Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identity

by Alexander, Bryant Keith; Anderson, Gary L.; Gallegos, Bernardo

• ISBN13: 9780805848205
• ISBN10: 0805848207
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 10/26/2004
• Publisher: Lawrence Erlbau

Summary

Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identitybreaks new ground by presenting a range of approaches to understanding the role, function, impact, and presence of performance in education. It is a definitive contribution to a beginning dialogue on how performance, as a theoretical and pragmatic lens, can be used to view the processes, procedures, and politics of education. The conceptual framework of the volume is the editors' argument that performance and performativity help to locate and describe repetitive actions plotted within grids of power relationships and social norms that comprise the context of education and schooling. The book brings together performance studies and education researchers, teachers, and scholars to investigate such topics as: *the relationship between performance and performativity in pedagogical practice; *the nature and impact of performing identities in varying contexts; *cultural and community configurations that fall under the umbrella of teaching, education, and schooling; and *the hot button issues of educational policies and reform as performances. With the aim of developing a clearer understanding of the effect, affect, and role of performance in education, the volume provides a crucial starting point for discourse among theorists and teacher practitioners who are interested in understanding and acknowledging the politics of performance and the practices of performative social identities that always and already intervene in the educational endeavor.

Author Biography

Bryant Keith Alexander is Associate Professor of Performance and Pedagogical Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. His work focuses on issue of identity construction and negotiation in the nexus of race, sex, and gender, as well as how these issues effect pedagogical interactions in the classroom.
Gary L Anderson is a Professor in the Department of Administrative Leadership and Technology at New York University. His research interests include school administration, school reform, action research, and critical ethnography.
Bernardo Gallegos is a Professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests include educational history; cultural, postcolonial, and subaltern studies; and Native American and Latina/o history and politics.

Table of Contents

Contributors	ix
Acknowledgments	xiii
Foreword	xv
Peter McLaren
Introduction: Performance in Education	1	(14)
Bryant K. Alexander
Gary L. Anderson
Bernardo P. Gallegos
PART I: PERFORMANCE AND PERFORMATIVITY IN PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICE
Teaching Is Performance: Reconceptualizing a Problematic Metaphor	15	(26)
Elyse Lamm Pineau
Critically Analyzing Pedagogical Interactions as Performance	41	(22)
Bryant K. Alexander
Exposing the Pedagogical Body: Protocols and Tactics	63	(20)
Judith Hamera
Bodily Excess and the Desire for Absence: Whiteness and the Making of (Raced) Educational Subjectivities	83	(24)
John T. Warren
PART II: PERFORMANCE, POWER, AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY
Performing School in the Shadow of Imperialism: A Hybrid (Coyote) Interpretation	107	(20)
Bernardo P. Gallegos
When Public Performances Go Awry: Reading the Dynamics of Diversity Through Power, Pedagogy, and Protest on Campus	127	(22)
Denise Taliaferro Baszile
Constructing Gay Performances: Regulating Gay Youth in a ``Gay Friendly'' High School	149	(24)
Glenda Aleman
``Playing the Game'' Versus ``Selling Out'': Chicanas and Chicanos Relationship to Whitestream Schools	173	(26)
Luis Urrieta, Jr.
PART III: POLICY, RITUAL, AND TEXTUAL PERFORMANCES
Performing School Reform in the Age of the Political Spectacle	199	(22)
Gary L. Anderson
Performance Theory and Critical Ethnography: Studying Chicano and Mesquaki Youth	221	(18)
Douglas E. Foley
Scientists as Scriptwriters: A Study of Educational Researchers' Influence on Educational Decision Making	239	(24)
Robert Donmoyer
Author Index	263	(6)
Subject Index	269