Donaldo Macedo

Bio: Donaldo Macedo is an academic researcher from University of Massachusetts Amherst. The author has contributed to research in topics: Literacy & Racism. The author has an hindex of 29, co-authored 62 publications receiving 8887 citations. Previous affiliations of Donaldo Macedo include University of Massachusetts Boston.

Literacy: Reading the Word and the World

Abstract: Literacy wikipedia, literacy data published by unesco displays that since 1950, the adult literacy rate at the world level has increased by 5 percentage points every decade on average, from 557 per cent in 1950 to 862 per cent in 2015 however, for four decades, the population growth was so rapid that the number of illiterate adults kept increasing, rising from 700 million in 1950 to 878 million in 1990. Word walls classroom strategies reading rockets, a word wall is a collection of words which are displayed in large visible letters on a wall, bulletin board, or other display surface in a classroom the word wall is designed to be an interactive tool for students and contains an array of words that can be used during writing and reading.

A Dialogue: Culture, Language, and Race.

Abstract: The following is part of an ongoing dialogue that Donaldo Macedo and Paulo Freire have been having since 1983. As it attempts to address the current criticisms of Freire's work along the lines of gender and race, this dialogue not only challenges the frequent misinterpretations of his leading philosophical ideas by conservative and some liberal educators, but will also embrace contemporary educational issues and discuss what it means to educate for critical citizenry in the ever-increasing multiracial and multicultural world of the twenty-first century.

Literacies of Power : What Americans Are Not Allowed to Know

Abstract: Literacies of Power: What Americans Are Not Allowed to Know, by Donaldo Macedo. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994. 206 pp. $15.95, paper. Reviewed by Patricia A. Young-Mitchell, University of California-Berkeley. The major premise of this book by University of Massachusetts professor of English and program director of Bilingual and English-as-a-Second-Language Studies Donaldo Macedo is that there exist, in the United States and other Western cultures, certain types of literacies or discourses that actually impede the dissemination of truth and knowledge. In this analysis of what he characterizes as the deceitful literacies of the powerful and their "pedagogy of big lies," Macedo implicitly frames true literacy as the power to dispel the myths surrounding significant historical events, political ideologies, educational constraints, and social agendas of American culture. Key among the themes touched upon in this book is the author's contention that in the United States the cultural reproduction of literacy uses institutional mechanisms to prevent independent critical thought, especially by those whom it seeks to dispossess. He subsequently identifies the nation's schools and its media as two of the most pervasive perpetuators of these lies because they are, in his view, the predominant vehicles through which dominant ideologies are projected. Literacies of Power is organized along five themes. In the introductory chapter, "Literacy for Stupidification: The Pedagogy of Big Lies," Macedo hypothesizes that an unfounded pedagogy has been used to keep Americans blind to the truth of Euro-American involvement in the wronging of the Western hemisphere. He attributes both this blindness and the belief in the myth of a "common culture" to Americans' general inability to create critical thought-that is, to their lack of mastery and knowledge of the literacies of power. Macedo demonstrates this through a comparison of Hirsch, Kett, and Trefil's (1988) Dictionary of Cultural Literacy and their list of "What Every American Needs to Know" to his own elaboration of American historical facts offered in this book's list of "What Every American Needs to Know but is Prevented from Knowing." As well, he suggests that next to the Western world's esteemed museums of fine art and science should be established museums of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and American slavery, the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, and the genocide of the American Indian-"museums of crime" that would serve to demystify the myths that often shroud the truth about American history and its dominant culture. In chapter two, "Our Common Culture: A Poisonous Pedagogy," Macedo emphasizes his contention that the big-lie theory, along with its philosophical twin-the poisonous pedagogy of an American culture based on Eurocentric ideals and practices yet masquerading as a "common" culture-together inhibit the achievement of a true common culture in the United States, one that allows persons of all races, genders, cultures, and language groups equal participation and representation in U.S. society. This theme is further explored in chapter three, "Our Uncommon Culture: The Politics of Race, Class, Gender and Language," which presents a conversation between Macedo and Brazilian educator-philosopher Paulo Freire. In their conversation, these two theorists engage in a dialogue about the development of an anticolonial society based on cultural production, which Macedo defines as the process by which particular groups of people produce, arbitrate, and corroborate their mutual ideologies. This chapter is also notable for Freire's penetrating reflections on his classic 1970 work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Macedo maintains in chapter four, "English Only: The Tongue-Tying of America," that the combined malapropisms of the American dominant group's pedagogical ideals involve schools and societal and government institutions alike in lies, deceit, humiliation, scare tactics, manipulation, and ridicule of non-White, non-male persons. …

A pedagogy of Multiliteracies Designing Social Futures

Abstract: THE NEW LONDON GROUP 1 In this article, the New London Group presents a theoretical overoiew of the connec­ tions between the changing social environment facing students and teachers and a new approach to literacy pedagogy that they call "multiliteracies. " The authors argue that the multiplicity of communications channels and increasing cultural and lin­ guistic diversity in the world today call for a much broader view of literacy than portrayed by traditional language-based approaches. Multiliteracies, according to the authors, overcomes the limitations of traditional approaches by emphasizing how ne­ gotiating the multiple lingustic and cultural differences in our society is central to the pragmatics of the working, civic, and private lives of students. The authors maintain that the use of multiliteracies approaches to pedagogy will enable students to achieve the authors' twin goals for literacy learning: creating access to the evolving language of work, power, and community, and fostering the critical engagement necessary for them to design their social futures and achieve success through fulfilling employment. If it were possible to define generally the mission of education, one could say that its fundamental purpose is to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public, community, and economic life. Literacy pedagogy is expected to play a particularly important role in ful­ filling this mission. Pedagogy is a teaching and learning relationship that creates the potential for building learning conditions leading to full and equitable social participation. Literacy pedagogy has traditionally meant teaching and learning

Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth

Abstract: This article conceptualizes community cultural wealth as a critical race theory (CRT) challenge to traditional interpretations of cultural capital. CRT shifts the research lens away from a deficit view of Communities of Color as places full of cultural poverty disadvantages, and instead focuses on and learns from the array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged. Various forms of capital nurtured through cultural wealth include aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial and resistant capital. These forms of capital draw on the knowledges Students of Color bring with them from their homes and communities into the classroom. This CRT approach to education involves a commitment to develop schools that acknowledge the multiple strengths of Communities of Color in order to serve a larger purpose of struggle toward social and racial justice.

Rethinking Critical Theory and Qualitative Research

Abstract: Some 70 years after its development in Frankfurt, Germany, critical theory retains its ability to disrupt and hallenge the status quo. In the process, it elicits highlycharged emotions of all types—fierce loyalty from its roponents, vehement hostility from its detractors. Such vibrantly polar reactions indicate at the very least that critical theory still matters. We can be against critical theory or for it, but, especially at the present historical uncture, we cannot be without it.

The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place:

Abstract: Taking the position that “critical pedagogy” and “place-based education” are mutually supportive educational traditions, this author argues for a conscious synthesis that blends the two discourses into a critical pedagogy of place. An analysis of critical pedagogy is presented that emphasizes the spatial aspects of social experience. This examination also asserts the general absence of ecological thinking demonstrated in critical social analysis concerned exclusively with human relationships. Next, a discussion of ecological place-based education is offered. Finally, a critical pedagogy of place is defined. This pedagogy seeks the twin objectives of decolonization and “reinhabitation” through synthesizing critical and place-based approaches. A critical pedagogy of place challenges all educators to reflect on the relationship between the kind of education they pursue and the kind of places we inhabit and leave behind for future generations.

Ethics and politics in qualitative research

Abstract: Getting straight on ethics in qualitative research is not an internal matter only Putting ethics and politics together is the right move intellectually, but it engages a major agenda beyond adjustments in qualitative theory and methods The overall issue is the Enlightenment mind and its progeny Only when the Enlightenment’s epistemology is contradicted will there be conceptual space for a moral-political order in distinctively qualitative terms The Enlightenment’s dichotomy between freedom and morality fostered a tradition of value-free social science and, out of this tradition, a means-ends utilitarianism Qualitative research insists on starting over philosophically, without the Enlightenment dualism as its foundation The result is an ethical-political framework that is multicultural, gender inclusive, pluralistic, and international in scope