Throughout course planning and implementation, Chris Neary works with you to center class objectives, assessments, and class activities around critical pedagogy. As we learn to define this for your course, we adopt intentional uses of technology to support student learning. Below is a summary of a recently released e-book called Practices in Digital Pedagogy: Evaluating Digital Tools, written by Jesse Stommel, executive director of hybrid pedagogy at the University of Denver.
What is Critical Pedagogy?
Stommel, in a 2014 blog post, defines critical pedagogy as:
- Critical, as in mission-critical, essential
- Critical, as in literary criticism and critique, providing definitions and interpretation
- Critical, as in reflective and nuanced thinking about a subject
- Critical, as in criticizing institutional, corporate, or societal impediments to learning
- Critical Pedagogy, as a disciplinary approach, which inflects (and is inflected by) each of these other meanings
Stommel’s 2023 e-book guides faculty and instructional designers on evaluating course technologies through this critical pedagogy lens. He asks these folks to go beyond the marketing promises of technology developers; rather, Stommel encourages critical reflection and assessment of these tools based on intended use and actual use in courses, including how accessible, inclusive, and equitable these tools are for you and for your students.
If you have any questions or want to consider this assessment for your course, set up a meeting with Chris Neary at christopher.neary@northwestern.edu.
Sources
Stommel, J. (2023). Practices in digital pedagogy: Evaluating digital tools. Course Hero.