Transformative pedagogies: Recognizing and responding to the elements of developmental contexts Mona M. Abo-Zena, Ph.D. Brown University IAFOR North American Conference on Education & IAFOR North American Conference on Psychology and the Behavioral Sciences 2014 Providence, Rhode Island

“Half the curriculum walks in the room with the students, in the textbooks of their lives” (Style, 1982, 2014).

Purpose? What is the purpose of education? What are the universal ends of education, and what are the specific ends? What “counts” as education?

What do you think? When and how do you think young children should be first introduced to using sharp objects, such as scissors? Why? When and how do you think young children should be first introduced to using sharp objects, such as scissors? Why?

(Rogoff, 2003)

Theoretical lens / lenses Critical lens grounded in developmental psychology socio-cultural lens and drawing from sociology and anthropology helps us to study human development and education within a community setting and broader cultural contexts. Critical lens grounded in developmental psychology socio-cultural lens and drawing from sociology and anthropology helps us to study human development and education within a community setting and broader cultural contexts. –Recognize the dynamic, complex, and differential relationships between cultural and community features and how they change over time. –Develop intervention skills and perspectives that contribute to providing quality services to a diverse population in applied settings.

Culture as the “medium of development” Individual development as situated in the settings, activities, practices, meaning systems, artifacts that constitute the “medium of culture ”

Development as related to culture Individual Development Social address SES, Ethnicity, Region, Heritage (Varied cultural contexts And values) Individual participation (in context) Variation in developmental outcomes

Evaluation How do we measure knowledge? Learning? Achievement? How do we characterize an educated person? is the purpose of education? What educational processes do we promote to fulfill these developmental ends?

(In) Coherence: Values, practices, outcomes

Costs of education Separation from parents Separation from parents “Your parents must be proud of you…irony: I was not proud of my mother and father.” (in Suárez- Orozco & Suárez-Orozco 2001, p. 105) Marginalization from community Marginalization from community –Alienation because of isolated “success” and physical or social class separation –Feelings of cultural loss

Perpetuation of inequality Consequences of internalizing the gender lenses is that “whereas before, the individual had been nothing more than a carrier of the culture’s gender polarization, now the individual is a deeply implicated-if unwitting- collaborator in the social reproduction of male power.” (Bem, p. 139) Consequences of internalizing the gender lenses is that “whereas before, the individual had been nothing more than a carrier of the culture’s gender polarization, now the individual is a deeply implicated-if unwitting- collaborator in the social reproduction of male power.” (Bem, p. 139)