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The review argues that, while Fish's book is undoubtedly a corrective to the most extreme examples of polemical teaching, it oversimplifies the difficulties academics face in trying to create sharp distinctions between politics and scholarship. The radical disconnection he advocates does not address the most difficult situations in which lines cannot be clearly drawn between the substance of academic research and teaching and the politics of the process of knowledge production itself.     

Student perceptions of iPads as mobile learning devices for fieldwork

This paper reports findings from six field courses about student's perceptions of iPads as mobile learning devices for fieldwork. Data were collected through surveys and focus groups. The key findings suggest that the multi-tool nature of the iPads and their portability were the main strengths. Students had some concerns over the safety of the iPads in adverse weather and rugged environments, though most of these concerns were eliminated after using the devices with protective cases. Reduced connectivity was found to be one of the main challenges for mobile learning. Finally, students and practitioners views of why they used the mobile devices for fieldwork did not align.     

Pedagogical declarations: feminist engagements with the teaching statement

To produce a teaching statement, current and aspiring teachers undertake the ostensibly straightforward task of putting their teaching philosophy onto paper. But upon close examination, the teaching statement – a seemingly simple object – is much more complex. The teaching statement is full of dual functions, many of which can be conceived of as working at cross-purposes. This paper draws on the teaching statement's history along with a collaborative and feminist mentorship methodology to highlight these dual functions. We discuss how teaching statements can be negotiated and inhabited from our perspective as early career scholars.     

Constructing and practicing feminist pedagogy in Taiwan using a field study of the Twenty-Five Ladies Tomb

Drawing on theories of space, gender, and participatory learning, central concepts in feminist pedagogy, the author designed a university-level general-education course that took the Twenty-Five Ladies Tomb in southern Taiwan as the focus of a field study and class discussion. This local gendered site, which commemorates a 1973 ferry accident that killed 25 unmarried young women working in Kaohsiung, raises issues about patriarchy in Taiwan, gender inequities in traditional Han customs, and women's labor. The course relied on guided class discussions and focus-group discussions, culminating in a visit to the site. Face to face with the researched, the author not only built an inclusive and supportive relationship with students in the classroom, but also put her researcher's reflexivity into teaching practice. Research results indicate that the freedom of the class discussion format succeeded in breaking down the logic of binary opposition that accompanies the traditional gender duality of male/female. Avoiding a top-down teaching style also minimized students' resistance to perspectives emphasizing gender equality.     

Birmingham Bog outdoor laboratory: potentials and possibilities for embedding field-based teaching within the undergraduate classroom

Providing cost-effective, hands-on field-based experiences to large cohorts of undergraduate students provides a core challenge for effective teaching and learning. This grand challenge is tackled through the construction of an exemplar outdoor learning environment within the Environmental Change Outdoor Laboratory (ECOLAB): Birmingham Bog (BB). Adjacent to the Geography building, the facility aims to produce a seamless, interconnected learning environment (in both space and time) that brings inaccessible fieldwork activities direct to the classroom at the time and frequency appropriate to the learning objectives. With the integration of this facility within a 3rd year undergraduate module, we explore through group interviews the ways in which BB adapted and influenced students’ engagement with lecture material, and the extent to which the approach can complement or replace current field based teaching activities. The group interviews identified how BB was considered an example of “effective learning” within the context of the wider degree programme. However, if confirmed, the value placed on residential field courses cannot be met by such campus experiences. Despite this, BB represents an increasingly fertile space for deeper stimulation and innovative ways of learning; diversifying pedagogical techniques and enabling students to re-engage with lecture content.     

Western leveraged pedagogy of Central and Eastern Europe: discourses of homophobia,tolerance, and nationhood

This article focuses on the relations between the two geo-temporal categories – Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and West/Europe – in discussions about sexual politics, homophobia, tolerance, and nationhood. It contributes to the existing literature about homonationalism and sexual nationalisms by introducing CEE to the debate's geographical loci, so far mostly invested in West/Europe and its relations to Islam. It argues that it is important to consider CEE in sexual nationalism debates because of its framing as the European (homophobic) Other in the emerging discourses of ‘homoinclusive Europe’. This article introduces the concept of leveragedpedagogy, which captures the specificity of the West/Europe – CEE discourses of sexual liberation, advancement, and backwardness. Leveraged pedagogy is a hegemonic didactical relation where the CEE figures as an object of the West/European ‘pedagogy’, and is framed as permanently ‘post-communist’, ‘in transition’ (i.e. not liberal, not yet, not enough), and homophobic. Such ‘taking care of’ CEE, it is argued, is a form of cultural hegemony of the Western EUropean liberal model of rights as the universal.     

Public protest,public pedagogy and the publicness of the public university

This article links protest and pedagogy in a study of the public university in India. Using as case studies two publicly funded metropolitan universities demonstrates how protests in a neoliberal higher education context in India are instantiations of a larger debate about the nature of democracy, and about the nature of the ‘public’ across the country itself.