Repair tables, broken vacuum cleaners and posters: Weaving new worlds together in response to breakdowns

When people decide to gather and repair broken devices together, it seems obvious that repairers and visitors gain all kinds of instrumental competences (e.g. repair knowledge, skills, and attitudes) and that they can also experience deeply a transformative learning process about, for example, the need to keep planetary boundaries within the sustainable limits of life. In this article we approach the educational dimension of repair cafés differently and sketch the outlines of a minor public pedagogy. We analyze repair cafés as situated and entangled assemblages of both human and non-human actors; assemblages that are always very local and that need to be analyzed as specific, designated places—and times—where something is at stake. The central focus of this article is on substantiating this notion of a minor public pedagogy by offering a detailed analysis of the particular pedagogic moments that emerge in these encounters between humans and things. The navigational capacity of this public pedagogy is minor in nature as it doesn’t create clear signposts of where to go as humans. Instead, it engenders many moments of and propels humans into a sensory sensitivity for inhabiting the world in the here-and-now.

Museum education and sustainable development: A public pedagogy

The question of how sustainability can be incorporated into all areas of society encourages museums to rethink their approaches to society and education. In this article, we argue that museums have the potential to become key public pedagogies for sustainable development and thereby play a crucial role in encouraging participation in sustainability issues. Due to the complexity of sustainability issues, and the potential disturbances of and difficult experiences resulting from exhibitions displaying them, we suggest that a theoretical framing for the teaching and learning of sustainability issues in museums is necessary. Thus, we argue that in relation to exhibitions displaying sustainability issues, museum education would benefit from a didactical framework in which the relation between teaching, learning, content and situation is taken into account. We also argue that a theoretical framework explaining the relation between exhibition, visitor and educational situation could inform pedagogical discussions about how to incorporate sustainability education into museums. Therefore, we suggest a transactional conceptualization of museum pedagogy for sustainability museum education based on John Dewey’s educational and aesthetic philosophy and Louise Rosenblatt’s theory of reading and writing as a potential approach to the teaching and learning of sustainability issues in museum education.

History and the Future of the Hybrid Party Politics in Neoliberal Age: A Case of Pakistan

The causes of rising populism and collapse of the left-right ideological paradigms termed “death of ideology” is important development on election canvas. This trend in recent decades has been described as hybrid party politics. The neo-liberal discourse in hybrid regime shape party politics with free market values, issues of inequality, denial of social justice, and crises of freedom are rampant. Consequently, hybrid party politics perpetuate systemic deprivation and chronic punishment to marginalized sections. The fast penetration of neoliberal and populist elements quickly fused into multi-layered public pedagogy. The common political discourse propounds for quick solutions to seek legitimacy with expanding corporate power constantly. The socioeconomic inequalities consequence of expanding neo-liberal values in all spheres like education and electoral practices have recently started crucially influencing urban socio-political environment that shape populist narratives in electoral arena. Neoliberal-populists leadership promote free market policies that push forward neoliberal populist rhetoric across political parties of different shades. The combination of neo-liberalism and populism thrives on subjects who perceive it solution to their problems. Thus, fast penetrating market-centric subjectivities consider alternative subjectivities outside perimeters of social dignity therefore political inclusiveness becomes subject to connection with power. The educative public pedagogy has been at the base of rising populism unfolding hybrid party politics

Feminists against Fascism: The Indian Female Muslim Protest in India

This article explores contestations around ideas of India, citizenship, and nation from the perspective of Indian Muslim female university students in Delhi. In December 2019, the Hindu majoritarian government introduced new citizenship legislation. It caused widespread distress over its adverse implications for Muslims and a large section of socio-economically deprived populations. In response, millions of people, mainly from Dalit, Adivasi, and Bahujan backgrounds, took to the streets to protest. Unprecedentedly, young Muslim female students and women emerged at the forefront of the significant public debate. This situation disrupted the mainstream perception of oppressed Muslim women lacking public voice and agency. Drawing on the narratives of the Indian Muslim female students who participated in these protests, this article highlights their conceptions of, and negotiations with, the idea of India. In doing so, this article reflects on the significance of critical feminist protest as a form of “public pedagogy” for citizenship education as a powerful antidote to a supremacist, hypermasculine, and vigilante idea of India.

Public pedagogy and leadership in sports organisations: Futebol dá força for sustainability?

Sport is a key educational and leadership arena for societal change and today’s sustainability challenges. Sports organisations have the potential to provide, initiate and create processes, situations and spaces for learning, socialisation and meaning making that go beyond traditional schooling and lead community change and capacity building towards sustainable development. This article is located in the research fields of public pedagogy and the intersection of leadership and sport for development, and contributes knowledge about how sports organisations’ public pedagogical practices and leadership support community change towards sustainability. The study is confined to soccer and the non-governmental sports organisation Futebol dá força (Football gives strength). The approach of public pedagogical leadership is developed and used to analyse and reflect on the function of sports organisations’ pedagogical leadership in community change and capacity building towards sustainability.

Historical thinking and family historians: Renovating the house of history

Family history research, as a multi-billion-dollar industry, is one of the most popular pastimes in the world with millions of enthusiasts worldwide. Anecdotally regarded by some in the academy as being non-traditional, family historians are changing the historiographic landscape through the proliferation and dissemination of their familial narratives across multiple media platforms. Learning to master the necessary research methodologies to undertake historical work is a pedagogic practice, but for many family historians this occurs on the fringe of formal education settings in an act of public pedagogy. As large producers of the past, there have been many important studies into the research practices of family historians, where family historians have been shown to draw upon the research methodologies of professional historians. Paradoxically, little attention has been paid to how these large producers of historical knowledge think historically. This paper reports on interview findings from a recent Australian study into the historical thinking of family historians. Drawing on Peter Seixas’ (2011) historical thinking concepts as a heuristic lens, this research finds that some family historians, despite being largely untrained in historical research methodologies (Shaw, 2018), display the theoretical nuances of the history discipline in (re)constructing and disseminating their familial pasts.

Rethinking environmental justice: capability building, public knowledge and the struggle against traffic-related air pollution

For more than a decade, a broad social movement has organised significant opposition to the expansion of the Antwerp ring road. By linking the very mobile, intangible and unplaceable problem of traffic-related air pollution to the highly local, concrete, immobile issue of the highway, they succeeded in creating the largest mobilization against air pollution ever in Belgium. A distributive justice discourse which portrayed Antwerp residents as being unfairly affected has played a crucial role in this endeavour. At the same time, the movement has struggled to involve and represent those who will be most affected by the ring road extension. Low income and ethnic minority residents living close to the ring road are strikingly absent from the movements’ ranks and tend to be silenced in its discourse. In this paper, we scrutinise this disparity between the social composition of the most affected areas and the social composition of the movement dealing with the issue, and reflect on the movement’s practices of knowledge production and dissemination from an environmental justice perspective. We highlight the need for expanding environmental justice beyond a merely distributive approach and argue that environmental justice movements need to see knowledge dissemination and public pedagogy as more than just a mobilizing strategy. Without pursuing equity in the distribution of networks, capabilities and knowledge, enhancing the possibilities of those who are most affected to develop their own strategies, environmental justice is difficult to realize.

Advancing book clubs as non-formal learning to facilitate critical public pedagogy in organizations

Book clubs are a well-known form of social engagement and are beneficial for those who take part, yet book clubs are not fully realized within management as a site for learning. This is unfortunate because book clubs that read fiction can foster social processes and help employees in search of more critical and emancipatory forms of learning. We theoretically synthesize the literature to advance current thinking with regard to book clubs as critical public pedagogy in organizations. We begin by introducing book clubs as non-formal adult learning. Then, book clubs that employ fiction as a cultural artifact are presented as a way for members to build relationships, learn together, and to engage in cultural change work. Next, the traditional notions of book clubs are made pedagogically complex through the lens of critical public pedagogy. Finally, we offer two implications: (1) as public pedagogy, book clubs can act as an alternative to traditional learning structures in organizations; and (2) book clubs, when valued as public pedagogy, can be fostered by those in management learning and HRD for consciousness raising and challenging existing mental models in their organizations.