Consciousness-Raising or Eyebrow-Raising? Reading Urban Fiction with High School Students in Freirean Cultural Circles

Autor/in	Brown, Amy
Titel	Consciousness-Raising or Eyebrow-Raising? Reading Urban Fiction with High School Students in Freirean Cultural Circles
Quelle	In: Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education, 9 (2011) 1, (12 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1946-7109
Schlagwörter	Culturally Relevant Education; Fiction; College Preparation; Discussion (Teaching Technique); Student Motivation; English Teachers; Teacher Attitudes; Teacher Student Relationship; Consciousness Raising; Graduation Rate; Critical Thinking; Ethnography; Action Research; High School Students; Urban Schools; Grade 10; African American Students; Racial Attitudes; Gender Differences; Student Attitudes; Critical Theory; Power Structure; School Choice; New York + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Fiktion; Schulische Motivation; English language lessons; Teacher; Teachers; Englischunterricht; Lehrer; Lehrerin; Lehrende; Lehrerverhalten; Teacher student relationships; Lehrer-Schüler-Beziehung; Bewusstseinsbildung; Kritisches Denken; Ethnografie; Projektforschung; High school; High schools; Student; Students; Oberschule; Schüler; Schülerin; Studentin; Urban area; Urban areas; School; Schools; Stadtregion; Stadt; Schule; African Americans; Afroamerikaner; Rassenfrage; Geschlechterkonflikt; Schülerverhalten; Kritische Theorie; Choice of school; Schulwahl
Abstract	For educational philosopher and activist Paulo Freire, cultural circles are a way to generate critical conversations among "teacher-students" and "student-teachers" and can provide the motivation for critical consciousness and political action (1970). Both teachers and students learn from one another as their democratic dialogue provides a means to name and upend social structures of privilege and oppression. As a fifth-year English teacher in New York City, in her second year of ethnographic teacher-research, the author saw the need for an activist intervention in a public, small school of choice (SSC), which she calls the College Preparatory Academy (CPA). She subsequently attempted her own version of a cultural circle. In this paper, the author outlines a theoretical framework and the methods employed in her study, along with the goals and activities of their cultural circle experience, including the challenges that they faced. Through the cultural circle experience, they aimed to develop a critical, dialogic pedagogy through discussions and activities responding to student-selected urban fiction texts. The author found that while the cultural circles garnered increased student motivation and critical engagement, participants also expressed ambivalence at critically engaging with literature and topics that were outside of school-sanctioned models of success and upward mobility. This paper will describe how these challenges arose in the cultural circle, and conclude with recommendations for teachers who want to re-write Freirean cultural circles in context. (Contains 11 endnotes.) (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education. 3700 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. e-mail: journal@gse.upenn.edu; Web site: http://urbanedjournal.org
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10