For the past few years, I’ve been researching Activist Pedagogy as an educational approach that promotes active social change in and out of the classroom. Here is a post on how I was introduced to the idea of researching activist pedagogy and the link between my educational endeavors both as a teacher and in various roles in education, and the initiative that I’d founded here, my 2016 Dialog Together web site.
I wanted to share with you that the article about the five-level model for assimilating activist pedagogy in the classroom, that can be found here in three languages, has become extremely popular among college lecturers working in parallel fields in education. I’ve seen quite a few page visits for the article as well as citations (in Arabic, English and Hebrew) of it in the syllabi of courses on topics related to promoting democracy and active citizenship. This subject in education is key for me. Please note that when I joined the meeting with Professor Andreas Schleicher, the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ) Director for Education and Skills, I understood that the subject of promoting human rights values, social justice and socio-political change were not being discussed as clear objectives at the OECD. This post is about that interesting encounter, under the auspices of the Taub Institute for social policy studies in Israel, and especially what was missing from it…and how important it is today to promote activist education among young people.
Even currently there are important local social-political issues coming up, such as hearing the voices of the people of the Negev. An emergency Jewish-Arab meeting took place this week centered around “we the Negev” and a call for a shared future and denouncing terrorism. On a global context, for instance a march of thousands of young people concerned for the future focused on climate change and the Russian-Ukrainian war. And for this reason, activist education is so relevant and important, and it possibly also provides hope that the world can change through education.
In addition to teachers’ professional development through activist pedagogy, I have published several articles that delve deeply into the subject from different perspectives and thought you might be interested in the development of this subject in Israel, because as far as I’m concerned, the field of activist pedagogy in Israel is not yet sufficiently developed. So, I’ll write a few words on each article, and if you want you can click the links and read each article in its entirety.
Two articles were published in Hebrew by Machon Mofet, the National Institute for Research and Program Development in Teacher Education and Education, that is promoting a systematic change in Israeli education. An article was published in the institute’s academic journal, Dapim, that describes officially and for the first time Israeli women pioneers in film and media education and their affinity to activist pedagogy even before they became familiar with the term, an article on re-conceptualization including a significant contribution to the advancement of women pioneers. When issue 77 of Dapim is published, its theme will be Israeli women pioneers in education. Some articles are already online, including this one about activist pedagogy that shows how the women who pioneered film studies in Israel advanced democratic liberal values encouraging real action in their social and community spheres through film production. Attached is a picture of Dorit Ballin, a film and media studies pioneer in Israel, taken from an interview with her for the article (summer 2019).
Another article in Hebrew was published in the Mofet Institute’s newsletter – Bamat Diyun. It focuses on teaching media literacy and its compatability to activist pedagogy. The article’s purpose is to characterize media teachers’ approach to their role as social change agents. It describes research in which 235 teachers specializing in different subject areas participated, and it checks media teachers’ affinity to five aspects of activist pedagogy – knowledge, perceptions, attitudes, behavior and assimilation, compared to teachers of other subjects – humanities, social sciences, exact sciences, languages, etc.’s affinity to the familiar critical media literacy studies. The article re-establishes and offers for the first time to assimilate the term activism into the familiar term and thus create a new term: Activist Critical Media Literacy, ACML
Three articles have been published in journals and international conference proceedings in English about activist pedagogy. The first describes the five-level model, which I’ve written about previously. The second describes the need to document a practical model from assimilating activist education studies through the activist pedagogy approach. The last is a research article about developing a questionnaire that was originally created for quantitative studies, that as far as I know has not yet been implemented, teaching educators about activist pedagogy. It’s interesting because it teaches a methodical tool that can be used for other purposes. For example, you can use the tool to check out interesting questions about activist education in different subjects, like intended classroom behaviors for teaching socio-political activism, or attitudes toward activist education for promoting different liberal and progressive agendas in education and ways for implementation, and are activist values being implemented in education, and also can you see a connection between school activities, such as recess or a trip and activist education?
Let me finish with a question – how do you see activist pedagogy? Is teaching it necessary? Is the term unclear still and do you need an article discussing the term itself in order to map it out and understand it better?
Sources:
קטקו-איילי, ק. (2022), הוראת אוריינות המדיה והזיקה שלה לפדגוגיה אקטיביסטית, במת דיון 68.
קטקו-איילי, ק. (2022), ניתוח של לימודי הקולנוע והתקשורת בישראל לפי הפדגוגיה האקטיביסטית: המשָׂגה מחודשת למעשי החלוצות הלגה קלר ודורית באלין. דפים 77, 9-28.
Ketko-Ayali, K., & Bocoş, M. (2020). Practical Five-Level Model for Activist Pedagogy and Promoting Active Citizenship: Film Study in Israel as a Test Case. Educatia 21, (19), 74-83. https://doi.org/10.24193/ed21.2020.19.09
Ketko-Ayali K., & Bocoş, M. (2021). A Model to Promote Active Citizenship and Activist Pedagogy (ACAP) in High School Teaching. In I. Albulescu, & C. Stan (Eds.), Education, Reflection, Development – ERD 2020, vol 104. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 10-22).
https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.03.02.2
Ketko-Ayali K., & Bocoş, M. (2022). Developing A Questionnaire for Active Citizenship and Activist Pedagogy. In I. Albulescu, & C. Stan (Eds.), Education, Reflection, Development – ERD 2021, vol 2. European Proceedings of Educational Sciences (pp. 555-563). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epes.22032.56
Ketko-Ayali K., (2022), Teaching Media Literacy and Its Affinity to Activist Pedagogy, Discussion Forum 68. (Hebrew)
Ketko-Ayali K., (2022), Analysis of Film and Media Studies in Israel according to activist pedagogy: Reconceptualization of the contribution of pioneers Helga Keller and Dorit Ballin. Dapim 77, 9-28. (Hebrew)
