Joe L. Kincheloe

Joe Lyons Kincheloe (December 14, 1950 – December 19, 2008) was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal and founder of The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy. He wrote more than 45 books, numerous book chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including critical pedagogy, educational research, urban studies, cognition, curriculum, and cultural studies. Kincheloe received three graduate degrees from the University of Tennessee. The father of four children, he worked closely for the last 19 years of his life with his partner, Shirley R. Steinberg.

Academic
Joe Kincheloe's first academic position was on the Rosebud Indian Reservation as the department chair of education at Sinte Gleska College (1980–1982). He was tenured at LSU-Shreveport (1982–1989), Clemson University (1989–1992), Florida International University (1992–1994), Pennsylvania State University (1994–1998), and was the Belle Zeller Chair of Public Policy and Administration from 1998 to 2000 at Brooklyn College. Kincheloe co-authored the Urban Education Ph.D. program at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York and served as Deputy Executive Program Officer there from 2000 to 2005. He moved to McGill University in January 2006 and received the first Canada Research Chair of Critical Pedagogy in October 2006.

Major influences
Kincheloe's work drew from a number of theoretical traditions, and his analyzes focused on the social, cultural, political, economic, and cognitive dynamics that contextualize teaching and learning. Dr. Kincheloe's research provided a compelling understanding of the forces shaping contemporary education. Understanding these dynamics, educators are better equipped to formulate policies and develop actions that rigorously cultivate the intellect while operating in a more socially just and inclusive manner. He and Steinberg spoke about critical pedagogy and cultural/media politics in North America, South America, Australia, Europe, and Asia.

Project for Critical Pedagogy
Kincheloe founded The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy with Shirley R. Steinberg at the Faculty of Education, McGill University. Following Kincheloe's death, the Freire Project continued as a virtual network: freireproject.org maintained and directed by Steinberg, creating a global community of researchers and cultural workers in critical pedagogy and cultural engagement. Kincheloe is considered one of the leading scholars in critical pedagogy, critical constructivism, the research bricolage conceived with Shirley R. Steinberg, critical multicultural education, and contemporary curriculum discourses. He is the architect of a critical cognitive theory, having developed the notion of a critical postformal educational psychology. Postformalism focuses on exposing the unexamined power relations that shape cognitive theory and educational psychology in a larger liberatory effort to develop a psychology of possibility. Such a critical psychology focuses on typically underestimated human cognitive capacities, the socio-cultural construction of mind, collective intelligence, and the unexplored dimensions of human cognition. Postformalism posits that mainstream psychology has historically dismissed the cognitive abilities of those who fall outside of whiteness, the middle and upper socio-economic classes, dominant colonizing cultures, and patriarchy. In this context, critical postformalism becomes a socially transformative psychology.

Impact
Central to Kincheloe's work in all of these areas is the construction of a rigorous form of multidimensional scholarship that draws upon critical theory, critical pedagogy, feminist theory, complexity theory, indigenous knowledges, post/anti-colonialism, and other global discourses to help end dominant power-constructed human suffering. In his work over the last few years Kincheloe has focused much attention on the politics of knowledge and epistemology and the diverse ways they operate to shape human consciousness and socio-political and educational activities. He was dedicated to creating a critical pedagogy that helps individuals reshape their lives, become better scholars and social activists, realize their cognitive potential, re-create democratic spaces in an electronically mediated global world, and build and become members of communities of solidarity that work to create better modes of education and a more peaceful, equitable, and ecologically sustainable world.

As educational scholar, Rucheeta Kulkarni (2008) writes: "With an authorial voice that blends conversational simplicity with visionary philosophy, Joe Kincheloe [outlines] the deepening crises of this nation's actions at home and abroad—including preemptive wars against imagined enemies, scripted curricula for deprofessionalized teachers, privatization of public schools, and corporate ownership of the news media—he tells the reader not to despair but to hope...For any reader who aspires to do meaningful and transformative knowledge work, it is hard to refuse Kincheloe's invitation into the ideas of critical pedagogy."

See Raymond Horn (1999) for a comprehensive overview of Kincheloe's scholarship in the 1980s and 1990s.

Criticism
Educational researcher Peter Smagorinsky (2007) argues in a review of Kincheloe's and Kenneth Tobin's Doing Educational Research: A Handbook that Kincheloe uses positivism as an inappropriate bogeyman in a misguided effort to resurrect this long-discredited way of knowing to justify radical perspectives on knowledge production. In Smagorinsky's opinion, Kincheloe's work is misleading and dangerous for those legitimate scholars who would seek to engage in scholarship that produces assured answers to specific questions. Detractors also critique Kincheloe's frequent attacks on U.S. educational, social, and foreign policy. Such attacks, it is maintained, are often unfair and reflect a one-dimensional, biased point of view. His analysis of "whiteness" and Caucasian racism have often drawn fire from more moderate and conservative analysts.

Bibliography of Books
Authored:
 * Kincheloe, Joe L (2008). Critical Pedagogy Primer 2nd edition. English: New York, New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-1-4331-0182-3
 * Critical Pedagogy Primer. (2004). New York City: Peter Lang. (2nd edition, 2008).
 * Teachers as Researchers: Qualitative Paths to Empowerment, 2nd Edition. (2002). New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
 * Getting Beyond the Facts: Teaching Social Studies/Social Sciences in the Twenty-First Century. (2001). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
 * Hacia una Revision Critica del Pensamiento Docente. (2001). Barcelona: Ocaedro.
 * How Do We Tell the Workers? The Socio-Economic Foundations of Work and Vocational Education. (1999). Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
 * Getting Beyond the Facts: Teaching Social Studies/Social Sciences in the Twenty-First Century. (2001). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
 * Hacia una Revision Critica del Pensamiento Docente. (2001). Barcelona: Ocaedro.
 * How Do We Tell the Workers? The Socio-Economic Foundations of Work and Vocational Education. (1999). Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

Co-authored:
 * The Stigma of Genius: Einstein Consciousness and Critical Education 2nd Edition. (2021). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. (Shirley R. Steinberg, Joe L. Kincheloe and Edmund Adjapong, with Deborah J. Tippins).
 * Reading, Writing, and Thinking: The Postformal Basics. (2006). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. (with P.L. Thomas).
 * Rigour and Complexity in Educational Research: Conceptualizing the Bricolage. (2004). London: Open University Press. (with Kathleen Berry) (Portuguese Edition, 2005)
 * Art, Culture, & Education: Artful Teaching in a Fractured Landscape. (2003). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.  (with Karel Rose)
 * Contextualizing Teaching: Introduction to the Foundations of Education. (2000). New York:  Allan & Bacon. Longman. (with Shirley R. Steinberg)
 * The Stigma of Genius: Einstein, Consciousness and Education. (1999). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. (with Deborah Tippins and Shirley R. Steinberg)
 * Changing Multiculturalism: New Times, New Curriculum. (1997). London: Open University Press. (with Shirley R. Steinberg).

Edited:
 * Classroom Teaching: An Introduction 2nd Edition. (2018). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. (with Shirley R. Steinberg).
 * Classroom Teaching: An Introduction. (2005). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
 * Multiple Intelligences Reconsidered. (2004). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. (Chinese Edition 2005).

Co-edited:
 * Christotainment: Selling Jesus Through Popular Culture. (2009). Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. (with Shirley R. Steinberg)
 * Cutting Class: Socio-economic Class and Education. (2007). Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. (with Shirley R. Steinberg)
 * Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now? (2007). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. (with Peter McLaren)
 * Doing Educational Research. (2006). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. (with Kenneth Tobin)
 * Teaching City Kids: Understanding Them and Appreciating Them. (2006). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. (with Kecia Hayes)
 * Urban Education: An Encyclopedia. (2006). 2 volumes. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. (with Philip Anderson, Kecia Hayes and Karel Rose). Rights bought by Rowman and Littlefield for 2nd edition: (2007) Urban Education: A Comprehensive Guide for Educators, Parents, and Teachers. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
 * Educational Psychology: An Encyclopedia. (2006). 4 vols. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. (with Raymond Horn).
 * Metropedagogy: Power, Justice and the Urban Classroom. (2006). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
 * What You Don't Know about Schools. (2006). New York: Palgrave Press. (with Shirley R. Steinberg)
 * The Miseducation of the West: How the Schools and Media Distort Our Understanding of Islam. (2004). Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Press. (Arabic Edition, 2005) (with Shirley R. Steinberg).
 * American Standards: Quality Education in a Complex World—The Texas Case. (2001). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. (with Raymond Horn).