ABSTRACT
For decades authors like Dewey, Freire and Giroux have confronted and questioned scholars and educational institutions in terms of 1) how much the stakeholders are empowering the students by distributing and shifting authority; 2) how seriously they are taking the role of education in shaping culture and politics, and 3) how much more equitable society can be as a result of challenging and acting upon societal questions in the teaching and learning process. This chapter discusses how cultural studies and maker pedagogies can be strong allies to challenge cultures of power and develop student agency. It offers the theoretical frameworks and practical tools to design powerful instructional conversations. Theory and practice are bridged by using Hall's encoding/decoding theory, the Maker-centered Learning framework, the protocols, Voice and Choice, and People, Systems, Power, Participations to maximize learning in Humanities classrooms at the intersection of Cultural Studies and Maker Pedagogies.
