Blundering for a Change: Errors Expectations in Critical Pedagogy

By William H. Thelin

What can teachers learn from classrooms that erupt into violence, recalcitrant students who thwart course goals, and service-learning projects that lead to more logistical nightmares than democratic breakthroughs? Incidents like these are bound to happen when English teachers attempt to change the status quo. Blundering for a Change examines the pedagogical, institutional, and cultural implications of these and other blunders, revealing how much they can tell us about the limits and possibilities of progressive teaching. The articles in this volume foreground moments of discord as lessons themselves - moments of discord brought on by politically charged topics, student-centered instruction, attempts to tie curricula to community service, and the various fears and intentions students and teachers can bring to their classrooms. Contributors to this book use their blunders to help themselves and readers reflect critically on their democratic aims and understand better how the contexts in which they teach curtail or facilitate those aims. By examining the disruptions, failures, and resistance they have experienced in their own classrooms, these authors reconfigure blundering as a valuable component of critical pedagogy. For them, blundering not only marks their attempts to try something new, it also allows them to recognize the network of forces that work for and against their struggle for a culture of democratic authority.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0867095660
• ISBN13: 9780867095661
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Heinemann
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.4" x 6.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary