Course overview
This course will introduce preservice teachers to critical thinking and the impact of adopting critical perspectives in building relationship, in pedagogy, curriculum and assessment practices within secondary education contexts. Preservice teachers will develop a critical engagement with the social and political influences on education, for the purpose of developing informed social justice pedagogic approaches to teaching and learning. Preservice teachers will build depth of understanding in critical perspectives on identity and belonging in the institution of education, the ways in which diversity (class and cultural capital, gender/sexuality, inter/multi culturalism/race, religion) is in tension with systematic/institutional privilege. Preservice teachers will develop understanding and a metalanguage to know about students with diverse linguistic, cultural; religious and economic backgrounds with a focus on Indigenous knowledge and perspectives, migrant communities and Asia literacy.
Course learning outcomes
- Explain how educational processes are linked to structural power relations along axes of socio-economic, gender, racial and ethnic differences
- Recognise the influence of social, cultural, political and historical factors on educator practice
- Analyse the contested nature of the knowledge represented by curriculum and assessment choices
- Evaluate the factors that shape curriculum development and the role of stakeholders in these processes
- Examine the relationship between pedagogy and social justice and the implications this has for curriculum and assessment practices
- Articulate a position on effective and ethical curriculum and pedagogy