scholarly journals Educating Informal Educators on Issues of Race and Inequality: Raising Critical Consciousness, Identifying Challenges, and Implementing Change in a Youth and Community Work Programme

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 410
Author(s):  
Jess Achilleos ◽  
Hayley Douglas ◽  
Yasmin Washbrook
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Critical Consciousness ◽  
Community Work ◽  
Implementing Change ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Informal Educators ◽  
Work Programme

The debate regarding institutional racism and White privilege within higher education (HE) remains prevalent, and higher education institutions (HEIs) are not exempt from the racial equality debate. Youth and Community Work is underpinned by anti-oppressive practice, highlighting a need to educate informal educators on the structural underpinnings of Race and inequlaity, so that they can be challenged in practice to bring about social change. For Youth and Community Workers, this is primarily done through informal education and critical pedagogy. The research aimed to unearth race inequality within the Youth and Community Work programme at Wrexham Glyndŵr University (WGU). Critical reflection methodology was used to deconstruct departmental processes of recruitment, learning and assessment, student voice, and support. Research data was analysed using thematic analysis, determining three themes: critical consciousness, challenge, and change. These are discussed within the framework of Critical Race Theory and critical pedagogy. The research concludes that oppression, and therefore inequality, occurs in the Youth and Community Work programme. Further reading of issues reported in HEIs across the United Kingdom shows that more analysis and deconstruction is needed through CRT. Educating informal educators on issues of race and inequality to raise critical consciousness is one way this can be achieved.

scholarly journals The Contested Terrain of Critical Pedagogy and Teaching Informal Education in Higher Education

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 476
Author(s):  
Alan Smith ◽  
Mike Seal
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Informal Educators ◽  
Contested Terrain ◽  
Do So

This review explores how critical pedagogy, often cited by educators of informal educators as a key influence, actually informs teaching of informal educators in higher education and assesses its potential to do so. It explores the background to critical pedagogy, its principles, aims and approaches and examines its worldwide influence on the teaching of informal educators. The authors argue that critical pedagogy is crucial for the teaching of informal educators, enabling lecturer and practitioners to interrupt the hegemony of neo-liberal and neo-managerial thinking in their practice and in higher education, and re-orientate themselves and examine their positionality within their institutions. It will focus on practical examples of enabling critical pedagogy in the teaching of informal education in higher education institutions.

scholarly journals Student Collaboration in Action: A Case Study Exploring the Role of Youth Work Pedagogy Transforming Interprofessional Education in Higher Education

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 761
Author(s):  
Tim Howell
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Interprofessional Education ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Youth Work ◽  
Youth Workers ◽  
Pedagogical Practice ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

The College of Health, Psychology, and Social Care at the University of Derby has transformed its Interprofessional Education (IPE) offer from a top-down standalone event into a five-year strategy designed and delivered in genuine collaboration with students. Across the higher education sector, IPE has been a struggle, tokenistic at best, with limited buy-in from students. When academic-led it prevents deep learning; however, by utilising an informal education approach students bring their life, programme, and practice learning together to genuinely break down barriers between professional disciplines. This paper will use an autoethnographic case study to explore the challenges and opportunities of genuine collaboration based on youth work principles in the creation of a ‘value-added curriculum’, not aligned to modules or assessments. It found that buy-in from academics and students comes when students are empowered to take the lead. This is based on youth work pedagogical principles of group work, relationships with shrinking professional distance, critical pedagogy, genuine agency, and an emotional connection made between the professionals and service users. It suggests the potential is considerable as youth workers bring their pedagogical practice to a broader range of spaces within and beyond higher education.

Feeling political

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Dannreuther
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Educational Practice ◽  
The Body ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Embodied Pedagogy ◽  
Opening Up

By exploring some of the challenges of teaching a radical politics in the neo-liberal university, the article looks to the writings of radical pedagogues like Freire and Giroux to position hope as an important resource for critical pedagogy for teachers. Drawing on Coole’s work on Merleau-Ponty, the article examines the potential of a critical pedagogy that taps into the body, rather than a mind, as a vessel for capturing hope and thus as a way of opening up a new resource for linking hope to educational practice. These resources are discussed in relation to debates concerning the politics of artistic practices, particularly with regard to how an embodied pedagogy might work around the constraints imposed by neo-liberal universities. Three themes are identified as warranting further discussion for an embodied pedagogy and their implications are reflected upon. These relate to how we view the student as embodying hope, how we view the classroom as a place of rich connections and how we capture learning through richness and reflection. The United Kingdom is the focus of the article, but there is a wider relevance given ongoing global trends in and debates about higher education.

Critical Co-Constructed Autoethnography: Reflections of a Collaborative Teaching Experience of Two Black Women in Higher Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 002193472110574
Author(s):  
Kiesha Warren-Gordon ◽  
Angela Jackson-Brown
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Teaching Experience ◽  
Predominantly White Institution ◽  
Capstone Courses ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
White Institution

Within this paper, two Black women teaching at a predominantly white institution of higher education utilize critical co-constructed autoethnography to reflect on their experiences of using a Womanist approach to co-teach two capstone courses during a global pandemic. Womanism is an epistemology focused on the experiences and concerns of Black women. Using this collaborative inquiry technique, we explore how forms of systemic racism within predominantly white institutions affects our ability to teach and grow as researcher in our specific fields. Critical co-constructed autoethnography is a methodology steeped in critical theory, critical pedagogy, and critical race theory that reflects the tempo, uncertainty, and complexity of research relationships that creates spaces for collaborating researchers to work across differences. We conclude this paper by highlighting the value of using co-constructed autoethnography as a method of articulating the voices of those who have traditionally been underrepresented in academia. This method also allows for the congruency of voices, which is a limitation within traditional autoethnography.

Features of teaching the discipline "Didactics of higher education" in non-pedagogical specialties

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Stareva
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Professional Activity ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Professional Programs ◽  
Process Formation ◽  
The Future ◽  
Student Training

The author reveals the necessity of introducing into the educational and professional programs of preparation of masters of non-pedagogical specialties of the discipline "Didactics of higher education". Formation of pedagogical competences of the teacher of the higher school will allow the future specialists professional activity in the institutions of higher education. The article reveals the essence of didactic competence and peculiarities of its formation in higher education students in the current conditions of organizing the initial process. The competency approach should permeate all aspects of student training. Therefore, a special (didactic) competence should be included in the list of the graduates' learning outcomes. The didactic competence is the ability to apply knowledge of psychology and pedagogy (didactics) in the educational process of higher education institutions. In the orientation of the educational and professional program of the master of non-pedagogical specialties it is necessary to enter competencies that allow him to engage in teaching activities. General competences add to the ability to carry out pedagogical activities using innovative educational technologies, and special competences add to the ability to organize the educational process and carry out scientific research in order to solve topical problems of the theory, methodology, organization and practice of higher education students. One of the most important compulsory (normative) disciplines that enable the future specialist to teach special and professional disciplines in higher education institutions should be "Didactic of Higher Education". This is the main feature of forming didactic competence in higher education institutions. But the competent approach in higher education does not come down to a separate discipline, but because the phenomenon of integral and dynamic develops in the process of formal, non-formal and informal education and is in constant development and self-development. All stages of preparation of the master of non-pedagogical specialties for teaching activity should be directed on achievement of the main purpose of the educational process — formation of pedagogical competences of applicants of higher education.

Liberate our Library: doing decolonisation work at Goldsmiths Library

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 148-154
Author(s):  
Marilyn Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Study Skills ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Ngugi Wa Thiong'o ◽  
The Self ◽  
Hierarchical Systems ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
The Mind

Library work now has a role to play when it comes to decolonisation. This article outlines what Goldsmiths Library, University of London is doing, through the Liberate our Library initiative, to diversify and decolonise its collections and practices against the backdrop of worldwide movements for education and social justice led by both students and academics to challenge the dominance of the ‘Westernised university’.2Examples of how we are doing this work are explained using critical librarianship as our guide, whilst recognising that we are still developing expertise in this evolving field of practice. This decolonisation work also uses critical race theory (CRT) as a means to dismantle racial inequality and its impact on higher education.Here, I would like to acknowledge the excellent and inspirational content of ALJ, Critical Librarianship: Special Issue (v.44, no.2) and I see this article as an ongoing companion piece.Goldsmiths Library's liberation work endeavours to empower its users with critical thinking and study skills whilst conducting their research using hierarchical systems and resources which in themselves are in the process of being decolonised.Decolonising a library collection and a profession must of course always begin or at least happen in tandem with the self, through a process that Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o describes as ‘decolonising the mind.’3

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