Defining Critical Pedagogy

This blog post is an attempt to synthesize the readings on Critical Pedagogy, a concept that was largely pioneered by Paulo Freire. In his experiences, he noticed a large number of issues surrounding standard teaching practices. Some of these are:

  • Students are expected to just absorb the information provided to them– not to question it or really think critically about what it means
  • Students are often de-personalized, making the material difficult for them to relate to in a meaningful or lasting way
  • Standard teaching reinforces current norms and standards, which in turn means that inequality, oppression, and exclusion are reinforced. This process is cyclical and self-reinforcing as those who learn under such structure eventually become the teacher themselves and conform to the methodologies that they learned under
  • Traditional teachers ignore or neglect the inherently political position that they hold
  • Students likely don’t realize they many ways in which they are being conditioned for compliance and sameness
  • Subject matters change over time, yet this fluidity is rarely reflected in practice; course materials often take a long time to change, if at all, making it out of touch with reality
  • Over time, students who cannot comply with the expectations of the standard classroom are at least disengaged and demotivated, if not completely left behind. (Most students fall into this category simply because of the diversity that exists in humans.) This occurs in spite of the fact that every student was once a naturally curious and inquisitive child; this curiosity, inquisitiveness, and the associated creativity has been neglected and discouraged for so long that they no longer have the same desire to pursue or express these drives
  • Teachers don’t realize the role that they can play in helping students become self-realized, fulfilled members of society

To combat these issues, Critical Pedagogy calls for a very different classroom in which the student is at the focal point of the material. Their experiences and individuality are highlighted, and the society in which they live is exposed for all that it is– good and bad. Specifically, Critical Pedagogy indicates that teachers have a moral and political imperative to:

  • Emphasize students’ personal growth and, in particular, critical thinking about societal norms and standards and how they interact with them
  • Relate material to real-world examples, highlighting how it may be useful for students later (rather than just the immediate, course-related benefits like grades)
  • Incite critical questioning, creativity, and understanding such that students are able to seek out answers individually; have deep, meaningful, and constructive conversations; and better understand all sides of an argument
  • Relate to students on an individual level, recognizing each student as a whole, unique individual who comes to the classroom with a different background and level of understanding from other students
  • Meet students where they are in their current understanding to help them rise to the “goal” understanding of the course
  • Understand that teaching will help drive research and that research can better inform teaching by keeping the material relevant and up-to-date for students
  • Accept that teachers will learn as they teach and that their students will teach as they learn
  • Adopt a cooperative teaching strategy in which students (in conjunction with the teacher) are in control of the classroom

In reflecting on these aspects of Critical Pedagogy, I noticed many overlapping ideas with Inclusive Pedagogy and Mindful Learning. That is, Critical Pedagogy reflects these teaching ideals as well by emphasizing a need to adapt to each individual students’ needs and perspectives while enforcing a need for students to directly interact with and incorporate the material into their own knowledge and experiences.

However, Critical Pedagogy takes this a step further by detailing how exactly this internalization of the material should occur in the context of current societal influences. That is, Critical Pedagogy involves combating societal and political norms very directly in order to enable each student to become self-realized and to understand where they (and their knowledge) fit into “the real world.”

Overall, I overwhelmingly agree with the ultimate recommendations and overarching rationale that drive Critical Pedagogy. Yet I find myself somewhat turned off by the overtly political nature of many of the points… That is, while I find myself shocked and amazed by Freire’s experiences and completely understand his political stances (and how they drove him to strongly encourage Critical Pedagogy whenever he could), I found it hard to relate much of these political points to my own experiences and hopes for teaching. For me, it’s much easier to see the liberating and world-changing impacts of teaching students how to read and write and how to think critically about what they read (especially in the context of their lives and the societies they belong to) than to see these kinds of impacts in my own field of Computer Science. (But perhaps that is under the assumption that students already know how to read and write by the time they enter my classroom…) In other words, reading and writing is so fundamental to accessing information and communicating with people that its enormously positive impact on people’s lives is not surprising. Computer Science is not quite as impactful and, taken as only the basic skills that are needed to develop programs, does not have the same level political undertones that reading and writing inherently do. Given this in combination with my own distaste for politics in general, I find myself resistant to incorporate such political undertones in my own teaching. Therefore, I think I find myself siding with– though not quite entirely– those who would take Freire’s teachings and attempt to de-politicize them to an extent for their own purposes.

Implicit Bias: Measuring It and Its Origins

While I found the implicit bias tests interesting, I couldn’t help but wonder how they designed these tests… Perhaps this wondering is more of a result of my training as a graduate student, but it led me to some interesting tangents…

First off, the tests. I noticed that they never explored all permutations of the test conditions in any one session (i.e., good left + bad right, bad right + good left, Thing1 left + Thing2 right, Thing2 left + Thing1 right, good/Thing1 left + bad/Thing2 right, good/Thing2 left + bad/Thing1 right, bad/Thing1 left + good/Thing2 right, bad/Thing2 left + bad/Thing1 right… the idea of permutations is reflected in the image below). Therefore, I couldn’t help but wonder if results might be skewed because they never tested all of these combinations, leading to implicit bias imposed by the test-makers themselves! Or perhaps they actually tested this and learned that only a subset of these combinations are necessary to detect implicit bias (which I would definitely be interested to read about! I love this kind of research. This might also be accomplished using an idea similar to counterbalancing from usability engineering, but I didn’t see any evidence of that between the multiple IATs I took).

Similarly, I couldn’t help but wonder how they take mistaken keystrokes, misread words, and previous “training” into account. First and foremost, mistaken keystrokes could be just about anything (e.g., finger twitch), but I would guess it’s safe to assume that they’re meaningful given the intent is to measure people’s instinct or gut reactions. However, this brings me to the other two… For example, more often than not, when the word “Terrific” came up and in the split second I started to read the word, I would often just take the first half of the word (“terr”) and assume a negative word (e.g., “terrible” or “terror”). This meant that, more often than not, I would classify this word as “bad,” even though “terrific” is a good thing. That is, my judgement of this word had nothing to do with any biases I had (believe me, I categorized it with bad/left and bad/right very consistently) and more to do with the implied time pressure; I was reading the word too fast to get an accurate judgement of what it said. (On that note, would their results be different with a vocabulary of words that are 5/6 letters or less? Or at least a vocabulary with more consistent lengths of words?)

Moving on to the “training” aspect, the first two sessions of any test trained good on one side + bad on the other, and Thing1 on one side + Thing2 on the other. This “training” certainly give people practice for what the tasks are (and may also be used for baseline results– who knows), but it also makes future tasks that mix these orderings more difficult; simply put, by the time that the left/right orderings have been switched for any particular variable, participants have already gotten significant exposure to and practice for the ordering being the other way around. This would definitely impact results… Do the test-makers account for this?

Image result for training

So, all of that aside, I also began wondering where implicit bias comes from… We all definitely have it, at least on certain subjects to some degree, but how do we “get” it? It seems to me like it’s something that is learned somehow… But where? Family, upbringing, and neighborhoods seem like obvious choices; they certainly have a heavy influence in how we all form our opinions and become the people we are. But what about less obvious, perhaps even more sinister, things?

Here, my mind took a turn to associations and how we learn them. For example, a child might learn from parents that stove = hot (and should not touch), but this lesson is often not truly learned until the hot = ouch association is learned (usually though touching it, just like mom told you not to). So, just how far can these associations go? In what ways do they play a role in how we interact with and understand the world? Take colors for another example… What’s your favorite color? Bet you just thought of one. Maybe several. Why are they your favorite colors? Might take you a second, but I bet you can think of a reason. Can you remember when that reason became the reason why your favorite color is what it is?

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Ok, now, what about light vs dark? Think back to just about every book, fantasy story, sit com, cop show, or anything else you can think of. Light = good, hope, success, happiness, and dark = bad, dangerous, scared, evil. (On that note, can you think of an example of a color used to signify poison that isn’t green or purple? I’m getting away from the point here, but I also think color associations are fascinating…) This means that from our infancy, we were taught that good things are light and bad things are dark. (You can usually tell in an instance whether a character in a movie or TV show is good or bad based on this, even if it’s just the color of their hat that’s different, and even if the character hasn’t said or done anything yet.) This idea is continuously reinforced. Everywhere. How much of an influence does this kind of “training” or “teaching” have on how we perceive people with lighter-toned skin vs people with darker-toned skin? (Ignoring the long, dark history behind this prejudice, social upbringing and family influences, etc. that probably have a much greater influence over how we perceive lighter-toned people vs darker-toned people… But I can’t help but wonder, just how much influence does it have? Where and how do we learn these prejudices?) How much influence does this have on the Skin-tone IAT? Would people whose favorite color is black perform differently on this IAT (or maybe the Race IAT) than someone else whose favorite color is white (but is equal in as many other aspects as possible)? (Although, now that I think about it, I’ve heard of people’s favorite color being black, but never of a favorite color being white. Where does that difference come from??)

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(Another tangent: I wonder if some of these associations are why there is so much attraction to certain things, simply because you’re not supposed to like them on some level. The “bad boy.” Villains, even ones like Elphaba or Dr. Horrible or Malcolm Reynolds that are the star of the show. What about satire and certain types of humor? Adults liking children’s shows? Hmmmm…..)

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Trying to Define My Teaching Self

This week’s readings triggered another visit to an old question that keeps haunting me: What kind of professor do I want to be?

Let’s be clear: I’m in Computer Science. Any classes I would teach will be heavily male-dominated, and may very likely consist of only men. And I look 18. Plus, teaching Computer Science concepts is a complex challenge alone, even without considering how to make it “fun.”

Here’s what I really mean: I might be one of the few– if not the only– women in the room; I worry about the level of respect and how seriously my students (particularly male students) will take me. This is only worsened by the fact that I look about their age. And trying to be a “fun” or “cool” teacher with such complicated, dense course material is already a challenge.

When I taught this past summer, these issues were front and center for me. I handled the concerns regarding my apparent age by trying to dress very professionally– more professionally than I have for any previous job. To address the difference in gender, I always tried to make sure that any attempts for “fun” or “coolness” were carefully executed; the last thing I needed was for students to take things the wrong way or otherwise give the impression that students could show me less respect than they would for their male professors.

That last part– being “fun”– was particularly difficult for me. Naturally, I’m someone who loves fun. I’m always looking for ways to put a twist on things or spice things up, just to make it different or interesting. A lot of that, however, revolves around my tendency to “give people shit.” Usually in silly ways. For example:

Friend (referring to some random thing): This is dumb.

Me: Well, maybe you’re dumb.

Friend: Well, maybe your face is dumb.

Me: Well, maybe your mom is dumb!

Silly? Yes. Stupid? Absolutely. Fun? Maybe. It at least breaks any monotony and opens the opportunity for more fun. But in a classroom setting, how would these kids of quips be received? I mean, I think calling students dumb, even in jokes, is probably not a good idea. But other types of quips along these lines? Maybe they’re ok, depending on the student. Yet my hesitancy revolves around 2 big concerns:

  1. Will students continue to take me seriously if I start to joke like that?
  2. Will any of my students mistake this kind of joking for flirting? (Let’s be honest, this has happened before outside the classroom, especially because I am careful who I joke about like this as not everyone likes it, but that means that a lot of this kind of joking is focused on only a few people. So, in the past it has been mistaken for some kind of special attention hinting at a romantic interest. I don’t need that kind of misinterpretation inside the classroom.)

These concerns extend to other things I might try to do for fun as well. For example, I debated all summer long whether to show this YouTube video to my students:

Is it relevant to anything in the course? No. But it’s funny and would help lighten the mood in the classroom. (For those of you who aren’t into video games or certain Nintendo games, the music is from the Kirby series and has been used in the Super Smash Bros. soundtracks, so most students in a Computer Science class would likely at least recognize it.)

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My concerns for showing the video? It’s based on the Single Ladies music video, starring women in tight leotards. So, is it appropriate to show in a college classroom? Is it appropriate to show in a college classroom consisting almost entirely of men? Is it appropriate for me, a woman, to show in a college classroom consisting almost entirely of men? (Ultimately, I showed it to a few students after the semester was over, towards the end of a social event– a game night– that I organized to celebrate the end of a difficult class for them. It got a good laugh.)

So, the bottom line for me is this: How can I be my authentic teaching self when my personality leans towards jokes and other fun things while my classes consist of a bunch of teenage/early-20 boys? Where does that balance lie? What kind of professor do I want to be vs what kind of professor can I or should I be?

Mindfulness and Technology in the Classroom

Given the recent readings and discussions we’ve had about mindfulness and technology use in the classroom, I thought some people might be interested in an article that I came across discussing how integrating some of these really cool technologies in the classroom can certainly help students, but those students are often the ones who are doing average or better. Struggling students might actually do worse. Additionally, the technology use can make them look busy– as if they understood the material when they actually don’t. Granted, the article (and Edutopia in general) focuses on K-12 classrooms, I find a lot of their articles like this one could have implications in higher education too. The article link is below; I recommend following Edutopia on Facebook if you want to see more of their stuff!

https://www.edutopia.org/article/looking-edtech-through-equity-lens?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Being a Mindful Fisherman Takes Creativity and Curiosity

In this week’s readings, Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown in A New Culture of Learning (2011) mentioned that the old saying, “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime” doesn’t capture the rapidly changing dynamics in almost all aspects of today’s world. What if there’s something else that should be fished instead? Or, even worse, what if there aren’t any fish left? All the resources this week cited a need to teach, on some level, curiosity and a willingness to be creative as a solution to dynamic problems.

I agree with this, to an extent. Certainly, being a creative fisherman– one who thinks critically about how to make and cast fishing nets and how these skills might be used to get other types of food– is much better than being an uncreative one. After all, it is this creativity that leaves you open to change. And, of course, curiosity naturally leads to creativity, so that should be fostered as well.

But these readings seem to completely dismiss the usefulness of just learning how to fish. Ultimately, if you want to learn how to be creative with your fishing skills, don’t you have to learn how to be uncreative first? To just know how to do it outright? That is, there seems to be no credit attributed to just knowing something, even if the thing that is known is subject to change over time.

Taking this a step further, I would even push back a little on the memorization and types of reflexes that Ellen Langer writes against. When a student is panicking on an exam, having that reflex and knowing what they should be doing– never mind the why– might actually save them on a particular question, allowing them to answer it an move on. (Of course, Ellen Langer would probably then start arguing about right vs wrong answers and such, but let’s face it– that is the nature of exams and most forms of assignments in classes. That’s the foundation for how we know how well students are doing. If we throw out right vs wrong answers completely, how do we measure progress or give students valuable feedback?)

What I think I would propose instead is altering the original saying to something like, “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and probably feed him for a long time, teach a man to think critically about his fishing skills and definitely feed him for a lifetime.” (But maybe that’s a mouthful.) Yes, things change, but I don’t think they’re changing so fast that old knowledge is becoming obsolete at a rate that would make skills– at least the basic ones– completely unusable to the point of not even being worth teaching people how to just do them (making them think critically about it after they have a foundation for which to base such thinking on, and encouraging critical thinking all the while). People have been fishing for thousands of years, after all. How much has fishing really changed in the last 5,000 years? 1,000? years? 100 years? 30 years? 5 years?

Engaging Computer Science Students: Technology Required

This week as part of my Contemporary Pedagogy class at Virginia Tech (GRAD 5114), we were asked to read several pieces of literature regarding using technology in the classroom to engage students who grew up in a digital age. However, in a computer science classroom, the use of technology is not an option; it is required. All projects are done on a computer and may very well involve other pieces of technology, such as a mobile device, depending on the class. Students also quickly learn that StackOverflow is the computer science oriented Google: you can search for various programing-specific problems and be almost guaranteed to find an answer. And if you can’t, you can easily post your own question to ask help from the community.

What this boils down to is that computer science classrooms are a special case where technology is concerned. Students are required to use it, so it must be in the classroom. They also are already engaged– or quickly learn to be– in online communities where they help each other with programming issues and concepts. The real challenge, then, is how to best integrate the technology in the classroom. Much of this challenge originates from the fact that the material taught in the class is highly technical, which I would argue needs to be taught based on a strong conceptual foundation. That is, if a student knows the concept and can explain it well, then they could probably figure out the code to accomplish it. If they just know the code but don’t understand the concept, then they likely can only apply the concept in a limited number of scenarios at best.

This is where Robert Talbert’s “Four Things Lecture is Good For“ comes in (who I happened to actually have in a math course at Grand Valley State University way back when– small world!). Modeling the thought process behind a new computer science concept I believe is undeniably crucial to students’ success. Sharing cognitive structures, giving context, or telling stories help solidify these ideas in their heads so that they can hopefully apply them independently in the course projects and exams.

However, this creates an issue in the classroom. Concepts can often be taught independently of actual programming examples, but at some point, these examples need to be introduced to contextualize the concept. This implies a balance that is necessary to strike in the computer science classroom between traditional lecture and programming examples that require computers. Such a balance is very difficult to strike, as I found out first hand this past summer when I taught my first class. Reflecting on my own experiences as an undergraduate student, I think other professors in computer science struggle with this too; many of the professors I had seemed almost resigned to the idea that computers were going to be in the classroom and that students would get distracted by them. All they asked was that students who were more prone to such distractions sit towards the back of the class in hopes that they would be less distracting to their peers. Perhaps, though, part of this resignation was that there is always a huge disparity in abilities in any such class: some students come in knowing nothing, and others have already learned everything. How do you accommodate such a wide disparity in a classroom where technology is a necessity?

Some of the readings discussed using games to help students get more excited about the material, thus helping them be more engaged as well. While this is a common tactic used in computer science classes, I don’t think that game-based learning can be used every day in such a context. There is simply too much technical material that, while some students may have experienced previously, many have not. The sheer amount of technical material that needs to be covered make it difficult to do so while giving students an opportunity to directly engage with it every class period. The solution in my class this past summer was to have several large projects throughout the semester that were built upon the lecture material. In combination with the labs that gave them some designated time to practice, the hope was that they would achieve a mastery of the material. Some did, of course, but I can’t help but wonder what is a better balance to strike between technology use and practice in the classroom and more lecture-based approaches while ensuring all necessary material is covered…