a glimpse of what transformative pedagogy could look like from a pragmatic standpoint and demonstrated the complexity of using these multiple approaches in the classroom.

Entering Youthwork Through Love's Many Pathways: A Poetic Rendition

Entering Youth work Through Love's Many Pathways is a text that wanders and digresses to places where, through poetic inquiry and a Spinozist and Sufi framework, the concepts of immanence, love and becoming can be explored. This thesis is framed as a walk through which the researcher / youth worker along with the reader, traverses through five pathways that she considers necessary in cultivating a meaningful relationship with the youth: opening, strength, listening, trust and unconditional compassion. By means of engaging the “self”, this thesis approaches youth work as a field that is relational and socially interconnected. In this sense, this poetic inquiry seeks to rupture predictable patterns of behaviour. One of the ways I do this is through found poetry. Through this specific form of poetic inquiry, I bring together various voices, an assemblage – Rumi, Rilke, Whitman, Lalla, Mirabai and Song of Songs – in order to find my voice and by extension, to help the youth find their voice through a human connection that goes beyond colour, race, gender etc. In other words, my aim is to actualize the experiences of becoming youth worker while being in a field of immanence where similarities are understood and differences respected. My hope is that this project may offer an example of understanding, celebration, and engagement of our mutual differences, while still being able to relate to one another through the many pathways of love.