Pedagogical Opportunities and Challenges: Handling the Carnivalesque, Question Posing, & Representations of Indigenous Peoples

While movements such as #WeNeedDiverseBooks have brought to the attention of teachers and educators the need for representation in instruction as well as casual reading events, the voices and perspectives of Native American and Indigenous peoples has long been absent from elementary classroom spaces. This study critically analyzed two commercially available English/Language Arts curricula and found that while there were few Native and Indigenous representations were present, those present were essentialized and stereotypical. Implications include how classroom teachers can better represent diverse perspectives when utilizing scripted curricula while calling for educator authority in the selection of classroom materials.

This paper makes two interrelated arguments: Teachers can widen their understanding of learning materials through the discovery of unexpected questions posed by the students, and researchers can widen their understanding of the parameters of scientific research through the discovery of unexpected questions posed by the teachers. Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue, the Saitou pedagogy of Japan and Vygotsky’s theory of creativity are used to analyze data and methods in two studies, one of classroom lessons in Japan and one of play in an early childhood classroom in the United States. Both ethnographic and formative intervention methods were employed in these studies.

Inspired by Fecho & Botzakis' (2007) rendition of Bakhtin’s Carnival, “sanctioned anarchy,” I examine various “anarchical” moments in a book group discussion of five Korean American males in grades 8-10 to understand how spontaneity could open up room for carnivalesque laughter. I draw mainly from Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World to understand the power and role of laughter and aim to show how embracing spontaneity might enable both teachers and students to envision learning as occurring amid and through ruptures within dialogic practice.