An Unquiet Pedagogy: Transforming Practice in the English Classroom

An Unquiet Pedagogy argues for a new approach to teaching English in the high school and college classroom, one that reconceives the relationship of literacy and the learner. The title is taken from an essay by Paulo Freire in his book with Donaldo Macedo entitled Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. Like Freire, the authors believe that pedagogy must be critical -- that it must examine the assumptions that teachers and students bring to any educational enterprise, that it must take into account the contexts of learners' lives, and that it must question, rather than quietly accept, existing practices.

Voices of beginning and experienced teachers are heard often in the book, exploring how such an unquiet pedagogy might come to be. The authors examine the experiences of these teachers, as well as their own, showing how the classroom can become a place of inquiry for both teachers and students and how theory and research that provide an integrated perspective on language, literacy, and culture must inform teaching practice. Their aim is to transform the English classroom into a place where the imagination becomes central and where learners construct knowledge in the development of real literacy.