Activism in Higher Education Classrooms: Examining Practices and Exploring Possibilities for Communication Activism Pedagogy

Activism in higher education classrooms: examining practices & exploring possibilities

for Communication Activism Pedagogy Monica Batac | School of Professional Communication | Ryerson University

Activism and Communication Scholarship in Canada Workshop | April 30, 2015

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a little bit about me student-teacher-activist-scholar education & communication second-generation Filipina-Canadian

image: Patricia Glogowski on Flickr

multiple identities various communities

dissec&ng  communica&on  educa&on    

“Students  flock  to  communica1on  courses  with  the  promise  of  parlaying  their  degree  into  a  professional  career,  and,  in  general,  they  find  an  instruc1onal  field  ready,  if  not  primarily  designed  to  accommodate  their  professional  needs.”  

(Palmer,  2014,  p.  46)    

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Professional Communication “practices — text, sound and image — that we use to communicate within, across and between communities as small as start-ups and as large as governments & multi-nationals”

tension

the  banking  concept  of  educa1on                                                    the  neoliberal  university        

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“Traditional communication education has become not only a business school affiliate but a business that produces a product: c o r p o r a t e - r e a d y g r a d u a t e s , who eagerly p u r c h a s e k n o w l e d g e as a c o r p o r a t e - v a l u e d c o m m o d i t y and their degree as a m a r k e t - e n t r y certificate.”

(Palmer, 2014, p. 65)

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cri&cal  pedagogy  as  hope  [?]      

“This  capacity  to  always  begin  anew,  to  make,  to  reconstruct,  and  to  not  spoil,    to  understand  and  to  live  as  a  process  -­‐  live  to  become...    This  is  an  indispensable  quality  of  a  good  teacher.”      

(Freire,  1993,  p.  98)    

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to  refuse  to  bureaucra&ze  the  mind,    

“Cri1cal  pedagogy  asserts  that  students  can  engage  their  own  learning  from  a  posi1on  of  agency  and  in  doing  so  can  ac1vely  par1cipate  in  narra1ng  their  iden11es  through  a  culture  of  ques1oning…  it  is  also  about  encouraging  students  to  take  risks,  act  on  their  sense  of  social  responsibility,  and  engage  the  world  as  an  object  of  both  cri1cal  analysis  and  hopeful  transforma1on.”    

(Giroux,  2011,  p.  15)    

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the  banking  concept  of  educa1on                                                    the  neoliberal  university        

image: greeblie on Flickr

(in)justice through communication

image: Andrew Carr on Flickr

separate  &  divided;  at  odds    

research    

 teaching  

 service  

 ac1vism  

image: Andrew Carr on Flickr

in  search  of  solidarity  &  synthesis    

research    

 teaching  

 service  

ac1vism        

Communicat ion ac t iv i sm pedagogy (CAP) teaches students how to use their communication knowledge and resources (e.g. theories, research methods, pedagogies, and other practices) to work together with community members to intervene into and reconstruct unjust discourses in more just ways.

(Frey and Palmer, 2014, p. 8)

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Palmer (2014), p. 53

Pedagogical approaches in communication education

Traditional CAP

Goal Produce market-ready personnel Build social justice communities

Theory Strategic individual psychosociological communication theory

Critical and social justice theory

Student Consumer: future employee Public intellectual: social activist

Communication Strategic resource exchange Medium of injustice, resistance, and reconstruction

Pedagogy Technical knowledge dissemination Applied sociopolitical problem solving

Knowledge Commodity: market productive information System vision: resource of liberation

Learning Memorizing, restating, rehearsing, preparing Networking, intervening, resisting, transforming

Community Future – business communities Present – oppressed communities

Power Bureaucratic institutional hierarchy Systemic socioeconomic power imbalances

Outcome Reproduces corporate-class systems Transforms unjust social conditions

a)  CAP  founda1ons  b)  CAP  courses  (syllabi/

project  examples)  c)  Social  jus1ce  ac1vism  

through  service  learning  d)  CAP  beyond  the  

university      Upcoming  book  review  on  Teaching  Communica1on  Ac1vism  (Canadian  Journal  of  Communica1on)  

image: Andrew Carr on Flickr

communication activism pedagogy building community, in solidarity

Today’s workshop + new Activism and Social Justice Division at the National Communication Association (NCA) Bringing communication scholars-activists (at all levels) together to connect; discuss teaching/research/service [etc.]; agitate, provoke, and support one another; cultivate future collaborations

•  to illustrate and imagine what activism and social justice work look like in our university classrooms

shared language, shared struggle

references Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the city. New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary ed). New York, NY: Continuum

International Publishing Group. Frey, L. R. & Palmer, D. L. (2014). Introduction: teaching communication activism. In L. R. Frey &

K. M. Carragee (Eds.), Teaching communication activism (pp. 1- 44). New York, NY: Hampton Press.

Frey, L. R., Pearce, W. B., Pollock, M. A., Artz, L., & Murphy, B. A. (1996). Looking for justice in all the wrong places: On a communication approach to social justice. Communication Studies, 47 (1-2), 110-127.

Frey, L. R., & Carragee, K. M. (Eds.) (2014). Communication activism: Volume 3 Struggling for social justice amidst difference. New York, NY: Hampton Press.

Giroux, H. (2011). On critical pedagogy. New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group. McLaren, P. & Kincheloe, J. L. (Eds.) (2007). Critical pedagogy: where are we now? New York, NY:

Peter Lang. Palmer, D. (2014). Communication education as vocational training and the marginalization of

activist pedagogies. In L. R. Frey & K. M. Carragee (Eds.), Teaching communication activism (pp. 45- 76). New York, NY: Hampton Press.