Illuminating Golden Threads

Pedagogical creativity can function as a vehicle to facilitate connection, restore humanity, and nurture critical hope in the classroom and beyond. Pedagogical creativity is essential and urgent as the confluence of the pandemic, civil unrest, and online learning have created dehumanized, unprecedented learning conditions. This chapter details an undergraduate general education course that leveraged contemporary young adult literature for cultural reformation and to promote social justice. This chapter provides examples of students enacting creativity and social imagination and concludes with a discussion of creativity in connection to this chapter's guiding questions.

Conversations on Citizenship, Critical Hope, and Climate Change: An Interview with Bronwyn Hayward

Bronwyn Hayward is a professor of political science at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Bronwyn’s scholarship focuses on the intersections of youth, sustainability, and climate change. She is director of the University of Canterbury Hei Puāwaitanga Sustainable Citizenship and Civic Imagination research group and co-principal investigator for the University of Surrey’s Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). She is lead author on two reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Her most recent publication is Children, Citizenship, and Environment #SchoolStrikeEdition. In this interview, Bronwyn and Sara discuss the complexities of educating for uncertain futures, specifically around climate change. We explore Bronwyn’s work with the IPCC, the Children and Youth Sustainable Lifestyles in Cities (CYCLES) project, and her foundational scholarship on ecological citizenship. This interview took place via Zoom in September 2020, in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand.

On critical hope and the anthropos of non-anthropocentric discourses. Some thoughts on archaeology in the Anthropocene

In this essay I scrutinize the non-anthropocentric discourses used by the social sciences and humanities narratives and critiques of the Anthropocene. Although not always predominant within the academic Anthropocene debate, such discursive strands remain politically and ethically inspiring and influential in that debate and for the public discourse concerning the epoch. I stress that these discourses inherit the hope for human progress that characterizes critical theory of the Frankfurt school, i.e. ‘critical hope’, a type of hope that renders the non-anthropocentric discourses self-contradictory. Even when they manage to escape the hold of critical hope, these discourses, I argue, suffer from ethical and political failings due to their inherent lack of focus on human–human relations and largely ahistorical nature. I conclude the essay by advocating an Anthropocene archaeology that remains critical of and learns from the ethical and political shortcomings of non-anthropocentric perspectives and making a related call for a slow archaeology of the Anthropocene.

Gifted Programming Identification Procedures: A Hidden Curriculum

<p>Monocultural notions of intelligence are crippling the field of gifted education and often, whether explicitly or implicitly, perpetuate inequity and disproportionality in both theory and practice, especially regarding <i>how</i> children are identified as gifted (Cross, 2021; Owens et al., 2018). This paper briefly examines the history of the conceptualization of giftedness and posits that gifted programming identification procedures represent a unique and dangerous hidden curriculum. Drawing from theory on critical hope and positionality, two tables are presented; one to examine hokey versus critical gifted programing practices, and one to examine dehumanizing versus humanizing gifted identification procedures. These tables are intended to generate discussion on what happens when new ways of conceptualizing giftedness meet old ways of understanding, informing, and ordering the field of gifted education. </p> @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}

Gifted Programming Identification Procedures: A Hidden Curriculum

<p>Monocultural notions of intelligence are crippling the field of gifted education and often, whether explicitly or implicitly, perpetuate inequity and disproportionality in both theory and practice, especially regarding <i>how</i> children are identified as gifted (Cross, 2021; Owens et al., 2018). This paper briefly examines the history of the conceptualization of giftedness and posits that gifted programming identification procedures represent a unique and dangerous hidden curriculum. Drawing from theory on critical hope and positionality, two tables are presented; one to examine hokey versus critical gifted programing practices, and one to examine dehumanizing versus humanizing gifted identification procedures. These tables are intended to generate discussion on what happens when new ways of conceptualizing giftedness meet old ways of understanding, informing, and ordering the field of gifted education. </p> @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;}

Children’s Literature in Critical Contexts of Displacement: Exploring the Value of Hope

The article builds upon work carried out through a Children’s Literature in Critical Contexts of Displacement (CLCCD) network funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council–Global Challenges Research Fund. The network brought together academics as well as government and non-governmental organisations with expertise in children’s literature, migration, and education who were actively working in Egypt and Mexico. They collaboratively designed workshops that examined the use of children’s literature as a cultural tool for post-crisis interventions that could contribute to creating a safe space for children and their families to reimagine and restore their self and group identities. This article begins by unravelling the concept of hope, arguing for a critical understanding of hope for transformative use within contexts of flux. Using a critical content analysis approach, five picturebooks used by Egyptian and Mexican mediators were analysed in order to develop an understanding of how critical hope developed within the texts. The emerging themes have been expanded into a set of guiding questions that will enable mediators and educators to use children’s literature in contexts of displacement or precarity.

On Critical Hope and ‘Anthropos’ of the Non-Anthropocentric Discourses: Some Thoughts on Archaeology in the Anthropocene

In this essay I scrutinise the non-anthropocentric discourses of the Anthropocene with the ultimate aim of starting a discussion about their use in archaeology. Specifically, I stress that these discourses inherit the hope for human progress that characterises Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, i.e. ‘critical hope’. This is a type of hope that renders the non-anthropocentric discourses of the Anthropocene self-contradictory. Even when they manage to escape the hold of critical hope, such discourses, I argue, still suffer from ethical failings due to their inherent lack of focus on human-human relations and largely ahistorical nature. I conclude the essay by advocating an Anthropocene archaeology not dominated by non-anthropocentric discourses and making a related call for a slow archaeology of the Anthropocene.