Coming to Class: Pedagogy and the Social Class of Teachers

by Alan Shepard, Gary Tate, John McMillan

Social class continues to be a powerful yet invisible regulator inside American colleges and universities. While the impact of college students' own backgrounds is well-studied, too little attention has been given to the social class histories of those who teach-and even less to the ways teachers' histories affect their relationships with students, who themselves are from a variety of class cultures. This important new book offers that insight. Coming to Class presents twenty-one original essays on the relationship of pedagogical practice to instructors' social class histories. The contributors, teachers of composition as well as literature, represent every area of English studies-one of the most politically contentious sites in contemporary debates about higher education. They write about the influence of class on their teaching from a diverse set of theoretical positions, subject positions, and socioeconomic realities. One of the greatest strengths of the collection is the fact that most of the contributors are just coming to recognize the role of social class in their own pedagogical practices-in the same ways other teachers are in their classrooms. Together, their voices will further the many conversations that are vigorously underway.

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 26, 1998