Laneshia Conner, Ph.D.; V. Nikki Jones, DSW; and Jason P. Johnston, Ph.D.
Laneshia Conner, Ph.D.; V. Nikki Jones, DSW; and Jason P. Johnston, Ph.D.
Abstract
Transformative participatory approaches in education are positioned to challenge traditional models where instructors bear all responsibility for knowledge creation and learners are passive recipients of knowledge. The promotion of participatory learning and critical pedagogy is essential to helping professionals seeking to understand oppressive structural barriers and employing strategies to dismantle these structures. This article describes a participatory approach undertaken to guide learners through an exercise to co-create syllabus content in a graduate social work course. Learners identified three themes, concerns, fears, and problems, related to the course material. Learners were also asked to think about how they could address the three themes to apply new information to problem solve. Through the syllabus cloud activity, learners shaped course content, decided on the format to deliver content, and applied their status as adult learners in an intentional way. As educators prepare to critically and intentionally dismantle aspects of the learning milieu that may perpetuate systems of oppression, collaborative learning and teaching can help to reduce oppressive practices. Reflections for formative and summative evaluation and future research are discussed.
Keywords: critical pedagogy, participatory learning, graduate education
Participation as an act of sharing is different than participation as an act of sharing power (White, 1996). Formal education has a history of occurring in schools under trained professionals and relies heavily on the participation of both instructors and learners. Instructors are positioned to exercise a great amount of authority over their learners, playing critical roles in their development, with institutionalized roles that often mimic the values of the dominant culture (Kumashiro, 2000; Strong, 2007). Previous scholars, such as Paulo Freire (2005), have created dialogues about this positioning, stating that instructors are often placed in positions that involve an oppressive dominant culture. Of note is that Eurocentric knowledge has been centered as legitimate knowledge, therefore, the experiences of other cultures and their learning styles and pedagogical needs have been greatly minimized (Kumashiro, 2000). There are many other challenges and complex nuances related to relational dynamics in education, as such, social constructivism provides a guide to understanding the interactional space that both learners and instructors can occupy, and that illustration of relational power can be mutually constructed and negotiated between the two groups (Manke, 1997; Kumashiro, 2000; Strong, 2007). The classroom is a place where power relations can be addressed, and instructors have an opportunity to raise awareness among learners while affirming and respecting the culture of the learners and their needs (Sidky, 2017). Even though instructor