Alimentar: Theorizing Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Mentorship for Democratic Doctoral Education

Abstract

This conceptual paper suggests ways in which pedagogical practices, curriculum, and mentorship could foster democracy in doctoral education. Building upon critical, dialogic, caring, anti-colonial, and engaged pedagogies, we propose a framework for examining marginal spaces of teacher and student relationships that build upon life-projects (Gunzenhauser & Gerstl-Pepin, 2006) in learning spaces. We use the Spanish terms “alimentar” and “infame” pedagogy to capture dichotomous approaches to teaching at the doctoral level. The challenge to linguistic borders should be read as a metaphor for the challenge of transcending ideological borders of doctoral pedagogy.

Kimberly J. Howard is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests include teacher identity, critical race theory, critical geography, and performance theories in and of education.

Kindel Turner-Nash is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of South Carolina. Her research interests include racially equitable teaching, critical race/whiteness studies, and teacher preparation, as well as critical sociocultural perspectives on the teaching of language and literacy.

Notes

1. We define “social justice” as a concerted effort to promote justice for humankind, particularly those who have been marginalized in society.

2. In situ is a term borrowed from ethnography meaning “in place,” or in the position.

3. By “untraditional epistemologies,” we mean that although we are privileged in many ways by being white women, our personal identities and knowledge orientations are also inseparable from our untraditional and diverse perspectives on scholarship. Both Turner-Nash and Howard are married to black men and are mothers to interracial children. These identities and Howard's process of learning the Spanish language have been the main contributors to our untraditional and diverse perspectives on race, language, and a sense of what it means to be “othered” (Fabian, 2002) and living in social borderlands (Anzaldua, 2003).

4. Tyack and Cuban (1995) explain that practices, such as report cards, “structure schools in a manner analogous to the way grammar organizes meaning in verbal communication. Neither the grammar of schooling nor the grammar of speech needs to be consciously understood to operate smoothly. Indeed, much of the grammar of schooling has become taken for granted as just the way schools are” (p. 85). Though not an analysis of doctoral eduction, we wish to extend the concept to doctoral education.

5. This is a way of talking about something that governs the way it can be talked about (Foucault, 1980; Scott, 2003)

6. This Spanish phrase means to “give birth,” but the literal translation is: to give the light.

7. In the U.S. context, “traditional” would include White, middle-upper class, monolingual English speaker, heterosexual, and male identities.

8. This translates to: They are (infinitive: ser) teachers who are (infinitive: estar) nourishing (also promoting virtues, passion, and habits).

9. Reasons for this could include an unsupportive or hostile work environment, personal crises, or unresponsive students that could force professor-teachers into infame pedagogical spaces.