"Radical Pedagogy "argues that longstanding pedagogical aims and practices are ineffective in promoting learning and social change and proposes a new strategy for achieving these ends. Drawing on recent research in psychoanalysis, social psychology, and cognitive science, Mark Bracher argues that the most effective way to solve social problems such as violence, prejudice, and substance abuse on a mass scale, as well as impediments to learning and personal well being, is through a pedagogy that addresses their common root cause: identity vulnerability. To this end, Bracher formulates psychoanalytically based practices to develop more resilient, secure, and prosocial identities for both teachers and students.

Drawing on recent findings of cognitive science, Mark Bracher here employs widely taught literary texts - including Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Voltaire's Candide, Camus's "The Guest," and Coetzee's Disgrace - to provide detailed demonstrations of how literary study can be used to develop cosmopolitanism, defined as a commitment to global justice. Cosmopolitanism, Bracher explains, is motivated by compassion for peoples who are distant and different from oneself, and compassion for them is dependent on perceiving their need, their deservingness, and their humanity. These perceptions are often prevented by faulty mindsets, or cognitive schemas, that can be corrected by the pedagogical practices described here.

"Radical Pedagogy" argues that longstanding pedagogical aims and practices are ineffective in promoting learning and social change and proposes a new strategy for achieving these ends. Drawing on recent research in psychoanalysis, social psychology, and cognitive science, Bracher argues that the most effective way to solve social problems such as violence, prejudice, and substance abuse on a mass scale, as well as impediments to learning and personal well being, is through a pedagogy that addresses their common root cause: identity vulnerability.To this end, Bracher formulates psychoanalytically based practices to develop more resilient, secure, and prosocial identities for both teachers and students.