Teaching to Transgress
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Objectives
Community Guidelines
Who is bell hooks?
Activity: What is engaged pedagogy?
Applying a Sociological Lens
What does engaged pedagogy look like?
What does it Mean to Be a Critical Educator?
Evaluation
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• The students will…
• Apply concepts of engaged pedagogy and multicultural education to
their own experiences.
• Engage in self-reflection of their educational journey and its influences on
their role as educators/learners.
• Understand education from a critical sociological perspective.
• The instructor will…
• Gain an understanding of the course material through dialogue, shared
narratives, and shared power.
• of shared power and recognize individual student voices.
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Use “I” statements
1 diva, 1 mic (one voice at a time)
Assume good intent
Use inclusive language
“don’t yuck my yum”
Confidentiality
Meet them where ‘they are’
Mutual respect
Step up, Step back
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Context of my personal educational experience with bell hooks
Black feminist critic of "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy“
A writer, a feminist theorist, and a cultural critic
Known as one of the most accessible academics in feminist
writing
• Her pseudonym, her great-grandmother's name, celebrates
female legacies and is in lower case because "it is the substance
of my books, not who is writing them, that is important."
• “Feminist movement created a revolution when it demanded
respect for women’s academic work, recognition of that work
past and present, and an end to gender biases in curriculum
and pedagogy.”
• Feminism is for Everyone: Passionate Politics, 2000
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• Why is it necessary to talk about race?
• It is inherent within traditional models of education that teachers
have power…The question is how will you use it?
• How does our own processes of self-awareness and selfreflection influence engaged pedagogy?
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• Video: cultural criticism and transformation pt 2
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ-XVTzBMvQ
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• Revealed features of college society that are similar to mental hospitals
• Total institution- self-contained societies that are designed to service all the
needs of the people residing within their boundaries
• All aspects of life conducted in same place under the same authority
• Authority figures have tremendous power within the institution's confines
• Total institutions are also largely self-contained and are designed so day-today interaction can occur independent of outside society
• A consequence of building structures into college society, students are
structurally discouraged from interacting with people outside of its confines
• Strongly imposed division of power lends to superiority and ability to
structure encounters
• How is the classroom a total institution?
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video: cultural criticism and transformation pt 1
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQUuHFKP-9s
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• Denigrates notions of wholeness and upholds idea of
mind/body split
• Encourages students and teachers to see no connection between
life practices, habits of being, and the roles of professors
• Reinforces existing systems of domination
• Positions learning as a rote assembly-line based on coercion
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• Education reinforces systems of domination. What are other
systems of domination?
• How is the college a “total institution”? How will you use the
power assigned as an educator to facilitate critical dialogue
and learning environments?
• What role will self-actualization and reflection play in your
institutional pedagogy?
• How will you facilitate unlearning as a platform for holistic and
critical learning?
• How will you integrate shared narratives and shared voices in
your classroom?
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• “Building common ground” or creation of collective guidelines to
build community
• Teaching gender using itunes
• Article: http://www.sociologysource.com/home/2010/9/12/teaching-gender-withitunes.html
• Teaching hegemony
• Article in handout: http://www.sociologysource.com/home/2010/9/27/teachinghegemony.html
• Adjust your rubric to reflect emphasis on participation to
encourage student voices
• Using autho ethnography to teach multiculturalism
• See handout
• http://naha1.edublogs.org/2008/03/07/auto-ethnography-anempowering-methodology-for-educators/
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• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaTQ5g8Prog&feature=related
• “I entered the classroom with the conviction that it was crucial for me
and every other student to be an active participant, not a passive
consumer...education as the practice of freedom.... education that
connects the will to know with the will to become. Learning is a place
where paradise can be created.”
• hooks
• Sites for critical education
• Feminist classrooms
• Childrens’ literature
• Colleges and universities?
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• An email will be sent out with a short
online evaluation form
(or you can follow the link below)
• https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadshe
et/viewform?formkey=dGNVTHJzeFZScXQ
5WlNoS2liTnU3MGc6MQ
Thank you 
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