5th Annual:
Critical Theories in the Twenty First Century: A Conference of Transformative Pedagogies
November 4th & 5th
Location:
700 South High St, West Chester, PA 19383
Sponsored by:
Educational Foundations
The Department of Professional and Secondary Education
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
2016 Theme:
From Critical Consciousness to Critical Engagement
| Friday, November 4 Keynote:
Michael W. Apple |
Saturday, November 5 Closing Keynote:
Ira Shor |
| Educational Realities and the Tasks of the Critical Scholar/Activist
|
Ira Shor is a Professor of Rhetoric/Composition at the City University of NY’s Graduate Center (Phd Program in English) and in the Dept. of English at the College of Staten Island (CSI).He started the new doctorate in Rhetoric/Composition at the Grad Center in 1993. There, he directs dissertations and offers seminars in literacy, writing theory, critical pedagogy, whiteness studies, the rhetorics of space and place, and working-class culture. As a member of the English faculty at CSI, Professor Shor teaches courses in writing, literature, and mass media as well as graduate classes for schoolteachers. His 9 published books include a 3-volume set in honor of the late Paulo Freire, the noted Brazilian educator who was his friend and mentor: Critical Literacy in Action (college language arts) and Education is Politics (Vol 1, k-12, and Vol. 2, Postsecondary Across the Curriculum). Shor’s work with Freire began in the early 1980s and lasted until Freire’s unfortunate passing in 1997. He and Freire co-authored A Pedagogy for Liberation, the first “talking” book Freire published with a collaborator. Shor also authored the widely used Empowering Education and When Students Have Power, two foundational texts in critical teaching. His Critical Teaching and Everyday Life was the first book-length treatment of Freire-based critical methods in the North American context. |
Michael W. Apple is the John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He also holds Distinguished Professor appointments at the University of London, the University of Manchester and at universities in China. A former elementary and secondary school teacher and past-president of a teachers union, he has worked with progressive educational systems, governments, universities, unions, and activist and dissident groups throughout the world to democratize educational research, policy, and practice. Professor Apple has written extensively on the politics of educational reform, on the relationship between culture and power, and on education for social justice. Among his most recent books are Knowledge, Power, and Education; Can Education Change Society?; and The Strong State and Curriculum Reform. His books and articles have won numerous awards and have been translated into many languages. Professor Apple has been selected as one of the fifty most important educational scholars in the 20th Century. His books Ideology and Curriculum and Official Knowledge were also selected as two of the most significant books on education in the 20th Century. He has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Educational Research Association, the UCLA Medal for “Outstanding Academic Achievement,” and a number of honorary doctorates by universities throughout the world. Professor Apple has worked on educational reform, lectured, and taught in a considerable number of countries throughout the world, where his material has been extremely influential in the development of more socially critical and democratic educational policies and practices.