Aphra Sutherland

Science 511
April 1, 2020
Word count: 580

Engaged Pedagogy Reading Summary

bell hooks’ discussion of engaged pedagogy, in her article of the same name, describes a
version of university classrooms in which teachers and students have a more complex, varied,
and holistic connection. hooks points out that this type of relationship, what she refers to as
engaged pedagogy, has become so rare in education that it has begun to appear as a
“transgression” rather than a form of pedagogy. To combat this, she grounds engaged pedagogy
in an examination of the role and stereotype of the “intellectual,” and then relates this to the
pedagogy of past thinkers, emphasizing how far away universities have moved away from the
ideals of scholars like Freire and Hanh. The disengagement that hooks speaks of is reminiscent
of what she identifies as a larger problem with education through anecdotes of her own
education, referencing Freire’s banking model and describing academic instructors as dictators -
benevolent, but still dictators. Creating classrooms in which people are regarded as whole
people, without delving too far into emotional labor, and where people can learn about topics
that can be applied through all facets to the real world, should be the goal of engaged education.
This might mean disagreement, discourse, and mistakes, which often means that student
involvement in the processes of the classroom should be prioritized. This type of vulnerability
should be encouraged and also, more importantly, modeled by instructors. hooks is careful to
clarify, however, that in an engaged classroom, it is not just students but also teachers who will
benefit from a prioritization of whole bodied, experiential learning in tangent with others in a
classroom.
Reading this essay puts me in mind of a professor that I had throughout my English
degree at the University of Alberta. Although not universally loved (she was fairly disorganized),
she remains to this day, one of my favourite and most influential teachers. I’m sure she was
familiar with bell hooks, although of this specific essay I’m not sure, but I also don’t think that
she would have explicitly been teaching this way. Rather, I get the feeling that she had just
realized that she wouldn’t connect with every student but she would most deeply inspire the
students she did connect with by displaying an astonishing amount of vulnerability and trust in
them. This looked like a lot of personal anecdotes, but it also meant well practiced active
listening and a great deal of academic freedom. She taught me introductory English, as well as
Canadian fiction, but the class that I think I learned the most from was a full year creative non-
fiction writing course. The freedom she instilled in that class gave me the confidence to explore
many new writing styles, especially with personal tones, that I’d never felt comfortable
inhabiting before, which I think was invaluable in a discipline that can sometimes overvalue
dense, academic text. I’ve never explicitly thought through what this professor’s pedagogy was,
but, in reflection, I think that she exemplified engaged pedagogy in a way that resonates with me
today. While creative non-fiction is fertile ground for this kind of exploration, sciences are
definitely a less obvious area. However, I think that that makes it all the more worth pursuing.
Just as an initial exploration, I wonder if this would look like more anecdotal instruction of
practicing scientists, more one-on-one reflection on the (frustrating) process of research, and
more experiential activities in which students could reflect and verbalize specifically what it is
that interests them in their chosen topic.