Teaching the History of Higher Education: A Critical Duoethnography

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Teaching Diversity in Higher Education

Abstract

Critical pedagogy, when conducted effectively, engages students in analysis of the ‘hidden curriculum’ (McLaren, 2009), the ways that the classroom serves implicitly to advance the interests of the oppressor. While critical educators support this goal, scholars (Ellsworth, 1992; Lather, 1998) have noted that we seldom reflexively examine our experiences deploying critical pedagogical tools in the classroom. In this duoethnographic study of two educators’ experience teaching a graduate course in the history of higher education, complexities in the teacher-student dialogic relationship are surfaced. This project provided us as activist educators (Newman, 2006) with the space to engage in “a ‘defiant speech’ that is constructed within communities of resistance and is a condition of survival” (Ellsworth, 1992, p. 102).

Authors

• Susan Marine, Merrimack College

• Z Nicolazzo, Miami University - Oxford