Critical Hybrid Pedagogies

Critical Hybrid Pedagogies mix online and in-person learning with critical approaches in pedagogy.

This project is open not only to the combination of classroom and online learning, but also between the layers between the local, global, modern and pre-modern and how students and teachers from different cultural backgrounds can situate themselves in these spaces.

Critical pedagogy has advanced different paths since the publication of Freire’s seminal work Pedagogy of the Oppressed (or Pedagogia do Oprimido, in Portuguese) (1968), where he defined traditional pedagogy as a “banking model of education” where students are passive receptors of knowledge. Postcolonial critiques of pedagogy (Aegerter, 1997; Bhabha, 1994; Spivak, 1988); queer pedagogy (Bryson & de Castell, 1993; Pinar, 1994) critical race pedagogy (Jennings & Lynn, 2005; Lynn, 1999; Solorzano & Yosso, 2000) respectively followed, diverted and added new perspectives to Freire’s original intention. The common element is the need to restructure teaching & learning as forms of emancipation raising critical consciousness about the attitudes, roles, materials and institutions in education.

However, a critical perspective about social injustice is not exclusive of critical pedagogy. Constructivist models, inspired by Piaget's notion that children are agents in their own cognitive development before learning (1954) and Vigotsky’s stronger emphasis on previous social cognition before the tutor (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 79), have tried to address the issue of the passivity of the student, encouraging the student to bring her own experiences in the classroom (Ford & Leclerc, 2000). In the constructivist paradigm, students are individuals with their own unique embodiment of developmental and cultural agency who join the classroom to build knowledge with the assistance of an instructor. Some constructivists pedagogues accentuate the importance of scrutinizing historical social assumptions in order to avoid oppression within the constructivist classroom (Abdal-Haqq, 1998, p. 5; Martin, 1994). In such a collaborative environment, social constructivism offers a zone of proximal development where emancipatory careers can be directed (Bassot, 2012).

In both cases, one of the main contributions of critical theory in online teaching is questioning the technological determinism and inherent “effectiveness” of digital artifacts (Wang & Torrisi-Steele, 2018, p. 36) and at the same time helping instructors to “re‐examine their roles, beliefs and assumptions, and ultimately help to reform teaching practice in online environments to the benefit of both educators and their learners.” (Wang & Torrisi‐Steele, 2015).

Intercultural Communication and Hybridization

Intercultural communication is used as a set of skills that allow deeper understanding of symbolic and practical orientations between different cultures. Intercultural communication goes beyond the passive acceptance of multiculturality to an active dialogue between cultures (Penas-Ibáñez & López-Sánez, 2006, p. 15). Intercultural communication in online learning has offered its own challenges because online learning (cyberspace) has its own culture and it is not culture free (Chase, Macfadyen, Reeder, & Roche, 2002) and this space adds another dimension to the already existing need of dialogue between cultures. In other words, it is the creation of a cultural space with its own rules and devices that collects the inputs of culturally diverse people.

Higher education collaborations that are transnational inherently involve intercultural communication, which can be examined by the tools developed to unpack and analyze cultural differences (Djerasimovic 2014; Trompenaars & Hampton-Turner 2012). How faculty and students perceive time, interpersonal relationships, hierarchies, individuals versus communities, and the role and nature of higher education itself, can significantly impact interactions and learning. Mere interactions do not automatically lead to mutual understanding across cultures, even when students are immersed physically in a new cultural setting, such as studying abroad. (Kern & Develotte 2018; Jackson 2015; Steir 2006) Moreover, there is often a lack of awareness on all sides of how one’s behavior is perceived and impacts others (Storti 2001).

In higher education collaborations there are often power relationships between ‘importer and exporter institutions’, and polarity between the ‘western and the local’. (Djerasimovic 2014) This is evident in curricula which can assume, for instance, common values in such terms as innovation, global competitiveness, and development. It is important to recognize how discourse constructs culturally-bounded assumptions about reality. (Djerasimovic 2014) Higher education collaborations that take place online offer a potentially rich space for intercultural communication and learning, but also present new challenges as the cultural assumptions and values are embedded mostly in written language and imagery. (Kern & Develotte 2018) As with physically immersive settings, intercultural learning must go beyond initial interactions and the exchange of information, but rather elucidate the deeper meanings in discourse and images.

Hybrid pedagogies face the challenge, not only to combine online learning with local experiences, but also the issue of hybridization of cultures themselves. This hybridization goes beyond the combination of two different cultures, but also how different cultures face modernity in their own ways. That is what Garcia Canclini “Hybrid cultures” (2012). In this way, intercultural communication in online learning involves a rich superposition of different forms of hybridity.

Products of learning: from text to critical co-design

In the classroom, the authority of the physical book or text, is as authored yet alienated and imposed over the student as a canon. The student becomes a vessel to be filled with text (Cuban, 1993) and in many situations, the student, even when she comes from an unprivileged background, can perceive herself as someone above or in suspension of her background because of the texts she is receiving (Shor, 2014, p. 8). The classroom and its disposition inside an institution like a university can become concentric and unidirectional.

The hypertext in online learning follows the subsequent authoritative order. The hypertext is presented through “high-technology” gadgets from North-America (Giroux, Lankshear, Peters, & McLaren, 1996, p. 34). When a new technology arrives it can give the impression that it is an instrument for a world that remains the same (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007). For that reason, it is highly important that instructors can be aware of the strong habits and values carried from the “physical” to the online classroom.

The authority of the text is borrowed from one space to the other. Online teachers, accustomed to their learning experience in the traditional classroom, are likely to include text based formats that reflect individualistic epistemologies (Caruthers & Friend, 2014, p. 15). Teachers tend to transfer their values and methodologies from the traditional classroom to the online classroom because they deem as successful in the former environment (Baran, Correia, & Thompson, 2011). Moreover than encouraging a constructive or constructive dialogue about the text, the student can be “anonymous” and have a sense of safety that disembodied her before the epistemology that she has before herself (Dall’Alba & Barnacle, 2005). This disembodiment before the text, or we might say before the hypertext, raises concerns about the involvement or even emotional engagement of the students and teachers about group constructed notions or experiences (Caruthers & Friend, 2014, p. 15).

We aim to re-embody the participant as a co-designer, where the participant can offer a final product that is not limited to the text or final paper submission, but rather as something that shows personal involvement with the topics in a form that the participant finds meaningful (art, interviews, videos, infographics, etc.) In such a way, we take the idea of co-construction in online learning (Cho, 2016), to a hybrid pedagogical model where participants become co-constructors of the model and co-designers in the final products of the course.

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