Teaching Defiance Stories and Strategies for Activist Educators [Paperback]

Michael Newman—a two-time winner of the Cyril O. Houle Award for Outstanding Literature in Adult Education—examines the use of rational discourse, nonrational discourse, and storytelling to bring about personal and collective change. Using a powerful blend of theoretical discussion and step-by-step accounts of practice, Newman returns to what actually happens in that magical encounter between teacher and learner. He examines the educational use of emotions such as frustration, dismay, anger, hatred and love. He proposes ways of teaching and learning insight. He examines how educators can teach people to take effective action. And he discusses how educators and learners can work together to make that action morally justifiable. Newman argues that the educator’s role is to help people resist the controls imposed on them by others. The task, the challenge, the mission of the activist educator is to teach defiance.

Foreword vii

Stephen Brookfield

Preamble xi

About the Author xiii

Part One: Making a Start

1. Taking Sides 3

Part Two: Rebelliousness and Defiance

2. Rebelliousness 17

3. Inspiring Rebelliousness 39

4. Defiance, Choice and Consciousness 61

Part Three: Choosing and Taking Control

5. Teaching Choice 75

6. Collective Decision Making 95

7. Teaching Dialogue 109

8. Conflict, Negotiation and Power 117

9. Teaching Negotiation 129

10. Negotiation, Consciousness and Reflection 143

11. Disruptive Negotiation 159

Part Four: Insight and Action

12. Nonrational Discourse and Insight 173

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