Willing to Accept Critical Feedback to Produce and Construct Knowledge

One of the quotes that really hit the spot for me in this week’s reading is, “To teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge.” I find that this quote really defines what it means to be a teacher. The current educational system is based on the “Banking Concept of Education.” The teacher has a list of things that they want the student to “memorized” and the students are then tested on how well they retained that information. A great teacher not only knows how to “deposit” information to the students, but they also know how to teach the student how to produce and construct their own knowledge.

I know that most of my engineering course are based on the Banking Concept of Education. The teacher stands in front of the classroom lecturing about a particular topic, and the students try to reproduce that information for the classwork, homework, and tests. For me personally, I am able to develop a “bank” of the available types of questions that could be asked on the test. Sometime it comes down to a bank of memorized facts rather than true understanding of the material. I found that I only understand something if I have experience and struggle through the nitty gritty details.

Some of the best teachers have taught me how to ask effective questions about topics that I have little knowledge of. I find that part is the hardest thing about teaching and learning. Most of the time when I am learning a new concept, I do not have enough background to truly understand what I do know and what I do not know. I frivolously try to write down everything that the professor is saying rather than understanding. I am not able to come up with questions until I take the time to sit down and really try to digest the notes. Once I have a basic understanding, then I am able to ask effective questions.

This is Spartahttps://media.tenor.co/images/a1fdde5e73a2bed6ac04fff952c94b94/raw 

One of my mentors from the industry has done a great job in teaching me how to develop effective questions. I remember when I first started working, I brought a problem to one of my senior technical engineers without truly understanding the questions that I wanted to ask him. He was extremely harsh to me, and he grilled me in ways that made me felt inadequate as an employee of the company. After this experience, I was determined to never let that happen again. I went back into my office and reworked the solution to incorporate his critical feedback in my new design. Before I went back to my senior technical, I sat there at my desk for an hour thinking of all of the critical questions that he could ask me. I asked myself, “What would Bruce grill me on today.” To my astonishment, I developed over 30 questions and answers to what I could be potentially asked by my senior technical. I walked confidently back to his office with my new proposed design and prepared answers. He started asking away, and I started to defend. After about ten minutes, he realized that I have come much more prepared than last time. He took it up a notch, and asked me questions that I have never would have thought of at my experience level. I paused for a minute to think about his questions, and responded to the best of my ability. This continued on for a while, and his feedback were as critical as ever. As the conversation is coming to an end, he grinned at me and said, “Good work.” I was stunned when I heard that compliment from him. He just spent the past hour kicking me down a pit, and started throwing rocks at me when I was at the bottom. After working with him some more, I began to understand the merits of his teaching style. He wasn’t interested in just transferring 30 years of experience to me. He was interested in teaching me how to ask effective questions. He was teaching me how to produce and construct knowledge.


Critical Pedagogy.

Shelli Fowler’s  “Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy” had an opening quote that immediately grabbed my attention. It stated,  “Education can function to control and contain students and maintain the status quo . . .Or, it empowers students to be critically engaged and active participants in society”.  Might I add I must admit that I am enjoying these sociological-based readings and topics, now that I have some time to reflect pedagogy and interaction between students and instructors are sociological situations. Especially if the goal is to create an environment where you want the student is able to gain and absorb as much knowledge as possible. This invites my next thought as Fowler’s also discussed critical consciousness, Fowler states that “The formation of a critical consciousness (which allows students to question the nature of their historical and social situation and to effect change in their society)”. Helping students develop and critical conscious also reminds me of another teaching strategy that I watched an instructor use heavily during a graduate teaching assistantship I had here at Tech. It is called Inquiry based learning, or Inquiring By Design, it is basically the practice of instructors leading students with questions and also answering with questions so the students are learning through experience and answering their own questions and teaching their selves for a greater educational experience. The idea of teaching and communicating with students and not at students is also a  component and take away from this teaching strategy. It is also a student-centered teaching strategy. Social sciences use alot of critical pedagogy techniques to teach and create a learning environment and beneficial discussions for students. I see critical pedagogy and critical consciousness overlapping, as far as fostering the idea of “raising awareness of critical issues in society (e.g., environment), and encourage students’sense of themselves as active agents with the ability to shape the world in which they live”. That is the thing i enjoy about sociology is that everyone “studies” or encounters sociology on a daily basis and it can be taught and understood a million different ways.  As I was anxious about having to teach something that is so routine is that everyone has different experiences and perspectives that everyone can learn from -such an interdisciplinary subject, I am grateful that this class is laying a great foundation for my future pedagogical ideas

Critical Pedagogy and Liberation

With the strong emphasis on liberation, I find Paulo Freire’s work, pardon the bad joke, critically important to thinking about how we as educators risk reproducing oppressive structures of society even as we attempt to teach our students to recognize and resist those structures. Power and domination implicit in the teacher/student relationship unconsciously train students to accept hierarchy, power, and domination in their lives, in their workplaces, and in their politics.

In chapter 2 of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire makes the import point that teacher-student relationships are often “fundamentally narrative” in character. The teacher/professor/instructor is a “narrating Subject” while students are “patient listening objects.” In this conception, education can be thought of through the metaphor of “banking,” where instructors deposit knowledge into passive student receptacles. Freire makes the point that we cannot liberate ourselves if we maintain this type of education.

In the alternative, as Dr. Shelli Fowler aptly summarizes, rather a critical pedagogy recognizes the importance of “dialogic exchange” between teachers and students. No longer is education a one-way transmission of knowledge from instructor to student but rather a relationship in which both learn, question, reflect, and participate in meaning-making. As Freire writes in Pedagogy of Freedom, an educator with a “democratic vision… cannot avoid in [their] teaching praxis insisting on the critical capacity, curiosity, and autonomy of the learner.”

Such a critical pedagogy seeks to bring students into subjectivity along with instructors. Students then move from passive objects to agentic subjects. But, and this is an essential insight to remember, the oppressed (a position occupied by students in banking education) are not “outside” or “marginal” to society (in this case the social/economic/political space of the university). They are already “inside” of the structures which oppress them. The oppressor and oppressed are co-constitutive of structures of hierarchy and domination; one cannot exist without the other.

Therefore, it is not simply a matter of “integrating” the oppressed into structures of oppression. Liberation requires -demands- a fundamental transformation of those structures. By way of example, we might take what I will call the “Lean In” ethos. This form of essentially neoliberal feminism sees the solution to oppression of women in (U.S.) society as bringing more women into corporate board rooms and perhaps making small concessions that will allow more women to occupy positions of power. This is integrating women into the structures that have thus far oppressed them. By contrast, a liberatory feminism might advocate dismantling corporations altogether and working to build alternative economic structures that are non-hierarchical, democratic, ecologically sound, and so forth.

This sort of liberatory/emanicaptory approach is deeply threatening to existing power structures, which is why to return to Freire, the banking concept of education remains a tool to suppress the threat that students will raise their consciousnesses of their oppression. The “humanist revolutionary educator” (something I aspire to unreservedly) does not -cannot- passively wait for such a consciousness to materialize. Such an educator actively works with their students to “engage in critical thinking and [seeks] mutual humanization.” Such an educator is a partner of their students and maintains a “profound trust” in their creative power.

I try to carry this with me as I teach and as I interact in the world more broadly. The demands Freire’s work makes upon us are stringent. It is not easy to remain conscious of the ways in which we reproduce power imbalances at the same time we attempt to overcome them. But, this is a central challenge of a critical pedagogy and, truly, of all social change.

Paulo Freire’s Advice

It is important to read more about the successful educators who influenced many generations. It was the first time I read about Paulo Freire, and I must say he seems to be one of the reasons critical pedagogy has improved. After the loss of his father, he lived a challenging life going through poverty and hunger, which pushed him to learn and dedicate his life to helping people.

After familiarizing myself with his life story, I looked at his literature and quotes. Many of his approaches were solutions to many of the problems we’re facing in the 21st century education. I picked a couple of them which I found most useful to my teaching experiences and can possibly try to implement them in my teaching journey. Those are:

  • “Be a tolerant teacher”

Being tolerant will allow you to learn new things with different people. It will give you the patience and democracy to understand the different students’ opinions and concerns, so everyone can be comfortable together.

  • “I was a curious boy, and now I’m a curious old man – my curiosity never stops”

Paulo was a curious being. I believe that being curious will give you the opportunity to continuously learn, improve yourself and better understand others.

  • “Their way of speaking is as beautiful as our way of speaking”

Encouraging students to participate to speak their voices and describe how they feel is crucial in their learning process. Nobody is perfect and everyone has better skills than others. So, mistakes are welcomed as long as they are corrected, hence encourages critical teaching environment.

 

References:

Paulo Freire, “The Banking Concept of Education,” Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Ch. 2, pp. 71-86

Paulo Freire, Short Video on Curiosity

June Jordon, Report from the Bahamas, 1982

 

On Pedagogy of the Oppressed

There were many things I enjoyed about Paulo Freiere’s teaching philosophy. I too despise what he terms banking-education, however, in a review of what Freiere offers as an alternative, I find myself asking a number of questions about what seem to me to be some gross assumptions. For this blog I have responded to some quotations from his writing:

“Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression.”

Absolutely. Education has, perhaps, always been about indoctrinating subjects with only the option to adapt and assimilate into a “world of oppression.” Virginia Woolf lays this out in A Room of One’s Own. Peiere doesn’t mention capitalism, but why not replace the term “world of oppression” with it? This brings the institution into the manifold of oppression. ALL major universities in the US harbor enormous hedge funds. The word university never appears in this sample of writing.

“Because banking education begins with a false understanding of men and women as objects, it cannot promote the development of what Fromm calls “biophily,” but instead produces its opposite: “necrophily.”

While life is characterized by growth in a structured functional manner, the necrophilous person loves all that does not grow, all that is mechanical. The necrophilous person is driven by the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if all living persons were things. . . Memory, rather than experience; having, rather than being, is what counts’ The necrophilous person can relate to an object — a flower or a person — only if he possesses it; hence a threat to his possession is a threat to himself, if he loses possession he loses contact with the world. . . . He loves control, and in the act of controlling he kills life. (Fromm)

What Fromm is doing here is reducing a thing to its effects, to the ways in which a thing externalizes itself. As Graham Harmon puts it in Immaterialism, Fromm, “rather than treating objects as superficial compared with their ultimate tiniest pieces, one treats them as needlessly deep or spooky hypotheses by comparison with their tangible properties or effects.” For Harmon, not thinking in objects runs the risk of either reducing a thing to its internal relations or parts (my DNA, cells, bacteria, what material tissues of which I am made) or to its effects, its externalizations, how I act on the world.

“The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own.”

Jacques Ranciere’s theory on universal education is a bit more radical. He tells the story of Joseph Jacotot, who was confronted with the dilemma of teaching students a language foreign to them without having a common language between himself and his students with which to begin. He spoke French, and they spoke Flemish. Jacotot gave his Flemish students a book in French, and with no explication they began to learn to write in French. Over time the sentences got better with no superfluous guidance from the professor! Ranciere’s theory replaces teacher with father, and communication with mother tongue. He refers to the way babies learn mother tongues with absolutely no explanation. Friere’s theory leaves intact the institutional position of the teacher, the explicator.

Critical Political

Something that has been on my mind a bit lately was an encounter I had with a friend of mine several years ago.  When I had first moved to Hawaii to do my master’s degree, we had a friend of a friend who already lived there and so he showed us around town and taught us all about what it was like to live in Hawaii.  It may not have been a classroom environment, but he was a teacher to me and my wife because so much of living in a different culture was new to us.  At one point the conversation became political, and he talked about a senator (I don’t even remember who it was at this point) who was doing a good job.  And I remember taking that at face value that there was a senator in Hawaii who was doing good things for the state.  What happened to my critical thinking skills at that time?  Had I just seen an authority figure telling me information and regressed back to the banking model of education?  Politics of all subjects is one we can think critically about!

 

Reading this week about critical pedagogy has had me thinking about the way in which knowledge is constructed and not just information for teachers to graciously bestow upon students.  The “teacher” in this scenario was someone who was giving his political view (not fact) about a politician’s performance.  Especially nowadays, I’m finding that who you talk to can result in very different views of how a politician is improving or deteriorating the current state of affairs.  The world around us is constantly changing!  (hence the “current” state of affairs)  So who is to say that knowledge can be static?!  This is why learning being a collaborative effort (where knowledge is constructed) instead of a one way message (banking model) is so important.  How many times through your college career have you heard that education helps you use your critical thinking skills?  I remember hearing that message so many times that I’m surprised how I’ve ever again had a moment in which I didn’t think critically.

 

I think this week’s topic builds so well from last week’s focus on inclusive pedagogy.  Instead of education taking place only one direction, from teacher to student, learning can go both ways and even sideways.  Just as my friend (a teacher to me in that scenario) had information to pass along to me, his views came from the context of his culture.  He and I differed in socioeconomic status, age, race, where we grew up, etc.  This created a situation in which learning could go both ways because of the diversity between us.  Now imagine how much diversity exists in a class of over 40 students from multiple countries!  And this diversity happens in every educational environment, yet it is left stagnant in the traditional banking model of education.

 

This is part of what I love about being in the counseling field is that learning never ends.  As a counselor educator, my students can learn from my experiences, but I can also learn from what they have to offer.  By modeling that experience, they can remain open minded to learn from the diverse clients that they will see in their time counseling.  Being culturally aware can involve being open to the varying experiences of others.  This parallels how critical pedagogy involves multiple directions of learning as opposed to the one way direction of the banking model of education.  Hopefully we as educators can remain open to learning from our students just as much as we teach them.  And students can be open to multiple perspectives, unlike the experience I shared above.  But hopefully by me reflecting on this, it allows me to better embrace diversity and a critical pedagogy in the future.

Shut Up And Listen

When I was an undergrad, I often went back and forth between being irritated with classmates that argued with the professors and being irritated with professors that didn’t listen to their students. When it came to novel concepts or subjects, I often wanted to hear uninterrupted lectures from my professors without so-and-so starting a debate or bringing up an exception I could’t follow. I knew that the professors weren’t always going to be correct, but, without some knowledge of the basics (even if skewed or from one perspective), how was I going to understand the concept well enough to analyze it myself. All I wanted was to absorb the information, so I could dissect it later in my own time.

I always appreciated when professors “shot down” those students who wanted to debate or argue in an intro or lower level class. Maybe they had enough knowledge to challenge the professor, but I certainly didn’t and neither did many of my classmates. As my basic knowledge grew with both in-class lectures and personal research, I found that I now had fully formed opinions and a wide perspective of the subjects. I could start debates and point out exceptions myself. But I found that a few professors (thankfully not a majority) still treated their classes as lower level and intro classes. They wouldn’t listen to the students’ opinions when they countered professors’ own, and they certainly wouldn’t allow for debates among the students. This halted my and everyone else’s learning. We had the basics down; now we could think for ourselves.

 


It’s all about execution.

“Intellectuals who memorize everything, reading for hours on end… fearful of  taking a risk, speaking as if  they were reciting from memory, fail to make any concrete connections between what they have read and what is happening in the world, the country, or the local community. They repeat what has been read with precision but rarely teach anything of personal value.” – Paulo Freire

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you just feel like the universe has been sending you a message? That’s how my week has been. Here I was, just minding my own business, going through the motions, when BAM! The universe started throwing me all these signs. I started listening to podcasts I had never heard of and everyone I did spoke to me. Not only did they speak to me, but they got me excited about my future. Who would’ve thought that could happen in the middle of grad school? I’m pursuing my masters right now and it feels like every other week I have someone asking me whether or not I’ll pursue my PhD and I think I finally have the answer. Yes, but not in Communication. Assuming I can make it through my master’s program, I’m going to try and grit my teeth and get through a PhD program in Public Health.

It all started when I listened to a podcast from a not-so-popular bikini bodybuilder competitor, Lacey Dunn. The episode, which you can find here, is a short interview with another bodybuilder who did her master’s thesis on macros vs. meal-prepping. I know most of you probably don’t know what that is but it’s a big debate in the fitness industry. Listening to this, a light bulb went off. If Laurin Conlin did her master’s thesis on something like IIFYM and meal-prepping, so can I. And this got me excited. I can actually take things I’m passionate about and dod on my own time anyways and apply it to my graduate studies? Heck yes! This all happened on Monday.

Then Wednesday hit and the universe decided a nudge wasn’t enough and shoved me harder. I went out on a limb and listened to another podcast that I had never listened to before. The podcast, which you can find here was an interview conducted with Quest Nutrition Co-Founder and Impact Theory CEO, Tom Bilyeu. If you’ve never heard of Impact Theory, I highly suggest you check it out. This podcast has three of my favorite things: fitness, business, and human behavior. A lightbulb didn’t just go off this time, there were fireworks.

I’m sure by now you’re all like, “what does this have to do with critical pedagogy and Paulo Freire?” Well, while I was reading this week I kept coming back to a theme shared by both Freire and Bilyeu: it’s all about execution. You can read all you want about facts, theories, concepts, and opinions within your field or pedagogy but what it really comes down to is what you do with that information. If you’re not creating a sense of community where ideas are shared and acknowledged, then change will never take place. Knowledge doesn’t mean s*** unless you use and share it. It’s really hard for me to put into words how much of a brain-gasm I had while putting these three concepts together so I highly encourage you guys to look at them. If you’re not into fitness or health or anything, Tom Bilyeu has a lot to say when it comes to “igniting human potential”.

 


Critical Pedagogy for social change from a local to the institutional level (#gedivt w9)

As Paolo Freire argued, “being tolerant” [1] creates opportunities to listen and experience diversity. Why should we be critical? Maybe to add different perspectives to the ones at hand. Who knows where such practice might lead. When should we be critical? Maybe when we think that we can provide (constructive) criticism that points out specific problems. […]
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