Routledge Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identity

Performance Theories in Education: Power, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identity breaks new ground by presenting a range of approaches to understanding the role, function, impact, and presence of performance in education. It is a definitive contribution to a beginning dialogue on how performance, as a theoretical and pragmatic lens, can be used to view the processes, procedures, and politics of education. The conceptual framework of the volume is the editors' argument that performance and performativity help to locate and describe repetitive actions plotted within grids of power relationships and social norms that comprise the context of education and schooling. The book brings together performance studies and education researchers, teachers, and scholars to investigate such topics as: *the relationship between performance and performativity in pedagogical practice; *the nature and impact of performing identities in varying contexts; *cultural and community configurations that fall under the umbrella of teaching, education, and schooling; and *the hot button issues of educational policies and reform as performances. With the aim of developing a clearer understanding of the effect, affect, and role of performance in education, the volume provides a crucial starting point for discourse among theorists and teacher practitioners who are interested in understanding and acknowledging the politics of performance and the practices of performative social identities that always and already intervene in the educational endeavor. Review "...a welcome - and much-needed - contribution to the field of educational research, in particular, and of interdisciplinary studies in general. By offering scholars and practitioners an alternative lens through which to view their research initiatives, pedagogical practices, and personal performances, the book creates an opportunity for a radical shift in how we 'do' education."—Education Review "A splendid book, one that will be respectively essential to performance and education scholars but, more importantly, to those working their borders and to those willing to explore them. Most distinctly, unlike other work exploring the sometimes merely metaphorical blur of teaching/performing, this book pushes the policy and curricular reform implications of taking their conjunction seriously. Well-written, well-organized, and powerfully focused on truly high stakes education, this book will and should make a difference."—Della PollockUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill About the Author Bryant Keith Alexander is Associate Professor of Performance and Pedagogical Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. His work focuses on issue of identity construction and negotiation in the nexus of race, sex, and gender, as well as how these issues effect pedagogical interactions in the classroom. Gary L Anderson is a Professor in the Department of Administrative Leadership and Technology at New York University. His research interests include school administration, school reform, action research, and critical ethnography. Bernardo Gallegos is a Professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests include educational history; cultural, postcolonial, and subaltern studies; and Native American and Latina/o history and politics.