Your post was interesting- it’s always nice to get different perspectives on this topic. I wonder if the differences are more distinct with individual- vs community-focused societies. In most of the United States, our culture is self-focused (the individual is more important than the community). With that attitude (I think), comes some feelings of entitlement to question to world around us- even if we don’t fully engage with critical pedagogy.
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I was amused by “And it is difficult because it is not easy to take criticism from students.” because I think it’s difficult for most people to take criticism. But your point is very valid, because when we see criticism as questioning our authority or status as the expert, especially when we do not think that the people that are making the criticism is “allowed” to do so, the surprise/embarrassment car cause people to be even more defensive. It’s very important for us to remind ourselves, when this inevitably happens, that we should facilitate learning and education and not act defensively.
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As a visual learner, I really enjoyed your team’s graphic. I love how the more you look at it, the more themes you are able to connect with the art. I particularly liked your team’s use of children in order to signify how we should always have a child-like curiosity and appetite for learning. Thanks!
So much cool stuff going on here! The intro is wonderful – and will be useful down the road when you need to ‘fluff up” your critical pedagogy chops. (I would note that hooks pushes us to critically engage oppression, especially by race and gender in our classes, but that’s sort of there….). But your individual adventures are just awesome — and it turns out that the disciplines that seemed so intractable (soil science and entomology) have terrific potential here: “students are encouraged to seek out what they find fascinating about the mechanics of insect flight, jumping or metamorphosis and present it to the class.” Nice.
Great post, Khushboo! I imagine ideal things are never easy to implement. You have to cross many barriers, personal and professional. However, once they are crossed, there is a completely different world waiting and for good. The idea behind teaching and education is not clear to many educators and teachers and that is the main problem, I believe. Teaching itself is a difficult task and if someone asks to add more to the plate, the natural instinct is to move away from that towards the comfort zone. And yet all good things are just out of that comfort zone.
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Has no one commented on this awesome post?!??!?
I think you all did a fabulous job of identifying some common tenets of a critical pedagogical approach and then applying it to your specific (and quite different) fields. I’m going to be thinking about M. K. riff on loving languages / learning languages for a long time. Thanks so much for this! (Also Oumoule’s Krispy Kreme cartoon is pretty funny — looks like the donut is taking off)
Hey Efon, you put a great post in here with some very critical perspectives. I relate to the social, economical and political influences on the education and believe that in spite of those influences, education can prevail and as you said enable us to become independent thinkers. I like your ideas and the importance of ideas in the learning. Thanks for the post!
These cognitive maps are all so cool! I especially like the IRL connection with the classroom and identity Antonio’s map and the biochemist’s map (last image).
I’ve had very good (albeit limited) experiences in syllabus co-creation. I defined the course objectives and specified the aptitudes everyone needed to have at the end. And then we worked through the “course design” together, which gave students the opportunity to define terms / concepts and draw up a kind of contract for the learning community. We were able to accommodate multiple learning styles in this manner and to leverage that diversity into something that benefitted the group as a whole. I will definitely do it again!
But not with a huge group, which brings me to Table 3’s awesome post: I think this is a terrific and versatile definition of Critical Pedagogy. And I do think that critical pedagogy approaches are easier to deploy in smaller classes than in large classes — but I don’t think that’s the point of critical pedagogy. Rather, I think critical pedagogy asks us as instructors to interrogate the rationale for having huge classes in the first place. Are they good for certain kinds of courses that are necessarily “banking model” / stand and deliver? Or are they just acceptable? Are the classes large because the university doesn’t want to / “can’t afford more faculty? Are students learning with and from the GTA’s in these large classes? Or is the instructor doing all of the “teaching” and leaving the course administration to the GTAs? Is that necessary? Ok?
Very creative artifact, guys! I agree, I would like to hear more about the creation / intention of this work in class this evening. Looks nifty!
