On Mutant Pedagogies

232 Pages·2017·163.17 MB·English

by  Jones, Stephanie

ON MUTANT PEDAGOGIES
DOING ARTS THINKING: ARTS PRACTICE, RESEARCH AND EDUCATION
VOLUME 3
Series Editor:
John Baldacchino, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Editorial Board:
Dennis Atkinson, Goldsmiths College, UK
Jeremy Diggle, i ndependent artist and academic, UK
Nadine Kalin, University North Texas, USA
Catarina Sofi a Martins, University of Porto, Portugal
Richard Siegesmund, Northern Illinois University, USA
Scope:
In the arts, the concept of theoria goes back to the original notion of thinking as a form of refl ection/
contemplation that remains integral to practice as both a practiced thought (phronesis) and as critical practice
(praxis). This book series is aimed at capturing and reasserting the wider possibilities that we give ourselves
by doing the arts. It explores how the arts and education can only converge through paradox, where what we
seek by doing arts thinking remains an open work and in continuous inauguration.
Thus Doing Arts Thinking is an alternative view of arts education. Rooted in arts practice and arts research,
it purposely retains a degree of ambiguity. It is not limited to “thinking about the arts”, or engaging with art
theory as a separate entity from practice. Rather, this book series intends to show that to mistake arts thinking
for abstract theory would be as false as dismissing arts practice for mere making; which would result in a
narrow view of both arts practice and arts research, especially when a third element – that of arts education –
is involved.
ON MUTANT PEDAGOGIES
Seeking Justice and Drawing Change in Teacher Education
Stephanie Jones
University of Georgia, USA
and
James F. Woglom
Humboldt State University, USA
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-94-6300-742-9 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-94-6300-744-3 (e-book)
Published by: Sense Publishers,
P.O. Box 21858,
3001 AW Rotterdam,
The Netherlands
https://www.sensepublishers.com/
The following chapters have been reprinted here with permission from the publishers:
Chapter 2: Jones, S., & Woglom, J. F. (2016). From where do you read the world? A graphica exploration
and expansion of critical literacies for teacher education. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 59(4),
443–473. (Chapter 2 titled Girlhood Deconstructed includes the majority of the article published previously)
Chapter 4: Jones, S., & Woglom, J. F. (2012). Overcoming nomos. Graphic chapter in P. Gorski, N. OseiKofi,
J. Sapp, & K. Zenkov (Eds.), Cultivating social justice teachers: How teacher educators have helped students
overcome cognitive bottlenecks and learn critical social justice concepts (pp. 27–48). Sterling, VA: Stylus
Publishing. (Chapter 4 has undergone some visual revision from original publication to align visual aesthetics
with the rest of this book)
Chapter 6: Jones, S., & Woglom, J. F. (2013). Teaching bodies in place. Teachers College Record, 115(8).
( Chapter 6 has undergone some visual revision from original publication to align visual aesthetics with the
rest of this book)
Chapter 7: Jones, S., & Woglom, J. F. (2015). Behind the body-filled scenes: Methodologies at work on
the body in graphica. In C. Medina & M. Perry (Eds.), Methodologies of embodiment: Inscribing bodies in
qualitative research (pp. 116-137). New York: Routledge.
Chapter 9: Jones, S., & Woglom, J. F. (2014). Dangerous conversations: Persistent tensions in teacher
education. Phi Delta Kappan, 95(6), 47–56.
Chapter 11: Woglom, J. F., & Jones, S. (2016). Playground futurities: Enacting freedom through Reggio, a
neighborhood, and relational aesthetics. In P. C. Gorski, R. M. Salcedo, & J. Landsman (Eds.), Talking back
and looking forward: Poetry and prose for social justice in education (pp. 103–112). New York: Rowman and
Littlefield. (Chapter 11 is titled Playground futurities and micro-utopias: Enacting freedom through Reggio,
a neighborhood, and relational aesthetics to align with this book)
Appendix B: Jones, S., & Woglom, J. (2013). Graphica: Comics arts-based educational research. Harvard
Educational Review, 83(1), 168–191. (Appendix B is titled Graphica: Stephanie and Jim’s journey to and
through the project to align with this book)
All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved © 2016 Sense Publishers
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written
permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of
being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
ON MUTANT PEDAGOGIES
“I know what you’re thinking: Bam! Pow! Zoom! A comic book about mutants – Ninja Turtles, perhaps, and
their mutated cousins, the Ninja Pedagogies! You’re not completely wrong: while the Turtles are missing, the
wild and wacky, the imaginative and the improvisational, the unpredictable and the surprising are all fully
present in this experimental, perpetually mutating comic book. On Mutant Pedagogies is a crazy quilt containing
multitudes: part graphic memoir, part diary of an ongoing intellectual journey, part powerful reflections on
democracy and education, and part practical teacher education manual. Stephanie Jones and James F. Woglom
extend an open invitation to animate our imaginations and our critical capacities, our courage and our initiative
in order to dive into the wreckage and get busy in the ongoing and always unfinished project of repair.”
– William Ayers, author of To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher and Demand the Impossible! A Radical
Manifesto
“The words-images-senses-energies-openings of this more-than-book demand readers attend to the injustices
normalized in the material and discursive structures of schooling and in the very bones of teachers and
children. The stunning force of its disruptive genre demands more from us—makes us sit up and read and read
differently. Not often does a book come along that, at every turn, disrupts common-sense habits of meaning-
making. The encounter this book enables pushes us to think the unthought and turn to a justice-to-come that
beckons. I’ve seen nothing like it.”
– Elizabeth A. St. Pierre, University of Georgia
“In On Mutant Pedagogies, the juxtaposition of stunning imagery with urgent and insightful narratives invites
readers to “see” with multiple lenses the perils and promises of teacher education and social justice. Stephanie
Jones and James F. Woglom invite us to engage with research-as-art, and readers will no doubt find their minds
and hearts stirred by this powerful new graphica.”
– Kevin Kumashiro, author of Against Common Sense: Teaching and Learning toward Social Justice
“Way to go! This is how embodied and embedded brains like to learn: graphic and artistic images that plug
theory into personal experiences in highly effective and affective ways. Finally a book that might actually
succeed in making students think differently about education! By plugging theory into familiar expressions of
embodied experiences, new ways of thinking are evoked.”
– L. Lenz Taguchi, Professor of Child and Youth Studies, and director of research studies in Early
Childhood Education, Stockholm University
“With On Mutant Pedagogies, Stephanie Jones and James Woglom present a courageous new take on social
justice in teacher education, one that illustrates and unchains boundaries of genre to chronicle a project of
equity nearing justice. In so doing, the book imagines a new brand of scholarship, where the hegemony of
exposition is interrupted to allow visual and print styles—graphical and comic book-esque—to narrate a set
of sophisticated and thought provoking theories, questions, and ideas about a multitude of issues concerning
teaching from a critical frame. Because of its style and sheer transgressive brilliance, this text is a trailblazer,
paving a path for a new type of scholarship—one that privileges the coming world over the passing one, one
that hopes for a better world we might together invent as opposed to the lesser one we must force ourselves
to not inherit.”
– David E. Kirkland, Executive Director NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the
Transformation of Schools and co-author of A Search Past Silence: The Literacy of Young Black Men
“Many educators have sat through course lectures on how to implement student centered practices. But far
too rare in education is the combination of doing something different while asking for something different.
On Mutant Pedagogies fills that gap powerfully by merging graphic scholarship with, yes, a call for mutant
pedagogies. This volume is provocative, inspiring, and needed more than ever.”
– Paul Thomas, Professor/Writer, Furman University
“On Mutant Pedagogies exemplifies a mutant pedagogy at its best. It is at once a captivating graphic novel and
a compelling scholarly text, made ever more powerful by the arts based pedagogies and comics based methods
intertwined by the collaborative praxis of Jones and Woglom. Those interested in teaching and education will
experience a mutant assemblage where important questions are raised around social issues before teacher
education is deconstructed and reimagined. Moreover, as readers, we are drawn into thinking through data
with both theory and visual composition. This is a stunning book that all teacher educators and teachers should
read and share as a brilliant example of collaborative practice for social justice.”
– Rita L. Irwin, Professor, Art Education, The University of British Columbia and co-author of Being
with A/R/Tography
“This new book by Dr. Jones and Dr. Woglom is ground-breaking, thrilling, and inspiring! A definite page-
turner, the authors invite us as educators into the world we most intimately know, the world of the classroom;
a microcosm of all that is troubling in the world, but also full of the entire potential arc of justice that Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. demanded we act on and towards. In essence, this book is a primer on how we can
enter the classroom and leave with our conscience, integrity, and dignity intact as change agents that make a
real difference in the world.”
– Anneliese Singh, Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, The University of Georgia
College of Education and author of Counseling and Psychological Practice with Transgender and Gender
Nonconforming Clients
“For everyone laboring in spaces that privilege standardization and normativity, On Mutant Pedagogies offers
a powerful way out right now through research and practice informed by situated histories, critical theoretical
insights, and aesthetic improvisation. I don’t think it’s possible to encounter this text without becoming
different.”
– Karen Spector, Director of Students on Race Relations Assemblage, University of Alabama
“Eye-popping, explosive, genre-crossing, Jones and Woglom take us into a Star Trek/Matrix-like space where
an aesthetic-graphica dimension rises out of a new material feminism for envisioning writing, research, method,
and methodology as nomo-busting. Beyond Lefebvre, Soja, Deleuze and Guattari, who gave us the rhimozatic
space-time structuration, they, through nostalgic ethnographic-origin storytelling, reveal their foundations for
entering teaching as socially-just educators. Relying on intertextuality as process, their graphica invites us
to read the word, between the word, and beyond the word. Just as they began in an imaginative space, they
guide us by logic that neither method nor methodology is fixed, but instead, invite us to stay committed to
challenging nomos, so our work can push each others forward where the indeterminate is beautiful and just
waiting to be discovered.”
– sj Miller, Ph.D., Deputy Director of Educational Equity Supports and Services at New York University
Metropolitan Center
“In On Mutant Pedagogies, Stephanie Jones and James F. Woglom have produced a shining achievement in
the field of justice-oriented teacher education. By representing the urgencies and conflicted terrains of teacher
education through a primarily visual form, Jones and Woglom present emotionally- and ideologically fraught
narratives that are, in effect, impossible to turn away from. Rendered multimodally, these stories possess a
visceral energy that is rare in academic accounts of teacher identity and professionalization, and they do so
without sacrificing a bit of scholarly precision demanded by the subject.”
– David E. Low, California State University, Fresno, USA
“On Mutant Pedagogies is a revelation of social justice praxis. Jones and Woglom offer us the rarest gift: a
book that is both a revolutionary meditation on and a keen demonstration of transformative teacher education,
deep inquiry, and the co-creation of counter-hegemonic spaces. I would encourage everybody to read it, except
that would be misleading, as this book is to be experienced, not merely read.”
– Paul Gorski, Founder of EdChange, Associate Professor, Social Justice and Human Rights, George
Mason University, and author of Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the
Opportunity Gap
“This text allows us to engage in a new kind of reading in education through complex imaginative research
work, pedagogies, and design. Centering embodied actions through Graphica creates a unique experience
to examine taken for granted teacher education structures, spaces and relationships to open its margins and
propose a new landscape for critically doing teacher education. Mutant pedagogies and how it gets articulated
on this book, provides spaces for other ways of knowing to emerge shifting what is possible in inquiry, teacher
education and the articulation of social justice pedagogical practices as an aesthetic project.”
– Carmen Medina, Indiana University, Associate Professor and co-editor of Methodologies of
Embodiment: Inscribing Bodies in Qualitative Research
“Jones and Woglom’s graphic book is one of the most innovative and enticing texts I have seen for engaging
early career and seasoned teachers in the practice of (re)considering their pedagogy. It offers us HOPE for
education, yet the arguments are situated in accessible theoretical sophistication. Each page is worthy of both
aesthetic praise and moral consideration. I am just disappointed I cannot afford to frame and hang each on my
university’s halls for us to continuously contemplate.”
– Corey W. Johnson, Ph.D., University of Waterloo and author of Fostering Social Justice through
Qualitative Inquiry: A Methodological Guide
“This innovative and honest work invites us to consider what education is and who it is for; then the book begs
us to do something new and unexpected after experiencing it. And how could one not? Jones and Woglom
argue for teacher education as mutability which forces us to reframe teacher education as an aesthetic, bodily
project—a space of deeply intellectual work, full of uncertainties, and pushing away from sameness. Teaching,
teacher education programs, and research methodologies are not neutral; this timely and captivating book
integrates and illustrates all—through cartooning!”
– Candace Kuby, University of Missouri, co-author of Go Be a Writer! Expanding the Curricular
Boundaries of Literacy Learning with Children and editor of Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and
Practice
“It is mighty difficult to carefully share lived experience and treat those lived experiences as socially, culturally,
and politically produced; to disrupt normative theorizing, researching, and teaching and offer a beautiful
tapestry of other theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical possibilities; to make a plea for mutating pedagogies
and write/draw a pedagogical text that actually, itself, mutates; and to write and draw so brilliantly. Jones and
Woglom’s work does all of this and so much more. It is a beautiful example of and-ing work that provokes
action – m oving with grace, agility, and urgency, without falling prey to either-or thinking. A true gift to
teacher education.”
– Mark D. Vagle, The University of Minnesota, Associate Professor and author of Crafting
Phenomenological Research

This one’s for you mom.
All my love,
Steph
To Rosaleen D’Angelo,
teacher, advocate, and fellow weirdo.
We’ll do the work,
Jim