Citation

Schroeter S. Stud. Soc. Justice 2019; 13(1): 142-158.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier B.V., Publisher Brock University, Social Justice Research Institute)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper asks what pedagogies are needed as Canadians are invited to reconcile colonial pasts with contemporary forms of racism and enduring colonial structures. Sharing discourses of race from youth who participated in a year-long ethnography, and moments from a drama-based pedagogical collaboration, this paper suggests ways of updating multiliteracies frameworks so as to better account for the networks of power that circulate in classrooms. This project had the dual aims of exploring discourses of difference used by students, as well as drama as a multimodal, embodied, and (post)critical pedagogy for unpacking differences embedded in the Grade 9 social studies curriculum. Drawing on feminist pedagogies, critical race studies, and Indigenous critiques of education, the author argues that embodiment and subjectivity are central to teaching and learning, and illustrates through excerpts from interviews and fieldnotes, how race, intersectionality, and White supremacy influence interactions in the classroom. The paper concludes by proposing that multiliteracies and multimodal pedagogies would benefit from centralizing anti-racist and decolonizing approaches to learning, in addition to the networks in which literacy practices occur and through which meaning is made.

Language: en

Keywords

decolonization; drama; multiliteracies; race; social studies