This work explores various forms of oppression that plague contemporary society. Through the analyses and reflections of theorists and social activists - including Paulo Freire himself - Politics of Liberation brings together, under a common project of human liberation, critical voices from around the globe: Mexico, Guatemala, Britain, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

In the hypercompetitive context of the new global economy, building a smart workforce is widely regarded as a key strategy for enterprises. But is this any more than another 'fast capitalist' slogan? What substance can be given to the idea? What are its associated values and practices? This book explores these issues from an international perspective in fresh and challenging ways. Key themes include:

* competence and being competent in the world of work
* experience, common-sense and expertise in workplace learning
* social practices and literacies in the workplace
*...

To understand contemporary times, we must appreciate the extent to which our lives are affected by the cultural and political struggle between "official" narratives and the counternarratives which emerge as oppositional responses. Counternarratives develops a concept of "postmodern counternarratives" as a frame for exploring the politics of media, technology and education within everyday struggles for human identities and loyalties. The authors identify two forms of counternarratives. One functions as a critique of the modernist propensity for grand...

Written by internationally acclaimed scholars on futures of critical theory, this book attempts to renew and reinvigorate critical theory by extending its range and its intellectual trajectories through strategies of inclusiveness that respect and build on parallel traditions. The authors reinterpret the work of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger in relation to central figures (Kant, Marcuse, Foucault) and themes of critical theory--the critique of modernity, theory of the self, and the question concerning technology. Key chapters address the critical significance of the work of the...

Situated at the intersection of two of the most important areas in educational research today - literacy and technology - this work draws on the potential of each while carving out important new territory. It directs scholars to the major issues, theoretical perspectives, and interdisciplinary research on new literacies.

Workplace democracy. Empowerment. Team leaders. Knowledge workers. This is the language of the new work order promoted by today's management, which promises more meaningful and satisfying work, greater respect for diversity, and more democratic distribution of knowledge.But Gee, Hull, and Lankshear find startling contradictions in this brave new workplaceescalating inequality between individuals, nations, and even continents. They show how newly created alliances between business, educators, and psychologists may point to a hidden capitalist agenda more interested in preserving the status quo...

What happens when a new social technology is imposed on the established social technology of the school? This book presents an unusual application of critical cultural analysis to a series of empirical case studies of educational uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Drawing on research conducted over a ten-year period in three different regions of the Anglo-American developed world, it examines themes arising from the struggle for the social spaces and emerging cyber spaces of schooling; the role of identity projects in educational change; and the paradoxes which arise...

Winner-2008 AESA Critics' Choice Book AwardMany educational practices are based upon ideas about what it means to be human. Thus education is conceived as the production of particular subjectivities and identities such as the rational person, the autonomous individual, or the democratic citizen. Beyond Learning asks what might happen to the ways in which we educate if we treat the question as to what it means to be human as a radically open question; a question that can only be answered by engaging in education rather than as a question that needs to be answered before we can educate. The...

Contributors to this book have illuminated the practices of literacy and learning in the lives of urban youth. Their descriptions and assessments of these practices are anchored in perspectives of New Literacy Studies. The ten studies explore a number of urban scenes in order to engage, understand, and present multiple youth identities, attitudes, activities, representations, and stories connected to a range of situated, adaptive, and voluntary uses of literacy. The authors use a variety of conceptual and methodological approaches to explicate the various skills, the distinct methods of...