When Prison Is the Classroom: Collaborative Learning about Urban Inequality
This article analyzes the pedagogy of an urban sociology course taught in prison, with both outside and imprisoned students. The course examined the production of knowledge used in the field of planning and sought to facilitate the coproduction of new insights about urban inequality. Participant obs...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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SAGE Publications
2020
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124146 |
| _version_ | 1826189803469668352 |
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| author | Steil, Justin P Mehta, Aditi |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning Steil, Justin P Mehta, Aditi |
| author_sort | Steil, Justin P |
| collection | MIT |
| description | This article analyzes the pedagogy of an urban sociology course taught in prison, with both outside and imprisoned students. The course examined the production of knowledge used in the field of planning and sought to facilitate the coproduction of new insights about urban inequality. Participant observation, focus groups, and students’ written reflections reveal that, in comparison to traditional classroom settings, students explored with greater complexity their embodiment of multiple social identities, wrestled more deeply with the structural embeddedness of individual agency, and situated their personal experiences in a broader theoretical narrative about urban inequality. Building trust in the face of significant power disparities within the classroom was essential to learning. The findings highlight the importance of new locations of learning that enable classrooms to become contact zones, pushing students to collaboratively reimagine justice in the city with those outside the traditional classroom.
Keywords: planning education; urban inequality; sociology of knowledge; prisons |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:22:34Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/124146 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:22:34Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | SAGE Publications |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1241462022-09-30T09:12:45Z When Prison Is the Classroom: Collaborative Learning about Urban Inequality Steil, Justin P Mehta, Aditi Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning This article analyzes the pedagogy of an urban sociology course taught in prison, with both outside and imprisoned students. The course examined the production of knowledge used in the field of planning and sought to facilitate the coproduction of new insights about urban inequality. Participant observation, focus groups, and students’ written reflections reveal that, in comparison to traditional classroom settings, students explored with greater complexity their embodiment of multiple social identities, wrestled more deeply with the structural embeddedness of individual agency, and situated their personal experiences in a broader theoretical narrative about urban inequality. Building trust in the face of significant power disparities within the classroom was essential to learning. The findings highlight the importance of new locations of learning that enable classrooms to become contact zones, pushing students to collaboratively reimagine justice in the city with those outside the traditional classroom. Keywords: planning education; urban inequality; sociology of knowledge; prisons 2020-03-17T17:30:24Z 2020-03-17T17:30:24Z 2017-10 2017-06 2020-03-10T12:30:16Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0739-456X 1552-6577 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124146 Steil, Justin and Aditi Mehta. "When Prison Is the Classroom: Collaborative Learning about Urban Inequality." Journal of Eduation Planning and Research (October 2017): 1-10 © 2017 The Author(s) en http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0739456x17734048 Journal of Eduation Planning and Research Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf SAGE Publications Prof. Steil via Jen Greenleaf |
| spellingShingle | Steil, Justin P Mehta, Aditi When Prison Is the Classroom: Collaborative Learning about Urban Inequality |
| title | When Prison Is the Classroom: Collaborative Learning about Urban Inequality |
| title_full | When Prison Is the Classroom: Collaborative Learning about Urban Inequality |
| title_fullStr | When Prison Is the Classroom: Collaborative Learning about Urban Inequality |
| title_full_unstemmed | When Prison Is the Classroom: Collaborative Learning about Urban Inequality |
| title_short | When Prison Is the Classroom: Collaborative Learning about Urban Inequality |
| title_sort | when prison is the classroom collaborative learning about urban inequality |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124146 |
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