Space for reflective practice

Welcome to this space to continue your learning.  Within this space, we encourage you to engage in a reflective practice.  Through this space, we aim to support you in continuing to delve into the important issues, perspectives, and approaches presented by our speakers, Maria Rosa Brea-Spahn.

As you continue to engage in this process, we recommend you create a journal - either on paper or on your computer.  In this journal, you might consider reflecting on:  How can you engage in critical and transformative pedagogy in your lab, your classroom or with your interns? 

What will you find here? 

• A sketch note based on the talk

• A summary and recording of the talk

• Suggested readings to further your reflections

We would be so pleased if you would share your thoughts in an anonymised space to share back with learners along this journey together. 

Summary

Through this talk, Dr. Brea-Spahn illustrated her pedagogical stances and moves, which are influenced by the teachings of critical pedagogue, Paulo Freire. A critical pedagogy is one that disrupts widely accepted perceptions of “knowledge ownership,” that asks us to welcome the notion of incompleteness in our own learning journeys, and that engages us in dialogical inquiry that accommodates doubt, curiosity, openness, and freedom to reflect, re-structure, and re-imagine our own frameworks (Freire, 1987). As such, this way of relating in the classroom disrupts traditional roles of teacher-student and it is actioned through critical stances and critical literacies.  Specifically, in these co-learning spaces, our compass is Freire’s (1987) urgent call to “name our world” that is used to identify, define, and disrupt our knowledge and myths of “good languaging, good learning, and good knowing” in ourselves and others through reflection and action -- a process that Freire referred to as praxis. 

Recording of Speaker Session

Link to the Zoom Recording 

Suggested Readings & Resources

The University of Alberta's Library has a wonderful set of resources for exploring Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. 

https://guides.library.ualberta.ca/edi/home.

As you continue your learning, we would recommend you explore: 

Brea-Spahn, M. R., & Bauler, C. V. (2023). Where Do You Anchor Your Beliefs? An Invitation to Interrogate Dominant Ideologies of Language and Languaging in Speech-Language Pathology. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 1-13.

Luke, Allan, Annette Woods, Douglas Fisher, Joyce Bruett, and Lisa Fink. "Critical literacies in schools: A primer." Voices from the Middle 17, no. 2 (2009): 9-18.

Reflection Questions

• How do my positionalities and ideologies impact my work?

• How are my learners’ positionalities, stories, languaging, and ways of meaning-making situated and reflected in the learning space and materials?

• How can my pedagogical practices center inclusiveness, promote reflexivity, and foster criticality?

• How can I interrogate curriculum and policy from a liberatory lens?