Forgotten memories of a social justice education: Difficult knowledge and the impossibilities of school and research

Abstract

This paper is about memory, the elusive process of remembering and of an encounter between a researcher and a participant who after five years reunited to remember. The object under study is a high school social justice curriculum with a central focus on the development of social action projects. Grounded in Pitt and Britzman's work on difficult knowledge, this paper asks: What do 10th grade students who spent four years attending a school committed to the Freirian principles of political engagement remember about their high school experience? Past and recent interviews are woven together to surface three emergent lines of thinking: the failure to secure knowledge as unitary and in agreement; education as deferred in time; and research as relational dilemmas and unconscious desire. The aim is to complicate teaching and learning by illuminating its difficulties and unseating our reliance on evidentiary accountability, production and outcome. Throughout, the positionality of the researcher is discussed, particularly as unconscious desire for social justice, as lovely knowledge, becomes transferred through one participant, Sadie.Although Sadie 1 was 15 years younger than me, she had always been taller, and in the last five years, it seemed little had changed. Her hair was cut just as it was in high school, straightened right below the ear and she was wearing a smear of blue eye-shadow and pink lip-gloss. I was relieved and slightly surprised at the ease in which we encountered each other, the immediate familiarity of her laughter, the way we embraced. It was like old friends, now of the same generation. Fourteenth Street was abuzz, and the New York City traffic muffled my attempts to fill the spaces with pleasantries. In a brisk turn, we rounded the corner and she took the lead. I followed in step until we both realized I was the one who knew the directions. Sadie had always been a natural born leader. When the waitress took our order, she decided almost immediately on the fusilli pasta with chicken. I wavered back and forth and settled on something completely random and unlike me. She always knew what she wanted; in my mind, Sadie had always been resolute.

Islamic Scientific Critical Consciousness as a theoretical framework for Muslim science educators

“…So, can the habit of ISCC be inculcated? One does not know what truly transpires in the pedagogical moment between the teacher and the student (Kumashiro, 2000;Sonu, 2016). Nevertheless, one can speak in terms of likelihood.…”

“Why Do We Need to Know About This?”: U.S. Imperialism, Persepolis, and Knowledge Production on Iran in the Classroom

“…Britzman has written about the concept of difficult knowledge in several places, but the most pertinent elaboration of the idea emerges from her work on the psychic and affective difficulties of teaching and learning around social and historical trauma, notably in relation to the teaching of The Diary of Anne Frank and Holocaust education (Britzman, 2000). Britzman’s work has also found resonance in a range of other areas of inquiry, including curriculum studies, language, and literature (Sonu, 2016; Tarc, 2011; Zembylas, 2014).…”

Analysis of the Subjects and Reasons of Curriculum Studies

“…Toplumsal etmenler teması kapsamında, sosyal adaleti konu edinen araştırmalardan birinde Sonu (2016) aynı kent okulundan mezun olan kişilerin sosyal adalete yönelik deneyimlerini ortaya çıkarmak amacıyla, bu deneyimlerin sosyal adalet ve sosyal projelerin gelişimine etkisini incelemiştir. Bray, Kobakhidze, Zhang ve Liu (2018), Kamboçya'da gölge eğitimin okuldaki aynı öğretmen, aynı öğrencilerle süregeldiğine ve sosyal eşitsizliklerin yaşandığına dikkat çekerek programın arz ve talep dengelerini ortaya çıkarmayı amaçlamıştır.…”