1st Edition
Teaching, Learning, and Schooling in Film Reel Education
Films about education provide many of the most popular interpretations of what teaching and learning mean in schools. An analysis of this medium reveals much about the historical, cultural, political, and philosophical dimensions of education. Timely and engaging, this book fills a gap for scholarly and informed public commentary on the portrayal of education in film, offering a wide range of conceptual and interpretive perspectives.
Teaching, Learning, and Schooling in Film explores several key questions, including: What does it mean to be a good teacher? How do these good teachers instruct? When is and what makes teaching complex? What constitutes learning? Do educational reforms work? The book’s interdisciplinary group of contributors answers these important questions in essays highlighting Hollywood, independent, and documentary films. Prospective and practicing teachers will engage with the thought-provoking educational issues raised in this book and gain insight into the complexities of teaching and learning portrayed in film.
Acknowledgements
Introduction: An Invitation to Read and View
Section 1: Teaching
Section 1 Introduction: On Teaching in Film
- The Teacher Archetype in the Movies
- From Blackboard To Smartboard: Hollywood’s Perennially Misleading Teacher Heroes
- Exploring the Heroic Teacher Narrative with Help From the Trickster
- Contending Views of Teaching in Film
- Monsieur Lazhar: The Subversive Dance of Relationship and the "Fierce Urgency of Now"
- Pastry, Practice, and the Pursuit of Excellence: A Commentary on Kings of Pastry
- Dilemmas of Becoming in Searching for Bobby Fischer
- Whale Rider: Culture, Cosmopolitanism, and Unofficial Schooling
- The History Boys and Cosmopolitanism
- A Poetics of Moral Education: Insights from Lee Chang-Dong’s Poetry
- Creating Classroom Civility
- White Supremacy, Neo/Colonial Education, and the Struggle for Precious Knowledge
- Dropout Nation: The School to Prison Pipeline, Educational Reform and Caring for African American and Latino Students
- The Dialectical Progression: From The First Year and Waiting for "Superman" to TEACH
- Waiting for "Superman", The Inconvenient Truth Behind "Waiting for ‘Superman’", and Taking Sides in Debates About Public Schools
James Rhem
Avram Barlowe and Ann Cook
Ian Parker Renga
Daniel P. Liston
Linda Irwin-DeVitis and Joseph L. DeVitis
Section 2: Learning
Section 2: Introduction: On Learning in Film
Jennie Whitcomb
Kevin O’Connor, Lisa Comparini, Stephen Dine Young, and Anna-Ruth Allen
Steven Weiland
Daniel P. Liston and Ian Parker Renga
David T. Hansen and Kyung Hwa Jung
Section 3: Schooling
Section 3 Introduction: On Schooling in Film
Megan J. Laverty
José García, Luis Urrieta, Jr., and Eric Ruiz Bybee
Courtney S. Robinson, Luis Urrieta, Jr., and Nydia A. Counts
James Trier
Katy M. Swalwell and Michael W. Apple
Contributors
Biography
Daniel P. Liston is Professor of Education at University of Colorado, Boulder
Ian Parker Renga is a Doctoral Candidate in Education at University of Colorado, Boulder
"Films about schooling provide many of the most popular interpretations of what teaching and learning mean in schools. Here, the reader will find a host of alternative interpretations. Combined, these films and their critics allow us to look at ourselves as teachers and learners and decide on our own what it all means."
Jim Garrison, Virginia Tech, USA
"Movies about education are often stereotypic and trite, featuring heroic teachers and bored students in classrooms with old desks and dusty chalkboards. Daniel Liston and Ian Renga have assembled a wide diversity of noted scholars to consider the subtle and complex ways the acts of teaching and learning have been depicted in a variety of international films. We can see here how cinema, arguably the most important art form created in the last century, can not only entertain, but also help us envision a better world through imaginative depictions of teaching and learning. I will use this volume in my own teaching and scholarship."
AG Rud, Washington State University, USA