Artifact #2 Reflection 1

ARTIFACT #2: C&I 6123 - Critical Perspectives in Curriculum and Instruction - Spring 2019 -

Critical Book Study and Critique of Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of

Freedom by bell hooks Reflection

Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching (ILT) Goals expressed within the

Artifact by the following ILT Core Values referenced:

Ethical - A heightened sense of morality and personal virtue is necessary by common

practice in all alliances, domains, and collaborations centered within any study or

community (bell hooks)

Transformative - Within a study, allows for analytical perception and engagement to

develop in the field under assessment by critical analysis, (re)design, implementation and

practice for trouble resolution and enduring systemic changes all can benefit from (Paulo

Freire)

Artifact Context

The purpose of Artifact 2, a Critical Book Study from the Critical Perspectives in

Curriculum and Instruction course in Spring 2019 is a critique on the distinguished educator,

feminist, and academic bell hooks’ commended work - Teaching to Transgress: Education as

the Practice of Freedom - where a book analysis was completed with two of my classmates. In

composing the book study, a dialogic journal was annotated each week where each chapter was

read, assessed, and written in a formal journal for content relevance, critique, and group

dialogue, which would also lead to weekly discussions in class. Pertaining to this artifact and its

evaluation, I chose to use the academic and educational researchers Paulo Freire - for

transformative values - and bell hooks - for ethical values, to critically review and assess the

topic of the artifact, which is a curriculum and instruction course book study reflection on the
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uncovering of liberating theory as an all-inclusive act of emancipation, by critical dialogue, for

all culturally diverse classroom learners.

Researcher Paul Freire in his academic writing, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, discusses

how societal transformation is an all-encompassing liberty-gain from life-halting oppressors,

which can restrain the humanity of those prejudged and marginalized. Also, researcher bell

hooks in her academic writing, Teaching to Transgress…, considers how critical thinking and

discussion that meanders through restrictive places can create transformative progressions for all

diverse students and members of the community to prosper from. I will attempt to use these

academic researchers’ writings to explain my artifact’s approach and purpose.

The Developmental and Learning Gains Achieved by the Artifact

Ethical Values

Purposefully, I have learned from the current artifact that the interchange between

classroom learners and facilitators that is devoid of thought-inducing dialogue and educational

criticality, fails to generate meaningful interrogation and analysis for all-around change

discovery in learners, which would outwardly be meaningless towards a student’s overall

transformation discovery, as the authors here allude to. Also, as the authors provide reference to,

I understand more so how a focused cultural responsiveness in learning places is pivotal towards

building and sustaining socio-cultural recognition and resilience for diverse learners that is

socially favorable and lasting to all. Overall, I feel all students, affluent or impoverished in all

communities, should have an unquestionable societal and human right at gaining a just education

that will provide them a social justice consciousness and equitable contribution to the democratic

process.

Transformative Values

More so, the above-mentioned authors clarify how classroom debate and discourse

through deliberate contest and practice, can lead to perspective changes, which could eventually

develop into transformative social action for the betterment of all in every community. Through
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the completed artifact and the related readings, I have acquired great awareness on how this

routine discourse in spaces and locations can embrace socially assembled interrelations in

communities and oppose divisive purposes subjugators directly utilize to suppress the hopes and

dreams of the marginalized, as the authors just mentioned propose. Eventually, the need to

emphasize social interests and shared contributions in educational settings becomes socially and

culturally relevant, not just for the liveliness of social advancement, but for unyielding

transformation to occur that will cut across all subjecting social deterrents, again, as the authors

here advocate.

Future Outlook and Value of the Artifact in Career Aspirations

By grasping how critical dialogue is vital towards empowering self and those with whom

one engages and collaborates, inside and outside of classrooms, as an employee in a training

environment, although I am not an educator, I understand how interactive engagement with

learners and colleagues can potentially reveal work discrepancies and lead to operational changes

for the better. One day, I hope to earn a job promotion into a curriculum developer position in

the training area I work and the educational gains I have acquired through a number of academic

readings such as those created by bell hooks has provided me great insight into writing training

plans with a more critical and analytical mind-set. And I will someday, as I hope to retire from

my current work location with lesson planning and training management experience, enter into

the teaching profession with an evaluative and critical perspective that will add to my own

developing self-efficacy and to the socio-cultural empowerment of the learners in the classroom I

will also learn and engage with, as well.

Conclusion

As I learned in completing the artifact here and through the attached readings, all people

being embraced within our communities apparently begins, again, with inquisition and

assessment of the societal relationships, conditions, and associating social disorders

marginalizing and castigating those set up for bias and marginalization, almost secretly by
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hidden educational agendas, as the just-mentioned authors make reference to. Here, too, I have

learned how the current artifact and associating values by my chosen academic authors spotlight

how the critical need for intellectual dialogue between teachers and students, once more, takes

into urgent context the historical and structural aspects of societal oppression and the

marginalizing forces, which becomes a counter-device for social deterrents, as the authors here

profess. Additionally, from this artifact, I have gained more comprehension on how to recognize

and debate the pathway of these socially deterrent-driven devices, which can become

educationally prompted and perpetuate these community-debilitating social constructs of

discrimination and intolerance that must be transformed for social salvation, as the authors

presented here offer. Overall, I have gained a high working knowledge on the counter-processes

of analyzing social deterrents by critical dialogue that gives cause to critically debate and contest

the harmful social constructs and their inducers, again as stated above, that can purpose societal

transformation, promise, and social justice for an all-embracing democratic process.

References

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress education as the practice of freedom: Education as the

practice of freedom (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203700280

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York, NY:

Continuum. (Original work published 1970)