Performance Theories in Education

Bryant Keith Alexander, Gary L. Anderson, Bernardo Gallegos

• Contents: P. McLaren, Foreword. B.K. Alexander, G.L. Anderson, B.P. Gallegos, Introduction: Performance in Education. Part I: Performance and Performativity in Pedagogical Practice.E.L. Pineau, Teaching Is Performance: Reconceptualizing a Problematic Metaphor. B.K. Alexander, Critically Analyzing Pedgagogical Interactions as Performance. J. Hamera, Exposing the Pedagogical Body: Protocols and Tactics. J.T. Warren, Bodily Excess and the Desire for Absence: Whiteness and the Making of (Raced) Educational Subjectivities. Part II: Performance, Power, and the Politics of Identity.B.P. Gallegos, Performing School in the Shadow of Imperialism: A Hybrid (Coyote) Interpretation. D.T. Baszile, When Public Performances Go Awry: Reading the Dynamics of Diversity Through Power, Pedagogy, and Protest on Campus. G. Aleman, Constructing Gay Performances: Regulating Gay Youth in a "Gay-Friendly" High School. L. Urrieta, Jr., "Playing the Game" Versus "Selling Out": Chicanas and Chicanos Relationship to Whitestream Schools. Part III: Policy, Ritual, and Textual Performances.G.L. Anderson, Performing School Reform in the Age of the Political Spectacle. D.E. Foley, Performance Theory and Critical Ethnography: Studying Chicano and Mesquaki Youth. R. Donmoyer, Scientists as Scriptwriters: A Study of Educational Researchers' Influence on Educational Decision Making.

"...a welcome - and much-needed - contribution to the field of educational research, in particular, and of interdisciplinary studies in general. By offering scholars and practitioners an alternative lens through which to view their research initiatives, pedagogical practices, and personal performances, the book creates an opportunity for a radical shift in how we 'do' education."—Education Review"A splendid book, one that will be respectively essential to performance and education scholars but, more importantly, to those working their borders and to those willing to explore them. Most distinctly, unlike other work exploring the sometimes merely metaphorical blur of teaching/performing, this book pushes the policy and curricular reform implications of taking their conjunction seriously. Well-written, well-organized, and powerfully focused on truly high stakes education, this book will and should make a difference."—Della PollockUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill