This essay integrates the results of a formalist discourse analysis of Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed with field observations of Freire's consciousness-raising programs in Lafin America. The discourse analysis identifies some of the salient features of Freire's discursive construction of knowledge. Freire's "rehurnanizing" discourse is shown to be both a means and an end in itself; for Freire, rehumanization is revolution. The field research documents the practice of Freire's rehumanizing discourse within consciousness-raising programs in both revolutionary and prerevolutionary societies. The field observations partly confirm and partly disconfirm the results of the discourse analysis: users of Freire's discourse, it appears, sometimes "read into" Freire's text a revolutionary practice that is not really there. This suggests an important discrepancy between, on the one hand, the constraints built into a discourse and discoverable through textual analysis and, on the other hand, the reconstruction and use of that discourse within particular "interpretive communities. " CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING, ETHNOGRAPHIC C O N -TEXT, ANALYSIS OF FREIRE'S DISCOURSEThis study treats Paolo $reire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) as a "discursive event" or "founding text" (Foucault 1972:199-200) through which the discursive practices of consciousness-raising manifest themselves. To undertake a discourse analysis of a text by an educational thinker like Freire implies a reorientation of educational research in line with the new agendas in the social sciences. The social sciences have turned in recent years to problems of method, epistemology, interpretation, and discursive forms of analysis. Beginning with the discipline of history (see Foucault 1970Foucault , 1972White 1973), this "rhetorical turn" has spread to sociology (Brown 1977(Brown ,1987, economics (McCloskey 1985), organizational theory (Morgan 1985), and especially anthropology. The rhetorical turn in anthropology has already produced a substantial body of work aimed at raising anthropologists' consciousness about their own textual modes of operation
No abstract
The focus of this article on teacher education reform in Israel is on educational reform documents, which have been subjected to a discourse analysis applying methods from poetics and intellectual history. It was possible to identify specific items of the international teacher education repertoire used to legitimate a local policy. For instance, when the Latin letters "B.Ed. " are inserted in the Hebrew tex4t it legitimizes the Boger hora'a (literally "teaching graduate") degree by assimilating it to the transnational degree of "B.Ed." The analysis shows how global reform rhetoric has been used to negotiate a new construct somewhere between the "ideal model" of teacher professionalization imported from the pacesetting countries (the United States and Great Britain) and the local situation.
This study focuses on the Israeli experience of developing higher education as part of the expansion of a nation-building economic project. Educational development and the current crises are examined in the context of a particular history and a unique socioeconomic, political, and cultural experience. Nevertheless, the purpose of this research is to allow the drawing of meaningful inferences, so that researchers into other national cases might profit from the insight into the sources, both visible and less visible, for the "break in equilibrium" (Bourdieu's term) in the Israeli academy. At stake is the most characteristic feature of the old Israeli academic model, namely the conflation of the missions of teaching and research. To discover the present state of the research-teaching nexus, we examined faculty perceptions as reflected in a recent (1993) survey. This survey was part of the first Carnegie International Survey of the Academic Profession, and its international scope allowed us to undertake some comparative analyses. The Israeli case-study, as well as the analysis of the International survey, shows that devotion to research and meeting teaching obligations, collaboration on research with others, obtaining funds for research, and scholarly publication have strong disciplinary relevance in the day-today shaping of academic life in all post-industrialized countries, Israel among them. A unique small systemEvery higher education system thinks of itself as unique. One of the reasons the Israeli system can claim uniqueness is the disproportionate national and international visibility of the Israeli academic profession relative to its actual size, which can be explained by the vigor with which Israeli academics have participated in the transnational marketplace of knowledge production and dissemination.The philosopher Zvi Lam (1987) has noted that the homogenized and standardized nature of the Israeli academy results from a basic fact -its small size. There are several universities in the world which have a larger student body and faculty than those of all Israeli higher education institutions combined. Israel is not only a small country, it is also a very irregular one. Conflicts and wars, frequent migrations of populations in and out, international involvements, traditional high regard for learning, economic decline and internal political tensions make it an uncommon case. Nevertheless the purpose of this research is to allow the drawing of meaningful inferences, so that other case studies might profit from the precedent of Israeli policies and strategies. Case studies of particular countries (even somewhat anomalous countries) are crucial for anyone engaged in strategic planning and policy making. This is because the basic questions regarding the nature and consequences of educational development are less accessible to scrutiny through macro-educational analysis than they are in specific national contexts.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.