An Examination of Teaching as a Practical Political Activity

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the notion of teacher as an agent of social change. The study participants were feminist university teachers. The study is important because it explored schools as political sites where teaching and learning are understood in terms of democratic citizenship and social justice. The theoretical base for the research was neo-Marxist theory drawing specifically on the concept of teacher as “transformative intellectual.”The findings of the study suggest that the notion of transformative intellectual may rely too heavily on abstract, and highly rationalistic, constructions of “empowerment” and “dialogue” as transformative strategies. Moreover, the study underscores a need to attend to the transformative intellectual as complicit in the production, and legitimation, of certain kinds of knowledges, in the context of pedagogy as an “interactive productivity.” Additionally, “transformative may not refer to a state, or characteristic, of an individual teacher but rather to a relationship ...