Critical pedagogy is the education movement aimed developing
students into socially and politically aware individuals, helping them
recognize authoritarian tendencies, empowering them to act against injustice,
and employing democratic and inclusive classroom practices. The term “critical
pedagogy” has been used by educators to refer to a broad range of pedagogies
that employ critical theory, feminist theory, queer theory, anti-racist theory,
multicultural education, and inclusive pedagogies. In this post, I will discuss
some of the critical pedagogy practices employed by Dr. Donna Riley (currently
a professor at Virginia Tech) while teaching a class called “Engineering
Thermodynamics” as Smit College, an all women college, during Spring and Fall
semesters of 2002. It should be noted that Riley uses liberative pedagogy as an inclusive term for critical pedagogy,
feminist pedagogy, and radical pedagogy. Some of the classroom practices
employed by Riley included:
Connecting learning
to students’ experiences. Students learn the most from examples which they
can relate to, based on their social and cultural backgrounds. Hence, Riley
used a wide variety of thermodynamic systems in class as examples. Also, the
textbook for the class was chosen such that it contained a wide variety of
examples of thermodynamic systems.
Democratic classroom
practices. Students were assigned teaching roles to teach parts of the
course to the entire class. They were not only asked to develop modules to
teach the class but also encouraged to relate them to their own lives. Also,
the seating arrangement reflected the democratic classroom practices. Instead of
sitting in rows facing the instructor, students were asked to sit in circles
with each student facing and talking to the entire class instead of just the
instructor.
Taking responsibility
for one’s own learning. Students were required to take responsibility for
their learning in that they were asked to do metacognitive reflections on what
was working or not working for them in the class. They were also asked to do assignments
in which they reflected on their learning of various aspects of the course.
Ethics discussions.
In order for students to be develop as ethically responsible individuals, they
need to learn the impact which an engineer’s work has on the society. To develop
such an ethical awareness, Riley and her class watched and critiqued videos on “energy
in society”, critiqued the textbook used for the class by analyzing the aspects
(e.g. alternate energy, environmental applications of thermodynamics, energy
system in developing countries) which were missing from the textbook. Also,
students were assigned ethics problems to reflect on.
Breaking the Western
hegemony. In order to decenter the male hegemony of the Western
civilization, Riley discussed examples of thermodynamic inventions done by
non-Western and non-male inventors. Also, some of the assignments required
students to make interracial and intercultural connections in thermodynamics.
Normalizing mistakes.
By normalizing mistakes in the process of learning, Riley fostered a classroom environment
in which students were comfortable attempting problems (sometimes even on the
black board) in class and learning from their mistakes. Another strategy used
by her for normalizing mistakes was acknowledging when she herself did not know
something.
Discussion of history
and philosophy. Riley discussed the history and philosophy of the development
of thermodynamic laws to demonstrate to the students that the process of discovery
does not lead one to an absolute truth. Instead, making mistakes is acceptable
in the process of discovery. Students were also required to reflect on how the knowledge
of history and philosophy of thermodynamics helped their learning.
Assessment
techniques. The assessment of students put a greater emphasis on
participation. Moreover, a flexible grading system was adopted. Students were
asked to work in pairs on some exams. In the second offering of the course,
problems were given to the students only as a learning exercise and not as an assessment
tool. Moreover, continual course feedback was taken from students to improve
their learning experience.
One of the critiques of critical pedagogy is that it does
not provide specific classroom practices. It just suggests that teaching and
learning should be contextual and aim at raising critical awareness among
students. A lot of times educators do not know how to apply critical pedagogy
in their classes, especially in hard and applied sciences, due to a lack of
knowledge about how to apply it. I hope the practices noted above can be
adopted to and adapted for any classroom and any discipline.
P.S. The
complete paper in which Riley discusses her experiences of applying liberative
pedagogy in her classes can be found from: Riley, D. (2003). Employing
liberative pedagogies in engineering education. Journal of Women and
Minorities in Science and Engineering, 9(2), 137–158.
