ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the conversation about prison teaching and research has, for the most part, made use of the individualistic, economic ideology of education-as-progress. It provides a methodological framework for prison teachers and scholars informed by the work of Margaret Kovach and Shawn Wilson. The chapter argues that a child coloring in this book would only need four crayons: grey, brown, blue, and orange. In the context of prison education, the persistent application of “economic values, practices and metrics” is troublesome in the ways that it often further commodifies and dehumanizes incarcerated people and works against the liberatory intentions of many educational justice programs. The chapter explores a few Indigenous scholars whose work disrupts such an ideology. Considering the troubling connection between narratives of individual transformation and histories of systemic injustice, scholars and teachers working in the prison benefit from a wider menu of options for theoretically framing prison education research and pedagogy.
