Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What is the “Achievement Gap”? What do you know about its causes? Besides achievement scores, what other indicators are there that American education disenfranchises students from marginalized groups?

Teaching Suggestion: Many students will know the term “Achievement Gap,” but they may be hazy on its real causes. If you are having students discuss this question aloud, you may wish to be prepared with accurate information to correct any misunderstandings, especially those that evidence biased attitudes about marginalized groups. You may also wish to consider how the demographics of and typical interactions among your students may influence whose voices are heard, particularly during discussion of the final question in this prompt. This final question might be one that is best answered in writing or after exposure to the resources below or others like them.

• This article from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education discusses the origins of the Achievement Gap.
• This 4-minute video from the news program Matter of Fact offers information on discipline bias.
• This 5-minute video from PBS Wisconsin Education discusses the prevention of bullying of LGBTQ+ students.

2. What do you know about bell hooks and engaged pedagogy? If you are unfamiliar with both hooks and this pedagogy, what does the term “engaged pedagogy” suggest to you?

Teaching Suggestion: Students studying education topics may have varying knowledge of hooks and her work on educational issues. If you suspect that many students have limited knowledge on this topic, you may wish to have students answer this question in writing before any discussion takes place, as the few students with prior background knowledge will tend to dominate the discussion and eliminate the usefulness of the schema-activating question about the possible meanings of the term “engaged pedagogy.” After preliminary attempts at answering this question, the following resources may be useful to students:

• This elegiac essay for hooks written after her death is by filmmaker Dream Hampton.
• This brief definition of engaged pedagogy is from the book Integrating Social Justice Education in Teacher Preparation Programs, published by IGI Global.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the book.

What formal educational experiences have you had that strike you as evidence of engaged pedagogy? What made these experiences “engaged” pedagogy? If none come to mind, how do you think your experience of school might have been different in classrooms where engaged pedagogy was employed?

Teaching Suggestion: This prompt is structured so that students are free to draw from any educational experiences, from kindergarten onward. If you choose to have students discuss this question aloud, it may interest them to consider whether there is any correlation between the age of students and the degree to which the practices used to teach them can be considered “engaged.” Before students discuss or write about this prompt, you may wish to draw their attention to the qualifier “formal” so that they do not initially get sidetracked into discussions of informal educational experiences. A follow-up discussion to this prompt, however, might include talking about the pedagogical practices commonly found in informal educational settings and the connection between these practices and the feelings and success rates generated by informal educational experiences.