Each One, Teach One: Toward a Critical Race Pedagogy Framework for Office Hours

• In Event: Sophisticated Racial Tools: Expanding the Explanatory Power of Critical Race Praxis

Abstract

Objectives and Research Questions:
Office hours are a higher education tradition and a contractual obligation for faculty (Fowler, 2021; Aguilar-Hernández & Flores, 2020). However, scholars have identified challenges with office hours including lack of faculty commitment and attendance (Newton & Gutmann, 1979; Pfund et al., 2013), student underutilization (Fowler, 2021), and that private faculty offices can intimidate students (Glynn-Adey, 2021), which can negatively impact students of color. This paper expands “pedagogy” to include office hours and argues that a Critical Race Pedagogy framework (Lynn, 1999; Lynn, Jennings, & Hughes, 2013) shifts away from the challenges by redefining them as transformative spaces. This paper asks: How can a Critical Race Pedagogy framework shift office hours to student-centered transformational spaces?

Theory:
This paper draws from the third tenet of Critical Race Pedagogy (CRP) (Jennings & Lynn, 2005), that calls for reflexivity, which Lynn et al. (2013) argued is autobiographical by nature. Faculty who employ a CRP in their teaching and office hours are committed to the goal of developing “a pedagogical strategy that accounts for the central role of racism in higher education…” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001, p. 595). Further, CRP engages in “anti-subordination praxis” (Valdes, 2000, p. 833), exemplified by Velez Martinez (2015) who calls faculty to engage students in conversations on racism and oppression “and how to challenge them” (p. 601).

Methods/Sources:
As called for by CRP, the author employs the tenet of reflexivity by using autoethnography as a method (Hughes, Pennington, & Makris, 2012). They build on CRT scholars who have used authoethnography to document how racism and all forms of subordination impact them (Chavez 2012; Camangian, Philoxene, & Stovall, 2024). The author draws on ten years (2014-2024) of experiences with ethnic studies undergraduates, educational leadership doctoral students, and ethnic studies high school teachers they trained for a dual enrollment program.

Findings:
The paper is guided by what the author calls “pedagogical flashpoints,” faculty-student highlights that exemplify the tenets of CRP and reflect transformation for the student and faculty. For example, the author found that one-on-one office hours are important to develop student consciousness, exemplified by the African proverb, “each one, teach one,” where faculty are called to instill in students the commitment to spread knowledge among their communities. Second, by expanding pedagogy to include office hours, the author expands CRP so that faculty create transformative spaces in their classroom and avoid being “tormentors” who employ a “pedagogy of neglect” during office hours (González Cárdenas, 2015).

Significance:
This paper is significant because it shifts discourse on office hours to center the tenets of CRP while promoting anti-racism and anti-oppression. If CRP is applied to office hours, students can be affirmed and challenged to understand the ways that racism and all forms of subordination impacts them and their communities. Lastly, this paper has implications for faculty training centers, specifically professional development curricula that too often ignores the pedagogical possibilities for office hours.

Author

• José Manuel Aguilar-Hernández, California State Polytechnic University - Pomona