This paper wrestles with the concept of care and its role in the movement towards abolitionist education. I draw from my experiences as a teacher / ethnographer in an alternative high school, called ...FREE LA, that serves and was created by system-impacted young people who have been pushed out of or barred from, or otherwise refused to participate in, traditional schooling. Grounded in students’ perceptions of how this space departs from traditional schools and other carceral institutions, I grapple with their consistent emphasis on care. Students’ juxtaposition between the type of care they experienced in traditional schools, and a different type of care experienced at FREE LA, leads me to consider both the violent genealogies of conditional care as endemic to state schooling, and the potential for reclaiming old-new genealogies of unconditional care that map radically reimagined educational space(s). The juxtaposition between these two types of care opens broader questions about the limitations of educational reform and the possibilities for abolitionist departure.
This autoethnographic work was written after the author had heard that teaching in the prison environment was challenging and difficult. Although she had previously worked in that environment for ...five years, she had not read the literature about being a prison educator and the comments made about prison being a difficult place to work were quite different to her own experience. Using analytic autoethnography, which links the individual experience to the academic literature as a methodological approach, she reviewed the academic literature finding that in the literature there were several viewpoints. Some of these matched her own experience and others indicated the difficulties and challenges faced by prison educators. Some of these challenges were faced by the author but accepted as part of the context. One of the outcomes of autoethnography is the raising of awareness and in this paper the author has brought together both viewpoints present in the literature and explained her own experience. Reflection on her own experiences and how they were represented in the literature and becoming aware of the other viewpoints resulted in this paper in which she brings together the importance of potential prison educators understanding the prison context and the interactions between the individual prison context and the personality of the prison educator with flexibility and resilience identified as important factors. Keywords: Prison educator, flexibility, resilience, prison context, analytic autoethnography, experience
Libraries are necessary to the educational process. Access to resources for incarcerated students is a challenge. Hekman Library supports the Calvin Prison Initiative in ways that support the ...educational mission of Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary.
Since 2008, numerous Argentine documentary films have explored the complexities of prison education. Prison education documentaries from other countries usually focus overwhelmingly on the possible ...success of "rehabilitation." In contrast, this article argues that contemporary Argentine prison education documentaries encourage critical, at times quasi-abolitionist, perspectives on imprisonment by challenging both punitive attitudes and liberal beliefs in the reinsercion (reintegration) of prisoners into society. Analyzing the documentaries El almafuerte (dir. Roberto Sebastian Persano, Santiago Nacif Cabrera, and Andres Martinez Canto), Argentina, 2009), 13 puertas (dir. David Rubio, Argentina, 2014), Lunas cautivas (dir. Marcia Paradiso, Argentina, 2012), and Pabellon 4 (dir. Diego Gachassin, Argentina, 2017), it draws on insights from film studies and criminology to show how these films provide intersectional and structural critiques of imprisonment. "Touristic" and affective encounters between incarcerated and non-incarcerated people serve to challenge comfortable viewing positions predicated on internal-external carceral and cinematic divides. These films teach spectators that outside spaces, people, and institutions are all central to the meaning, problems, and incoherence of incarceration in Argentina.
This article examines how a structural pedagogical innovation facilitates classroom discussion around topics such as social justice and equality. The authors examine one innovation called the ...Inside-Out model, a program where incarcerated and nonincarcerated college students take courses together inside prison. Because the program's aim is to break down barriers structuring higher education and prison, this research focuses on how this model serves as a bridge between two institutions while also challenging the inequities of prison and higher education. Using interviews with former Inside-Out students, the authors compared their responses to those who have not participated in the program. The data show that while all student respondents were aware of their existence within their respective "bubbles," students who participated in the program had more nuanced understandings of the carceral system, racial justice, and inequity. Keywords: prison education, Inside-Out Prison Exchange, total institution, inclusion, racial equity
"Phillis in Prison" is a reflection on recent experiences in teaching African American literature in four MDOC facilities, over two semesters, in 2020; then connecting those students to an academic ...opportunity to present their work (reading and writing) on colonial poet Phillis Wheatley, and the work of contemporary poet Honoree Fanonne Jeffers (The Age of Phillis, 2020) at the Society of Early Americanists (SEA) biennial conference, in March 2021. Student-inmate work was read by undergraduates in the Social Justice Program at Spelman College.
The aim of this article is to increase awareness of the activities that are carried out in Catalan prison libraries to promote reading, literacy and culture among inmates. The educational role of ...prison libraries is recognized both in recommendations on international law issued by UNESCO and the Council of Europe and in recommendations issued by professional bodies such as the Library and Information Association (CILIP, formerly the Library Association) and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). To ascertain the type of activities conducted by Catalan prison libraries to promote reading, literacy and culture, a survey was emailed to prison managers. The results reveal that libraries in Catalan prisons play a very active role in the education of inmates. They offer a wide range of activities related to the promotion of reading, literacy and culture, whether as part of an internal library initiative or in partnership with other education services. The survey revealed some relatively common prison activities, such as reading clubs and art workshops, in addition to some highly original initiatives such as rap writing, escape rooms and lip dubs, and programmes such as AlfaDigital, which aim to develop reading and creative abilities while enhancing ICT skills.
Research on education for youth served in the juvenile justice (JJ) system is limited. Yet in order to ensure equity for these students, JJ teacher knowledge and use of evidence-based practices ...(EBPs) must be understood. This study aimed to understand JJ teacher knowledge and use of EBPs within JJ classrooms. Based on 157 JJ teachers’ responses to a survey that was sent to an email database of JJ facility administrators and disseminated on social media, this study examined JJ teachers’ familiarity with 15 different EBPs, the implementation frequency of these practices, and whether teacher licensure type, experience, or education level impacts these measures (familiarity and implementation practices). The authors found that a range of 77.7% to 86.6% of teachers reported they were familiar with each of the 15 EBPs included in the survey. There were no significant group differences between JJ special education and JJ general education teachers’ self-reported overall use of academic or behavior management EBPs. There were differences between specific EBPs included in the survey. The findings suggest that there is no difference between JJ special education teachers’ and JJ general education teachers’ overall use of academic or behavior management EBPs. Yet there is still improvement to be made in JJ teacher knowledge and use of EBPs.
The field of integrated language arts is an ideal forum for sharing stories, discussing perspectives, expressing emotions in a healthy way, and challenging the systems that govern and shape our ...lives. Accomplishing this goal in a traditional classroom can sometimes be difficult, but for a moment, consider the physical space of a classroom within a juvenile residential center (JRC). This space brings many obstacles that traditional classrooms, teachers, and students do not have to address. To thrive, students need to be in a safe environment of trust. Trust is both critical and challenging to build in a space with so many limitations. By centering student agency, identity, and awareness of structural barriers, teachers may be able to make a positive difference in the lives of incarcerated students, especially those impacted by trauma. This could help students gain a new perspective on their own recidivism and cycles underneath a systemic context, hopefully forging a path toward freedom and healing. This qualitative case study focuses on two novice teachers’journeys as they navigate their instructional decisions and practice within a JRC.
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