In UKHE a significant aspect of the work of central Educational and Learning Developers is to help university staff develop their pedagogy and their curriculum practice. We work with staff to help them become educationalists – to teach and assess more effectively – and to develop their practice to tackle emerging changes in society, in educational policy – and in the aptitudes and attitudes that they encounter in the students before them.
Our work involves change: in our practices – of our resources – to our ways of thinking about teaching and learning. Change can provoke disquiet, unease and even resistance. Comfortable with the role as subject expert or academic researcher; the role of teacher or facilitator of learning can leave us exposed, vulnerable and in dangerous academic space. Becoming a ‘teacher’ rather than a lecturer moves us from positions of power to positions of danger and risk. Embracing our agency with respect to the successful university experiences of our students can leave us exposed to criticism from management and students alike – no more evident than in the constant big stick of NSS!
So – if you want to think about your practice in an exciting and stimulating online collegiate course – why don’t you think about joining Hybrid Pedagogies MOOCMOOC on Critical Pedagogy? Check out their curriculum and sign up for the MOOCMOOC from here:
http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/mooc-mooc-critical-pedagogy/
Texts that will be covered and that you can discuss with other online participants include:
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, chapter 2
Emily Dickinson, “From all the Jails the Boys and Girls”
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, chapter 1
Henry Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy
Anarchist Pedagogies, chapter 7 “Spaces of Learning: The Anarchist Free Skool”
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Henry Giroux, “Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom: Paulo Freire and the Promise of Critical Pedagogy”
Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society, Ch. 1: “Why We Must Disestablish School”
John Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us”
Ricky Lee Allen, “Whiteness and Critical Pedagogy”
I hope some of you join in with this MOOCMOOC – and Good luck!!