Pedagogies of Kindness and Respect

P. L. Thomas is an associate professor of education at Furman University. The National Council of Teachers of English recognized his blogging with the 2013 George Orwell Award, and he is currently a column editor for English Journal. Follow his work on Twitter (@plthomasEdD) and at The Becoming Radical (http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/).

• Contents: P. L. Thomas/Paul R. Carr/Julie Gorlewski/Brad J. Porfilio: «God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.» - Theoretical Framework – Rachel K. Brickner: Public Education and the Ethics of Care: Toward a Politics of Kindness? – Michael Burger: Are We Educating Our Children Within a Culture of Care? – Sharon M. Chubbuck/Brandon Buck: No Excuses for «No Excuses»: Counternarratives and Student Agency – Lee-Anne Gray: Empathic Education for a Compassionate Nation: A Pedagogy of Kindness and Respect for Healing Educational Trauma – Jiacheng Li/Mei Ni: Renewing the Confucian Tradition: Kindness and Respect in Children’s Everyday Schooling – Maria K. McKenna: «When I explain it, you’ll understand»: Children’s Voices on Educational Care – Angela C. Passero/Carrie L. Gentner/Vonzell Agosto: Prekindergarten Policy and Politics: Discursive (Inter)play on Readying the Ideal Learner – Chiara D’Amore/Denise Mitten: Nurtured Nature: The Connection Between Care for The Experience of Caring – Laura J. Dull/Diana B. Turk: No More Disrespect: Teaching All Students to Question Right and Wrong in History – Candice C. Carter: Peace Education About the Lives of Children – A. Scott Henderson: Acknowledging and Validating LGBT Identities: Toward a Pedagogy of Compassion – Ursula A. Kelly: Reclaiming Kindness, Courage, and Compassionate Justice in Difficult Educational Times – Cammie Kim Lin: A Critical Pedagogy of Care and Respect: What Queer Literacy Pedagogy Can Teach Us About Education for Freedom – Michalinos Zembylas/Robert Hattam/Maija Lanas: Toward Pedagogies of «Senseless Kindness» in Critical Education.

«In a bloodless policy world in which kindergarten students are being forced into college and career readiness, this volume on care as a fundamental aspect of educational practice is most welcome. I hope that this book gains a wide readership of concerned educators who believe that teaching and learning are, at their heart, built around relationships that lead to trust and support. My thanks to the editors and contributors for bringing this timely set of papers to our profession, in hopes that kids get the nurturing support that they need to become caring members of the communities that they enter in life.»(Peter Smagorinsky, Distinguished Research Professor of English Education, Department of Language and Literacy Education, The University of Georgia) «It can be easy to forget, both in education systems built on capitalistic notions of competition and conformity, and in communities of clenched-fisted critical educators, that compassion and kindness are, themselves, inherently revolutionary. I experienced Pedagogies of Kindness and Respect as a sort of tonic of counter-hegemony. The authors – scholars, educators, activists – offered me a theory-grounded hope against neoliberalism’s soul-crushing hold on public education. But equally important, they offered me a transformative vision for educational justice that is rooted in a solidarity that only can be built on critical humanism. I emerged deeply informed and spiritually nourished.»(Paul C. Gorski, Associate Professor, New Century College)