International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education
Editors: A/Prof John Lidstone, Queensland University of Technology and Prof Joseph P. Stoltman, Western Michigan University
Book Review Editor: Dr Sarah Witham Bednarz, Texas A & M University
Editorial Assistant: Donna Bennett, Australia
|
Volume: 10 Number: 2 Page: 184–188
|
|
|
|
|
Normalcy, Freakishness and Critical Pedagogy: Struggling In Here with Lessons in Whiteness
|
|
Melanie Wall
|
|
In this paper I consider some of the pedagogical implications of teaching whiteness within the classroom. I discuss the nature of whiteness as a dominant discourse and the challenges involved in enabling
students to critically engage with the material presented. I advocate a twofold approach that both challenges the naturalised ways of seeing which sustain whiteness and encourage students to place themselves
relationally in terms of whiteness. The paper also considers some of the problems I have encountered with regard to teaching whiteness such as the institutional framework which tends to subvert and domesticate
difference; and the distancing strategies used by students to avoid the critical potential of understanding whiteness. Finally I examine the importance of the embodied performance of teaching whiteness,
reflecting on my role in the classroom.
© Multilingual Matters 2001
Full text PDF
|
