Queering Critical Literacy and Numeracy for Social Justice: Navigating the Course

by Summer Melody Pennell

Overview

This volume explores the value of using queer pedagogy in an interdisciplinary middle school classroom to promote a better understanding of social justice and the social construction of knowledge among students. In the course of the study, which combined student-centered literacy and mathematical inquiries through a social justice lens, students used critical literacy skills to research social justice topics, learned to read numerical data like traditional print text, and created and solved their own math problems. In bringing together critical mathematics and critical literacy through a queer lens, the author offers new ways of thinking that challenges norms and helps students embrace new concepts of learning for the modern era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030115845
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	02/08/2019
Series:	Queer Studies and Education
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Summer Melody Pennell is Assistant Professor of English Education at Truman State University, USA. Her research interests include teacher education, critical literacy, new literacies, queer theory and pedagogy, and young adult literature. 

Table of Contents

1. Learning in Motion: Kayaking Lessons.- 2. School, Community, and Students: The River.- 3. Math for a Cause: Preparation for the Journey.- 4. Students Moving Out of their Comfort Zones: Primary and Secondary Stability.- 5. Moments of Active Reflection: Eddies.- 6. Going Around Learning Obstacles: Portages.- 7. Moving Forward When Faced with Learning Difficulties: Rolling a Kayak.- 8. Conclusions and Implications: The Take Out.-

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Queering Critical Literacy and Numeracy for Social Justice offers a unique contribution to the fields of social justice education, teacher education, interdisciplinary teaching, ethnographic educational research, and queer pedagogy. Drawing on queer pedagogy’s practice of questioning norms and binaries, Dr. Pennell engages her students in critical reading strategies relevant to media and information literacy while highlighting the dangers of relying on or believing in singular answers. Conceptualizing mathematics as processes that are open to interpretation rather than as a field of discrete problems and solutions, Pennell fosters critical thinking in her students and readers. In this thought-provoking book Dr. Pennell weaves kayaking as a metaphor for learning throughout her analysis as well as her reflectionson her own teaching and research. (Susan Woolley, Associate Professor of Educational Studies and LGBTQ Studies, Colgate University, USA)