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International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Book | Chapter

189074

Rethinking models of collaboration in critical pedagogy

a response to stonebanks

Cory Buxton Eugene F. Provenzo

pp. 377-383

Abstract

Christopher Stonebanks raises a number of important questions about the meaning of critical thinking when it comes to teaching and teacher education and especially about the relationship between critical thinking and indigenous knowledge. Critical thinking and indigenous knowledge are both areas of concern for critical theorists, but Stonebanks raises the question of how these two areas of interest play out in teacher education – the "other hat" that many of us who are engaged in critical pedagogy as part of our scholarship wear. Stonebanks' answer to the question for his own practice is that it needs improvement. He believes that his answer may have implications for other teacher educators as well. Stonebanks makes the point that in the North American context, those of us who work in teacher education have largely settled with complacency when it comes to preparing our teachers for the culturally and linguistically diverse school settings where many of our predominantly White, middle-class, female teachers will find themselves working. We give our preservice teachers a course on multicultural education, we integrate diversity topics such as valuing students' "funds of knowledge" into our methods courses, and we look for some evidence through a project or lesson plan that our teachers have demonstrated the value of diversity in their classrooms. With those pieces in place, we hope that our graduates will go on to be culturally responsive teachers. After all, we ask ourselves, is there really more that we can do at this stage of these young people's development as teachers? As for the teachers themselves, once they have heard our "pitch" for the importance of multicultural education in several of their classes, they often begin to respond with some stock answers about teaching diverse learners that they think we want to hear, or "mechanically" as Stonebanks puts it. Stonebanks' examples of the "water lice" experiment and his exploration of education in the Malawian context challenge us to rethink our ideas about the roles of critical thinking and indigenous knowledge in teacher education.

Publication details

Published in:

Tippins Deborah J., Mueller Michael P., van Eijck Michiel, Adams Jennifer D. (2010) Cultural studies and environmentalism: the confluence of ecojustice, place-based (science) education, and indigenous knowledge systems. Dordrecht, Springer.

Pages: 377-383

DOI: 10.1007/978-90-481-3929-3_32

Full citation:

Buxton Cory, Provenzo Eugene F. (2010) „Rethinking models of collaboration in critical pedagogy: a response to stonebanks“, In: D. J. Tippins, M. P. Mueller, M. Van Eijck & J. D. Adams (eds.), Cultural studies and environmentalism, Dordrecht, Springer, 377–383.