Public Pedagogies

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Discussions about curriculum and pedagogy in education have, for the most part, been limited and limiting, exploring curriculum as a written plan of study (often handed down by the state or a district) and pedagogy as the mere equivalence of teacher instruction. Using some foundational and contemporary theories in education combined with those with ideas from public pedagogy and cultural studies, the intent of this course is to broaden and complexify our understandings of curriculum and pedagogy - what they are, what they entail, where and by whom they are enacted, and, mostly, what they "do" in education when conceived in more broader terms. Using a variety of texts, both in and outside of education, we will explore how pedagogy and curriculum combine with the "public" to operate - to -educate - in "spaces"like a college campus, a theme park, a museum, a textbook, a classroom, a mall or grocery store, or through popular cultural texts such as film, advertising, social media, and/or newspapers. Going back and forth between discussions of curricular artifacts and pedagogical understandings in education proper and those public "texts" noted above, we will examine how curriculum and pedagogy operate in both formal and informal educational settings, what one may learn from the other, and, in the process, re-imagine what these terms could mean in the context of K-12 education.