While the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic upon higher education institutions has been well documented, less is known about how academics themselves responded to these rapid changes. This paper analyses the experiences of teacher education academics from Australia and New Zealand (n = 13) who were interviewed during lengthy pandemic…

This article describes a project titled Mapping Contemporary Cinema (MCC) that forms part of the final year undergraduate curriculum in a film studies programme at a UK Russell Group university. The project is a distinct and innovative synthesis of critical pedagogy with research-based learning and is here considered in the light of Gert Biesta's…

Building on existing studies on co-teaching and teaching difficult subjects, this article examines the development of our co-teaching relationship, as educators with marginalized identities, teaching on difficult subjects in a graduate critical consciousness course. The authors used the theoretical and methodological intersection of critical…

This article explores the practical implication of adopting critical pedagogy, and more specifically critical legal pedagogy, in the teaching of non-traditional students in higher education context. It is based on the teaching of criminal law at Birkbeck School of Law, addressing learning tasks which have been designed to enhance students'…

Fostering critical thinking abilities amongst students is one component of preparing them to navigate uncertain and complex social lives and employment circumstances. One conceptualisation of critical thinking, valuable in higher education, draws from critical theory to promote social justice and redress power inequities. This study explored how…

This paper focuses upon the interpretation of freehand drawings produced by a small sample of 220 first-year students taking an Irish politics introductory module in response to the question, "What is Irish Politics?" By sidestepping cognitive verbal-processing routes, through employing freehand drawing, we aim to create a critical and…

At present there is a small, albeit growing, body of literature on pedagogical strategies and reflections which addresses the ways educators attempt to challenge the effects of neoliberalism on higher education. In this article, we reflect upon our pedagogical practices in higher education in this moment of neoliberal transformation wherein, as…

Sustainability education is a growing field within higher education that fosters personal and intellectual engagement with the interconnected tensions of pressing social, ecological, economic, and political issues. Sustainability education aims to prepare learners to become creative problem solvers and active citizens who understand the…

Collaborative learning and critical pedagogy are widely recognized as "empowering" pedagogies for higher education. Yet, the practical implementation of both has a mixed record. The question, then, is: How could collaborative and critical pedagogies be empowered themselves? This paper makes a primarily theoretical case for discourse…

Ellsworth's article entitled "Why doesn't this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy" raises issues about the complex dynamics of implementing critical pedagogy in real classrooms, and the difficulties and paradoxes of putting the empowerment rhetoric into practice. This article analyses the…

In Turkey, one of the major challenges that university education faces is the indifference of young people towards social issues. The aim of this article is to contribute to the "practice" of critical pedagogy by proposing that showing movies is an important critical teaching method with the power both to give pleasure to the students…

Discourse about the scholarship of teaching and learning appears to represent some views about higher education more than others. For example, disciplinary perspectives have been acknowledged, and ideas from critical theory and phenomenography have been presented, with the role of reflection receiving considerable attention. While approaches to…

There is scant research literature on the interconnection between spirituality and anti-oppressive pedagogy in the higher-education classroom. In this paper, based on a broader qualitative study that examined spiritually-minded activist scholars in the Canadian university context, I focus on how four such scholars integrate spirituality into their…

This paper presents an analysis of the ways in which UK higher education (HE) has become increasingly commercialised and commodified in the post-1980s. It critiques the strategies adopted by successive UK governments to reinvigorate the relationship between educational and economic life, and to facilitate a more corporate and entrepreneurial…

Research on student responses to Critical Pedagogy frequently highlights their opposition to transformational agendas. This paper focuses on student opposition at a predominantly 'white' South African university to materials that represent the apartheid past. Engaging with the imperatives of transformation characterizing post-apartheid Higher…