Faculty Member, Educational Foundations, Research, Technology and Leadership
Assistant Professor
Beeghly College of Education
About
I am originally from Toronto, and now reside in Montreal, maintaining a deep attachment to both cities. I studied for two years in France in the early 1980s, which proved to be a formative learning experience, and then undertook the rest of my university studies in Canada in the areas of political science, sociology and education. I completed my doctorate in the sociology of education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto in 1996, with my thesis examining anti-racism and institutional culture in education.
For the past few years, I have been a professor at Youngstown State University, where I teach courses in multicultural education, the sociology of education, diversity and leadership, and qualitative methodology. My current research is broadly concerned with social justice, with specific threads related to race and identity, critical pedagogy, democracy and political literacy, media literacy, and intercultural relations.
I am influenced by the critical pedagogical movement/tradition/body of work, and am intellectually, socially and politically interested in Paulo Freire`s work and ideas around political literacy, transformation, conscientization, and radical love. Other scholars, such as Joe Kincheloe, Peter McLaren, George Dei, and Carl James, have further supported my thinking around political sociology, oppression, human decency, and the quest for peace.
In 2007, I co-edited The Great White North? Exploring Whiteness, Privilege and Identity in Education (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers), and, in 2008, co-edited another book, entitled Doing Democracy: Striving for Political Literacy and Social Justice (New York: Peter Lang). I am currently finalizing two other edited books dealing with intercultural education and youth culture, respectively, and am also writing a book on critical pedagogy and democracy.
I am the co-founder and co-director (along with David Zyngier of Monash University in Australia) of the Global Doing Democracy Research Project, which aims to produce a range of studies on the international level, leading to critical, comparative analysis of how democracy and education can be more effectively connected.
I have travelled a fair amount these past several years, and have seen my thinking evolve thanks to numerous interactions with people in their local contexts, which, generally speaking, differs greatly from the North American vantage-point of what the world looks like. The human decency that one can witness and absorb in almost any context is, for me, an important and tangible revelation, something which underpins my work on critical pedagogy.
I have a blog on the Paulo and Nita Freire International Center for Critical Pedagogy at McGill University on the theme of democracy (econ-ocracy, which addresses the neo-liberal manifestations and distortions of the true meaning of democracy), where I am also a Research Associate.
I also write poetry, and have been fortunate enough to collaborate with Spanish-speaking colleagues on several literary projects, including two anthologies with Cuban colleagues. Lastly, I have been involved in a range of projects and initiatives in relation to solidarity with Latin America. My website is: www.coe.ysu.edu/~paulcarr/.
Contact Information
http://www.coe.ysu.edu/~paulcarr/
Youngstown State University
Beeghly College of Education
One University Plaza
Youngstown, OH
USA, 44555
330-409-5209
skype - paulocarr
