January 31, 2025

Professor Shirley Steinberg’s keynote and interactive session kickstarted the cluster’s official launch on 10 January. We were happy to see more than 40 education researchers from NUS, NIE, SMU and SUSS present at the event. It was a great afternoon of discussions, and strategising next steps for critical education research in Singapore and the region.

Professor Steinberg talked about radical love and healing as key concepts in critical pedagogy. She spoke about the importance of embodied, lived, and accountable critical education research that is committed to mending the torn fabric of social life. She argued that as critical education researchers we must guard against the hegemony of technologies that promise convenient solutions to the very complex world we live in. Our research which is informed by disciplinary knowledge and classroom practice, are sites where we interact with learners who both reproduce and question this hegemony. How might we navigate this space of possibility as critical educators and critical education researchers in the context of Singapore and Asia?

About Shirley Steinberg
An innovative educator and social theorist, committed to critical pedagogy, diversity, inclusion, equity, accommodation, transformative curriculum, and social justice within curriculum and pedagogy, Shirley R. Steinberg was formerly the Graduate Program Director for Literacy Programs at Brooklyn College. She founded and directed The Paulo and Nita Project for Critical Pedagogy at McGill University, where she developed funding, infrastructure, building, and staffing. She opened and directed The Werklund Centre for Youth Leadership at the University of Calgary and was Director of the Institute for Youth and Community Research at the University at the West of Scotland. Steinberg’s scholarship has contributed to the disciplines of Curriculum Studies, Critical Pedagogy, Inclusive Education, Leadership Studies, and Critical Research Studies. Her commitment to social justice and cultural sensitivity has been internationally disseminated for the past 2 1/2 decades. Steinberg held the Werklund Research Chair of Critical Youth Studies for two terms at the University of Calgary. Steinberg is committed to academic publishing the promotion of new and emerging scholars, and as a series editor has facilitated the publication of over 650 books in curriculum studies, urban and rural education, critical pedagogy, foundations of education, leadership, and cultural studies. She is the founding editor of four academic journals. A/P Kamalini Ramdas, NUS Geography and Cluster Head, welcoming Professor Shirley Steinberg (University of Calgary) Professor Shirley Steinberg’s keynote sharing Dr Shobha Avadhani (NUS Communications and New Media) engaging with Prof Steinberg’s sharing on radical love