Agency and Deliberative Communication in the Classroom

Among many challenges in the space of education in the global South, we find that curricula are often out of touch with the contextual reality of students and that classroom or lecture-hall sizes are too big to engage a critical majority. Therefore, reimagining educational processes, or aspects thereof, becomes imperative. This article proposes that cultivating relational models of communication in the classroom is particularly useful in empowering students to connect with, participate, and actively co-shape the content and process of curricula and that it does so by casting agency as the freedom to work “with” rather than “against” or independently of the status quo. It also captures and reflects on the experience of a group of students and facilitators who employed such an approach in their classroom.