Kincheloe was born in the mountains of East Tennessee. Raised in a very poor area of Sullivan County, Tennesseze, Kincheloe was profoundly lucky to have parents who were committed to social justice around issues of race, class, and gender. Drawing upon his parents’ commitments and his witnessing of grotesque forms of classism and racism in the South of the 1950s and 1960s, Kincheloe developed a unique way of seeing the world grounded on his empathy with the perspectives of those who suffered at the hands of dominant power blocs. His research, scholarship, and activism emerged from these experiences and shape the ideology and spirit of the Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy. Joe's partner in life and scholarship was his longtime love, Shirley Steinberg. With Shirley, Joe developed postformalism, critical multiculturalism, kinderculture and christotainment, along with many other theories and ideas. He and Shirley are the parents of four children and six grandchildren.

His major areas of interest include but are not limited to the following:

A. Postformalism: A Socio-Political Theory of Cognition
B. Critical Bricolage
C. Evolving Criticality
D. Teachers as Critical Researchers and Scholars
E. The Emergence of a New Childhood: Pedagogical Implications

A. Postformalism: A Socio-Political Theory of Cognition.

Drawing upon the innovations delineated by the long tradition of critical interpretivism in a socially, culturally, and philosophically informed study of cognition—the psychological work of John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky, cultural psychology, the paradigmatic analyses of Kenneth Gergen, constructivism, situated cognition, and enactivism in particular—Kincheloe has worked over the last fifteen years to develop a critically grounded foundation for intersection of cognitive studies and critical pedagogy. Incorporating insights from feminist theory, African American ways of seeing, subjugated/indigenous knowledges, the ethical concerns of liberation theology, and a variety of critical theories from the Frankfurt School, Paulo Friere, and critical pedagogy to recent innovations in social theory, he has sought to construct a contemporary critical interpretivist cognitive theory grounded on a concern for social justice and rigorous educational practice. The postformal studies that have emerged in the context of his work have offered a new way of understanding cognition and education in relation to social, cultural, and historical scholarship.

Humble in its debt to the above-mentioned socio-psychological discourses, postformalism attempts to connect cognitive studies to questions of power—developing in the process a critical theory of cognition. In this context postformalism escapes from the universalist proclivities of particular socio-personal norms and ideological expectations. The postformal concern with questions of meaning, emancipation via ideological disembedding, and attention to the process of the production of selfhood moves beyond what Jean Piaget termed the formal operational level of thought with its devotion to proper procedure. Postformalism grapples with purpose, focusing attention to issues of human dignity, freedom, authority, scholarly rigor, and social responsibility. Many have argued that postformalism with its bricoleur’s emphasis on multiple perspectives will necessitate an ethical relativism that paralyzes social action. A critical postformalism grounded on an ever evolving notion of criticality refuses to cave in to relativistic inaction. In this context postformalism promotes a conversation between critical theory and a wide range of social, political economic, psychological, and philosophical insights. This interaction is focused on expanding and constructing self-awareness, new forms of critical consciousness, and more effective modes of social and pedagogical action.

Thus, in the spirit of John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky postformalism involves learning to think and act in ways that hold pragmatic consequence—the promise of new insights and new modes of engaging the world. In this context students in postformal schools encounter bodies of knowledge, not for the simple purpose of committing them to memory but to engage, grapple with, and interpret them in light of other data. At the same time such students are confronting such knowledges they are researching and interacting with diverse contexts. They are focused on the rigorous scholarly process of making meaning and then acting on that meaning in practical and ethically just ways.

In this context postformalism opens a new realm of research concerning the cognitive dimensions of critical pedagogy. Here, postformalism insists that researchers in the socio-cultural, political, curricular, and teaching methodological dimensions of education ask new questions about the cognitive assumptions on which their work is grounded. Such questions lead to new conceptions of mind and what might be called creative intelligence. Concurrently, it insists that researchers in the cognitive domain of education ask new socio-cultural, political, curricular, and teaching methodological questions of their scholarly inquiry. In this way postformalism opens new conversations among educational and other disciplinary scholars who are traditionally isolated from one another.

Relevant postformal publications:

The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology. (2007). 4 vols. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Press. (with Raymond Horn).

Reading, Writing, and Thinking: The Post-formal Basics. with P.L.
Thomas(2006). Rotterdam, Sense Publishers.

The Post-Formal Reader: Cognition and Education. (1999). New York: Falmer Press. (with Patricia Hinchey and Shirley Steinberg)

Rethinking Intelligence: Confronting Psychological Assumptions about Teaching and Learning. (1999). New York: Routledge. (with Leila Villaverde and Shirley Steinberg)

"A Tentative Description of Post-Formal Thinking: The Critical Confrontation with Cognitive Thinking." Harvard Educational Review, 63, 2, Fall, l993, pp. 296-320. (Also published in P. Leistyna, A. Woodrum, and S. Sherblom (eds.) Breaking Free: The Transformative Power of Critical Pedagogy. Boston: Harvard Educational Review Press, l996.) (with Shirley Steinberg)

B. Critical Bricolage

The French word, bricoleur, describes a handyman or handywoman who makes use of the tools available to complete a task. Some connotations of the term involve trickery and cunning and are reminiscent of the chicanery of Hermes, in particular his ambiguity concerning the messages of the gods. If hermeneutics came to connote the ambiguity and slipperiness of textual meaning, then bricolage can also imply the constructed and imaginative elements of the presentation of all formal research. Drawing on the work of Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Norman Denzin, and Yvonna Lincoln, Kincheloe has developed a critical notion of the bricolage that integrates multimethodological, multitheoretical, and multidisciplinary informed modes of research into education and the critical quest for a socially just pedagogy.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century bricolage is typically understood to involve the process of employing these methodological strategies as they are needed in the unfolding context of the research situation. While this interdisciplinary feature is central to any notion of the bricolage, Kincheloe proposes that educational researchers go beyond this dynamic. Pushing to a new conceptual terrain, such an eclectic process raises numerous issues that researchers must deal with in order to maintain theoretical coherence and epistemological innovation. Such multidisciplinarity demands a new level of research self-consciousness and awareness of the numerous contexts in which any researcher is operating. As scholars labor to expose the various structures that covertly shape their own and other scholars’ research narratives, the bricolage highlights the relationship between a researcher’s ways of seeing and the social location of his or her personal history. Appreciating research as a power-driven act, the researcher-as-bricoleur abandons the quest for some misleading notion of objectivity. Instead the critical bricoleur focuses on a more robust concept of objectivity—a notion that works to clarify his or her position in the web of reality and the social locations of other researchers and the ways they shape the production and interpretation of knowledge.

In this context bricoleurs move into the domain of complexity. The bricolage exists out of respect for the complexity of the lived world. Indeed, it is grounded on an epistemology of complexity. One dimension of this complexity can be illustrated by the relationship between research and the domain of social theory. All observations of the world are shaped either consciously or unconsciously by social theory—such theory provides the framework that highlights or erases what might be observed. Theory in a more traditional empiricist mode is a way of understanding that operates without variation in every context. Since theory is a cultural and linguistic artifact, its interpretation of the object of its observation is inseparable from the historical dynamics that have shaped it. The task of the bricoleur is to attack this complexity, uncovering the invisible artifacts of power and culture, and documenting the nature of their influence on not only their own research but on scholarship in general. In this process bricoleurs act upon the concept that theory is not an explanation of nature—it is more an explanation of our relation to nature.

In its labors in the domain of complexity the bricolage views research methods actively rather than passively, meaning that researchers actively construct their research methods from the tools at hand rather than passively receiving the “correct,” universally applicable methodologies. Avoiding modes of reasoning that come from certified processes of logical analysis, bricoleurs also steer clear of pre-existing guidelines and checklists developed outside the specific demands of the inquiry at hand. In its embrace of complexity, the bricolage constructs a far more active role for humans both in shaping reality and in creating the research processes and narratives that represent it. Such an active agency rejects deterministic views of social reality that assume the effects of particular social, political, economic, and educational processes. At the same time and in the same conceptual context this belief in active human agency refuses standardized modes of knowledge production.

In this way the critical bricolage moves educational researchers to rethink their approaches to the field and the goals of their scholarly inquiry. Bricolage also insists that if researchers are going to use the best methods and theories available to inquire into certain domains or answer particular questions, they must be aware of the existence of multiple methods of research and diverse theoretical constructs. Such awareness demands a more rigorous approach to the education of pedagogical researchers—graduate students need to understand what approaches to research and theory exist and the multiple ways they might be applied in a synergistic relation to other methods and theories.

Relevant publications:

On to the Next Level: Continuing the Conceptualization of the Bricolage. Qualitative Inquiry, 11, 3, June 2005, pp. 323-350.

Rigour and Complexity in Educational Research: Conceptualizing the Bricolage. (2004). London: Open University Press. (with Kathleen Berry).

The Sign of the Burger: McDonald’s and the Culture of Control. (2002). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. (Korean Edition, 2004).

Describing the Bricolage: Conceptualizing a New Rigor in Qualitative Inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 7, 6. 2001, pp. 679-92.

C. Evolving Criticality

Critical theory questions the assumption that societies such as Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the nations in the European Union, for example, are unproblematically democratic and free. Over the 20th century, especially after the early 1960s, individuals in these societies were acculturated to feel less uncomfortable with relations of social regulation and subordination rather than equality and independence. Given the social and technological changes of the last half of the century that led to new forms of information production and access, critical theorists argued that questions of self-direction and democratic egalitarianism should be reassessed. In this context critical researchers informed by the “post-discourses” (e.g., critical feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, indigenous studies) came to understand that individuals' view of themselves and the world were even more influenced by social and historical forces than previously believed. Given the changing social and informational conditions of late-20th-century and early 21st century media-saturated Western culture, critical theorists have needed new ways of researching and analyzing the construction of identity/selfhood (Agger, 1992; Flossner & Otto, 1998; Leistyna, Woodrum, & Sherblom, 1996; Smith & Wexler, 1995; Sünker, 1998; Steinberg, 2001; Wesson & Weaver, 2001; Villaverde, 2008). Thus, one begins to understand the need for an evolving notion of criticality—a critical social theory—in light of these changing conditions.

In this context it is important to note that a social theory as used in this context is a map or a guide to the social sphere. A social theory should not determine how we see the world but should help us devise questions and strategies for exploring it. A critical social theory is concerned in particular with issues of power and justice and the ways that the economy, matters of race, class, and gender, ideologies, discourses, education, religion and other social institutions, and cultural dynamics interact to construct a social system (Beck-Gernsheim, Butler, & Puigvert, 2003; Flecha, Gomez, and Puigvert, 2003). Critical theory and its educational expression, critical pedagogy—in the spirit of an evolving criticality—are never static as they are always evolving, changing in light of both new theoretical insights and new problems, social circumstances, and educational contexts.

The list of concepts making up this description of an evolving critical theory/critical pedagogy indicates a criticality informed by a variety of discourses emerging after the work of the Frankfurt School of Social Theory in post-World War I Germany. Indeed, some of the theoretical discourses while referring to themselves as critical directly call into question some of the work of Frankfurt School founders Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse. Thus, diverse theoretical traditions have informed our understanding of criticality and have demanded understanding of diverse forms of oppression including class, race, gender, sexual, cultural, religious, colonial and ability-related concerns. In this context critical theorists/critical pedagogues become detectives of new theoretical insights, perpetually searching for new and interconnected ways of understanding power and oppression and the ways they shape everyday life and human experience.

Thus, criticality and the knowledge production it supports are always evolving, always encountering new ways to engage dominant forms of power, to provide more evocative and compelling insights. The forms of social change it supports always position it in some places as an outsider, an awkward detective always interested in uncovering social structures, discourses, ideologies, and epistemologies that prop up both the status quo and a variety of forms of privilege. In the epistemological domain white, male, class elitist, heterosexist, imperial, and colonial privilege often operates by asserting the power to claim objectivity and neutrality. Indeed the owners of such privilege often own the “franchise” on reason and rationality. An evolving criticality possesses a variety of tools to expose such power politics. In this context it asserts that critical theory and critical pedagogy are well-served by drawing upon numerous discourses and including diverse groups of marginalized peoples and their allies in the non-hierarchical aggregation of critical analysts.

Obviously, an evolving criticality does not promiscuously choose theories to add to the bricolage of critical theories/pedagogies. It is highly suspicious of theories that fail to understand the workings of power, that fail to critique the blinders of Eurocentrism, that cultivate an elitism of insiders and outsiders, and that fail to discern a global system of inequity supported by diverse forms of hegemony and violence. It is uninterested in any theory—no matter how fashionable—that does not directly address the needs of victims of oppression and the suffering they must endure.

Indeed, the very origins of criticality—the tradition that lays the groundwork for critical pedagogy and is concerned with power and its oppression of human beings and regulation of the social order—are grounded on this concern with human suffering. Herbert Marcuse, one of the founders of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, and Paulo Freire were profoundly moved by the suffering they respectively witnessed in post-WWI Germany and Brazil. Though Kincheloe's notion of a critical pedagogy is one that continues to develop and operates to sophisticate its understandings of the world and the educational act, this evolving criticality in education should never lose sight of its central concern with human suffering. One does not have to go too far to find suffering. In North America suffering is often well hidden but a trip to inner cities, specific rural areas, or Aboriginal reserves will reveal its existence. Outside of the North America observers can go to almost any region of the world and see tragic expressions of human misery. Kincheloe’s articulation of critical pedagogy asserts that such suffering is a humanly constructed phenomenon and does not have to exist. Steps can be taken in numerous domains—education in particular—to eradicate such suffering if the people of the planet and their leaders had the collective will to do so. In recent years, however, globalized political economic systems with their de-emphasis of progressive forms of education have exacerbated poverty and its attendant suffering. An evolving criticality develops new ways to deal with such developments and new modes of education to subvert their effects.

Relevant publications:

Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now? with Peter McLaren (2007). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Critical Pedagogy. (2004). (2nd Ed. 2008). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

The Struggle to Define and Reinvent Whiteness. College Literature, 26, 3, Fall, 1999, pp. 162-95.

Changing Multiculturalism: New Times, New Curriculum. (1997). London: Open University Press. (with Shirley Steinberg).

Rethinking Critical Theory and Qualitative Research. In The Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd Edition. N. and Y. Lincoln (eds), (revised and updated). 1994 (2nd Edition, 2000) (3rd Edition, 2005). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. (with Peter McLaren).

Toward a Critical Politics of Teacher Thinking: Mapping the Postmodern. (1993). South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey. (Portuguese Edition, 1995; Spanish Edition, 1999).

D. Teachers as critical researchers and scholars

Kincheloe’s work in education is centered on the education of teachers to be rigorous scholars and researchers of the cosmos of schooling and the larger domains that shape education. Until teachers are educated and viewed by the public with these objectives in mind, little can be done to improve elementary, secondary, and higher education. In the existing world of schooling and especially in the new educational order being created in many Western societies by standardized, multiple-choice drvien curricula, teachers do not live in the same professional culture as researchers. Knowledge in contemporary education is still something that is produced far away from the school by experts in a rarefied domain. This must change if democratic reform of education is to take place. Teachers must join the culture of researchers if a new level of educational rigor and quality is to ever be achieved. In such a new democratized culture, teacher scholars begin to understand the pedagogical implications of standardized, one-size-fits-all curricula. In this context they appreciate the benefits of research, especially as they relate to understanding the forces shaping education that fall outside their immediate experience and perception. As these insights are constructed, teachers begin to understand what they know from experience. With this in mind they gain heightened awareness of how they can contribute to the research on education. Indeed, they realize that they have access to understandings that go beyond what the expert researchers have often times produced.

In the new school culture Kincheloe imagines, teachers are viewed as learners—not as functionaries who follow top-down orders without question. Teachers are seen as researchers and knowledge workers who reflect on their professional needs and current understandings. They are aware of the complexity of the educational process and how schooling cannot be understood outside of the social, historical, philosophical, cultural, economic, political, and psychological contexts that shape it. Scholar teachers understand that curriculum development responsive to student needs is not possible when it fails to account for these contexts. With this in mind they explore and attempt to interpret the learning processes that take place in their classrooms. What are their psychological, sociological, and ideological effects, they ask. Thus, scholar teachers research their own professional practice (Bereiter, 2002; Norris, 1998; Kraft, 2001).

With empowered scholar teachers prowling the schools, things begin to change. The oppressive culture created by positivistic standards is challenged. In-service staff development no longer takes the form of “ this is what the expert researchers found—now go do it.” Such staff development in the new culture gives way to teachers who analyze and contemplate the power of each other’s ideas. Thus, the new critical pedagogical culture of school takes on the form of a “think tank that teaches students,” a learning community. School administrators are amazed by what can happen when they support learning activities for both students and teachers. Principals and curriculum developers watch as teachers develop projects that encourage collaboration and shared research. There is an alternative to top-down standardization of the curriculum with its deskilling of teachers and students (Novick, 1996; Norris, 1998; Jardine, 1998).

Promoting teachers as researchers is a fundamental way of cleaning up the damage of these reforms that work to deprofessionalize teachers . Deskilling of teachers and dumbing-down of the curriculum takes place when teachers are seen as receivers not producers of knowledge. A vibrant professional culture depends on a group of practitioners who have the freedom to continuously reinvent themselves via their research and knowledge production. Teachers engaged in complex, critical practice find it difficult to allow imposed curricula and their poisonous effects to go unchallenged. Such teachers cannot abide the deskilling and reduction in professional status that accompanies these top-down reforms. Teacher empowerment does not occur just because we wish it so. Instead, it takes place when teachers develop the knowledge work skills and pedagogical abilities befitting the calling of teaching.

Reforms based on standardization are both assume and promote a reductionistic, truncated view of educational, social, and psychological research. The profound advances in research produced over the last thirty years are virtually ignored by advocates of one-truth standards. What we know or have developed the capacity to know about the complex world of teaching and learning grants educators a far more compelling and diverse view of schooling and its relationship to social, cultural, historical, economic, and psychological forces (Willinsky, 2001a; Symes and Meadmore, 1999; Coben, 1998). It is frustrating to watch these advances in research and knowledge production (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000; Clough, 1998) relegated to the trash heap, while outmoded and destructive modes of inquiry are recovered and legitimated. With their official status, such practices are rendered unquestionable. Teacher researchers have the difficult task of questioning that which standardized reforms render unquestionable. Using the insights of an evolving criticality, the intellectual rigor of the bricolage, and the power of postformal socio-cognitive frameworks, teacher research can profoundly change the quality and goals of democratic schooling.

Relevant publications:

Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction. Amsterdam, Springer Press.

Critical Constructivism (2005). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Students as Researchers: Creating Classrooms that Matter. (1998). New York: Falmer Press. (Chinese Edition, 2003) (with Shirley Steinberg)

Teachers as Researchers: Qualitative Paths to Empowerment (1991) (2nd Edition, 2003). Philadelphia: Falmer Press.

E. The Emergence of a New Childhood: Pedagogical Implications

In Kincheloe’s work on childhood and childhood education, he has made use of the bricolage to study these topics from multiple perspectives—historiography, ethnography, cognitive research, media studies, political economic analysis, hermeneutics, semiotics, content analysis, etc. Based on this multiperspectival inquiry, Kincheloe has maintained that new times have ushered in a new era of childhood. Evidence of this dramatic cultural change surrounds each of us, but many individuals have not yet noticed it. When Shirley Steinberg and Kincheloe wrote the first edition of Kinderculture in 1997 many people who made their living studying or caring for children were not yet aware of the nature of the changes in childhood that they encountered daily. By the last half of the first decade of the twenty-first century more and more people are understanding this historic change, but Kincheloe is still amazed by how many child professionals remain oblivious to these social and cultural alterations.

In the domains of psychology, education, and to a lesser degree sociology few observers have seriously studied the ways that the information explosion so characteristic of our contemporary era has operated to undermine traditional notions of childhood. Those who have shaped, directed and employed contemporary information technology have played an exaggerated role in the reformulation of childhood. Thus, Kincheloe’s research in this domain was some of the first work to analyze changes in the nature of childhood, especially the role that information technology has played in this process. Of course, information technology alone has not produced a new era of childhood. Numerous social and political economic factors have operated to produce such changes. The focus of his work in what he and Shirley Steinberg have labeled, kinderculture, is not to cover all of these factors but to question the ways media in particular has helped construct what Steinberg and Kincheloe called the new childhood.

Childhood is a social and historical artifact—not simply a biological entity. Many scholars have argued that childhood is a natural phase of growing up, of becoming an adult. The cardinal concept here involves the format of this human phase that has been produced by social, cultural, political, and economic forces operating upon it. Indeed, what is labeled today as the “traditional childhood” is only about 150 years old. In Europe’s Middle Ages, for example, children participated daily in the adult world gaining knowledge of vocational and life skills as a part of such engagement. The concept of children as a particular classification of human beings demanding special treatment differing from adults had not yet developed in the Middle Ages. When one studies childhood in different world cultures—not to mention children of the same cultures and times from different class and gender backgrounds—these socially constructed dynamics become even more obvious.

With the advent of a plethora of socio-economic changes, technological developments, globalization, and the growth of new forms of media and media access, Western societies and increasing other parts of the world have entered into a transitional phase of childhood. This transitional phase has been accompanied by a paradigm shift in the way many scholars study childhood and situate it in social, cultural, political, and economic relations. This scholarly shift takes direct exception to a reductionistic view of childhood and its expression of a universal, uniformly developmentalist conception of the normal child. This positivist passive conception of children as receivers of adult input and socialization strategies has been replaced by a view of the child as an active agent capable of contributing to the construction of his or her own subjectivity. For those operating in the parameters of the new paradigm, the purpose of studying and working with children is not to remove the boundary between childhood and adulthood but to gain a thicker, more compelling picture of the complexity of the culture, politics, and psychology of childhood. With its penchant for decontextualization and inability to account for contemporary social, cultural, political, economic, and epistemological changes, the reductionist paradigm is not adequate for this task (Cannella, 1997; Jenkins, 1998; Hengst, 2001; Cannella and Kincheloe, 2002; Cannella, 2002; Cook, 2004).

Insisting that children existed outside of society and could only brought in from the cold by adult socialization that led to cognitive and maturational development, the reductionist view constructed research and childhood professional practices that routinely excluded children's voices. In opposition to this view Kincheloe has argued that such reductionistic silencing and general disempowerment is not in the best interests of children. In the name of child protection, Steinberg and Kincheloe have maintained, children are often rendered powerless and vulnerable in their everyday lives. As Steinberg and Kincheloe construct their view of children as active constructors of their own worlds, they emphasize the personhood of children. The children of this “new paradigm of childhood” both construct their worlds and are constructed by their worlds. Thus, in ethnographic and other forms childhood research, Kincheloe positions children, like adults, as co-participants in research—not as mere objects to be observed and categorized. As advocates of a new paradigm operating in the domain of social, political, and educational policy making for children, Steinberg and Kincheloe contend that such activity must always take into account the perspectives of children to inform their understanding of particular situations (Mason and Steadman, 1997; Seaton, 2002; Cook, 2004). In this context Steinberg and Kincheloe—along with a few other scholars—seek to provide children with tools that facilitate children's efforts to achieve their own political goals and help them construct their own culture.

In rejecting the reductionist paradigm of childhood passivity and innocence advocates of the new empowerment paradigm are not contending that there is no time that children need adult protection—that would be a silly assertion. Children, like human beings in general, too often find themselves victimized by abuse, neglect, racism, class bias, and sexism. The salient point is that instead of further infantilizing children and rendering them more passive, Kincheloe’s new paradigm attempts to employ their perspectives in solving their problems (Mason and Steadman, 1997; Jenkins, 1998). In addition, such transformative researchers and child professionals work to help children develop a critical social consciousness as they protect their access to diverse knowledges and technologies. As is the nature of developing a critical consciousness in any context, Kincheloe and Steinberg are arguing that children in social, cultural, psychological, and pedagogical contexts need help in developing the ability to analyze, critique, and change for the better their position in the world. Here is where critical pedagogy intersects with kinderculture.

In this changing social context of childhood research on the new childhood contends that children are far more cognitively capable than traditionally maintained by developmental psychology. The world of electronic media along with these changing notions of the social role of the child has expanded what Lev Vygotsky referred to as the ZPD (zone of proximal development)—the context that facilitates the learning process—of contemporary children. In the ZPD individuals learn to take part in social and cultural activities that catalyze their intellectual development. In the media created electronic ZPD with its videos, TV, computers, video games, Internet, iPods, popular music, and virtual realities children learn to use the tools of culture, e.g., language, mathematics, reasoning, etc… (Fu, 2003). The skills learned may or may not be abilities valued by the school. They are valuable abilities nonetheless.

When sociologists, psychologists, and cultural scholars examine what children are able to construct employing the symbols and tools of mediated culture, they realize how sophisticated and intellectually advanced children’s abilities can become in this new electronic ZPD. In this new domain of learning many children free themselves from the educational project of modern Western societies. Many children in Western societies—and increasingly around the world—are no longer learning along a pre-planned program of selected exposure to the adult world by adults. Instead they are accessing previously considered “adult” information via electronic media. As this takes place, such children are freed from particular parental norms and parental regulations common to Western “bourgeoise” culture. A child cultural aesthetic develops that eschews cultural products provided for the purposes of education and refinement. It is in this context that an electronic kinderculture emerges. It takes shape around the new childhood desire for independence and resistance to things adult. Traditional forms of school learning become less and less important and less applicable to the needs of these new children (Hengst, 2001). Thus, childhood is perceived in crisis because it resembles nothing most people have ever seen before.

A central objective of Kincheloe’s study of this new reality entails the promotion of understandings of kinderculture that lead to smart and democratic pedagogies for children at the cultural, familial, and school levels. Cultural studies connected to a democratic education—a critical pedagogy—for children involves investigations of how children's consciousness is produced around issues of cultural expectations for children, social justice and egalitarian power relations. Thus, Steinberg and Kincheloe’s analyses focus on exposing the footprints of power left by the corporate producers of kinderculture (TV, videos, popular music, video games, etc.) and their effects on the psyches of children. Appreciating the ambiguity and complexity of power, this critical pedagogy for children is committed to challenging ideologically manipulative and racist, sexist, and class-biased entertainment for children. It is equally opposed to other manifestations of kinderculture that promote violence and social and psychological pathologies. Children's entertainment like other social spheres is a contested public space where different social, economic, and political interests compete for control. Unfortunately, North Americans are often uncomfortable with overt discussions of power. Such unease allows power wielders to hide in the recesses of the cultural and political landscape all the while shaping cultural expression and public policy in their own interests—interests that may conflict with those of less powerful social groups such as children.

The information explosion, the media saturation of contemporary Western societies with its access to private realms of human consciousness has created a social vertigo. This social condition often labeled hyperreality, exaggerates the importance of power wielders in all phases of human experience. Hyperreality's flood of signifiers in everything from megabytes to TV advertising diminishes our ability to either find meaning or engender passion for commitment. With so much power-generated information bombarding of senses, adults and children lose the faith that they can make sense of anything. Thus, the existence of hyperreality forces scholars and educators to rethink the conversation about literacy. Children who have been educated by popular culture approach literacy from a very different angle. Media literacy becomes not some rarefied add-on to a traditional curriculum but a basic skill necessary to negotiating one's identity, values, and well being in power-soaked hyperreality. Here media literacy becomes a central dimension of a critical pedagogy of childhood.

A critical understanding of media culture, Steinberg and Kincheloe maintain, requires that young students not simply develop the ability to interpret media meanings but to understand the ways they themselves consume and affectively invest in media. Such an attempt encourages both critical thinking and self-analysis, as students begin to realize that everyday decisions are not necessarily made freely and rationally. Rather, they are encoded and inscribed by emotional and bodily commitments relating to the production of desire and mood, all of which leads, in Noam Chomsky's famous phrase, to the "manufacture of consent." These are complex pedagogical and ideological issues and they demand rigorous skills of questioning, analyzing, interpreting, and meaning making. Contrary to the decontextualized pronouncements of reductionistic modes of developmental psychology, relatively young children are capable of engaging in these cognitive activities (Nations, 2001). Of course, in the contemporary reductionistic, test-driven educational context such abilities are not emphasized, as memorization for standards tests becomes more and more the order of the school day.

A central dimension of kinderculture—the critical pedagogy of childhood—requires developing and teaching this media literacy. Such a literacy respects children's intellectual ability to deal with the complexities of power, oppression, and exploitation, as it refuses to position them as innocent, passive, and helpless victims. In an era where children can instantaneously access diverse types of information, they need the ability to traverse this knowledge terrain in savvy and well-informed ways. A critical pedagogy of childhood finds this approach much more helpful than pietistic efforts to censor potentially offensive data from innocent childhood eyes. In their effort to perpetuate the discourse of childhood innocence, many child advocates maintain a reductionistic developmentalist view that media literacy is irrelevant because children do not have the intellectual and emotional maturity to understand TV advertising and subtle marketing appeals (Cassell and Jenkins, 2002). As much as the advocates of childhood innocence might wish for it, children in the twenty-first century are not going to return to the mythical secret garden of innocence. For better and worse children now live in a wider, information saturated adult world. Kincheloe’s research on kinderculture convinces him that the best thing critical pedagogues can do in this circumstance is to prepare children to cope with it, make sense of it, and participate in it in ways that benefit everyone (Vieira, 2001).

In this context the critical politics of kinderculture urges psychologists, sociologists, parents, and other citizens to reflect on children’s activities represented by many as “misbehavior.” Can researchers and educators empathize with children who are positioned as self-directed agents in one social domain and incompetent individuals in need of constant surveillance and punitive regulation in another? Can they understand the difficulty of dealing with such contradictions in one’s everyday pursuits? A critical politics of childhood urges researchers and educators to take such questions seriously. Indeed, we maintain that a critical politics of childhood involves more than just protecting children. As such professionals begin to reconsider the notion of competence, advocates of a critical politics of childhood work to ensure that children can use their ever-evolving abilities in a way that improves their quality of life and the society in which they live.

Relevant publications:

Kidworld: Childhood Studies, Global Perspectives, and Education. (2002). New York: Peter Lang. (with Gaile Cannella)

Kinderculture: The Corporate Construction of Childhood. (1997) (Portuguese Edition, 2001) (2nd Edition, 2004). Boulder, Colorado: Westview. (with Shirley Steinberg)

The New Childhood: Home Alone as a Way of Life, Cultural Studies, 1, l996, pp. 219-38.

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