Critical Perspectives on Teaching in Prison Students and Instructors on Pedagogy Behind the Wall

This volume makes a case for engaging critical approaches for teaching adults in prison higher education (or ?college-in-prison?) programs. This book not only contextualizes pedagogy within the specialized and growing niche of prison instruction, but also addresses prison abolition, reentry, and educational equity. Chapters are written by prison instructors, currently incarcerated students, and formerly incarcerated students, providing a variety of perspectives on the many roadblocks and ambitions of teaching and learning in carceral settings. All unapologetic advocates of increasing access to higher education for people in prison, contributors discuss the high stakes of teaching incarcerated individuals and address the dynamics, conditions, and challenges of doing such work. The type of instruction that contributors advocate is transferable beyond prisons to traditional campus settings. Hence, the lessons of this volume will not only support readers in becoming more thoughtful prison educators and program administrators, but also in becoming better teachers who can employ critical, democratic pedagogy in a range of contexts.

Part 1. The Context 1.An Open Letter to Prison Educators 2. Hope for Leaving a Legacy 3. Repairing the Generations: Prison Higher Education as Historical Reparations 4. Pedagogy of the Offender 5. A Nice Outfit 6. From Africa to High Desert State Prison: Journeys of an Invisible Teacher Part 2. In the Classroom 7.The Perils of Transformation Talk in Higher Education in Prison 8. On the Practice and Ethos of Self-Compassion for Higher Educators in Prisons 9. Beyond Progress: Indigenous Scholars, Relational Methodologies, and Decolonial Options for the Prison Classroom 10. Shout, Sister Shout: Embodied Pedagogy in Creative Writing Classrooms 11. "Go Hard": Bringing Privilege-Industry Pedagogies into a College Writing Classroom in Prison 12. Women’s Writing Groups Inside: Healing, Resistance, and Change 13. Writing for Reentry: A Few Lessons from Transfer Theory 14. Untimeliness; or, What Can Happen in the Waiting 15. Teaching American History in Prison 16. The Prison Oppresses: Avoiding the False Us/Them Binary in Prison Education 17. Learning Inside-Out: The Perspectives of Two Individuals Who Had the Opportunity to Partake in the Soul Journey of Healing Arts and Social Change 18. Healing Pedagogy from the Inside Out: The Paradox of Liberatory Education in Prison 19. Schools, Prisons, and Higher Education

Rebecca Ginsburg is Associate Professor of Education Policy and Director of the Education Justice Project at the University of Illinois, USA.