A Critical Perspective on Social Science Pedagogical Research: Critical Pedagogy in Challenging Times

1. A Critical Perspective on Social Science Pedagogical Research: Critical Pedagogy in Challenging Times Professor Joyce E Canaan, School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Education, Law and Social Sciences, Birmingham City University, Perry Barr, Birmingham B42 2SU

2. Critical Pedagogy in Challenging Times: An Overview • What is critical pedagogy? • Why critical pedagogy now? • What does critical pedagogy offer social science research and teaching today? • Methodological perspectives/Research methods • Impact of critical pedagogy on students and tutors • Possibilities and limits of critical pedagogy research/teaching • Relevance for you? • References

3. 1. What Is Critical Pedagogy? • What is critical pedagogy? • Introduced by Paolo Freire, most notably in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in dialogue with/building upon prior authors/activists including: Gramsci, CheGuevara,Dewey, Marx, Fromm, (and other critical theorists) amongst others. • As I noted in an early paper on my usage of critical pedagogy:

4. 1. What Is Critical Pedagogy? • For Freire, learning should be a dialogical process in which: • the teacher-of-the-student and the students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students-teachers. The teacher is no longer the-one-who-teaches but one who is himself [sic] in dialogue with the students, who in turn, while being taught, also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow (Freire 1996 in Canaan 2005:162).

5. 1. What Is Critical Pedagogy? • For Freire, critical pedagogy requires problem-posing education (rather than banking)—in which teachers facilitate student challenging of prior understandings (of ‘limit situation’) by placing students’ understandings in a wider and deeper context. • Learning also aims to encourage learners not just to interpret, but to change, the world, developing ‘the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world’ (Freire 1996 in Canaan 2005:162). • This is clearly political—but education has never been a neutral process

6. 2. Why Critical Pedagogy Now? • HE in crisis especially in England post Browne Report and Comprehensive Spending Review. • Funding cuts (80% in STEM and 100% in Non-STEM subjects); fees nearly trebling from autumn 2012; ‘student choice’ central to new system, • Effects: • Radical shift in definition of HE from public to private good; • Privatising HE (one new provider, BPP, and more to come); • Some institutions cutting non-STEM areas (London Met, University of East London). More could do so; • Consequently, what will happen to the critical thinking these subjects engender? (See Canaan 2011 for a wider discussion of these issues).

7. 2. Why Critical Pedagogy Now? • Current crisis preceded by ‘a crisis in the very idea of the university’ as its ‘traditional values and motives’ have been undermined by the ‘complete subordination of intellectual life to instrumental values and. . . the measure of money’ (Thorpe 2008:103). Thus university and public sector presumed to rest on same principles of being profitable as private sector. • What should our response be: • Sit tight? Analyse what is happening? Resist cuts (strikes, other action)? Participate in Facebook groups sharing information/organising events/actions (e.g., Campaign for the Public University)?) Create alternative educational processes?

8. 2. Why Critical Pedagogy Now? • My response with others: • Set up critical pedagogy/popular education group at C-SAP which resulted in: • Day schools whilst supported by C-SAP and post C-SAP funding; • C-SAP funding for Gurnam Singh and colleagues to conduct 9 podcasts with critical pedagogues and popular educators. Mean podcast hits: 9,000. • Co-wrote invited piece for ELISS—Enhancing Learning in the Social Sciences, Canaan, J E and Amsler, S (2009); co-edited C-SAP booklet(Canaan, J E, et al, (eds) (2010). Recently submitted co-authored book proposal: Cowden, S et al to Continuum. • Co-established Public Sociology undergraduate routeway at BCU which utilises critical pedagogy to underpin learning and teaching. Conference presentations to share good practice, leading to co-authored publication (Badcock M and Canaan, J E 2011).

9. 2. Why Critical Pedagogy Now? • Other UK responses: Popular Education Network (PEN) co-coordinated by Jim Crowther at University of Edinburgh; • TRAPESE—Taking Radical Action through Popular Education and Sustainable Everything! http://trapese.clearerchannel.org/about_us.php • International critical pedagogy conference July 2011, Athens, co-organised by Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies (UK), Cultural Logic (USA/Canada), Kritiki(Greece), Radical Notes (India) (See the JCEPS website for further details: http://www.jceps.com/ -and for articles by critical pedagogues).

10. 3. What Does Critical Pedagogy Offer Social Science Teaching and Research Today? • Perhaps most crucially for this event, CP offers a way to reach the kinds of ‘new students’ who recently entered HE. • Engaging students by listening and then tailoring teaching and assessment to best meet these students’ needs. • Consequently regaining enthusiasm for teaching and respect for students; • For those committed to a more egalitarian and socially just world, offers opportunities to encourage students to develop analytical/critical skills for praxis—and to lead by example (see, for example, Nottingham Critical Pedagogy Group, Nottingham University, School of Geography, Leeds: MA in Activism and Social Change). • Sharing insights gained and building a wider network through talks, writing, podcasts, twitter.

11. 4. Methodological Perspectives/Research Methods • Critical pedagogy is methodologically informed by: Marxist, critical, feminist, post-colonialist and anti-racist/critical race theories/perspectives. • This perspective interweaves research and teaching. • For example, Neary & Winn talk of students as producers of knowledge (against the notion of students as consumers or customers), arguing that this entails:

12. 4. Methodological Perspectives/Research Methods • undergraduate students working in collaboration with academics to create work of social importance . . . full of academic content and value, while . . . [also] reinvigorating the university beyond the logic of market economics (193). • They aim to work with students in an open and creative environment that ‘engenders equity among academics and students’ in which academics collaborate with student producers (Ibid:210). • Multiple research methods can be used with this open, collaborative spirit—most but notably Participatory Action Research (PAR)isutilised which entails work with groups to help address challenging circumstances they face.

13. 5. Impact of Critical Pedagogy on Students and Tutors • Students: • From my experience most—but not all—students find the dialogical approach of critical pedagogy compelling . . . Although not necessarily immediately. • In a recent module evaluation students claimed that learning was: ‘like a process of waking up,’ or ‘having a light bulb go on,’ or ‘opening one’s eyes.’

14. 5. Impact of Critical Pedagogy on: Students and Tutors • Tutors: • At a time when so many of us are overwhelmed with higher teaching/research pressures and with ’regimes of accountability’ (Canaan 2010, and many others, e.g., Strathern (2000), Wright and Shore (2000)), new energy/affirmation provided by seeing growing student enthusiasm/engagement. • This energy/affirmation more widely indicated by growing body of work indicating more tutors are encouraging students to be producers (e.g., recent first British Conference of Undergraduate Research; Healey, ongoing).

15. 6. Possibilities and limits of Critical pedagogy research/teaching • Possibilities: • Growing student engagement with learning and development of analytical and critical skills—vital for them as graduates and for our national/global future • Thus offers students tools for understanding/engaging with the world today • Part of growing tutor investment with teaching/learning and researching teaching/learning. • Limits: • Possible short term dissatisfaction by some students previously taught using banking model of learning

16. 6. Possibilities and limits of Critical pedagogy research/teaching • May never reach some students alienated from learning—could any pedagogy do so? • Many of us find students needing more support which means we can’t take critical pedagogy teaching as far as we would like to do • Overtly political nature of critical pedagogy may be seen as ‘biased’ . . . But if education isn’t neutral, is critical pedagogy any less neutral than any other pedagogy?! • Pedagogical research generally still somewhat devalued by more elite academics doing what they consider to be theory led research (but of course our work can be highly theoretical!)

17. 7. Relevance for you? • Let’s now discuss this!

18. 8. References • Badcock, M and Canaan, J E (2011) Student engagement with Public Sociology A view from BCU (paper given to British Conference of Undergraduate Research and to be submitted for publication. • British Conference of Undergraduate Research, http://www.bcur.org/ • Canaan, J E (2011) Is this ‘just the beginning’?: Possibilities of the 2010 English student movement, in Hatcher, R. and Jones, K. eds., No country for the young: Education from New Labour to the Coalition, London: Tuffnell. • Canaan, J E and Amsler, S (2009) Whither critical pedagogy in the neo-liberal university today: Two UK practitioners’ reflections on constraints and possibilitieshttp://www.eliss.org.uk/PreviousIssues/Volume1Issue2/ViewArticle/tabid/72/itemid/43/pubtabid/73/repmodid/411/Default.aspx • Canaan, J E (2005) Developing a pedagogy of critical hope, in LATISS—Learning and Teaching in the social sciences, 2(3): 159-174. • Why critical pedagogy and popular education matter today C-SAP: Higher Education Academy Subject Network for Sociology, Anthropology, Politics. (free download chapter by chapter on LULU) • Coventry University Podcasts with critical pedagogues/popular educators: http://coventryuniversity.podbean.com/category/education, Uploaded 8/11/2008; 6/7/2009; 7/8/2009. Average podcast hits: nearly 9,000.

19. 8. References • Cowden, S and Singh, G, et al, eds (nd) Acts of knowing: Reclaiming critical pedagogy for the future of highereducation, Continuum: London and New York. • Feagin, J and Vera, H 2008) Liberation Sociology Boulder and London: Paradigm Publishers • Healey, M (ongoing)Creative Honours Projects (Creative-Hops) National Teaching Fellowship Scheme project, http://insight.glos.ac.uk/tli/activities/ntf/ntfellows/Pages/mh.aspx • Leeds University School of Geography: MA in Activism and Social Change http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/study/masters/courses/maasc .. • Neary, M and Winn, J Student as producer: Reinventing the student experience in higher education, in L. Bell, H. Stephenson and M. Neary, eds. The Future of Higher Education: Policy, Pedagogy and the Student Experience,Lincoln: Lincoln University Press. Pp.192-210., http://eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/1675/1/Future_of_HE_-_Chapter_10.pdf • Nottingham Critical Pedagogy Group, through the Nottingham University Centre for Social and Global Justice http://nottinghamcriticalpedagogy.wordpress.com/about/ • Thorpe, C. (2008) The demise of the humanistic university? in Academic Labor, autumn • Shore, C. and Wright, S (2000) Coercive accountabiity: The rise of audit culture in higher education, in Strathern, M. ed., Audit Cultures : Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academy, London and New York: Rouitledge, pp. 57-89. • Strathern, M, ed. (2000) Audit Cultures: Anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academy, London and New York: Rouitledge.