Critical Rhetoric and Pedagogy: (Re)Considering Student-Centered Dialogue

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Critical Rhetoric and Pedagogy: (Re)Considering Student-Centered Dialogue 1
Cathy B. Glenn
Department of Speech Communication
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale
cglenn@siu.edu
If students are going to learn how to take risks, to develop a healthy skepticism towards all master narratives, to recognize the power relations that offer them the opportunity to speak in particular ways, and be willing to critically confront their role as critical citizens who can animate a democratic culture, they need to see such behavior demonstrated in the social practices and subject positions that teachers live out and not merely propose. (Giroux, 1992, p. 141)
In practice, critical rhetoric seeks to unmask or demystify the discourse of power. The aim is to understand the integration of power/knowledge in society—what possibilities or change the integration invites or inhibits, and what intervention strategies might be considered appropriate to effect social change. (McKerrow, 1989, p. 91
In general, a principle aim of critical2 approaches to pedagogy is the creation of conditions within which students are able to develop a critical consciousness. The pedagogical process of developing critical consciousness (or Paulo Freire‘s notion of conscientization) 3 involves showing students how to recognize and evaluate structures of power. This pedagogical focus on developing critical consciousness means that students can begin to understand themselves as active agents, enabling them to identify and/or create conditions for the possibility of change in oppressive sociopolitical constructs. As part of this pedagogical approach, student-centered dialogue is cited as essential in facilitating the development of critical consciousness (Friere, 1970; Giroux, 1992; hooks, 1994; McLaren, 1997; Shor, 1997; Tayko & Tassoni, 1998). However, since critical dialogue is most easily facilitated within a relatively small, seminar-like class structure, larger class populations present a considerable challenge. The absence of critical pedagogy literature that discusses this challenge points to a need for theorizing how critical consciousness might be developed with a large number of students. I aim, in this essay, to contribute to that literature by presenting a case study analysis that demonstrates how critical consciousness development can be enabled in a classroom with over 100 students.
The case study analysis presented in this essay suggests that student-centered dialogue is not the only--nor is it an essential—means for helping students develop a sense of critical consciousness. Utilizing Raymie McKerrow‘s (1989) theory of critical rhetoric to analyze the strategies of one teacher, I focus on how the development of critical consciousness is possible without a central focus on student-centered dialogue. In the first section, I offer a brief overview of critical pedagogy as it relates to student-centered dialogue. Outlined in the second section are McKerrow‘s praxis-oriented aspects of a critical rhetoric. In the third section, the various teaching strategies presented in the case study are analyzed via McKerrow‘s concepts. In the last section, I suggest possible implications for theorizing critical pedagogy when student- centered dialogue is not a viable option. My hope in offering this example of critical pedagogy-- performed in a context generally deemed inadequate to support such an approach--is to underscore how critical consciousness development does not depend on an . priori focus on student-centered dialogue.
Critical Pedagogy & Student-Centered Dialogue
In general, critical pedagogy4 has been described as an approach to teaching that, through a focus on students‘ interests and identities, attempts to move away from teacher- and text-centered curricula. By drawing subject matter from students‘ own lives, language, and cultures, a critical reading of dominant sociopolitical constructs is included and situated within students‘ experiences to provide a sociohistorical context from which to envision and enact social change (Friere, 1970; Giroux, 1992; hooks, 1994; McLaren, 1997; 1998; Shor, 1997). In short, critical pedagogy aims at developing students‘ critical consciousness. Even though the specific means engaged to do so vary among pedagogues in this area, affording a privileged status to student-centered dialogue is a familiar theme.
The advantages of critical dialogue in the classroom have been a focal point in recent educational theory and research and much has been written explicating the transformative potential of including a student-centered dialogic aspect in critical approaches to teaching (Arnett, 1993; Boler, 1997; Conle, 1997; Friere, 1987, 1997; hooks 1994; McHenry, 1997; Popkewitz, 1997; Schutz, 1998). These scholars point to the constitutive aspects of dialogue as the primary means for helping students develop an awareness of their agency in affecting change in oppressive circumstances. Performing as critically thinking and speaking subjects in the classroom provides, for students, the basis for performing as citizen-critics outside it, as well (Giroux, 1992). Scholars have addressed how dialogue can offer students an opportunity to rehearse social criticism (Andrews, 1989; Foss, 1989; Fry, 1986), how sociocultural and identity issues can be treated during dialogic processes (Braithwaite, 1997; Kidd, 1989; Strine, 1993), and how issues related to gender and sexual orientation can be critically engaged when dialogue is student-centered (Campbell, 1991; Jenefsky, 1996; Wood & Lenze, 1991; Yep, 1998). It seems clear from these accounts that students benefit when they are offered opportunities to engage in critical dialogue with peers.
While acknowledging the value of a student-centered approach to dialogic pedagogy, an equal acknowledgement of the contingencies of institutional, sociopolitical, and ideological constraints must be considered alongside the aims of a critical approach to teaching (Boyd, 1999; Burbules, 2000; Gur-ze‘ev, 1998; Lather, 1998)5 . One of those institutional limitations is class size, an aspect of classroom organization that is rarely, if ever, a part of the scholarly discussion of student-centered dialogue. It should go without saying that each classroom context is unique and each intrinsically possesses its own promise and potential; on the other hand, each also presents distinctive contextual challenges (Glenn, 1999b). This recognition of context contingency--specifically as it relates to the number of students in a particular class--is nonexistent in scholarship advocating a critical approach to teaching that utilizes learner-centered dialogue as the means to attain critical consciousness.
Facilitating critical dialogue is not an easy task, even with a relatively small number of students; it is a complicated process--usually among one facilitator-teacher and many students—that requires constant communicative (re)negotiation (Glenn, 1999a). For those critical pedagogues who find themselves in the context of a large classroom, that communication process becomes nearly untenable. It is crucial for those teachers, then, to develop specific, situated, and localized strategies in order to retain the critical character of their teaching approach while adjusting their teaching strategies to accommodate a large number of students. Dr. Michelle Wolf is one such teacher, and this study represents a starting place for theorizing those strategies employed in her classroom.
Dr. Wolf was one of my professors when I was an undergraduate student at San Francisco State University (SFSU), and her teaching approach left an impression on me that has endured. Dr. Wolf is 20-year faculty member in the Department of Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts (BECA); she completed her M.A. in Communication Studies at the University of Massachusetts and her Ph.D. in Communication Theory--with a Mass Communications and Educational Psychology emphasis--at the University of Texas at Austin before coming to California. Dr. Wolf has been teaching for 25 years. Being a part of her class “Social Aspects of Electronic Media” (BECA 422) was a memorable experience for me as an undergraduate; her provocative style and inherently critical mode of teaching was always engaging. The theoretical material introduced in class was interspersed with frequently affective, sometimes graphic, and always controversial media; and, these cultural fragments were offered with a healthy measure of Dr. Wolf‘s own sociocultural critique. Even though I regularly found myself disagreeing with particular positions she took in the course of introducing the material, her obvious enthusiasm for, commitment to, and engagement with students and teaching facilitated a welcoming classroom environment that invited critical exploration of the course material in connection with the life experiences we all brought to the table. Choosing to study Dr. Wolf‘s pedagogical style for this project was motivated by my own interest in critical approaches to pedagogy, approaches I assumed necessitated a central focus on student-centered dialogue as the way to foster critical engagement. Initially, I viewed the project as an opportunity to learn how to facilitate a critical discussion with a large number of students (over 100) from a teacher whose critical perspective, like mine, also informs her pedagogy. I learned during the course of this project, however, that my own presuppositions about critical pedagogy—significantly influenced by those assumptions found in much of the literature-- were in need of (critical) reconsideration. In the following section, I offer a brief sketch of the theoretical framework within which those reconsiderations are situated.
Critical Rhetoric
Raymie McKerrow (1989) describes critical rhetoric as a practice and theoretical enterprise encompassing divergent critical projects in its overarching “critical spirit” or stance. Critical rhetoric serves, according to McKerrow, to de-mystify and connect, through an engaged and subjective critique, seemingly unrelated forces of knowledge/power in society in order to recognize how they can create conditions of oppression and marginalization. More than that, McKerrow points out that a critical rhetoric “establishes a social judgment about ‘what to do‘ as a result of the analysis [and serves] to identify the possibilities of future action available to participants” (p. 92). Critique, in this sense, is explicitly political, and the critical rhetor takes an advocacy stance in offering analyses. In particular, a critical rhetoric is concerned with how systems of power and domination are discursively constructed and maintained in order to construct counter-discourses that might interrupt and, potentially, transform oppressive constructs.
This is not to say that McKerrow advocates for a critical rhetoric that points in the direction of some prescribed utopian telos. As McKerrow puts it, “The search is not towards a freedom for something pre-determined. [.] [T]he telos that marks the project [of critical rhetoric] is one of never-ending skepticism, hence permanent criticism” (p. 96). Some, however, have challenged McKerrow‘s absence of a prescriptively normative telos declaring the “lack” renders critical rhetoric sophistic and politically inefficacious in its move to declare permanent critique socially transformative (Biesecker, 1992; Cloud, 1994; Ono & Sloop, 1992; Fassbinder, 1996). On the other hand, as McKerrow points out, permanent critique that recognizes the contingent nature of normative constructs does not mean that employing it precludes the ability for political judgment and action. Instead, critical rhetoric “is simply non-privileging with respect to the options its analysis raises for consideration” (p. 97).
Criticism, for McKerrow, is also a performance and, as such, goes beyond traditional argumentation‘s focus on critique as an instrument of rationality. McKerrow, borrowing McGee‘s notion of the “rhetorician as performer” (p. 108), describes how critique--rather than being conceived of as instrumentally rationalistic—is understood as an embodied method or practice. The critic, through a critique of collected cultural fragments, performs interpretations of social conditions and, in doing so, “becomes arguer or advocate for an interpretation of the collected fragments” (p. 108). Critical rhetoric is also performative in the sense that it is part of instantiating--through repetitive iterative processes on the part of the rhetor--a sense of sociopolitical consciousness with an audience, thereby creating the conditions for envisioning alternatives to the status quo. Ultimately, this performance of critical subjectivity on the part of a critical rhetor demonstrates, for an audience, a process of identifying and/or creating the conditions for the possibility of humane social change.
As it relates to a critical approach to teaching, particularly with a large number of students, critical rhetoric can be conceived of as a way to foster the development of critical consciousness on the part of students when critical dialogue is not a practical option. In a large classroom setting where a lecture-type format is most appropriate, a teacher who practices critical rhetoric becomes a “specific intellectual” to borrow Foucault‘s (1980) notion. S/he is able, through her/his performance of critical discourse, to “advocate a critique as a sensible reading of the discourse of power” (McKerrow, p. 108), thereby opening up the potential, on the part of students, for reflecting on this critique and envisioning alternatives to oppressive status quo constructs. This pedagogical function of critical rhetoric acts as a “model” of critical consciousness for students and creates the conditions for students‘ own critical engagement without having to prioritize student-centered dialogue in the process.
Also, when situated in a critical pedagogical approach, the open-ended, contingent nature of normative possibilities in McKerrow‘s critical rhetoric can be particularly effective in engaging students in the cognitive and affective processes necessary for critical classroom engagement. The non-privileging normative approach, with respect to the choices created in the critical process, leaves room for students‘ own cultural, sociopolitical, and historically-located analyses and applications. In other words, critical rhetoric employed by a teacher need not prescribe what students should believe or do. Instead, critical rhetoric employed in McKerrow‘s sense challenges students to examine the taken-for-granteds that may preclude their own critical reflection on and evaluation of those beliefs or (in)action. It is the process--the critical rhythm of permanent criticism--not necessarily the content of the critique that students might begin to approximate when a teacher employs critical rhetoric.
This state of permanent criticism as it relates to Dr. Wolf‘s teaching strategies and her students‘ responses, constitutes the bulk of the following analysis. The study demonstrates, through a specific embodied example of pedagogy, how critical rhetoric performed by a particular pedagogue can foster critical consciousness on the part of a large number of students when student-centered dialogue is an impractical option.
Case Study Overview
My observations of Dr. Wolf‘s teaching strategies in BECA 422 took place during the Fall 1999 semester and consisted of approximately 15 total hours of logged, in-class observations. During the course of those observations, I came to realize that facilitating discussion with this large group of students was an impractical approach. The setting--a large auditorium-like classroom with fixed, theatre seating—contributed to the difficulties in that the students were focused on the front of the room and the physical environment was less than conducive to discussion and more so to a lecture or performance approach. More than that, the number of students in this class significantly limited her ability to manage a critical discussion that would allow for interaction among students, a key element of student-centered dialogue. Although some limited discussion was accomplished, Dr. Wolf primarily focused on employing other strategies to critically engage her students.
My observations and analyses, then, shifted in order to discern how it was possible that, without the benefit of student-centered critical dialogue, her students were able to critically engage with the material performed in lectures and how that engagement facilitated the process of critical consciousness. In general, I observed that the level of critical engagement that would usually be reserved for smaller, more dialogically-centered classes was attained in this large student population. Those means--as illustrated by the categories in the following section-- offered the students in Dr. Wolf‘s class an opportunity to critically connect to the material presented in BECA 422 without having to frequently vocalize their thoughts in class.
Finally, the population of students in this study reflected a diversity commonly found at SFSU. The ages of students ranged from 18 to 39; the class standings ranged from freshones6 to seniors; 46% of students claimed Caucasian ethnicity, while 54% claimed diverse ethnicities7 ; and, the gender breakdown was 52% female, 48% male. It should be noted that the original study from which this essay grew employed an ethnographically oriented methodology. Specifically, along with the in-class observations, the students were offered the opportunity to contribute their thoughts/feelings about Dr. Wolf‘s approach and their own engagement with it by responding to a survey utilizing open-ended questions. The original project also included an oral history conducted with Dr. Wolf and a parallel autoethnographic account. The analysis section following, then, is based in all four methodological sources: my observations, the students‘ survey responses, Dr. Wolf‘s oral history account, and autoethnographic material.
Analysis
This section illustrates three conceptual categories of teaching strategies employed by Dr. Wolf: explicit cultural critique, personal self-disclosure, and spontaneous, provocative participation assignments. Each strategy, I suggest, served to facilitate critical consciousness processes on the part of this large population of students without student-centered dialogue. I offer an exemplar in each of the three categories and analyse them utilizing McKerrow‘s praxis principles of critical rhetoric. I move to tease out the ways that Dr. Wolf‘s strategies acted as a critical rhetoric and, at the same time, connect those with her students‘ processes of critical consciousness development.
Cultural Critique
Today‘s class (9/22/99) is the second part in a unit on censorship. In addition to a lively lecture about censorship precedents and implications, we watch part of a cable program featuring a woman applying lotion to her enormous (silicone) breasts, a graphic and emotional clip from a 1970‘s Vietnam documentary, and a short videotaped modern primitive performance in which a man recites poetry while impaling his scrotum with needles and filling it with saline. In the last few minutes of class, we watch as a man performs oral sex on his well-endowed male partner while masturbating himself. For a class of approximately 100 students, the room seems unusually silent during the last clip. At the end of the class period, the students begin leaving the room; some are very quiet, others giggle as they make their way to the door, while still others are talking to friends in hushed, somewhat frenetic tones. It‘s just another day in BECA 422.
Dr. Wolf‘s utilization of controversial media in combination with the lectures she performs afterward act as a model or demonstration of cultural critique for her students. As McKerrow (1989) suggests, a critical rhetoric unapologetically takes a stand against something and Dr. Wolf‘s provocative media choices and analysis of them constitute her perspective via her cultural criticism. The critical rhetorical performances stimulate her students‘ critical engagement and reflection processes thereby facilitating development of their sense of critical consciousness. In particular, Dr. Wolf‘s media choices spark the students‘ critical thinking processes by immediately engaging them on an affective level, seemingly establishing a sense of investment and commitment to the topic (censorship on this day). This direct engagement, then, enables Dr. Wolf to prompt her students to think more deeply and critically about those topics and facilitates an opportunity for them to make connections between seemingly unrelated media images/messages and the power/knowledge constructs embedded.
As McKerrow points out, description is always already evaluative and processes of understanding/knowing cannot be separated from processes of evaluation. Although McKerrow explicates this notion in the context of rhetorical criticism, teachers, like critics, also choose what they will focus on, what aspects are emphasized, and those choices are innately influenced by what a teacher brings to teaching. In Dr. Wolf‘s case, her critical perspective is always already a part of her media choices, and it acts to frame the analysis she offers her students. Moreover, the controversial choices, in prompting diverse readings on her part and from her students‘ perspectives, demonstrate the constitutiveness of meaning making through discursive processes.
When choosing fragments of media to combine for presentation, Dr. Wolf assumes an active rather than passive role for her students as audience. As such, her juxtapositions of very different types of mediated fragments encourage her students to act critically by finding connections between them, particularly as they relate to their own lived experiences. It becomes necessary, then, to see beyond the surface meanings of individual fragments (e.g., nude bodies, sexual acts, war footage, etc.) when trying to locate how they might be related on a broader cultural level. Moreover, her choices reflect what McKerrow describes as a critical rhetoric that understands that media fragments may be interpreted as polysemic (containing many meanings), instead of simply representing the one obvious meaning that requires interpretation. Students are given the opportunity, through Dr. Wolf‘s own critical readings, to offer readings of their own “which contain the seeds of subversion or rejection of authority, at the same time that the primary reading appears to confirm the power of the dominant cultural norms” (McKerrow, p. 108).
An orientation, McKerrow explains, “is the least restrictive stage from which the critical act might be launched” (p. 102). In McKerrow‘s sense, the criticism rendered from this stage is not prescriptive; rather, it is a discursive process that serves to open up space for deciding what counts in making critical judgments. Contingently oriented criticism, rather than fixing a set of interpretations from which to choose seeks, instead, to open space by increasing the possibilities for creative interpretations. By extension, generation of interpretive options to status quo constructs becomes a creative process of critical invention. Dr. Wolf‘s political orientation, reflected in her oft-voiced critical analysis of various socio-political issues during her lectures, serve as a starting point for many of her students‘ own opinion-formation and critical development. For instance, her explicit capitalist critiques, her anti-censorship stance, and her feminist analysis of mediated body images trigger in her students responses that begin (or continue) the processes of critical consciousness development. Rather than serving to impose her own perspectives on her students, Dr. Wolf‘s opinions oftentimes trigger critique of them from her students (generally in the form of written feedback). Her students seem to catch her critical rhythm, so to speak, and undertake the act of criticism themselves. More than this, when asked to consider options for changing what might be viewed as damaging or oppressive mediated messages, Dr. Wolf‘s students offer creatively fashioned alternatives, the conception of which may have been less creative if not for the critical forum in which they are allowed to develop.
Finally, these aspects of critical rhetoric, performed by Dr. Wolf, seem to confirm McKerrow‘s notion that the performance of critical readings can act as a way to establish a critical spirit and begin to open up possibilities for envisioning transformation of social structures. Dr. Wolf‘s explication and critique of the controversial mediated messages/images serve to open up previously unexamined areas of analysis for her students and foster the kind of critical thinking and reflection necessary for developing a critical consciousness. Her strategies, in this case, offer a way to engage with students at this critical level without having to make student-centered dialogue the focus of her pedagogy.
Personal Experience and Self-Disclosure
Today‘s lecture (11/10/99) begins a unit on body image and media representations and Dr. Wolf takes a some time to relate her own experiences with body image development. She shares an abbreviated, but emotional narrative of several early life experiences; the first involved an incident of her own painful experience with facial disfigurement as the result of being hit in the face with a baseball bat. The story includes aspects of both her physical and psychological devastation and the sometimes-cruel reactions of her grade-school peers. She goes on to talk about her battles with an eating disorder and the negative self-perception of her own body image as it relates to media representations of the “model” body type and her childhood experiences. The students seem mesmerized; there is not a single student in the room who does not seem completely engaged with Dr. Wolf as she tells these stories.
McKerrow (1989) points out that a critical rhetoric is decidedly, yet self-reflexively, subjective; critique moves to take a stand either for or against something, oftentimes in the context of the critic‘s lived experiences. In the case of Dr. Wolf‘s self-disclosure around the concepts of body image and media representation, the performance of critiquing the overwhelming, and sometimes devastating, impacts of represented (and ignored) body types in media serves to model cultural critique as a deeply personal and powerfully political process.
A key aspect of this critique, in Dr. Wolf‘s classroom, includes an explicit confirmation, through her own admitted and sometimes-demonstrated emotionality, that feelings (as opposed to informal logic or reasoning) are a natural and necessary part of the critical process. McKerrow suggests that this aspect of critical rhetoric reflects a move away from a strictly rational epistemic function for rhetoric “grounded in universal standards of judgment” (p. 104) by including a doxastic sense that expands those standards to include aspects of personal feelings and beliefs. The expansion afforded episteme by an association with a reconceptualized doxa allows the two to inform each other in the process of critical rhetoric and, in so doing, provide “the means by which we determine what we believe, what we know, and what we believe to be true” (p104). Put differently, the focus shifts away from knowledge and knowing based on universal foundations independent of subjectivity and toward recognition of the contingency of both knowledge and its construction/reception by individuals.
Moreover, Dr. Wolf‘s critical rhetoric, by explicitly demonstrating the power of mediated symbolic representations of body images in her own lived experiences, underscores how those signs come to possess that power. In McKerrow‘s words, “Doxastic knowledge functions as the grounding of a critical rhetoric” (p. 104) and, as such, provides the basis on which an evaluation of discursive power is possible. With this grounding, Dr. Wolf‘s critique acts as a way to connect mediated images with material effects in her lived experiences and, by extension, her students‘ lifeworlds. As McKerrow suggests, “Rather than focusing on questions of ‘truth‘ or ‘falsity,’ a view of rhetoric as doxastic allows the focus to shift to how the symbols come to posses power—what they ‘do‘ in society as contrasted to what they ‘are‘” (p. 104). The shift in focus to what mediated images do in society, facilitated by Dr. Wolf‘s doxastic rhetoric, helps to connect to students in ways that are more personal and, in the process, prompts a level of commitment to the topics in this class.
Notably, in this context, the level of self-disclosure as part of the critique also acts as a way to bridge the affective gap between Dr. Wolf and the large number of students in her classroom. A sense of intimacy is created when Dr. Wolf relates a story that includes aspects of her own life experience with which nearly all students can relate: feelings of insecurity, marginalization, negative self-concept, and personal pain. They can see reflected parts of themselves in her portrayal of her own personal experiences and development. The level of connection this creates with her students enables Dr. Wolf to maintain an environment that nurtures a feeling of safety in which her students are free to critically explore various aspects of the concepts presented in BECA 422.
Finally, McKerrow points out that critical rhetoric, like any other discourse, is material; in this sense, then, critique is constitutive. This in no way denies ostensibly non-discursive materiality, McKerrow clarifies; instead, his point is that critical judgments about material constraints happen in discursive processes. It is this critical discourse, McKerrow argues, that construct the conditions for the possibility of critically informed sociopolitical judgments and that open up the potential for material sociopolitical transformation. Dr. Wolf‘s critique of mediated body images engages her students in a way that includes them in that construction of those transformative possibilities. Her students, by connecting with Dr. Wolf‘s personal experiences as they relate to the subject matter in class, are prompted to begin questioning how that same subject matter affects them, as well. This critical engagement lends a sense of immediacy to the lecture and helps facilitate critical consciousness development for her students without their discourse being central.
Participation Assignments
In a unit on news coverage (10/27/99), Dr. Wolf begins the class session with a participation assignment: a current events survey. The first question on the survey is, “What is going on in East Timor?” She spells the name for those who seem to be confused by the question, then she moves on to different questions: How do people in Iraq label their ethnic group? What is the capital city of Iraq? What is the name of one other city in Iraq besides the capital? What does the terrain/land look like in Iraq? What is the weather like in Iraq? Can you name a body of water in this country? What form of government will you find there? Is there a Head of State in Iraq and what is his/her title? What percentage of the population of the Iraqi people lives in the cities? During the process of asking the questions, Dr. Wolf takes on a demanding, almost aggressive tone. It feels as if she expects that her students should know the answers to these questions and that they should have no problem responding to questions about countries that have generated such intense media attention.
After the students finish and pass their survey responses forward, she tells them the answers to the questions. In general, the students appeared to be surprised, even stunned, by how little they know about such heavily covered, politically significant countries. After disabusing the students of numerous stereotypes and misconceptions about Middle-Eastern peoples, their cultures, and the countries in which they live, she spends some time explicitly critiquing what seems to be an apparent lack of engagement with and attention to the news media by those who have chosen to devote their academic time to media studies. I look around the room and it seems that every student is listening intently to the not-so-subtle critique of her/himself.
Participation assignments generally consist of either written surveys administered in class and turned in immediately before a lecture, or take-home exercises that ask students to individually connect with and/or engage in a critique of some form of media. An example of a participation survey is related here; outside participation assignments also included visiting activist websites and responding to the content, critiquing new television programming, and writing a viewer/listener response letter to a media source offering a critique about what they viewed/heard. The sometimes spontaneous—and, almost always provocative-- participation assignments in this class seemed to serve two purposes: first, they compell students to focus attention on a subject that they, previously, may not have thought about in much depth. Second, in conjunction with Dr. Wolf‘s critical analysis, they move students from vague feelings about an issue or concept to working their way through those feelings toward critically informed thinking and reflection.
In general, the participation assignments in this context manifested McKerrow‘s state of permanent criticism. Dr. Wolf‘s constant probing for students‘ thoughts, feelings, and opinions, via the participation assignments, set a critical tone that activated a critical thinking inclination on the part of her students. The students, through the written participation assignments, presented the products of their critical thinking processes; they understood this as their opportunity to critically respond to Dr. Wolf without extended in-class dialogue. The effect, immediately, was to engage the students in the subject matter at hand and, as significantly, enabled them to connect their own experiences and knowledge about the concepts and issues to a critical evaluation of the theoretical constructs discussed in the lecture.
In particular, several of the participation assignments reflected McKerrow‘s notion that critical rhetoric is nominalist in nature. For example, the participation survey recounted above allowed an opportunity for Dr. Wolf to critique, through naming, the mediated representations of different cultures. In this instance, she demonstrates for her students how mediated discourses tend to obscure or neglect aspects of cultures that locate them as significantly different than, even deviant to, USAmerican cultural standards. This demonstration, in conjunction with her students‘ participation in the survey, served to highlight how these mediated representations become embedded in the knowledge constructs most viewers take for granted. The students‘ inability to name important aspects of, in this case, Middle Eastern cultures reflects the process of the knowledge construction of USAmerican media and their own lack of critical engagement with that construction and the assumptions therein. Dr. Wolf‘s lecture session afterwards challenges students to re-examine those assumptions that underlie the processes of how they come to understand mediated cultural representations
Moreover, as McKerrow suggests, critical rhetoric‘s nominalist nature points to the contingent aspects of cultural terms. This recognition of contingency with regard to assigning names to cultural groups, signifying characteristics of those groups with particular terms, and/or designating the political beliefs or actions of different cultural groups can point in the direction of who might benefit from practices of naming. For instance, Dr. Wolf points out that, situated within the current sociopolitical context, naming the conflict in East Timor a “civil war” benefits those countries that may be complicit in provoking and enabling the conflict by deflecting attention away from them and onto those embroiled in the conflict. In other words, if the conflict is viewed as internal rather than externally aggravated and abetted, those outside countries involved are able to sidestep any responsibility for the devastation in that country. At the same time, this critique (and others like it) suggests that historical contingencies are rarely, if ever, a part of mediated representations of different cultures. Without that background knowledge, Dr. Wolf argues, the process of naming (or constructing terms for) other cultures, peoples, beliefs, and actions becomes abstracted and attenuated, and the symbols are easily appropriated as a strategy of marginalization and domination.
Finally, critical rhetoric recognizes that absence is as important as presence in constructing knowledge, particularly as it relates to understanding and interpreting mediated discourse. In the context of the participation assignment recounted in this section, Dr. Wolf‘s critique of her students‘ lack of knowledge about important sociopolitical events (like the conflict in East Timor) acted as a way to highlight the discursive power of what is unsaid. For these students, East Timor and the people there were effectively nonexistent. McKerrow, addressing this absence issue, borrows Phillip Wander‘s sketch of what is not said/seen on television as a way to illustrate this phenomenon:
Most characters on prime time conform to conventional standards of beauty—they tend to white or near white, fine-featured, young, well proportions, and of average height. NEGATION: Few characters appear on prime time who are fat. Not many have scars, limps, or protruding lips. Few adult characters are under five feet or over six feet, four inches tall. Not many characters appear to be over 65. When physically “deviant” characters do appear, they tend not to be cast as intelligent, strong or virtuous. (Wander, 1981, in McKerrow, p. 107)
The power to discursively erase the existence, in mediated representations, of different ethnicities, genders, classes, and sexual orientation (among many others), is derived precisely from its absence in relation to what is present. Dr. Wolf‘s critique of mediated body images (described in the previous section) also included an account of what is left out of those images and the effects of that discursive erasure. In the context of the participation assignment in this section (along with that in the previous section), the critique served to help her students develop a more sophisticated, critical level of awareness--a critical consciousness--when viewing mediated images of cultures constructed as deviant from USAmerican norms. At the same time, Dr. Wolf‘s performance of that critique allowed for the development of critical consciousness without the benefit of student-centered dialogue.
Closing Thoughts
Without question, Dr. Wolf‘s pedagogical strategies are risky and, as the anonymous reviewers pointed out, the approach she takes may not be suitable for some teachers. Diverse student populations, various classroom limitations, and institutional constraints are but a few of the contingencies with which individual teachers must contend when choosing pedagogical strategies, risky or not. Moreover, utilizing intentionally provocative media, personal self- disclosure, and seemingly confrontational participation assignments requires sober consideration of possible student responses to such stimulation. Certainly, Dr. Wolf‘s 25 years of experience with this approach assists her in facilitating critical engagement with her students and, by her own account, having “lots of confidence” and “knowing what you‘re doing”8 are crucial in fostering the kinds of positive experiences she reports with students. She also understands that sometimes her students‘ responses are seemingly negative at first, but that the affective response marks a connection with them that can grow in positive, productive directions throughout the semester. Referring to the unit on censorship, she points out that “After today, like I know a lot of them left not liking me. [. . .] I know that if I get them upset with me (I don‘t like them to not like me, I hate it) but if I can get them to go home and rag on me [. . .] they go home and talk about that. That means they take the classroom out of the classroom [and] if my class gets out into their life, that‘s my objective.” Clearly, the possibility that students may initially respond negatively can be uncomfortable for others with less experience or, perhaps, less of a tolerance for risk, vulnerability, and uncertainty. However, every teacher takes risks when critically engaging students and, explicit or not, those risks make each one of us vulnerable and render the “outcome” of our pedagogical strategies uncertain. And, it is within the fertile liminal spaces of that uncertainty that those teachers and students willing to risk create the lush conditions for the possibility of transformation.
My own pedagogical style has benefited from Dr. Wolf‘s approach in a number of ways, particularly given my own inclinations for risk-taking and the level of comfort I find in the stimulation of uncertainty. Although my teaching experience constitutes only a fraction of Dr. Wolf‘s, I‘ve had ample opportunity to employ the specific strategies9 explored in this study and have found them to be especially useful in enlivening course concepts, inviting students to make connections to their own lifeworlds, and filling up sometimes emptied and dried out theoretical spaces with rich, affectively-informed student readings. For instance, during a unit on perception, stereotyping, and hate speech, we watched a scene from American History X in which a family‘s struggles with race issues are graphically highlighted during an emotionally intense and physically violent conflict during dinner. During the previous class period, I prepared the students for this scene by making some initial connections to material we had covered, previewing the storyline (including the strong nature of it), and inviting those who felt uneasy about watching the scene to pass on it. Importantly, in my case, because this was a class with only about 30 students, we could engage in a conversation about the clip. After we watched the scene, we debriefed the experience by talking about our initial “gut” reactions, then about how those reactions might relate to race, perception, and stereotyping. Finally, we were successfully able to make connections between the broader communication concepts, identity formation processes, and the destructive force of hate speech in those processes. However, Dr. Wolf‘s large student population makes this conversational process untenable; at the same time, this context contains its own unique characteristics that facilitate critical consciousness without the benefit of student- centered dialogue and those implications follow.
In this study, several aspects of negotiating critical engagement with a large number of students without prioritizing student-centered dialogue were explored. This exploration suggests several strategies that can help facilitate critical consciousness development on the part of a large number of students (and, perhaps, smaller student populations, as well). Dr. Wolf‘s intentional and risky stimulation of her students through explicit cultural critiques and controversial media choices, open and honest self-disclosure, and spontaneous, provocative participation assignments all promoted critical engagement in diverse and particularized ways in her classroom. Likewise, her students‘ understanding of, and responses to, her intentions and approach seems to indicate that the performance of critical rhetoric, on the part of teachers, offers an alternative to privileging student dialogue while maintaining the ability to nurture students‘ critical consciousness development. Contrary to critical pedagogy literature that assumes learner- centered dialogue is the key to critical consciousness development, this study seems to suggest alternative, unique aspects of critical engagement in a large class that does not lend itself to critical discussion.
During my observations over the course of this study, it appeared that the size of this student population uniquely contributed to communicative dynamics in some surprisingly effective ways. The distinctive setting with its fixed seating and large number of students--a setting traditionally considered problematic in terms of critically engaging students—seemed to actually promote the possibility that Dr. Wolf‘s risky, sometimes confrontation style would be critically effective. First, in the area of cultural critique and controversial media, the large room and number of students may have helped to dissipate uncomfortable feelings that, in a smaller classroom, would be more problematic. The forceful approach may be more effective when the environment is not so intimate and the students are allowed to silently explore their thoughts and feelings around the concepts and issues without being compelled to share, publicly, those thoughts/feelings.
Second, in the area of self-disclosure, the personal nature of the disclosure seems to take on a public performance character rather than a more invasive, somewhat trickier conversational style that a smaller classroom would support. The students were able to disassociate themselves from the personal implications of self-disclosure for Dr. Wolf while, at the same time, witnessing a personal narrative in which they felt safe to engage, evaluate, and on which they could privately reflect. In a smaller classroom, the personal-academic boundary may be too blurred for comfort if the students feel too personally confronted by a teacher‘s personal disclosures. Finally, in the area of participation assignments, when the survey questions were consistently intended to point out a particular lack of awareness or information on the part of students, the larger classroom provided a sense of anonymity thereby fostering a sense of safety within an otherwise provoking environment. In a smaller classroom, this forceful a tactic could prompt students to feel they have an individual responsibility to come up with the “right” answer/opinion/feeling or face public exposure and embarrassment if they offer what might perceived as the “wrong” answer.
The analysis offered here begins construction of only a first layer of understanding of one unique and powerful teacher‘s rhetorical strategies for critically engaging a large number of students without the benefit of critical, student-centered dialogue. Comparison studies are needed, of course, in other settings and with other teachers and students. Gradually, the findings could be pulled together and further conceptions and strategies could be added to the tentative categories discussed in this study. Moreover, for teachers who approach pedagogy critically, this study offers a starting place for theorizing how it is possible to retain critical aspects of teaching, even in the most challenging institutional settings. Raymie McKerrow‘s critical rhetoric suggests a framework from which to begin that theorizing work in order to more fully understand how students‘ critical consciousness can be developed in diverse classroom contexts that seemingly precludes critical approaches to teaching. And, as Henry Giroux (1992) suggests,
This [work] is what the pedagogical struggle is all about—opening up the material and discursive basis of particular ways of producing meaning and presenting ourselves, our relations with others, and our relation to our environment so as to consider the possibilities not yet realized. (p. 202)
My hope is that this study provides a contribution to that end.
[A closing personal note: I came to this project as a work in progress. I am indebted to Michelle for walking with me during part of this process of personal and professional invention. And, I am grateful to her for earnestly and openly allowing me to witness her vulnerabilities and risk-taking and compare them to my own; to scrutinize her processes and evaluate them next to mine; and, to take those pieces of herself she generously offered and make them a part of who I am. Our visions, hopes, and aims may diverge in some respects, but we share a common respect for students and a reverence for processes of learning and teaching. My (re)creations and (re)inventions of my self, as a teacher and a student, are connected to hers, and, as she would point out, we are always already, mutually, works in progress.]
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Endnotes
1. This is a revised version of an essay originally presented to the Ethnography Division at the Eighty-Sixth Annual National Communication Association Meeting, November 9th, 2000 in Seattle, WA. I extend my warm thanks to Jonathan M. Gray and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.
2. I use the term “critical” as an adjective throughout this essay to inform those words described by it with a set of assumptions embedded in critical social theory. Kincheloe and McLaren (in press) merit quoting here, at length, their outline of the key criticalist assumptions to which I gesture:
[K]nowledge is not preontologically stored in nature‘s archive waiting to be discovered by the thinker with the right formulae but rather is fundamentally mediated by the language of analysis adopted by the thinker; all theoretical and philosophical discourses are constituted within relations of power, which are informed by history and culture; logical facts can never be isolated from the domain of values or removed from forms of ideological inscription; the relationship between object and concept and object and signifier and signified is never stable or fixed and is often mediated by the social relations of capitalist production and consumption; language is central to the formation of subjectivity (conscious and unconscious awareness); certain groups in any society are privileged over others and while the reasons for the privileging may vary widely, the subordination and superordination that characterizes contemporary societies is most forcefully reproduced when subordinates accept their social status as natural, necessary, or inevitable; oppression has many faces that focusing on only one at the expense of others (e.g., class oppression vs. racism) often eludes the interconnection among them; and mainstream research and teaching and thinking practices are generally, although most often unwittingly, implicated in the reproduction of systems of class, race, and gender oppression” (in McLaren, 1994, p. xi).
3. Freire (1970) describes “conscientization” as an ongoing process by which a learner moves toward a critical consciousness. For Freire, as for many of the critical pedagogues who have followed in his footsteps, this process is the heart of liberatory (or critical) education. It should be noted that developing a “critical consciousness” differs from “consciousness raising” in that the latter frequently involves “banking” education—what Freire describes as the transmission of pre-selected knowledge from the “experts” (teachers) to passive student recipients/receptacles. Conscientization means interrupting/disturbing prevailing mythologies or power/knowledge constructs in order to develop critical levels of awareness; in particular, awareness of oppression, of being an “object” in a world where only “subjects” have power. According to Freire, the processes of critical self and other-awareness involve recognizing and identifying contradictions and tensions in experience--that are oftentimes accepted as natural and inevitable--through learner-centered dialogue in order to begin a process of transforming oppressive circumstances.
4. The term “critical pedagogy,” for the purposes of this essay, is based on the idea that critical social theory, with its emphasis on potentiality, transformation of oppressive social constructs, and human emancipation can inform educational practices in a way to promote social change. There are various other names for this approach.
5. Although outside the scope and aim of this essay, Nicholas Burbules (2000) offers an excellent survey of dialogic approaches to pedagogy along with important critiques of oftentimes taken-for-granted assumptions of criticalist pedagogical perspectives. As he reasons with respect to recognizing those assumptions:
[P]aradoxically [. . .] it may actually be that those very communicative relations that try to be most open about their implicit commitments and prescriptions may be for that very reason more difficult to diagnose in terms of their blind spots and, hence, more difficult to resist. Or, to put this a different way, those modes of dialogue that put the greatest emphasis on criticality and inclusivity may also be the most subtly co-opting and normalizing. Such a recognition unsettles critical pedagogies of all sorts, whether feminist or Freirean, rationalist or deconstructionist. (p. 88, Burbules‘ emphasis)
6. I borrow this term from Dr. Wolf.
7. The student participants self-identified as African American, Asian American, and Latino/a. It should be noted that 12 students (17%) left the space blank or intentionally obscured what they had originally written. Moreover, some responses reflected what seemed a disdain for being asked to identify themselves partly based on an ethnic category. For example, a significant number (58%) of the self-identified Caucasian students used words like “whitebread,” “caucazoid,” and “whitey,” while other students identified as “just mixed” or “american, not important.”
8. During the course of the oral history interview conducted with Dr. Wolf, I posed questions related to the inherent risks in her approach, how they played out with respect to student responses, and how those responses may be influenced by a teacher‘s gender. These are some of the responses garnered in that interview.
9. These strategies were employed with significant adjustments for content; Dr. Wolf teaches media studies and I teach communication studies so, even though these areas overlap considerably, the material is different enough to require the content adjustment.