Chapter 1. Socially Conscious Pedagogy

We begin the handbook with a brief introduction to Socially Conscious Pedagogy which informs all of the subsequent chapters. Acknowledging and engaging deeply with the diversity of students and faculty offers us ways to combat the marginalization that many face both in and out of higher education. In this way, CUNY classrooms can become collaborative and generative spaces that empower students. This work, of course, is not without its challenges. In this section we discuss some strategies to begin to shape teaching in ways that are oriented towards social justice.

What is Socially Conscious Pedagogy?

Socially conscious pedagogy is an approach to teaching that is self-reflexive, responsive and subversive of hegemonic social and educational practices. It is a fluid and evolving process of developing teaching practices designed to mobilize introspection as a vehicle for greater self-awareness, unlearn restrictive knowledge constructs, and destabilize power relations. Socially conscious pedagogy is not a prescriptive set of practices, but a descriptive set of principles operationalized in the work of educators who engage anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-ableism, and resist other marginalizing social forces through their teaching. You will find these principles and practices throughout this handbook.

How might we do it well?

Many instructors are excited to teach in ways that prepare students to be in the world in socially just ways, but this work is challenging. Institutions and systems often do not prioritize questions of justice, so our classrooms can feel like contradictory spaces for students. To address this, instructors can introduce new perspectives, marginalized texts, and a range of approaches to transforming the world. The classroom can be a space for practice engaging the world in ways that cohere with social justice through resisting hierarchy, prioritizing collaboration, and connecting student learning to lived experience in socially conscious ways.

Socially Conscious Collaboration in the Classroom

Collaborative Syllabi

Foster and support underrepresented ideas, voices and perspectives in the classroom.

This work starts with the syllabus, and can range from asking students to produce their own knowledge through original research, community engagement projects, and creative expressions to integrating texts and materials that are outside of the disciplinary canon into the syllabus. Instructors might integrate these non-canonical materials by engaging in collaborative syllabi making. On the first day of class instructors may invite students to choose between the topics that will be studied throughout the semester, crowdsource questions that can orient selection of material, and/or ask students to suggest course materials that are not part of the traditional canon. As the semester unfolds instructors can also produce assignments or in-class activities encouraging students to reflect on the processes by which ideas and voices become marginalized within a discipline.

Collaborative Learning

Organize collaborative learning experiences so that students are exposed to divergent perspectives, different ways of learning, and processes of negotiating knowledge production.

Instructors can use a variety of active learning strategies (activities that promote students’ direct engagement with course material). These include small groups with task-oriented in-class activities where students are invited to respond to a problem proposed by the instructor, to reach consensus within the group, to posit questions to the instructor and to each other, and/or to practice reading a text together aloud. When reading and working together to attend to a question, task, or problem, students can learn how to listen deeply, to build trust, and to communicate generously, with the instructor as a model for these practices.

Collaborative Feedback

Offer multiple occasions for low-stakes work (short, informal and ungraded) and classroom participation as a means of scaffolding learning (building in smaller steps toward larger skills).

Low-stakes work allows you as the instructor to provide meaningful feedback without reproducing oppressive power dynamics that are punitive and high-stakes (through grading). Low-stakes work allows students to communicate openly with the instructor about points of confusion and can allow the instructor to understand and attend to students’ individual needs as learners. Inviting students to build rubrics with the instructor as part of low-stakes assignments can also enhance transparency in the evaluation process and disrupt the power imbalance usually reproduced in traditional grading practices, such as the “red pen approach.” See the chapter “Grading and Assessment Strategies” in this handbook for further consideration of these questions.

Networks of Support

Reflect frequently on your experiences teaching in conversation with other educators, and give space to students to reflect on conflicts arising in the classroom, lessons gone awry, responses to activities, and other elements of your courses.

It is necessary to appreciate one’s teaching as a fluid and evolving practice that is informed and infused with our own social worlds and positionalities, as well as to recognize this same experience in our students’ lives in and out of the classroom.

Facilitating a Socially Just Classroom

Counter Resistance

Managing and countering resistance is often a central part of Socially Conscious Pedagogy because this kind of teaching offers other ways of understanding the world and critiquing the hierarchies that order people in unjust and violent ways. Instructors will not always be able to avoid or even anticipate resistance, but by prioritizing and modeling respectful dialogue and creating clear guidelines and norms for discussion (both listening and speaking), it is less likely that resistance becomes a crisis that cannot be undone. Respectful dialogue is not universal or intuitive, and students can offend others without meaning to do so and without understanding the negative responses they might provoke. Clarifying expectations for language, discussion, and listening can avoid the kind of unpleasant and unproductive eruptions that can happen from misunderstandings in tense classroom discussions.

Take processing seriously

Many college classrooms are discussion-based. This is an important method of student learning, but often does not leave enough time to process. Students read at home, often only reading the assigned text once, then return to class and must be prepared to discuss. Students may need more time to process new and challenging ideas about the world. While many instructors have anxiety about covering content, if students are unable to process that content, the effort is wasted. Students may be reading, but they may not have had the time to (or know how to) process what they have learned. Allowing students time to process through short writing before a discussion where they respond to a prompt or a quote from the reading gives them time to process. Students might respond to a prompt in words or phrases, with a drawing, or an image or series of images. Activities like this gives students guided time to process and organize their thinking, making it less likely for them to say something that they have not thoughtfully considered.

Allow silence and value listening

It is important for students to speak in classrooms, but honoring silence can engage students in content in ways that do not require articulation or intellectual performance. This can be good for the talkers, but also for quieter students who require more time before speaking. Instructors can give students other ways to engage with content through art-making or looking at art, listening to music or interviews, watching music videos, or listening to poetry or podcasts. Allowing students time in class to be silent but engaged, particularly around heavy or difficult topics, prepares them for more thoughtful and considered conversation.