Contested Spaces of Teaching and Learning examines the educational experiences of adults as cultural practice. These practices take place in diverse settings from formal educational contexts to institutionally interstitial realms to fluid and explicitly contested everyday spaces. This edited collection includes twelve richly rendered ethnographic case studies written from the perspective of practitioner-ethnographers who straddle the roles of educator and ethnographic researcher. Drawing on distinct theoretical framings, these contributors illuminate the ways in which adults engaged in teaching and learning participate in cultural practices that intersect with other dimensions of social life, such as work, recreation, community engagement, personal development, or political action. By juxtaposing ethnographic inquiries of formal and informal learning spaces, as well as intentional and unintended challenges to mainstream adult teaching and learning, this collection provides new understandings and critical insights into the complexities of adults’ educational experiences.

During the 1990s, Naples' left-wing administration sought to tackle the city's infamous reputation of being poor, crime-ridden, chaotic and dirty by reclaiming the city's cultural and architectural heritage. This book examines the conflicts surrounding the reimaging and reordering of the city's historic centre through detailed case studies of two piazzas and a centro sociale, focusing on a series of issues that include heritage, decorum, security, pedestrianization, tourism, immigration and new forms of urban protest. This monograph is the first in-depth study of the complex transformations of one of Europe's most fascinating and misunderstood cities. It represents a new critical approach to the questions of public space, citizenship and urban regeneration as well as a broader methodological critique of how we write about contemporary cities.

Higher education has been presented as a solution to a host of local and global problems, despite the fact that learning and assessment can also be used as mechanisms for exclusion and social control. Developing Transformative Spaces in Higher Education: Learning to Transgress demonstrates that even when knowledge may appear to be the solution, it can be partial and disempowering to all but the dominant groups. The book shows the need to contest such knowledge claims and to learn to transgress, rather than to conform. It argues that transformative spaces need to be found and that these should be about the creation of new opportunities, ways of knowing and ways of being. Working in and through spaces of transgression, the contributors to this volume develop frameworks for the possibilities of transformative spaces in learning and teaching in higher education. The book critiques the ways in which Western higher education culture determines the academic agenda in relation to dialogue on social differences, minority groups and hierarchical structures, including issues of representation among different groups in the population. It also explores the personal and political costs of transgression and outlines ways in which transitions can be transformative. The book should be of interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students engaged in the study of higher education, education studies, teacher training, social justice and transformation. It should also be essential reading for practitioners working in post-compulsory education.

"Anxieties over children's safety or teenage propensities towards violence and sex have precipitated a moral panic in a large swathe of our society. This provocative work traces the changing scientific and societal notions of what it is to be a young person, and argues that there is a need to rethink how we view childhood spaces, child development and the politics of growing up. The book challenges popular myths that evoke general notions of childhood as a natural stage in the development towards adulthood and offers alternative theories that value the embodiment and local embeddedness of young people."--Publisher's description

From constructing new buildings to describing rival-controlled areas as morally and physically dangerous, leaders in late antiquity fundamentally shaped their physical environment and thus the events that unfolded within it. Controlling Contested Places maps the city of Antioch (Antakya, Turkey) through the topographically sensitive vocabulary of cultural geography, demonstrating the critical role played by physical and rhetorical spatial contests during the tumultuous fourth century. Paying close attention to the manipulation of physical places, Christine Shepardson exposes some of the powerful forces that structured the development of religious orthodoxy and orthopraxy in the late Roman Empire. Theological claims and political support were not the only significant factors in determining which Christian communities gained authority around the Empire. Rather, Antioch’s urban and rural places, far from being an inert backdrop against which events transpired, were ever-shifting sites of, and tools for, the negotiation of power, authority, and religious identity. This book traces the ways in which leaders like John Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Libanius encouraged their audiences to modify their daily behaviors and transform their interpretation of the world (and landscape) around them. Shepardson argues that examples from Antioch were echoed around the Mediterranean world, and similar types of physical and rhetorical manipulations continue to shape the politics of identity and perceptions of religious orthodoxy to this day.

European nobility faced a number of religious, political and military challenges. Many sought to increase their status, or maintain their privileges, by negotiating with various political and religious authorities, and exploiting opportunities in this era of upheaval. In examining the protective strategies nobles adopted in an age of state-building, reformation and expansion, this collection reveals the roles of the 'second order' and their ability to survive. Scholars across disciplinary and national boundaries offer exciting new perspectives on this central social group.

Applying a critical lens to language education, this book explores the tensions that Latinx students face in relation to their identities, social and institutional settings, and other external factors. Across diverse contexts, these students confront complex debates and contestable affirmations that intersect with their lived experiences and social histories. Martinez and Train highlight the pedagogic and ethical urgency of teacher responsibility, learner agency and social justice in critically addressing the consequences, constraints, and affordances of the language education that Latinx students experience in historically-situated and institutionally defined spaces of practice, ideology and policy. Reframing language studies to take into account the roles of power, inequality, and social settings, this book provokes dialogue between areas of language education that rarely interface. Through privileging the learner experience, the book provides a window to the contested spaces across language education and generates new opportunities for engagement and action. Offering nuanced and insightful analyses, this book is ideal for scholars, language researchers, language teacher educators and graduate students in all areas of language education.

The first in-depth study of the impact of economic and political decentralization on planning practice in developing economies, this innovative volume, using original case study research by leading experts drawn from diverse fields of inquiry, from planning to urban studies, geography and economics, explores the dramatic transformation that decentralization implies in responsibilities of the local planning and governance structures. It examines a range of key issues, including: public and private finance local leadership and electoral issues planning in post-conflict societies. Offering unique insights into how planning has changed in specific countries, paying particular attention to South East Asian economies, India and South Africa, this excellent volume is an invaluable resource for researchers, graduate students and planners interested in urban planning in its international political and economic context.

Teaching Toward Democracy examines the contested space of schooling and school reform with a focus on the unique challenges and opportunities that teaching in a democratic society provides. Chapters are written in the spirit of notes, conversations and letters the nationally recognized team of authors wish they received in their journeys into teaching. Building on the conversational and accessible approach, this revised edition includes additional dialogues amongst the authors to further explore how they have individually and collectively reflected on the qualities of mind that teachers explore and work to develop as they become more effective educators. Inspiring and uplifting, Teaching Toward Democracy adds to the repertoire of skills teachers can access in their classrooms and encourages the confidence to locate themselves within the noble tradition of teaching as democratic work.

The Curriculum and Pedagogy book series is an enactment of the mission and values espoused by the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group, an international educational organization serving those who share a common faith in democracy and a commitment to public moral leadership in schools and society. Accordingly, the mission of this series is to advance scholarship that engages critical dispositions towards curriculum and instruction, educational empowerment, individual and collectivized agency, and social justice. The purpose of the series is to create and nurture democratic spaces in education, an aspect of educational thought that is frequently lacking in the extant literature, often jettisoned via efforts to de-politicize the study of education. Rather than ignore these conversations, this series offers the capacity for educational renewal and social change through scholarly research, arts-based projects, social action, academic enrichment, and community engagement. Authors will evidence their commitment to the principles of democracy, transparency, agency, multicultural inclusion, ethnic diversity, gender and sexuality equity, economic justice, and international cooperation. Furthermore, these authors will contribute to the development of deeper critical insights into the historical, political, aesthetic, cultural, and institutional subtexts and contexts of curriculum that impact educational practices. Believing that curriculum studies and the ethical conduct that is congruent with such studies must become part of the fabric of public life and classroom practices, this book series brings together prose, poetry, and visual artistry from teachers, professors, graduate students, early childhood leaders, school administrators, curriculum workers and planners, museum and agency directors, curators, artists, and various under-represented groups in projects that interrogate curriculum and pedagogical theories.