The Freire Project

Andrew Churchill is a doctoral student at McGill University.  He is a writing instructor in the McGill Centre for Teaching and Writing and a research assistant for the International Project on Cyberbullying.  In collaboration with Shaheen Shariff, the principal investigator, he has presented this research in Canada, the United States and New Zealand. Currently he is co-editing the book Truths and Myths of Cyber-bullying: Stakeholder Responsibility and Children’s Safety, to be published in 2009.  He is doing his doctoral work under the supervision of Joe Kincheloe.  As part of this work, he edited Rocking Your World: The Emotional Journey into Critical Discourses.  This book features stories by a dozen authors about their personal and professional relationships with criticality.  Currently, Andrew is focusing on his doctoral research: An analysis of the potential impact of Charter Schools on critical public education reform. This work focuses on examining the potential (or lack thereof) for Charter Schools to enact critical change within public education in the United States.  Specifically, the work asks whether Charter Schools have the potential to redress any of the fundamental issues of inequality and social injustice pervasive to American public education. Its look is wide ranging in scope and includes considering issues such as student agency, assumptions around intelligence, the role of standardized curriculum and testing, the ongoing deprofessionalization of teachers and, of course, the purpose of schools themselves.