Challenging Traditional Academic Power Structures with Engaged Pedagogy

An Analysis of bell hooks’ Concept of Utilizing Pedagogy as a Liberatory Practice

For generations, traditional learning practices have involved the allegedly omniscient professor standing behind their podium, articulating class content in a one-way stream of ideas.

Throughout my entire life and academic career, I have been conditioned to accept this classroom dynamic as inherently true and correct. That is, as a student, it is my place to passively soak in the teacher’s wisdom with no hesitation or pause. That the presence of a question exists only for clarification, not to challenge or provoke. Any skepticism from the student is immediately seen as a form of disrespect, and with good reason, as this type of behavior threatens the very power structure the teacher’s validity is based on. At least, that is what traditional pedagogy likes to perpetuate.

In Building a Teaching Community: A Dialogue by bell hooks, hooks examines the concept of utilizing pedagogy as a liberatory practice. She seeks to do this through reconceptualizing traditional pedagogy into what she refers to as “engaged pedagogy”.

Traditional pedagogy regards knowledge and the mind as concepts separate from the body, where the lessons taught in the classroom are divorced from real life. Professor Tom Barret refers to it as the “sage on stage” approach that so many education conferences have served to prolong. This is the system I, and most others, have been learning from for the majority of our lives. We have been conditioned to believe that true knowledge has nothing to do with who we are or where we come from. That in academia, our identities and life experiences are irrelevant. This has led to a incredibly detached way of learning in modern society, one that has prevented, rather than promoted, a valuable teaching discourse.

Engaged pedagogical practice, on the other hand, seeks to combine one’s life experiences with class curriculum while simultaneously dismantling the traditional power structures that exist between teacher and student. This is the form of teaching some may find to be obscure, as most students have likely never actually encountered it within the classroom. Engaged pedagogy “invites us to be in the present, to remember that the classroom is never the same. Traditional ways of thinking about the classroom stress the opposite paradigm — that the classroom is always the same even when students are different” (hooks 158). It challenges the traditional pedagogical notion that the classroom is an inherently static space. This is important especially for situations in which the classroom is really diverse, where students do not share the same underlying assumptions about learning.

An important point that hooks mentions here is that in order to utilize teaching as a means to liberate and empower students, teachers must first realize it their voice is not the only voice of value. The student has a voice that must be heard by both the teacher and their fellow students. It is important for the teacher to uplift and amplify this voice in a way that allows the student to recognize they are capable of participating in a dialectical exchange of ideas.

One of the major challenges in establishing an engaged learning space is the fear that deviating from the traditional way will result in loss of the students’ respect. Hooks mentions that students often confuse the lack of formality with a lack of seriousness, and lose respect for the process. In her dialogue with white philosopher Ron Scapp, he reveals that because he teaches in an informal manner, many students come an go to the class as they please, not respecting it as a legitimate class. In instances such as these, hooks emphasizes the importance of reminding her students to respect the learning process even when it is different than what they are used to.

In examining liberatory teaching practices, hooks cites an instance in which she encountered her first professor who wanted the class to sit in a circle rather than in rows, a change she eagerly embraced. I personally had a similar experience in my most recent quarter in college, and viewed it as an earnest effort to dismantle traditional patriarchal learning structures.

Hooks concludes her dialogue with the interesting idea that in order to sustain an engaged teaching environment, job-sharing and job-switching between teachers must be established. She explains that many teachers reject the idea of engaged pedagogy because they fear the damage the lack of time-off will have on them. This can be addressed if teachers can afford and are encouraged to take a leave of absence that isn’t necessarily a sabbatical while someone else fills in.

Hooks’ proposal to establish learning communities where engaged learning and teaching can be sustained, is incredibly important to dismantling the traditional power structures that exist today that insist so adamantly on clinging to the past.