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"Arts of the Contact Zone" (pdf)

Article
Pratt, Mary Louise
1991
Modern Language Association; Profession, (1991), pp. 33-40
Topics: Philosophy of Teaching

Additional Info:
In "Arts of the Contact Zone, Pratt describes a manuscript from 1613 penned by Andean man named Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. The manuscript was a letter written to King Phillip III of Spain and was titled The First New Chronicle and Good Government. The manuscript details Spanish conquest in South America. Pratt cites the manuscript as an example of autoethnography. She writes, “Guaman Poma’s New Chronicle is an instance ...
Additional Info:
In "Arts of the Contact Zone, Pratt describes a manuscript from 1613 penned by Andean man named Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. The manuscript was a letter written to King Phillip III of Spain and was titled The First New Chronicle and Good Government. The manuscript details Spanish conquest in South America. Pratt cites the manuscript as an example of autoethnography. She writes, “Guaman Poma’s New Chronicle is an instance of what I have proposed to call an authethnographic text, by which I mean a text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them”. The New Chronicle ends with a revisionist account of the Spanish conquest. Pratt uses the manuscript as an example of an oppressed person or group resisting hegemony, and she connects the practice of authoethnography, critique and resistance to the creation of contact zones.
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"Fighting Imperviousness with Vulnerability: Teaching in a Climate of Conservatism" (pdf)

Article
Weekes Schroer, Jeanine
2007
Teachingn Philosophy, Vol. 30, No. 2, June 2007
Topics: Critical Pedagogies   |   Teaching Diversity and Justice

Additional Info:
This essay explores challenges that arise for professors who teach critical theory in our current climate of conservatism. Specifically, it is argued that the conservative commitments to non-revolutionary change and reverence for tradition are corrupted in our current political and intellectual climate. This corruption, called "ideological imperviousness," undermines the institutional structures put in place to produce a functional educational environment that imposes an unjust vulnerability on professors and risks depriving ...
Additional Info:
This essay explores challenges that arise for professors who teach critical theory in our current climate of conservatism. Specifically, it is argued that the conservative commitments to non-revolutionary change and reverence for tradition are corrupted in our current political and intellectual climate. This corruption, called "ideological imperviousness," undermines the institutional structures put in place to produce a functional educational environment that imposes an unjust vulnerability on professors and risks depriving students of the opportunity to acquire the critical skills necessary to combat their own vulnerabilities.
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"Listening to Students: How to Make Written Assessment Feedback Useful"

Article
Rae, Agnes M.; Cockrane, David K.
2008
Active Learning in Higher Education 3, Vol. 9 (3): 217-230
Topics: Assessing Students

Additional Info:
Written assessment feedback has not been widely researched despite higher education students continually expressing the need for meaningful and constructive feedback. This qualitative study employing focus groups captures and interprets the student perspective of written assessment feedback. Participants were Registered Nurses and non-traditional entrants to higher education. The findings generated a framework of themes and categories representing the feedback process experienced by the students. The themes were ‘learning from’,‘the ...
Additional Info:
Written assessment feedback has not been widely researched despite higher education students continually expressing the need for meaningful and constructive feedback. This qualitative study employing focus groups captures and interprets the student perspective of written assessment feedback. Participants were Registered Nurses and non-traditional entrants to higher education. The findings generated a framework of themes and categories representing the feedback process experienced by the students. The themes were ‘learning from’,‘the process of receiving’ and ‘making sense of’ feedback.When this framework incorporates strategies such as ‘feed-forward’, selfmanaged learning and personalized guidance it then represents a heuristic model of effective written assessment feedback. The model, created as a result of the research, should enhance the student experience and aid understanding of the complex processes associated with providing written assessment feedback.
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"Other People's Problems: Student Distancing, Epistemic Responsibility, and Injustice"

Article
Whitt, Matt S.
2015
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, June 2015
Topics: Teaching Diversity and Justice

Additional Info:
In classes that examine entrenched injustices like sexism or racism, studentssometimes use ‘‘distancing strategies’’ to dissociate themselves from the injustice being studied. Education researchers argue that distancing is a mechanism through which students, especially students of apparent privilege, deny their complicity in systemic injustice. While I am sympathetic to this analysis, I argue that there is much at stake in student distancing that the current literature fails to recognize. On ...
Additional Info:
In classes that examine entrenched injustices like sexism or racism, studentssometimes use ‘‘distancing strategies’’ to dissociate themselves from the injustice being studied. Education researchers argue that distancing is a mechanism through which students, especially students of apparent privilege, deny their complicity in systemic injustice. While I am sympathetic to this analysis, I argue that there is much at stake in student distancing that the current literature fails to recognize. On my view, distancing perpetuates socially sanctioned forms of ignorance and unknowing, through which students misrecognize not only their complicity in injustice, but also the ways that injustice shapes the world, their lives, and their knowledge. Thus, distancing is pedagogically problematic because it prevents students from understanding important social facts, and because it prevents them from engaging with perspectives, analyses, and testimonies that might beneficially challenge their settled views and epistemic habits. To substantiate this new analysis, I draw on recent work on epistemologies of ignorance, especially Jose´ Medina’s account of ‘‘active ignorance.’’ In order to respond to student distancing, I argue, it is not sufficient for teachers to make students aware of injustice, or of their potential complicity in it. Beyond this, teachers should cultivate epistemic virtue in the classroom and encourage students to take responsibility for better ways of knowing. The article ends by outlining several classroom practices for beginning this work. Keywords Pedagogy Distancing Epistemology of ignorance Active ignorance
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An Unlikely Triumph

Web
Dresser, Sam
Aeon Newsletter
Topics: Academic Histories and Contexts

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In its first century the American higher-education system was a messy, disorganised joke. How did it rise to world dominance?
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In its first century the American higher-education system was a messy, disorganised joke. How did it rise to world dominance?
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