Critical Pedagogy Project
David Bell, Deirdre Duffy, Sara Motta, Heather Watkins
Centre for the Study of Global and Social Justice (CSSGJ)
School of Politics and International Relations
Integrative Learning Rationale
We understand the role of integrative learning to be in helping students to make vital connections between their own experiences, the theory they learn in the classroom and the broader world in which they live- key factors in the educational philosophy known as ‘critical pedagogy’ (Freire, 1970). Our project seeks to build on these resonances by developing a number of innovative resources for learning and teaching.
We seek to promote more effective learning through the development of critical thinking and reflective learning skills in both students and staff: encouraging them to relate academic knowledge to other forms of knowledge; especially that created outside academic spaces and from. This helps to bridge the gaps between concepts of teacher and learner; inside and outside; and practice and theory- moves central to much contemporary work in social and global justice. We are particularly keen on working with postgraduate research students to develop an understanding of this holistic approach to learning and teaching.
Much of our work will involve the integration of new technologies into the learning environment. Group blogs, online discussion forums, podcasting and video editing all present opportunities to create critical, integrative pedagogies in the teaching of social and global justice.
We will also develop our role as an existing partner in the C-SAP (Subject Network for learning and teaching Sociology, Anthropology and Politics) national network for critical pedagogies, which is seeking to foster collaboration and feedback across the teaching/learning divide in order to share innovations and further enhance good practice. This will enable our work to be disseminated throughout higher education spaces across the UK.
Methodology
The key deliverables are the interdisciplinary working group, a series of teaching seminars for incoming PGR-teachers in the CSSGJ, a series of seminars for MA students on the MA in Global and Social Justice, a blog that encourage linkages, dialogue and collaboration in the praxis of critical pedagogy in HE, the development of a tool-kit that can be used in the teaching of social justice more generally and a number of collaborative conference papers and articles that seek to combine critical theory with critical pedagogy in the teaching of social justice in HE. The working group provides a much-needed space for experienced and developing teachers to reflect on their teaching; for students to offer experiences of teaching; to exchange resources; and experiment with new approaches; and to develop re-usable workshop materials which support new intake MA students in making connections between learning and social justice. The project involves input from international and nationally-recognised speakers on teaching for social justice.
Implementation
This report outlines the progress of the working group so far and details future plans.
Workshops with MA Students
We ran two workshops for postgraduate students on the MA in Social and Global Justice, on 21 October 2009 and 25 November 2009 which will become part of the regular seminars offered to MA students undertaking this MA course. These explored both students’ ideas about the role of teachers, learners and education, and how this connects (or not) with their experiential learning, and explored more concretely how particular ideas around problem-based learning, might be incorporated into the delivery of the redesigned core module of the MA Programme. Students also offered experiences of problem-based learning from their educational histories- including community based projects in Latin America. We considered the issues surrounding adopting problem-based learning and critical pedagogical methods to an MA in the University of Nottingham and discussed a range of achievable delivery methods which might include reflective learning journals, participatory activities, and an online collective blog.
The Critical Pedagogies Working Group
The Critical Pedagogies Working Group is an inter-disciplinary group dedicated to exploring the possibilities and problems of using critical pedagogy in the teaching of social justice in HE settings. Group meetings are advertised via a number of mailing lists and are open for all to attend. Sessions so far have attracted academics and students from a number of departments in the University, as well as community educators and NGO members. The Working Group was launched on Wednesday 4 November 2009 with a workshop by Alice Cutler from TRAPESE Popular Education Collective. Titled “In the Age of Stupid: Encouraging Critical Thinking through Popular Education/Critical Pedagogy,” the session was an exploration of why critical pedagogy might be needed within the university context. It was well attended by a number of academic teachers- particularly from within the School of Politics and International Relations, and helped make clearer exactly how a problem-based MA module might be structured. A number of teachers present at the session also adapted critical pedagogical techniques discussed for use in their current teaching (at both BA and MA level), and have received positive feedback regarding these methods on Student Evaluation of Teaching forms.
On Jaunary 20th the Working Group was visited by Professor Maria Gadelha de Carvalho, a popular educator and at Ceara State University in Brazil. She spoke about her experiences as a Professor pushing (to some degree of success) for methods derived from the traditions of popular education and critical pedagogy to be included within Higher Education in Brazil, and spoke of the successes of its methods: both for teachers and students in the university and- potentially- for the community surrounding the university. We have opened up an on-going link with her research team in Brazil through which we seek to continue exchanges experiences and practices.
Our final visiting speaker was Dr Gurnham Singh, who visited on May 20th. Dr. Singh is an activist educator who holds the post of Principal Lecturer in Social Work and Co-Director Applied Research Group in Social Inclusion in Social Care at Coventry University. In recognition for his work in the field of anti-racist education and critical pedagogy, he was selected for a prestigious National Teaching Fellow by the Higher Education Academy in 2009. He spoke about his use of technology in facilitating critical pedagogy; specifically focusing on the use of dialogical podcasting in order to uncover the personal and political histories that often remain hidden in conventional approaches to teaching and learning.
In addition to hosting visiting speakers, the working group also meets regularly. Following set readings (as well as podcasts and videos) the group has discussed a range of themes relevant to using critical pedagogy in higher education- considering how issues of class, gender, race and non-academic forms of knowledge can impact on our teaching. These groups have provided a space for lively debate about experiences and theory, and proved extremely useful for networking and forging the basis for collective theoretical production about and in relation to the project.
The Working Group has helped to organise a number of conferences, seminars and workshops. A number of sessions on critical pedagogy and popular education were hosted at “The Pink Tide: Reconfiguring Politics, Power and Political Economy in the Americas”, a conference at the University of Nottingham from 22-24th January 2010, which was attended by over 200 people. Speakers on Critical Pedagogy and Popular Education were Professor Maria Gadelha de Carvalho; Dr.Liam Kane from the University of Glasgow; Dr. Tristan McCowan from the University of London and the POOR Scholars from Los Angeles, whilst Nottingham Free School hosted a popular education session on affinity building.
The group was also heavily involved in co-ordinating the one-day workshop “Critical Education for Critical Times”, hosted at the University of Nottingham on 14th May 2010. Over 60 academics, popular educators cultural workers participated from across the UK and Ireland to discuss what it means to be a critical educator through a number of participatory workshops and dialogues. Each workshop was facilitated by educators, one of whom was Sara Motta one of the project’s co-coordinators, with experience in critical pedagogy and/or popular education, and drew on these experiences to introduce new work in empowering, prefigurative, transformative and critical pedagogies linked to social and political movements.
A paper titled “Theorising Critical Pedagogy in the Teaching of Social and Global Justice: Practice Informed by Theory” was presented to the School of Politics and International Relation’s research seminar by the four members of the working party on May 19th; sketching out the theoretical frameworks from which the group has been working and asking how these can be used to facilitate the teaching of social and global justice within a university setting. This paper is currently undergoing a rewriting process as a collaborative article for publication in an academic journal. Deirdre Duffy has also written an article for the website Human Rights in Ireland on autonomous education Read article.....
Inspired by the material discussed at various stages throughout the project, the project is in the process of setting up a group blog. This will be used to post reflections on our meetings, link to relevant articles and scholarship on critical pedagogy and popular education as well as hosting articles on critical pedagogy and higher education written by members of the working group. We will also feature guest articles from national and global theorists who engage with similar themes and podcast recordings with educators, students and academics interested in critical pedagogy. This will be integrated with a presence on Twitter. It is hoped that this will enable us to network with other critical pedagogues and popular educators around the globe.
In all the spaces of critical pedagogy praxis that we have facilitated we have given time for specific evaluations of participants as well as encouraged a more holistic long-term evaluative process that manifests itself in a growing commitment to the project and to introducing critical pedagogy into our teaching practice.
We believe that this is reflected in a number of successes. Lecturers in the CSSGJ have begun to incorporate critical, integrative into their teaching on a wide range of modules (related to social and global justice and otherwise) at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. These have been met with mixed success- students have responded enthusiastically (both verbally and through Student Evaluation of Teaching forms) to a number of classroom techniques, but technological methods (group blogs and discussion forums) have not seen a great deal of uptake- although this is an avenue we wish to pursue further.
We are also pleased at how we have managed to raise awareness of- and debate surrounding- the need for an integrative critical pedagogy. The various reading and discussion groups we have run have been well attended and have provided plenty of stimulating discussion- sharing knowledge and practices across disciplines, and opening up spaces to voices from outside the tradition of higher education in the global north.
Future Plans
We will develop a tool-kit in the teaching of social justice in HE, a series of workshops in teacher training developing critical pedagogy for our pgr-teachers and potentially other pgr-teachers and a number of working papers and articles.
We will continue with the reading groups and hope to attract further funding from the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice and other relevant funding bodies to facilitate continuing our visiting speakers series.
References
Freire, P. 1970, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Continuum.