[URBANTH-L]AAA 07 Panel on Global Pedagogies

[Susanne Cohen]

Call for papers:

Form, Content, and the Promise of Method:  Intersections of Global
Pedagogies and Historical Change 
Proposed panel for the AAA Annual Meeting, Nov 28-Dec 2, 2007, Washington,
DC

Many different types of educators, from corporate trainers to religious
leaders to secondary school teachers, draw upon globally circulating ideals
about self and society in their efforts to create new types of subjectivity
and social relations.  In such contexts, teaching methods often become a
focal point of ideological claims and contestations, as social actors make
links between the "form" of teaching practices and their "content,'
investing certain practices with a particular power to transform society and
social life.  Yet in situations of significant historical change, such
connections between form and content can be particularly unpredictable. This
panel seeks to explore and question such links between form and content of
teaching practices in conditions of globalization, paying particular
attention to questions of historical continuity and disjuncture.  What role
do considerations of teaching methodology play in projects to create
subjectivities that reflect various global ideals-whether these are
connected to religious movements, ethnic diasporas, or neoliberal models of
independent action?  What types of claims do social actors of all types,
whether international aid agencies or parents engaged in informal teaching
practices, make about the form and content of particular educational
techniques, such as role plays, games, study circles, experiential learning,
use of electronic media and the internet, and particular forms of testing
and evaluation, and how is this related to their own positionality in larger
historical and global milieus?  How, more generally might we conceptualize
the relationship between pedagogical form and content in global contexts:
Do certain types of instruction inevitably produce certain types of
personhood and social relations, and what types of intended and unintended
consequences can follow from a particular methodological choice?  How do
longer-standing traditions in teaching and learning interact with newer
approaches, and what do the forms that ensue tell us about the relationship
between form and content in situations of historical change?  What moral and
social anxieties are expressed in debates about proper forms of education
and training, and how are these shaped by local and international relations
of inequality and authority?

The two organizers of this panel engage these questions in the context of
post-socialist Russia.  One of us works on workplace training programs aimed
to instill market-oriented communication skills, the other on legacies of
atheist public pedagogy in post-Soviet religious groups. Ideally, papers on
this panel will reflect a range of geographic regions and examine diverse
educational settings, from the corporate world to schools, families,
international aid agencies, and religious organizations.

If interested in participating, please send an abstract (250 words) to
Susanne Cohen (smcohen at umich.edu) and  Sonja Luehrmann (sluehrma at umich.edu)
by February 28.