case study on critical pedagogy

5 Critical Pedagogy: Challenging Bias and Creating Inclusive Classrooms

Introduction.

Regardless of the type of library you work in, your learners will come from varied backgrounds, identities, and life experiences, and will bring different interests and educational needs to the classroom. These experiences shape how learners experience the classroom, the content, and the learning activities, and ultimately impact what they learn and how they use that knowledge. As instructors, we need not only to recognize these differences and how they influence learning but also acknowledge and honor the richness of experience our learners bring. We need to create an inclusive classroom environment where everyone feels welcome and valued, and where our content is relevant to our learners’ diverse identities and interests.

In order to be effective in this role, we must better understand how existing educational, social, and political systems shape our learners’ experiences from their earliest moments and continue to influence what and how they learn inside and outside of the classroom through the rest of their lives. We must recognize how bias has impacted and continues to impact both our learners’ and our own experiences, and develop culturally competent and inclusive practices in order to mitigate bias in the classroom and interact effectively with learners from varied cultural backgrounds.

Critical pedagogy provides a theoretical framework to examine issues of power in the classroom, and to surface and challenge the biases and oppressive structures that can undermine learning and alienate students. Inclusive teaching offers strategies for translating that theoretical knowledge into action. This chapter begins with a brief overview of critical pedagogy, followed by an examination of some of the biases critical pedagogy uncovers and how those biases can impact the work we do as instructors. Next, the chapter presents strategies for mitigating bias, improving our cultural competence, and creating inclusive classrooms where all learners are able to engage with relevant content and effective pedagogies. Chapter 6 extends the discussion of inclusion to address specific issues of accessibility and universal design for learners with disabilities.

Critical Pedagogy

As discussed briefly in Chapter 3, social constructivists in particular recognize that learners’ cultures, including shared values, behaviors, and beliefs, shape their knowledge. However, no society is made up of a single, monolithic culture; rather, different communities reflect different values and beliefs, and encourage and discourage different behaviors. Political, social, and educational systems tend to reflect the dominant culture, and over time the values, behaviors, and beliefs associated with that culture become so ingrained as to be invisible. Those living within the dominant culture do not recognize it as a system but simply see it as “normal,” and anything outside of that system is “other” than normal. Some educational theorists recognized that these differences have a profound impact on education.

Bourdieu (see, e.g., Bourdieu & Passeron, 2000) and Freire (2000), for instance, saw that traditional educational systems tended to reflect and favor the experiences of children from wealthy families. Because these children understood that system and saw themselves reflected in it, they thrived and were successful, while children from poorer families struggled. Since the dominant systems are essentially invisible, those in power tend to attribute the challenges faced by marginalized individuals as inherent to the person. In other words, if a child from a poor family struggles to learn to read, teachers will often assume the issue is with the child’s innate ability to learn, rather than recognize that the child might not have had the same preliteracy experiences and current support systems that other children have. Because they do not recognize the root issue, these educational models tend to replicate rather than challenge the existing systems, so learners from the dominant culture continue to succeed while those from marginalized communities continue to struggle, a phenomenon that Bourdieu refers to as cultural reproduction. While earlier theorists tended to focus mostly on the impact of economic disparities in education, other writers and educators like bell hooks, Henry Giroux, and Ileana Jiménez have applied feminist, queer, and critical race theory to examine how existing classroom power structures marginalize women, people of color, individuals who identify as LGBTQIA+, and other learners as well.

Importantly, critical pedagogy does not end with theory but rather focuses on praxis, or translating knowledge into action. Critical pedagogy sees education as a tool for empowerment, a place where learners develop the knowledge and skills they need to undo oppressive structures and achieve liberation (Freire, 2000; Tewell, 2015). Unlike the traditional “banking” model of education that positions learners as passive recipients of information, in a classroom guided by critical pedagogy, learners engage with problems that are personally meaningful and are active agents in their own education, and through that education gain agency to enact change in the world beyond the classroom (Elmborg, 2006; Freire, 2000; Tewell, 2015).

Critical pedagogy informs the critical approaches to information literacy discussed in Chapter 2, which urge us to move away from a skills-based, teacher-centered approach to information literacy toward one that questions dominant information structures and adopts student-centered teaching methods. Building on the ideas of agency and empowerment, critical information literacy encourages learners to see themselves as part of the “scholarly conversation” and as creators of information, rather than just consumers, and provides them with ways to recognize and challenge dominant powers within the current systems of creating, sharing, and evaluating information. Thus, for instructors, critical pedagogy pushes us to surface power dynamics in the classroom and the larger communities in which our learners live, and to reflect on how our own culture and biases color our approach to the classroom. In doing so, it offers a model for a more inclusive teaching practice.

Bias in the Classroom

We all have bias. These biases might be based on gender, race or ethnicity, class, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, body type, or other elements of people’s personal identity. In some cases, we may be aware that we have a bias, while in other cases, we hold unconscious biases that we have unwittingly picked up over the course of our lifetime. Banaji and Greenwald (2013) show that our unconscious biases are particularly pernicious because we are unaware of the effect they have on our thoughts and actions, resulting in discriminatory judgments and behaviors that are automatic and hard to recognize. For example, research shows that when given résumés with equivalent qualifications from applicants with stereotypically white names and stereotypically Black names, search committees will favor applicants with stereotypically white names (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2003) and that orchestras have historically favored men over women in auditions (Goldin & Rouse, 2000). Unconscious bias also affects library services. Shachaf and Horowitz (2006) found differences in librarians’ replies to email reference queries based on the patron’s perceived ethnicity and religious affiliation, including the time taken to reply, length and quality of answers, and the use of welcoming, professional greetings and conclusions. These examples demonstrate one of Banaji and Greenwald’s important findings–that hidden biases result in acts of commission, such as favoring men or whites in hiring, as well as acts of omission, such as providing less thorough service to some patrons.

It can be uncomfortable and even challenging to recognize our own bias. As Sue (2010a) notes, most people “see themselves as fair-minded individuals who would never consciously discriminate” and “their self-image of being ‘a good moral human being’ is assailed if they realize and acknowledge that they possess biased thoughts, attitudes and feelings.” As we grapple with our own biases, it can be helpful to remember that our brains evolved to develop heuristics that allow us to function effectively and safely in our environment. These heuristics often operate at an unconscious level; if you have ever seen a snake and instinctively jumped back even before you could assess whether the snake was venomous, you have experienced an unconscious heuristic that told you snakes are dangerous. Unfortunately, unconscious thoughts and biases influence how we react to people as well, particularly when we perceive those people as “different” from ourselves. If we want to be fair-minded, rational people, it is essential that we identify and reflect on our unconscious biases, including recognizing how our society shapes and influences those biases, in order to mitigate the effect they have on our thoughts and actions (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013). Activity 5.1 provides an opportunity to learn more about unconscious biases you may hold.

Activity 5.1: Take an Implicit Bias Test

As part of its research on implicit bias, Project Implicit at Harvard University offers tests that attempt to measure personal biases. While these tests are not perfect measures, they offer a starting point for reflecting on how we might be impacted by unconscious bias. Visit Project Implicit and try one or more of the available tests.

Questions for Reflection and Discussion:

How did you feel about your results? Were you surprised or uncomfortable? Did other feelings emerge?
If your test results revealed a personal bias, how might that bias affect your work in the classroom? What strategies could you use to mitigate this bias and deliver high-quality instruction to all your learners?

Microaggressions

One manifestation of bias is microaggressions, which Sue (2010a) defines as “the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.” Microaggressions may be aimed at women, people of color, individuals who identify (or are perceived) as LGBTQIA+, and people with disabilities, among others. Microaggressions come in many forms, including verbal (e.g., “Where are you from?” which implies a person of color must be a foreigner; telling a woman to smile), nonverbal (e.g., clutching one’s purse more tightly or crossing the street around a person of color), or environmental (e.g., Native American mascots) (Sue, 2010b). While microaggressions may appear minor, they create hostile classroom environments, perpetuate stereotype threat, lower workplace productivity, and cause mental and physical health problems (Sue et al., 2009, p. 183).

Because microaggressions often reflect our unconscious biases, they can be hard to eliminate. Princing (2019) notes that when we first meet someone new, we tend to notice what makes them different from us. She recommends we reflect on those thoughts and question any beliefs or stereotypes that may accompany them. The Reinert Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning (n.d.) also recommends that instructors reflect on their assumptions and expectations as a first step to avoid committing microaggressions. For example, an instructor who assumes that learners from first-generation or lower socioeconomic backgrounds are less prepared for college might make a comment to that effect in the classroom, making students hesitant to attend office hours lest they confirm the instructor’s negative belief. Additional strategies instructors can use:

Resist the myth of color blindness. Unconscious bias makes it difficult to be truly colorblind. In addition, claims of color blindness obscure structural disadvantages and the very real differences in the experiences of people from marginalized groups (Princing, 2019).
Believe the stories of people from marginalized groups. We can learn more about everyday bias by listening to and learning from the stories of individuals who have firsthand experience with bias. We must take care not to dismiss those stories as exaggerations, misunderstandings, or isolated incidents.
Do not ask students to speak for their entire racial or culture group. As noted elsewhere in this chapter, learners from the same broad cultural group will not necessarily share all of the same values, beliefs, and understandings, and students may not feel capable of speaking for the experience of others (Reinert Center, n.d.). In addition, singling out learners in this way can make it appear that the instructor sees them as a one-dimensional representative of a particular identity, rather than as an individual bringing varied strengths, interests, and experiences to the classroom.
Assume groups you are talking about are represented in the classroom. Treating every classroom interaction as if we were speaking with a member of the group under discussion can remind us to choose our words with care (Reinert Center, n.d.).
Remain open to learning about microaggressions and yourself. While it is natural to feel defensive when others point out that we have said something problematic or offensive, we can approach such instances as learning opportunities.

In addition to recognizing the role that bias might play in our own actions, instructors should be aware that students will bring their own biases to the classroom. These biases will affect how learners understand and interact with instructional content, peers, and instructors, and instructors should be attentive to instances where learners commit microaggressions against one another. Microaggressions can be awkward and even challenging to address, especially if they were framed as a compliment (e.g., “You speak English so well”) or reflect commonly accepted stereotypes. Offenders may be unaware of the offense they have caused and because they did not intend to offend others, may be reluctant to accept responsibility for having done so. However, it is important to address such events clearly and promptly. Sue et al. (2019, p. 134) note that when microaggressions occur, small interventions by allies and bystanders have a “profound positive effect in creating an inclusive and welcoming environment” and discouraging further microaggressions. Strategies for addressing microaggressions in the classroom include:

Make the “invisible” visible. Create awareness by naming the microaggression with statements such as “I think that’s a stereotype I just heard” (Sue et al., 2019, p. 136).
Disarm the microaggression. Statements such as “I don’t agree” or “I don’t see it that way” and actions such as shaking one’s head communicate to the perpetrator and others that the microaggression is not acceptable (Sue et al., 2019, p. 136).
Take an educational, nonpunitive approach. Turn microaggressions into teachable moments by asking learners to reflect on their assumptions (Center for Teaching and Learning, n.d., p. 11). Phrases like “it sounds like you think” or “Could there be another way to look at this?” can prompt speakers to identify and question their unconscious biases (Gonzaga et al., 2019). Ferguson (2015) suggests we approach microaggressions in the spirit of “calling in” rather than “calling out.”
Redirect. When students are asked to speak for all members of their racial or cultural group, we can redirect the conversation with statements such as “Let’s open this question up to others” (Gonzaga et al., 2019).
Use “I” statements. The use of “I” statements such as “I felt uncomfortable when you said . . . ” communicate impact while minimizing blame (Gonzaga et al., 2019).
Discuss intent versus impact. Instructors can use statements like “I know you meant to be funny, but you hurt . . . ” to help learners recognize the impact of something they said. If learners struggle with the idea that they may have offended or harmed someone despite not intending to cause offense, instructors can use metaphors such as bumping someone in the grocery store or causing a car accident to explain the difference between intent and impact (and the need to make amends).
Rewind. Sometimes microaggressions happen so quickly, the conversation moves on before they are addressed. Statements like “I’d like to revisit something that was said earlier” allow us to step back and address these microaggressions ( Gonzaga et al., 2019).

Another manifestation of bias can be “othering,” or treating the history and experiences of white, middle-class, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied people as universal or the norm, while presenting the history and experiences of other groups as unusual, exceptional, or only of interest to members of those communities. For example, displaying books by Black authors in February, but not at other times, sends an implicit message that the history of America is the actions and accomplishments of whites and that the accomplishments of others are of limited value or interest. While special displays and programs are an important way to recognize and support events like Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and Pride Month, librarians should also integrate materials by individuals of color, women, and LGBTQIA+ authors into displays year-round.

In some cases, the systems that are foundational to libraries treat selected groups as the other. For example, the Dewey Decimal System reserves 200-289 for topics related to Christianity and the Bible, leaving only the 290s for all other religions; Schingler (2015) points out that this reflects an underlying assumption that Christianity not only has more to say on theological topics, what it has to say is more valuable. Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are notoriously problematic in their treatment of women and people of color (Berman, 1969, 1993; Drabinski, 2008; Knowlton, 2005). The presence of subject headings such as “women astronauts” and “African American business enterprises” reveals an assumption that these professions are for white men and that the presence of others is unusual or remarkable, while subject headings that utilize biased terminology, such as “illegal aliens,” send a message about who belongs in America.

These instances of bias and othering can create barriers to information seeking. Howard and Knowlton (2018) point out that Library of Congress Classification distributes materials related to African American and LGBTQIA+ issues throughout the collection, making browsing or even grasping the scope of the topic challenging for researchers. Even when controlled vocabulary uses neutral terminology, the accompanying thesauri can obscure topics for patrons trying to identify the database’s preferred subject heading. For example, a search for “queer” in the ERIC thesaurus returns “the term(s) you entered could not be found” with no suggestions for next steps ( ERIC uses the subject heading “homosexuality”). In comparison, a search for “queer” in the thesaurus for PubMed takes one to the preferred subject heading, “sexual and gender minorities,” along with notes about how the term is applied and related/narrower terms.

As part of creating inclusive classrooms, we must be aware of the ways in which library systems and spaces can “other” marginalized groups, and take steps to improve equity and inclusion in our spaces and collections. For example, when creating lessons, we can plan search examples that reflect the diversity of our community and learners’ interests. As appropriate, we can surface and acknowledge problematic practices, and engage students in a dialogue about the impact of those practices and how they might be changed. Integrating diversity into curricular content is addressed in more detail later in this chapter.

Deficit-Based Thinking

Learners, by their very nature, come to our libraries and classrooms with gaps in their knowledge and skills. Oftentimes, instructors seek out research that will help them identify these gaps in order to develop relevant content. While this research can provide valuable guidance for instructors, it is sometimes framed solely in terms of what learners are lacking and can lead us to focus exclusively on students’ weaknesses, an approach termed deficit-based thinking.

Increasingly, educators are taking an asset-based approach that recognizes and builds on the strengths students bring to the classroom (Heinbach, 2019; Ilett, 2019; Kocevar-Weidinger et al., 2019; Matteson & Gersch, 2019; Tewell, 2020). For example, research on returning adult learners may show that they lack up-to-date research and citation skills, framing this as a problem that will hinder academic success. An asset-based approach recognizes that adult learners, by virtue of having spent time in the workforce, bring valuable life experience that can enrich classroom discussions, along with strong collaborative and interpersonal skills developed in the workplace. In addition, adult learners tend to have clear educational and career goals and are highly motivated to develop the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in higher education. As another example, Kocevar-Weidinger et al. (2019) show that despite the stereotype that first-year college students lack research skills, they actually have extensive everyday research experience that can serve as a starting point for academic information literacy instruction.

Sometimes things characterized as weaknesses or deficits are in fact strengths if we recast our narrative. For instance, research on first-generation students may focus on the challenges they encounter because their families are unable to advise them on how to navigate the academic and social aspects of college. Research also shows that first-generation undergraduate students are less likely to use campus support services (Longwell-Grice et al., 2016; Portnoi & Kwong, 2011). An asset-based approach recognizes that families of first-generation students are often very supportive of their students’ academic endeavors and, if given information about support services on campus, will recommend their students take advantage of such services. Thus, while they lack firsthand knowledge of higher education, family members can be a conduit to connecting first-generation students to campus resources. Activity 5.2 asks you to think more deeply about asset-based approaches.

Activity 5.2: Reflecting on Asset-Based Thinking

Individually or with a group of classmates, select a group of learners you might work with, such as recent immigrants, English-language learners, international students, or older adults.

What gaps in knowledge or skills are typically ascribed to this group? Are these viewed as simple gaps or as deficits?
What strengths will this group of learners bring to the classroom?
How could you use an asset-based approach to build on these strengths in designing instruction?

Cultural Competency

Cultural competency is the ability to work effectively with people from varied cultural backgrounds. Cultural competency is an essential skill for librarians; it prepares us to recognize barriers to information use, to work with colleagues and patrons of diverse backgrounds, and to develop culturally responsive services and programs (Cooke et al., 2017; Kim & Sin, 2006; Morris, 2007; Overall, 2009). Instructors who are culturally competent understand how culture influences teaching and learning, and are able to engage learners from diverse backgrounds in the classroom.

Cultural differences can emerge in our classrooms in numerous ways. For example, contemporary American classrooms tend to be student-centered; students are expected to ask questions during lectures, discuss ideas and even disagree with instructors and peers, and engage in self-directed learning activities. In contrast, some cultures value teacher-centered classrooms where learners are expected to listen respectfully as teachers share their expertise. International students and recent immigrants who are accustomed to teacher-centered instruction may be uncomfortable during discussions and student-led activities and may even feel instructors are abdicating their responsibility to share expertise. They may also be reluctant to “bother” the instructor by asking questions or admitting they did not understand something. Culturally competent instructors can attend to these differences by interspersing discussion and active learning with direct instruction, encouraging questions and participation in discussions, and explaining how the planned activities support learning. In addition, librarians can create more culturally inclusive classrooms by:

Speaking slowly and clearly, especially when working with learners from different cultures and language backgrounds.
Avoiding slang, idioms, and sarcasm, none of which translates well across cultures, and using humor judiciously.
Avoiding library jargon, which is likely to be unfamiliar to international students and recent immigrants, as well as to novice learners in general.
Respecting cross-cultural rules for personal space and touching.
Making expectations for participation explicit.

Cultural differences may surface in surprising ways. Bunner (2017, p. 43) provides an example of a student who got in trouble for answering a question in class, not realizing that the teacher was asking a rhetorical question, something that does not exist in his culture. The student explained, “in my culture when an adult asks you a question, you are supposed to answer.” Osa et al. (2006) highlight the care we must take in using or interpreting body language and facial expressions; they provide the example of raised eyebrows, which can indicate surprise, interest, approval, skepticism, or disapproval, depending on the culture of the speaker. Whether or not to make eye contact as a sign of respect and the appropriate finger with which to point also differ by culture.

These are only a few examples of cultural differences. Cultural differences also influence written and conversational communication styles, preferences for individual or cooperative problem solving and study, tolerance for uncertainty, conventions of politeness, and expectations for how children will interact with adults (Brook et al., 2015; Cifuentes & Ozel, 2006; Gay, 2002; Weinstein et al., 2003). Activity 5.3 asks you to think about cultural differences you have experienced.

Activity 5.3: Reflecting on Cultural Differences

Think of a specific instance of a cultural difference or misunderstanding that you have observed.

What behaviors were central to the situation?
What values, beliefs, or assumptions are reflected in the behaviors of each person involved?
How might these values, beliefs, or assumptions influence a person’s experience in the classroom?
How might your recognition of these values, beliefs, and assumptions impact your understanding of your students and your instruction?

In order to provide culturally competent instruction, librarians must develop their cultural knowledge and translate that knowledge into strategies for action. Villagran (2018) suggests librarians use the Cultural Intelligence (CQ) model as a framework for reflection and professional development. This model, shown in Figure 5.1, has four components: drive, knowledge, strategy, and action (Cultural Intelligence Center, n.d.).

Drive: This component reflects our interest, persistence, and confidence in learning about other cultures and working in culturally diverse environments. For example, librarians might be motivated to learn about other cultures in order to improve their ability to design and deliver inclusive services for members of their community.
Knowledge: This component is our understanding of cultural similarities and differences. Instruction librarians who want to improve their cross-cultural knowledge might seek out readings and professional development opportunities on how culture impacts teaching and learning.
Strategy: This component reflects the metacognitive element of cultural competence; it is our ability to plan for and reflect on multicultural encounters. Culturally competent instruction librarians recognize their learners will come from varied backgrounds, develop strategies to create inclusive instruction, and reflect on their teaching experiences in order to identify areas for improvement.
Action: This component is our ability to use appropriate behaviors during multicultural interactions. Instruction librarians can translate cultural competence into action through their instructional design and delivery and through their interactions with individual learners.

Figure 5.1: The Cultural Intelligence Model

An example may demonstrate how librarians can use the Cultural Intelligence model as a guide to professional development. Early in her career as an academic librarian, one of the authors, Melissa, heard that international students from Asia would answer questions such as “Do you understand?” with “yes” out of politeness, whether or not they understood the material being taught. Concerned that she might not be teaching international students effectively (drive), Melissa sought out articles about library services for international students and talked with a colleague with expertise in the area (knowledge). This research helped her better understand cultural differences in teaching and learning, and confirmed the need to modify the instructional strategies she used in the classroom and at the reference desk (strategy). As a result, Melissa became conscientious about speaking slowly, avoiding slang and library jargon, using open-ended questions that could not be answered with “yes,” providing written handouts, and using a pencil or her entire hand to point, instead of the index finger (action).

Librarians can use a number of strategies to develop their cultural knowledge, including reading books and articles, participating in relevant conferences and webinars, and attending cultural events such as festivals, museum exhibits, and film screenings. Reflection is an important part of cultural competence; a teaching journal, discussed in more detail in Chapter 14, can prompt librarians to reflect on classroom experiences, record teaching success, and identify areas for improvement. Conversations with colleagues are also a way to increase cultural knowledge, reflect on one’s teaching, and develop new strategies for inclusive pedagogy. Activity 5.4 is an exercise to reflect on your own learning and instructional practices using the Cultural Intelligence model.

Activity 5.4: Building Cultural Competency

Using the Cultural Intelligence Model shown in Figure 5.1, reflect on your cultural competence, either in general or with regard to a specific patron group with whom you anticipate working.

How would you rate your cultural competence? Are you stronger in some areas, such as Drive or Knowledge, than others?
What motivates you to improve your cultural competency?
How have you built your cultural knowledge? What resources can you use to continue building your knowledge?
Do you feel confident applying your cultural competence in the classroom? What strategies would you use as you plan and deliver instruction?

While learning about different cultures can empower librarians to provide more culturally relevant instruction, librarians should avoid categorizing or stereotyping specific learners. Cultural groups are not static or homogeneous, meaning learners from the same broad cultural group will not necessarily share all of the same values, beliefs, and understandings, or react in exactly the same way to instructional experiences. In addition, learners are comprised of multiple identities, of which culture is only one aspect. Thus, we should use the knowledge we develop about different cultures as a way to be alert to potential differences that could lead to misunderstandings, but not to pigeonhole or predict the behavior and experience of an individual learner.

Strategies for Inclusive Teaching

Increasing our knowledge and understanding of other cultures is only a first step toward cultural competence and inclusive teaching. We also need to parlay that understanding into instructional practices that acknowledge, appreciate, and attend to the rich diversity of our classrooms. This section presents strategies for inclusive teaching, including fostering a positive classroom climate, integrating diverse content, and using inclusive pedagogies.

Fostering a Positive Classroom Climate

Our sense of belonging in the classroom influences our motivation to learn. The Center for Teaching and Learning (2019) at Columbia University identifies four types of classroom environments:

Explicitly Marginalizing: The instructor or other students say or do things, such as committing microaggressions or repeating stereotypes, that exclude learners and perspectives from marginalized backgrounds.
Implicitly Marginalizing: The instructor excludes some learners through subtle actions such as calling primarily on male students or using examples solely from the predominant culture.
Implicitly Centralizing: The instructor will discuss issues of marginalization and diversity if a student raises the topic, but such conversations are not planned or presented as essential.
Explicitly Centralizing: The instructor intentionally integrates marginalized perspectives into course content, raises issues of diversity and inclusion, and takes action to foster sensitivity, such as establishing norms for discussion and group work.

While the environment in any classroom can fluctuate, the overall classroom climate is often less inclusive and welcoming than instructors realize. In one study, instructors rated their course as falling midway between implicitly and explicitly centralizing, while learners rated the same course as implicitly marginalizing (Center for Teaching and Learning, 2019).

One conclusion we might take away from this research is the need for critical self-reflection on the part of instructors. In addition, the research suggests that instructors must make a concerted effort to create an inclusive classroom environment. Some strategies we can use include:

Express interest in students. Welcoming participants as they enter the room and learning their names help participants feel recognized (if you are worried about remembering names, you can have them create a table tent or name tag). In addition, instructors should come out from behind podiums, which can be perceived as distancing, to engage with participants. Reflective activities such as minute papers also offer opportunities to respond to individuals and demonstrate interest in their learning (Center for Teaching and Learning, n.d.; Bunner, 2017).
Establish ground rules for discussions. Establishing guidelines for civil, constructive interaction is becoming more common in credit courses; oftentimes, instructors engage students in creating these guidelines in order to foster a sense of ownership. The time constraints of library workshops may not allow for lengthy or collaborative agreements; however, librarians can establish simple ground rules, such as respecting the opinions of others and valuing diverse perspectives, at the beginning of sessions (Watts, 2017).
Foster student-to-student relationships. Instructional strategies that foster interaction such as think-pair-share, small group work, and class discussions promote positive classroom relationships.
Make expectations explicit. As mentioned earlier, cultural background can influence classroom behaviors such as participation styles and how, or whether, to ask questions. Instructors should make their expectations explicit with comments such as “I hope you will ask a lot of questions as we go along,” or “Right now we are going to work independently, but later we’ll share our work with others.”
Express high expectations for all students. Instructors should use an encouraging, positive tone, while also setting high expectations for all learners. Gay (2002) and Weinstein et al. (2003) point out that stereotypes based on race and/or gender can cause instructors to lower expectations for certain groups of students. Weinstein et al. (2003) offer the example of a non-native speaker of English who was offended when a teacher told him his English was “good,” rather than suggesting he continue to practice. He felt the former was patronizing and did not help him improve his language skills.
Address microaggressions and other forms of bias. As discussed earlier, instructors should be mindful of stereotypes and take care not to perpetuate them, and to practice intervention strategies that can be used when microaggressions occur in the classroom.
Ask for feedback. Instructors can use course evaluations and classroom observations to gather feedback on how well they foster an inclusive classroom environment.

Integrating Diverse Content

All learners have a right to instructional offerings that address their needs and interests. At the program level, we should offer workshops and other instructional resources on a wide variety of topics that are suitable for patrons of varied ages and ability levels. We should take care to schedule classes and programs at varied times to ensure access for the widest number of people. For example, a traditional storytime program on a weekday morning will serve families with a stay-at-home parent as well as families where parents work the late shift or on weekends, while a pajama storytime held in the evening will serve families where parents and other caregivers work during the day.

In addition, our course content should reflect the diversity of our communities and the larger world. Not only does this allow learners to “see” themselves in the curriculum, it provides opportunities for all learners to learn about diversity and equity and to develop cultural competence. In addition, integrating discussions of diversity and equity throughout the curriculum ensures these issues are not “othered” or treated as an addendum to a curriculum where whiteness and heterosexuality are the norm. Further, we must engage these topics in authentic ways, rather than with benign or superficial celebrations of multiculturalism (Bunner, 2017, p. 42; Kumasi & Hill, 2011, p. 252). Some strategies librarians can use to integrate diversity and inclusion into instructional content:

Use diverse examples. For instance, a librarian teaching a workshop on Overdrive can conduct sample searches featuring authors of diverse identities. An academic librarian or archivist teaching students to locate primary documents from World War II might highlight sites with materials from the Tuskegee Airmen or the all Japanese-American 442nd Regiment. Hinchliffe (2016) notes that librarians can call attention to issues of human rights through the examples used in class.
Choose metaphors and analogies carefully. While metaphors and analogies can help learners build on prior knowledge and make concepts more concrete, they are often embedded in cultural knowledge or experiences that not everyone will share. Similarly, pop culture references may exclude learners based on their age or cultural background, although in some cases librarians can pause to offer a brief explanation.
Discuss how issues of race, class, and gender impact the material being covered. Gorski and Swalwell (2015, p. 36) argue, “at the heart of a curriculum that is meaningfully multicultural lie principles of equity and social justice—purposeful attention to issues like racism, homophobia, sexism, and economic inequality.” Gay (2002) suggests that instructors address topics such as racism, historical atrocities, and structures of power, and contextualize issues within race, class, and gender. While librarians may initially feel uncomfortable discussing challenging topics in the classroom, Bunner (2017, p. 43) found that ignoring issues of race is more problematic for students of color than imperfect conversations.
Model how participants can seek out marginalized voices and perspectives. In addition to incorporating a wide range of perspectives into our own teaching, we can encourage others to adopt a wider perspective and demonstrate resources and search strategies to uncover marginalized voices.

As part of creating a more inclusive curriculum, librarians will need to build collections that incorporate the histories and voices of marginalized groups. After all, it will be difficult to use diverse examples or demonstrate strategies for surfacing marginalized voices if our print and online collections do not contain that material. In addition, we need to be skilled at working within these collections. Curry (2005, p. 70) found that small behaviors like raised eyebrows, biting one’s lip, or a reserved or even neutral affect communicated discomfort while helping a patron research LGBTQIA+ topics, leading the patron to be less likely to ask for help in the future. In the same study, Curry (2005, p. 71) found that even librarians who indicated a willingness to help the patron lacked the necessary knowledge to identify appropriate sources of information. While Curry’s study focused on assisting patrons at the reference desk, her findings are very applicable to the classroom.

Part and parcel with building our knowledge of resources, we must understand the biases and weaknesses built into existing search systems, and develop strategies to find information within (or despite) those systems. Drabinski (2008) shares her experience of teaching with a colleague who incorrectly assumed that if LCSH has a heading for “African American women,” it must also have a heading for “white women” and advised students to use that phrase when searching. Noble (2012, 2018) shows that search engines such as Google are not neutral; rather, they replicate the biases inherent in society, delivering search results that reinforce stereotypical depictions of women and people of color. Ultimately, librarians who are committed to integrating equity and inclusion into the classroom must step back to look at the totality of their library’s spaces, collections, and systems.

Inclusive Pedagogy

Pedagogy is our approach to teaching. It reflects our understanding of the learning process, our goals for the classroom environment and student learning, and, subsequently, the activities one plans for the classroom. Instructors who practice inclusive pedagogy recognize that students have varied preferences for and comfort levels with different learning activities such as lecture, whole-class discussion, and small group work, and offer varied ways for learners to engage in the classroom.

Instructors can select from a wide variety of activities when planning instructional sessions. In fact, novice instructors are sometimes overwhelmed by the seemingly endless array of options. Chávez and Longerbeam (2016, pp. 8-9) suggest cultural approaches to teaching and learning range from “individuated,” which tend to compartmentalize content and treat learning as an individual experience, to “integrated,” which are more interconnected and focus on shared learning experiences. Instructors might seek to balance activities that reflect an individuated approach such as lecture, independent practice, and reflective writing, with activities that reflect an integrated approach such as discussion, case studies, and collaborative work.

Another approach we can take is balancing instructor-centered and learner-centered activities. Instructor-centered activities are those in which the instructor has a strong role in directing course content and the process of student learning, such as lecture and demonstration. In student-centered activities, students direct and shape their own learning; examples of student-centered activities include small group work, case-based and problem-based learning, and practice exercises that allow students to explore their own interests.

In addition to varying classroom activities, instructors can offer learners choices. For example, during an online searching activity, we might give learners the option of trying a task on their own or collaborating with their neighbor. Instructors can also adapt activities to create a more inclusive environment. For example, workshop participants might be reluctant to engage in a discussion with others they do not know well, especially if the topic is sensitive. A think-pair-share, which offers time for individual reflection and ordering one’s thoughts, or a small group discussion, where one shares ideas with just a few others, may feel safer for participants and can be used as a lead-in to a whole-class discussion or activity.

Emancipatory Education

While inclusive pedagogy outlines the strategies we can take as instructors to honor our learners’ experiences and make our classrooms and instruction welcoming and accessible to all learners, critical pedagogy also recognizes learners as agents in the classroom and in the world. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed , Freire (2000) discusses the emancipatory aspects of education, or how education can be structured so as to empower marginalized and oppressed communities to liberate themselves from systems of oppression. Crucial to Freire’s approach is that the learners are the agents of their own liberation. Instructors can facilitate this process by recognizing and mitigating bias and through the inclusive strategies outlined in this chapter, but ultimately, learners should be empowered to act on their own behalf.

We can foster emancipatory education within the library classroom by surfacing oppressive practices not only within education but within library systems and structures, facilitating dialogues about these practices, and encouraging students to imagine and adopt roles for themselves in challenging those systems. Chapter 2 outlines steps we could take in the context of critical information literacy, such as helping students recognize how prevailing publishing practices and notions of authority favor some voices and marginalize others, and encouraging them to seek out those voices that have been marginalized to include their perspectives. We can also work with learners to take action in the wider world, as librarians at Dartmouth College did when they collaborated with students to petition the Library of Congress to eliminate the term “illegal aliens” from its official subject headings (Albright, 2019).

Our learners bring varied backgrounds, identities, and educational needs to the classroom. Using critical pedagogy as a guide, librarians can adopt inclusive teaching practices that create classrooms, libraries, and, ultimately, communities that are more just and equitable for all members.

Key takeaways from this chapter include:

Instructors should understand the role unconscious bias plays in discrimination and inequity, and develop strategies to prevent and address microaggressions, othering, and deficit thinking.
Cultural competence is a set of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that enable librarians to interact effectively with patrons from diverse backgrounds. Instruction librarians need to understand how culture affects teaching and learning, and develop strategies for inclusive pedagogy.
Elements of inclusive teaching include fostering a positive classroom climate, integrating diverse perspectives and issues of diversity and equity into course content, and using inclusive pedagogies.

Activity 5.5 asks you to reflect on inclusive teaching.

Activity 5.5: Reflecting on Inclusive Teaching

Find (or draw) an image, photo, gif, etc., that captures your thoughts on inclusive teaching. Share your image and a brief explanation with your classmates.

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Article Contents

Introduction, teaching peace with critical pedagogy, critical theory practiced in the classroom, acknowledgement, re-imagining peace education: using critical pedagogy as a transformative tool.

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Christie Nicoson, Barbara Magalhães Teixeira, Alva Mårtensson, Re-Imagining Peace Education: Using Critical Pedagogy as a Transformative Tool, International Studies Perspectives , 2023;, ekad023, https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekad023

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Existing studies demonstrate that although peace and conflict studies (PCS) emerged from a deep connection between political activism and research, the field has increasingly moved toward promoting liberal ideals of peace that sustain the status quo. Amidst this trend, many scholars have pushed research and education programs to explore beyond a hegemonic liberal peace, for example by diversifying reading lists and drawing on decolonial frameworks. This paper adds to such efforts: through the case study of a higher education PCS classroom, we use narratives from two course conveners and a student to explore challenges and opportunities of realizing a critical pedagogy approach to peace education. This approach recenters the classroom not necessarily in terms of what students ought to think, but how; critical theory provides a basis for fostering curiosity, using query as a tool of learning, and focusing class structure on students’ needs. Our findings suggest that using critical pedagogy in PCS addresses calls for a greater understanding of peace beyond the absence of violence, fosters active envisioning of peace, and works toward decolonizing and demystifying peace work. Ultimately, we call for PCS classrooms to foster critical thinking and radical imagination for a pedagogy of peace praxis.

Resumen : Los estudios existentes demuestran que, aunque los estudios en materia de paz y de conflictos (PCS, por sus siglas en inglés) surgieron de la profunda conexión existente entre el activismo político y la investigación, este campo se ha ido dirigiendo, cada vez en mayor medida, hacia la promoción de ideales liberales de paz que contribuyen a sostener el statu quo. En medio de esta tendencia, muchos académicos han impulsado programas de investigación y educación con el fin de poder estudiar más allá de una paz liberal hegemónica mediante, por ejemplo, la diversificación de las listas de lectura o recurriendo a marcos decoloniales. Este artículo se suma a estos esfuerzos: a través del estudio de caso de un aula de PCS de educación superior, utilizamos las narrativas de dos coordinadores del curso y de un estudiante con el fin de estudiar los desafíos y oportunidades derivados de llevar a cabo un enfoque pedagógico crítico en materia de educación para la paz. Este enfoque centra la atención en el aula, pero no necesariamente en términos de lo que los estudiantes deben pensar, sino de cómo deben pensarlo. La teoría crítica proporciona una base para fomentar la curiosidad, para utilizar las consultas como herramienta de aprendizaje y para enfocar la estructura de la clase en las necesidades de los estudiantes. Nuestras conclusiones sugieren que el uso de la pedagogía crítica en los PCS aborda aquellas demandas relativas a una mayor comprensión de la paz más allá de la ausencia de violencia, fomenta la visión activa de la paz y trabaja hacia la descolonización y desmitificación del trabajo por la paz. En última instancia, hacemos un llamamiento a que las aulas de los PCS fomenten el pensamiento crítico y la imaginación radical con el objetivo de alcanzar una pedagogía de la praxis de la paz.

Résumé : Les études existantes montrent que bien que les études relatives à la paix et aux conflits (EPC) soient nées d'une connexion profonde entre l'activisme politique et la recherche, la discipline tend de plus en plus à promouvoir les idéaux libéraux de paix qui entretiennent le statu quo. Face à cette tendance, de nombreux chercheurs ont poussé les programmes de recherche et d’éducation à s'aventurer au-delà de la paix libérale hégémonique, par exemple en diversifiant les listes de lecture et en s'appuyant sur les cadres de décolonisation. Cet article vient renforcer ces efforts : par le biais de l’étude de cas d'une salle de classe d'EPC de l'enseignement supérieur, nous utilisons les récits de deux organisateurs de cours et d'un étudiant pour examiner les défis et opportunités liés à la concrétisation d'une approche pédagogique critique de l’éducation à la paix. Cette approche recentre la salle de classe pas nécessairement en termes de ce que les étudiants devraient penser, mais de comment ils le devraient : la théorie critique offre une base pour encourager à la curiosité, en utilisant la question comme outil d'apprentissage et en concentrant la structure de cours sur les besoins des étudiants. Nos conclusions indiquent que l'utilisation de la pédagogie critique en EPC répond aux demandes d'enrichissement de la compréhension de la paix au-delà de l'absence de violence, encourage une conception active de la paix et œuvre en faveur de la décolonisation et de la démystification de l'action pacifique. En définitive, nous appelons les salles de classe d'EPC à encourager la pensée critique et l'imagination radicale en vue d'une pédagogie de la pratique de la paix.

Over time, the once exciting idea of finding the key to world peace started to feel childish. However, when I eventually realized I actually do not know how to imagine positive peace or the way there, it left me puzzled. Why is it so hard for me, a peace student, to articulate a vision? (A)

The above reflection from Alva's last exam as a peace and conflict studies (PCS) student inspired us to question the challenges of learning and practicing peace in formal higher education. Students’ motivation to build peace is often met with some level of amusement; despite researchers’ most ardent convictions of contributing to positive change in society, the loss of such rosy dreams is often dismissed as necessary “maturity”—that as students grow and learn, they adjust expectations of changing the world. We argue, however, that the loss of tenderness, hope, and imagination experienced in PCS classrooms is symptomatic of the way academic programs and the research field have evolved and deserves considered (re-)insertion in pedagogy.

While PCS emerged with deep connections between political activism and research, the field has moved away from the radical transformation of society, instead promoting liberal ideals that sustain the status quo. In a context of increasingly neoliberalized higher education, PCS has become depoliticized and directed toward treating symptoms of conflict, rather than dismantling foundations of oppression and inequality ( Byrne et al. 2018 ; Lottholz 2018 ). A gap between practitioners and theorists yields closed knowledge production in academia vis-à-vis solutions brought to “distressed communities” ( Ragandang 2021 ). In this context, we ask, why do we study peace? And for what?

This paper presents a self-reflective case study of a PCS course to explore the challenges and opportunities of realizing such an approach in a higher education classroom. We conclude that critical pedagogy can help re-center classrooms on students rather than content, demystify peace work as something that happens solely in the Global South, and challenge the depoliticization of the classroom. This pedagogy further poses benefits to PCS research through addressing calls for a greater understanding of peace beyond the absence of violence, active envisioning of peace, and decolonizing peace as a Eurocentric practice. Ultimately, we contribute to a growing movement that calls for PCS and International Relations (IR) classrooms to be a place for the exploration of liberation and social change, and for the development of critical thinking and radical imagination toward a peace praxis that calls into question the status quo of pedagogical structures. Our approach centers the classroom not necessarily in terms of what students ought to think, but how ( Tickner 2020 ).

Peace in the 21 st Century: Critical Perspectives on Violence, Justice, and Peace is a 4-week, 7.5 credit elective in the PCS Bachelor's program at Lund University in Sweden. The authors of this paper participated in the course: Barbara and Christie, doctoral candidates, who study and teach in peace and political science classrooms, designed and led the course; and Alva, the recent graduate, participated as a student. The course comprises three lectures focused on core theories and five seminars on specific themes, with assessment via participation and a written exam. This paper studies the first iteration of the course in 2022. The classroom comprised eight students—all women, Swedish, and PCS program students. Enrollment opened late due to delays partially connected to the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning no international students applied. The 3-year PCS program draws instructors from the fields of social science, humanities, and law. Courses cover dynamics of war, politics, and peacebuilding, with topics such as democratization, conflict management and transformation, human rights, and environmental issues.

Our case study analysis consists of novel empirical data collected during and after completion of the course. We analyze course design materials such as the syllabus, planning documents, and classroom materials created and provided by teachers. We also analyze a variety of reflective materials. Alva's final exam, a personal narrative, provides a primary source. After the course, each author journaled individual reflections, recalling impressions and classroom experiences. These narratives compose collective reflections while honoring individual perspectives. We also draw data from anonymous student evaluations given at the conclusion of the course. 1 Additionally, we include input about course structure, workload, and content gathered through discussions held during seminars one-third of the way through, at the mid-point, and the end of the course. In the final course meeting, Barbara and Christie invited course participants to join a collective project of pedagogic reflection, which resulted in this paper. All students gave consent to have their course participation included; only Alva volunteered to join the project and therefore provides more specific student-perspective data.

The paper reflects and remains constrained by how our individual power, privileges, and ideas connect to economic, social, and cultural background, beliefs, and biases ( Ackerly and True 2010 ). All three co-authors on this paper are women, trained in Swedish PCS classrooms (Barbara and Christie for MSSc degrees and Alva a BA), who work with PCS predominantly in English. Alva from Sweden, Christie from United States, and Barbara from Brazil come from privileged backgrounds with access to higher education and stable fulfillment of basic needs. Writing this paper, Alva particularly acknowledges the privilege of her own reflections and progress in Peace in the 21 st Century are made possible by her financial stability. We push ourselves to expand and use critical lenses in our ongoing study and work, but constantly face limitations in our ways of expressing, knowing, and relating as well as realities of working within an institution based upon and prioritizing Western ways of knowing, foci, and outcomes within the broader academic system. Furthermore, while participating in classroom discussions about the problems of West-centric peace practices, we remain part of that system and must consider our own positionalities continuously so as not to claim other people's voices or slip into ideas of being “above” or disconnected from the issues at hand.

This paper reviews pedagogical challenges in PCS higher education and describes key aspects of critical pedagogy in relation to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL). We then present empirical material detailing the course structure and including narratives of physical and emotional experiences from each of the three authors. These underpin the theoretical argumentation and continually connect our positionalities, classroom experiences, and the broader field. We conclude with impressions and implications of critical pedagogy in peace education as a means of working toward an alternative peace praxis.

“Peace” Emerging within and Beyond Academia

Many identify the inception of peace studies amidst post-WWII peace activism and the emergence of modern social science ( Gleditsch et al. 2014 ; Krause 2019 ). Aims of radical social transformation marked the field, combining a theoretical understanding with normative commitments of building peace (e.g., Addams et al. [1906] ; Galtung 1969 ; Hettne 2001 ). The scholarship included armed violence but also explored how these material manifestations connect to structural violence such as poverty and inequality, as well as culturally violent norms and values like colonialism, Eurocentrism, patriarchalism, racism, etc. Research identified and sought to negate deeply rooted structures of violence and segregating values and norms.

As peace studies grew, it increasingly separated research and teaching from politics and activism, leaving early praxis relatively marginalized ( Krause 2019 ). In the 1970s and 1980s, many researchers feared connections with practices of peace and anti-war movements would “give peace research a bad name” and “discredit the scientific mode” ( Singer 1976 , 124). In efforts to further establish and maintain “academic respectability,” the field favored peace research as “science,” following trends in social sciences toward positivist explanations of social phenomena ( Krause 2019 , 293). In parallel, many universities and research centers adopting peace studies saw “conflict” as a more established academic concept and thus favored the double qualification of “peace and conflict studies” ( Gleditsch et al. 2014 , 147). Positivist approaches and a focus on conflict, rather than peace per se, dominates contemporary PCS ( Gleditsch et al. 2014 ; Bright and Gledhill 2018 ).

Beyond academia, concepts of peace and peacebuilding gained traction with the UN and other multinational agencies and international financial organizations and underwent further (re)interpretation through Western ideals of modernization and progress. Peace efforts became increasingly aligned with dominant systems, complying with and sustaining violent projects of resource extraction and economic growth ( Hettne 2001 ; Jaime-Salas et al. 2020 ). Discourses on peace and development became entwined: rather than focusing on liberation from oppression and violence, peace efforts upheld and reproduced dominating and exploitative structures ( Magalhães Teixeira forthcoming ).

While many scholars and practitioners recognize problems with liberal ideas of peace and challenge this hegemon, there remains a largely instrumentalist approach to peace. Lottholz (2018 , 697) observes that the “peace writing industry” enables a universalist ontology catered toward an industry of peacebuilding and dominant values of free market capitalism, ironically distracting from everyday struggles in conflict-affected contexts. These models neither account for nor address colonial violences of the past nor those persisting today ( Byrne et al. 2018 ). Lottholz (2018 , 697) argues that this ultimately “may render it [peace studies] complicit in the instantiation of negative and imperial forms of peace.” Critical voices within PCS and IR more widely urge engagement beyond conflict or the study of overt wars and physical violence, to center mundane “everyday” experiences of peace in order to more comprehensively understand and address conditions of violence and peace (e.g., Cruz and Fontan 2014 ; Väyrynen 2019 ; Wibben et al. 2019 ; Jaime-Salas et al. 2020 ; Parrado Pardo 2020 ). A gap emerges in terms of (re)producing dominant worldviews and limiting ways of understanding and practicing peace.

Classrooms for Peace, to What End?

To what end then does education in PCS aim, and are such goals achievable through prevailing teaching methods? Critical IR scholars point out that the means of teaching shape international affairs, not least through the training of professionals, leaders, and teachers ( Frueh et al. 2021 ; Hornsby and Grant 2021 ). Broadly speaking, IR syllabi, classroom design, and pedagogic choices lack diversity and follow a mainstream Global North canon ( Andrews 2022 ). A study on PCS in Western and especially North American higher education shows centering privatization, deregulation of institutes, free-market economics, and the promotion of the entrepreneurial self as strategies for peace ( Kester 2017 ). Such teaching privileges rational discourse and Western epistemologies as the foundation of knowledge ( Fúnez-Flores 2022 ) and takes place amidst the neoliberalization of higher education, where classrooms are increasingly progress-driven through market values. This constrains education programs and leads to feelings of isolation and competition, ultimately hindering student growth as critical thinkers ( Giroux 2019 , 240) by “restricting the intimacy necessary for deep engagement with critical perspectives, such as anti-oppressive practice” ( Preston and Aslett 2014 , 504).

Furthermore, it has been shown that peace education largely emphasizes psychosocial and technocratic processes while missing broader social issues such that learning may in fact perpetuate inequalities and harm ( Hajir and Kester 2020 ). In many classrooms, closed and nonreflexive teaching streamlines student demonstration of acquiring textbook knowledge ( Kertyzia 2022 , 177–9). This acts to “discipline” learners: excluding pioneers and forcing students into coherence, leading to boredom and distortion of the messy reality of peace and conflict issues ( Sjoberg 2017 , 163–5). Such “passive curricula” focuses on “the what” over “the how” and fails to prepare students for life beyond the classroom ( Smith and Yahlnaaw 2021 , 39).

This state of pedagogy in higher education for peace studies holds implications for not only what students learn, but the ways in which they do so. As Roohi ( Wibben et al. 2019 , 90) explains, “to study peace (and its multiple meanings—or the lack thereof—or to provide a critique of existing traditions of “studying peace”), we must avoid replication of set precedents as they are confined by hegemonizing impulses within peace studies.” Strategies to bring alternatives in balance with current mainstream teaching approaches often center around attention to power relations between ways of knowing, perspectives included, and dynamics in the classroom. Such efforts moreover recognize that teaching is never neutral, but value-laden, and ask scholars to rethink classrooms and curricula as political ( Smith and Hornsby 2021 ).

Existing efforts with critical pedagogy challenge neoliberalizing processes that otherwise increasingly isolate and draw divides between students and teachers, academics and activists ( Mott et al. 2015 ). IR has seen growing attention to power imbalances and perpetuation of violence in pedagogy. Wemheuer-Vogelaar and colleagues (2020 , 18) urge that “IR courses should sensitize students to geo-epistemological biases and epistemic violence while allowing for a collective reflection on the discipline.” Educators of critical PCS focus on inquiry, shaping classrooms for questions and generation of new processes, rather than a space for defining answers ( Bajaj 2015 , 160). Such approaches to help students understand multiple viewpoints and develop critical thinking skills work best through centering student needs ( Kertyzia 2022 , 179). With this focus, the teachers’ role also transforms: instructors adopt an active role sharing experiences and reflecting on their own positionality as a means to build knowledge and skills and to explore different behaviors and worldviews that promote peace ( Bajaj 2015 , 155; Kertyzia 2022 ).

In this line, existing studies explore creative, reflexive ways to break from closed systems (e.g., Bittencourt 2021 ; Tavares de Oliveira 2021 ). As Confortini (2017 , 85) argues, “in order to be relevant, transformative, and rebellious, IR theory must be prefigurative: it must remain connected with an ‘emancipatory outcome’”; prefigurative IR theory helps classroom participants enact visions and think outside traditional teaching. For example, Ling (2017 , 141) builds on Buddhist practices of making space for irreverence, questioning, creativity, and playfulness; she suggests “kōanizing IR” to emancipate the field politically, intellectually, and spiritually, and to move away from foci of parsimony, rigor, and autonomy. Undisciplining IR, Sjoberg (2017 , 166–7) suggests fantasy as a tool of “thinking without a net,” moving beyond singularity and exclusion, asking students to question teaching itself. Other recent interventions push for “doing IR as if people mattered” and explore joy in teaching and studying IR (e.g., Krystalli 2021 ; Särmä 2021 ). Wibben ( Wibben et al. 2019 , 103) highlights that a curriculum leading with utopias and peace, rather than violence and conflict, provides a means for moving beyond pessimism, reflecting that “if we don't make an active effort to imagine what an alternative, peaceful society would look like, we are less likely to realize that another world is not only possible but can be enacted.”

Building on these foundations of critique and examples of existing critical pedagogic approaches, we join in creating an active and creative PCS environment to stimulate transformative peace action. We see peace education itself as a praxis; teaching PCS is not neutral, nor can or should it be seen as removed from experiences and practices of peace. Building on feminist and decolonial perspectives, we explore how a critical pedagogy rooted in praxis can foster curiosity and critical questioning. By shaking the status quo, we argue that students become more engaged and empowered as active “peacebuilders” within and beyond the classroom.

Scholars increasingly highlight that an uncritical peace education may (however unintentionally) reproduce hegemonizing ideas and prescriptive strategies that normalize different forms of violence built into societal structures ( Jaime-Salas et al. 2020 ). Critical PCS recenters transformational potential through supporting students to be strong scholars who practice “doing” peace. In this section, we construct a theoretical framework that aligns normative commitments of peace studies with propositions of critical pedagogy.

We follow the scholarship of bell hooks (1994 ) and Paulo Freire (2017 , [1970] ), using critical pedagogy that challenges students and teachers to dismantle oppressive and violent systems in practice and processes of reflection. We apply this in PCS through three independent but intertwined ideas rooted in SOTL. First, we draw on the idea of engaged pedagogy , which centers learning processes around students’ active participation and learning and moves away from a “banking” system of education with teachers as fountains of knowledge and students as empty buckets ( Freire 2017 [1970] ). Second, we use discomfort to unpack classroom processes in unraveling central concepts and theories. Finally, we embed classroom discussions in the idea of praxis as a tool to transform teaching about peace and activate education in processes of transformation. We discuss each of these in relation to SOTL tools and strategies to facilitate deep learning (e.g., Trigwell 2006 ; Elmgren and Henriksson 2018 ). Figure 1 visualizes this: these core course design components appear in the center, with the second-tier circle identifying components of these, to be discussed in the following subsections. The outer-most circle presents themes from analyzing the design and experiences of the course: a caring classroom model, practicing reflexivity , and envisioning peace . We explore these themes in Section 3.

Critical pedagogy design and outcomes in a PCS classroom.

Engaged Pedagogy

A critical pedagogy approach necessitates (re)structuring learning around engagement between teachers and students. bell hooks (1994 ) deconstructs the idea that solely teachers hold responsibility for classroom dynamics. “Engaged pedagogy” entails education as a practice of freedom that invites both students and teachers to share, be empowered, and grow ( hooks 1994 ). This process cannot be actualized if teachers are encouraging students to take risks, but are not willing to do the same. When teachers engage in bringing narratives of their own lived experiences or personal interrogations into the classroom, it demystifies the view of the teacher as all-knowing and all-encompassing, in opposition with students. Instead, the classroom becomes a communal space for knowledge production. Students join teachers in maintaining a creative learning environment, reflecting and theorizing in connection with their own lived experiences to build confidence in sharing their constant and unfinished process of reasoning.

A constructivist theory of knowledge sees learning shaped as part of a greater whole such that “knowledge and understanding are based on experience and are not regarded as something that can just be transferred from teachers to students” ( Elmgren and Henriksson 2018 , 42). This “deep approach” involves an intention to understand rather than simply complete a requirement, and yields higher quality learning outcomes ( Trigwell 2006 ). Moreover, Freire (2017 [1970] ) urges moving away from a “banking” concept of education, where the teacher and the student are understood as opposites. To Freire (2017 [1970] ), this projects “absolute ignorance” onto the students and reproduces classroom subordination and hierarchy. This dichotomizes people/world and suppresses opportunities or abilities to change oppressive structures. In contrast, a “problem-posing” model of education sees knowledge as co-created and challenged at all stages (Freire 2017 [1970]). By breaking the teacher/student dichotomy of knowledge provider/receiver, the learning process emerges dialectically rather than unilaterally.

Bringing these perspectives to peace studies allows learners to question static understandings of peace and violence, and the separation between academia and the “real world.” Ways of teaching PCS that reproduce the “banking” method of education directly or indirectly reinforce fatalistic views of the world. An engaged pedagogy approach, meanwhile, allows students and teachers to engage in deep theoretical and conceptual discussions, and to reimagine how these processes came about from a political and historical perspective. This depends on fostering curiosity, the use of query as a tool of learning, and teaching that focuses on student needs. Reardon writes, “the sequence and mode of instruction most effectively emerge from the learners’ question, ‘What does this subject have to do with me, my life and the society in which I live?’” ( Reardon and Snauwaert 2011 , 6). Thus, teaching is not necessarily a matter of what students ought to think, but how .

As discussed above, a critical approach to PCS aims to disrupt power relations and foster a deeper understanding of violence and social transformations. Achieving this necessitates engaging with underlying coloniality in how concepts are learned or taught, complicity with a violent hegemony, and personal roles in transformation ( Hajir and Kester 2020 ). A pedagogy of discomfort gives students an opportunity to question their own worldviews and assumptions, creating possibilities for growth, compared to retreats to comfortable, safe spaces ( Davis and Steyn 2012 ; Felman 2013 ). Here, we draw on the tool of activating prior knowledge . SOTL demonstrates that students’ prior knowledge affects how they learn, in terms of sufficient prior knowledge needed to move forward, inaccurate knowledge, or through strengthening appropriate associations. Furthermore, students “learn more readily when they can connect what they are learning to what they already know” ( Ambrose et al. 2010 , 18). This enables engaging with discomfort, since prior knowledge attained both within and beyond classrooms shape how students process and relate to new material. This opposes the banking form of education that separates students’ own experiences and prior knowledge from learning processes. Activating prior knowledge thereby provides an important source of leverage or a vantage point from which to contextualize knowledge and explore the limits and potentials of different research paradigms.

In addition, the tools of practice and feedback complement processes of discomfort. Critical course content may challenge deeply personal perspectives, assumptions, or blind spots. In asking students to engage with this discomfort, an encouraging environment couples practice with targeted, low-stakes feedback. As we introduce new material (concepts, theories, cases) and skills (summarizing, analyzing, critiquing), opportunities for students to apply what they learn and receive feedback help them retain knowledge and build skills ( Ambrose et al. 2010 ; Elmgren and Henriksson 2018 ). Teachers and peers give feedback throughout the course, including through discussion of assessment criteria and how to use feedback. The practice-feedback cycle provides lower-stakes contexts for students to explore the discomfort of questioning assumptions, challenging a status quo, or venturing beyond their zones of comfort.

Through a critical pedagogy for peace education, we aim not only to employ the concepts and tools for education but also to center the relationship between theory and praxis. Freire (2017 [1970] , 126) defines praxis as the combination of theory with both reflection and action directed at the transformation of structures. Praxis holds it impossible to only discuss processes of transformation from a purely intellectual perspective—it must be grounded in action. In the same way, action cannot be limited to pure activism, but requires grounding in theoretical reflection.

Praxis also helps promote intrinsic motivation , a key factor that “generates, directs, and sustains what [students] do to learn” and this can be stimulated in a variety of ways ( Ambrose et al. 2010 , 69). One approach for achieving this is in connecting classroom work to broader societal contexts or students’ future studies, and sharing of teachers’ own enthusiasm for relevant areas of study. Learning anchored in larger problems benefits student motivation and teacher skills in IR classrooms ( Brown and King 2000 ) and fosters deep learning in understanding ideas, seeking meaning, and encouraging dialogue ( Trigwell 2006 ; Elmgren and Henriksson 2018 ).

Finally, the classroom experience helps explore and utilize praxis as an educational tool. Widely accepted constructivist approaches to teaching and learning agree that individuals construct knowledge in relation to their own context, extending classroom environments and cultural communities ( Brown and King 2000 ). As praxis involves theory with action and reflection and further interlinks with the aspect of discomfort, we use class environment to encourage engagement with praxis. Fostering a welcoming and inclusive space entails care (or acts of love, as bell hooks instructs) and using varied methods to shape environments that are stimulating, challenging, and welcoming for all students. For example, classrooms may draw on a variety of media and teaching methods, practice flexibility, vary representation, or offer options for expression. Different activities facilitate particular outcomes and teaching methods, varying in suitability for each student’s needs ( Haggis 2006 ; CAST 2018 ). For example, using teaching materials like songs, poems, or visual art could stimulate learning outcomes differently and also engage students and teachers in practices of active reflection. Using different learning styles provides an opportunity for praxis in the classroom.

To illustrate and analyze critical pedagogy in the classroom, we examine Peace in the 21 st Century , presented in the introduction. The case study draws on two streams of empirics: course design materials and experiences of course participants—both teachers and students. Our analysis describes and reflects on interweaving theoretical bases and practical strategies of engaged pedagogy, discomfort, and praxis from critical pedagogy and SOTL. Table 1 summarizes implementation: teaching and learning activities (TLAs) listed in column 1 receive a mark across the row for which strategies each implements. We also include activities not associated with these specific strategies, but that direct uni- or multi-structural phases of learning, marked as “other.”

TLA strategies in relation to theoretical framework

.	Engaged pedagogy .		Discomfort .			Praxis .		.
.	Communal space .	Problem-posing .	Activating knowledge .	Practice .	Feedback .	Motivation .	Environment .	Other .

Assigned, independent reading	x		x					x
Teacher-led visual and oral presentations, including text excerpts, art, and sharing experiences from research, motivations, challenges, etc.						x		x
Small group discussions: relate pre-existing knowledge to new material			x	x			x
Mentimeter poll: generate word clouds (lecture 3)			x
Concept maps (lecture 1)			x
Criteria activity: students and teachers develop criteria for giving and receiving feedback on seminar presentations (lecture 2)	x	x		x	x	x	x
“Muddiest point” paper (lecture 3)			x	x		x	x

Group discussions: witnessing violence, injustice, peace “close to home”	x	x	x	x		x
Group presentations: summarizing and analyzing an article of their choice (seminar 1, 2); teacher feedback	x	x		x	x			x
Group presentations: apply theory to a selected case (seminar 3, 5); peer, teacher feedback	x	x		x	x			x
Individual presentations: ideas for their final paper; teacher feedback (seminar 5)	x	x		x	x	x		x
Group activity: giving and receiving feedback, requiring analyzing peers’ work based on set criteria; each responds to feedback (seminar 3)	x	x	x	x	x	x
Art activity: create interpretation of critical discussion of peace and praxis using mixed media and later present their work to the class	x		x	x		x	x
Student-generated exam prompts: work in small groups (seminar 4)	x	x				x

Write individual paper: choose 1 prompt to interpret and respond to; teacher feedback			x	x	x	x

.	Engaged pedagogy .		Discomfort .			Praxis .		.
.	Communal space .	Problem-posing .	Activating knowledge .	Practice .	Feedback .	Motivation .	Environment .	Other .

Assigned, independent reading	x		x					x
Teacher-led visual and oral presentations, including text excerpts, art, and sharing experiences from research, motivations, challenges, etc.						x		x
Small group discussions: relate pre-existing knowledge to new material			x	x			x
Mentimeter poll: generate word clouds (lecture 3)			x
Concept maps (lecture 1)			x
Criteria activity: students and teachers develop criteria for giving and receiving feedback on seminar presentations (lecture 2)	x	x		x	x	x	x
“Muddiest point” paper (lecture 3)			x	x		x	x

Group discussions: witnessing violence, injustice, peace “close to home”	x	x	x	x		x
Group presentations: summarizing and analyzing an article of their choice (seminar 1, 2); teacher feedback	x	x		x	x			x
Group presentations: apply theory to a selected case (seminar 3, 5); peer, teacher feedback	x	x		x	x			x
Individual presentations: ideas for their final paper; teacher feedback (seminar 5)	x	x		x	x	x		x
Group activity: giving and receiving feedback, requiring analyzing peers’ work based on set criteria; each responds to feedback (seminar 3)	x	x	x	x	x	x
Art activity: create interpretation of critical discussion of peace and praxis using mixed media and later present their work to the class	x		x	x		x	x
Student-generated exam prompts: work in small groups (seminar 4)	x	x				x

Write individual paper: choose 1 prompt to interpret and respond to; teacher feedback			x	x	x	x

Experiences and outcomes of the course illustrate care as a central theme. The idea of “caring”—in terms of work to build and sustain oneself and relations with others—makes possible the critical thinking we call for as part of a re-imagined peace education. Discomfort played a key role in bringing PCS into our everyday lives, studying peace where we stand, and challenging or exploring each of our roles in learning about and practicing peace. To engage with discomfort necessitates space to make mistakes, try out ideas, or share uncertainties. Teachers not only expected students to share their uncertainties but also expressed their own challenges and hesitations, practicing empathy for learning as a nonlinear, constantly co-constructed process.

The course design included explicit “class care” foundations: designating space for open minds and respect; promoting well-being with regard to the amount of work, emotional labor, and processing of ideas as well as the added stress of studying during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; and maintaining honest communication as grounds for exploring critical thinking. Teachers designed this element with consideration for criticism within the larger PCS Bachelor program. In 2022, a student newspaper reported particularly high pressure within the program that created an “unsustainable” study environment, noting that some students feel ashamed for not keeping up with the workload and others left the program due to stress ( Jönsson and Löthman 2022 ). The article conveys almost an echo-chamber feel, indicating student perceptions that feedback to instructors remains unaddressed in a meaningful way. As a student during this time, Alva perceived the competitiveness within the program as connected to the neoliberalization of higher education, sharing:

I feel like many students participate in the program to be prepared for and strive towards high-ranking positions within international organizations such as the UN, which is embedded in the liberal western order. This in turn colors the motivation to and focus of the studies. (A)

At the very least, this highlights that student needs remain an important and perhaps under-appreciated issue in PCS classrooms.

Utilizing engaged pedagogy in the design meant teachers engage with students in activities to build communal space and a safe environment for discomfort. For instance, Barbara describes a sense of empowerment through shared vulnerability among teachers and students:

[As a teacher,] I felt particularly connected with the students one time when we were discussing a very open question and one of the students said that they liked how I sometimes started my reflections or contribution in discussions with ‘I am not certain about this…’ or ‘I am not sure how I feel about this…’ because it allowed them to also have uncertainties and to express their own process of reasoning and learning inside the classroom. (B)

As this narrative demonstrates, teacher growth and empowerment enable an environment of care and help deconstruct dichotomies between teachers and students. Space to hesitate or volunteer “What I don't understand is. . .” kept discussions open and allowed for engagement with critical theory in messy and complicated processes of learning and unlearning.

Both teachers and students share classroom responsibilities of practicing care, producing knowledge, and bringing excitement to the learning environment. Alva reflects on her student perspective:

The classroom environment felt safe, kind, and open for learning and growth. But this did not result in flat discussions where everyone just agreed with each other, to avoid difficult emotions. On the contrary, it facilitated more open discussion, constructive feedback, and less fear of experiencing difficult emotions. (A)

Within this environment and in response to initial questions and tone set by the teachers, students contributed to the classroom environment in meaningful ways. Aside from active participation and dedication to studies, they provided feedback on teacher intentions, their well-being and workload, and maintained an open and safe environment for discussion. Students took part in creating course criteria related to classroom activities and shared their priorities for learning outcomes.

As the course dynamics started promoting deeper and longer discussions, we practiced specific skills. As the course proceeded, participants completed more complex tasks; for each TLA, teachers explained expectations and relevance for learning; all course participants continually refined goals for TLAs. Barbara reflects that this shifted the class atmosphere and environment:

I think a very important part of motivating students was that we as teachers always explained to the students why we were doing a specific activity, what we were expecting to get from it. Students can feel frustrated during class exercises when they don't understand how different activities can help in their education, but once we started explaining to the students the motivation behind every exercise, they felt more included in this process of learning. (B)

Practice activities coupled with targeted, low-stakes feedback. For instance; in the first seminar, students presented and received student feedback; in the next, students provided feedback, with teachers supplementing at the end. This activity provided feedback on students’ performance, and also strengthened their skills in giving and receiving feedback:

I remember a student sharing that they don't know what to do with feedback from teachers. I think part of this is the timing—most feedback comes as comments on the final exam rather than throughout a learning process. But also, when we did this exercise, I noticed that having to give feedback changed how students received feedback. It was less confrontational or defensive. They approached comments with humility and even gratitude. (C)

In another example, class participants practiced giving and receiving care during a check-in after the first third of the course. Teachers opened an informal conversation with students, sharing the plan for the rest of the course and inviting students to suggest changes. Students expressed great interest in the material, but shared a sense of overload and difficulty meeting course demands. Christie reflects on a moment during this conversation, of sitting in a feeling of vulnerability and practicing trust to respond to student needs:

As a teacher, I often feel I need to have all the answers and lay out a concrete plan for students. Now, they were more or less telling us our plan didn't work as they wanted, and not only that, they rejected our suggested change of plans and proposed their own! […] We had to trust that it was not simply a matter of being studious enough – committing the necessary hours to complete tasks—but in fact that the students wanted more time to engage with the material. (C)

As a result, teachers and students worked together to restructure the course. This involved cutting some seminar plans, reorganizing assignments, and designing new activities to allow more space for students to find and follow their own interests. After completion of the course, one participant reported in their anonymous evaluation that they felt “engaged, on track, and supported throughout,” another assessed the course as “stimulating, motivating, exciting,” and a third cited the “collaborative nature” as the most enjoyable aspects of the course. Evaluations also noted time for discussion and encouragement of critical assessment as important in their overall learning, and one remarked that the experience stood in contrast to other courses taken. Ultimately, the class design—created by teachers as well as students—resulted in richer discussions and greater well-being for participants.

Practicing Reflexivity

Initially, reflexivity was not a particular focus of the course, but through analyzing processes of engaged pedagogy, discomfort, and praxis from the course design, both students and teachers found reflexivity playing an important role. One implementation of this was through requiring students to read beyond traditional PCS literature, explore cases of violence “closer to home,” question their goals or role within peace education, and explore the limitations of this field. Barbara reflects,

Throughout my own studies I have always felt like there was a huge distance between students of PCS and the realities of peace work. My intention with designing this course was to break with the dichotomy that peacebuilding is only practiced in the Global South by international organizations from the Global North; that this is the only career path available for students to work with building peace. By broadening the idea of peace, violence, and justice, we wanted to shake student's preconceived ideas and to rethink these issues in their own countries/communities. (B)

In the course evaluations, students shared that they not only found the literature to be interesting and different to usual PCS encounters, but also “very captivating and genuinely enjoyable to read.”

To achieve this, activating prior knowledge played a key role. Activities throughout the course gauged what students already knew and connected coursework with prior knowledge as a means to clarify or adjust any weak or distorted understandings, as well as to strengthen retention and understanding of new material. We constantly referred back to concepts and theories that are central and PCS “canon,” and engaged in deep, critical discussion about how these concepts and theories operate, and the consequences or implications of using these. This design element led to discussions about how some ideas are conceptualized only with Global South countries and communities in mind, and implications of lacking explanatory power to understand phenomena of violence, injustice, and peace in the Global North. Participants deconstructed these concepts and theories to unpack “hidden” hegemonizing impulses.

Results of this materialized during the mid-way seminar when students worked in small groups to present case studies on racial injustices or indigenous movements. All students chose to focus on examples from their home country, Sweden. Students posed questions to each other and shared reflections that problematized both teacher and student positions within society and academia, historically and within national and community contexts. This led to challenging discussions about ethics in PCS from a perspective of positionality, rather than for example as a check-box completed for field study. We later connected this with Freire's “revolutionary futurity,” the idea that in order to create transformation in our societies, it is not enough to reflect on it intellectually, but it is also necessary to act upon the world. For Freire (2017 [1970] , 50), true solidarity requires acts of love “to affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.” Engaging with positionality in theory, in this case through embodied intellectualizing, explored different personal and communal dimensions of solidarity.

Another class activity involves creating visual representations of peace, engaging participants more intimately in theorizing by raising questions about their own values, positions, privileges, etc. We used different materials to explore ideas and practice free expression in response to a series of prompts, including: “what does peace look like for you; who builds peace; and what would it look like to embody a critical praxis” (with art outcomes in Image 1 ). Some students created art together with a partner; others worked independently. This connects to problem posing as a tool in engaged pedagogy and taps into care and empathy, which draw us closer together through our own positionality. Students and teachers explored discomfort and demonstrated a willingness to learn from others, which pushed the boundaries of how we know peace as well as how we think and communicate ideas in relation to others. For example, in earlier class discussions, building peace referred to development work abroad; in these creations, peace is represented as resting, food, nature, no work, or freedom of form. Peace comes closer to home here, building on the qualitative difference of peace(s) rather than the absence of violence, as well as the constructive power of discomfort that engaged with questions of privilege or opportunity. Outcomes of this were multiple, as a student shares:

Using mixed media to envision peace.

At first, the exercise felt a bit silly. But when we got started, and in the reflection afterward, we learned a lot about the power and implications of what we had just done. It was not necessarily the physical result of the art session that was the most valuable outcome, although looking at the physical piece can be a good reminder of your visions. But for me, it was the agency in the act of thinking about my utopia, and the intuitiveness of choosing materials, colors and shapes. A trust in my own ideas. (A)

As encapsulated by hooks (1994 , 21), not only students but also teachers must grow and be empowered: “That empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks. [. . .] When professors bring narratives of their experiences into classroom discussions it eliminates the possibility that we can function as all-knowing, silent interrogators.” For example, many exercises in class entailed working in small groups, where teachers joined as participants. From a student perspective, Alva reflects that in many classrooms, teachers operate from a position of expertise, watching or assisting students while they carry out exercises. Including teachers as learners in class exercises, instead,

was both a reminder that our teachers are also students, that no one is ever fully learned, and it flattened the classroom hierarchy in a way that felt liberating and respectful of everyone's learning journeys. (A)

Striving to dissolve hierarchies between teacher and learner allowed a dialectic of critical thinking. This is important because when we activate prior knowledge, this means we are not only recalling facts or existing knowledge but also engaging with it.

Finally, practicing reflexivity reveals another important takeaway from this case study regarding classroom hierarchies. Following the problem-posing model from Freire, the course design aims to move away from a “banking model” of education and dissolve hierarchies between students and teachers. Out of the class discussion to restructure part of the course, discussed previously, participants dedicated a seminar to co-designing the final exam. Teachers gave parameters on program requirements and provided alternative ideas and inspiration for different formats; the rest of the seminar left space for participant brainstorming and discussion. Despite engaging discussion, all participants struggled to explore possibilities within the exam assignment. From a teacher's perspective, this activity was more challenging than expected:

Exams and final papers are such an engrained part of the classroom experience, that when we asked students what they wanted to get from the exam, what they would like to see not only in terms of questions but also format, it was quite difficult to piece something together. In the end, most students chose to write a traditional paper in response to one of the prompts. (C)

In the end, students agreed to a format of responding to one of multiple exam prompts. During the seminar, they worked in groups to write prompts, which teachers later consolidated and posted in the online course portal. Beyond thinking “outside the box,” this example illustrates that challenging engrained classroom hierarchies requires deeper unsettling and unlearning for both teachers and students; doing so within an existing system certainly presents significant limitations. It was not only the students who struggled with how to approach the open exam task; teachers also questioned how to grade such an assignment fairly.

Overall, we assess that the problem-posing model was more successful with regard to the learning process. That is, while teachers held responsibility for convening the course and conducting relevant administrative tasks, students and teachers co-produced knowledge and exercised autonomy for example in choosing cases to research, speaking up about their priorities and interests, and contributing to critical discussion. However, unsettling other hierarchies that shape classroom experiences requires further stretching—perhaps through a program-wide effort—and brings us back to questioning what purpose breaking hierarchies serves and for whom.

Envisioning Peace

Finally, the design and implementation of this course related to the aspect of “envisioning” peace. We take steps toward this through using art in teaching materials. For example, we drew on publicly available images created by artists for use in social justice protest, teaching, and movements (e.g., art by Molly Costello 2 ). These images were used in their own right, rather than as representative or illustrative of something expressed in text. For example, art was projected on classroom screens as a means to open discussion and shape an atmosphere:

The lecture slides were filled with beautiful art. It was liberating to see that it is ok to express utopian or idealistic ideas about peace, that it is not something that does not belong in ‘serious classrooms’ (A).

The art enabled teachers and students to draw on visualizations as a means of fostering inspiration and creative thinking, to evoke powerful images of what could be , rather than relying only on, for instance, figures depicting rates of injustice or images of violence. The power of representation here also expands possibilities for what counts as knowledge and how we might express ideas.

As discussed under practicing reflexivity above, art as a medium for critical thinking was also used in TLAs to facilitate imagining and envisioning peace. Image 1 shows the outcomes of the art activity. Students and teachers worked from a prompt to create an artistic representation of their own understanding of peace and peace praxis, using materials of printed images, colored pens, colored paper, scissors, and glue and tape to create images on a piece of blank paper. The opportunity to work with physical material, producing something with our hands—using different parts of the body and media other than screens and keyboards moved our imaginations away from texts, academic references, etc. This pushed beyond “boxed-in” ideas of peace or definitions from textbooks, beyond the replication of established ideas. Students and teachers strived to create visual, independent thoughts and ideas. The artistic activity linked to theoretical creativity—opening up new ideas, exploring limitations of thought that we may not be conscious of, and working to actually picture how a “peaceful utopia” might look.

Using art in these different ways, we engage with theoretical ideas of peace and also the emotional component of learning and articulating peace. For example, peace was not only represented as an experience or material object (e.g., people in connection, bodies resting, etc.) but also expressed through the intentional use of different colors and forms. Art here provided a critical tool for the production of knowledge, sharing messages in a nonlinear way, and as an alternative means of expressing thoughts and emotions.

This tied to motivation as well, incorporated for example by using dialectic feedback, multimedia, flexibility in assignment formats, and independent choice in study topics. This provided a way to translate critical pedagogy into the dynamics of the classroom and in operationalizing tenants of the SOTL. This translated in the student experience, as demonstrated by course evaluation remarks praising the “collaborative nature of the course and how Barbara and Christie really facilitated open discussion” and marking high satisfaction with “the seminars and the encouragement from the teachers. I felt very included and encouraged to learn and participate.” Notably, however, despite teachers’ efforts to facilitate open discussions, there remained some desire from students for more structure. The openness of course activities also led to some repetition and although one participant praised how active students were allowed to be in the course, they also mention “the seminars and lectures were quite similar” and another writes, “I would have appreciated a bit more structure to guide the discussion, slightly more specific questions for example.”

The exam-design seminar focused on the collective decision of what skills and knowledge on which students wished to be graded and wanted to strengthen, as well as the teachers' objectives and expectations. This departed from more traditional formats and allowed for more creativity and deeper discussion of the course debates. For instance, Alva wrote a personal narrative format exam, and shares about her first experience including the first-person “I” in her paper:

I had never done this before, and found it liberating and empowering. I think that previously, […] I would have rather opted for already established links and conclusions because I was removed from the equation. Now I, very practically, felt like I had a voice. (A)

As discussed above, the open exam aligned well in theory, but in practice, it highlighted the need for integrating this practice more holistically. Christie reflects on, pointing to the potential for further strengthening teaching activities through deeper engagement with critical pedagogy:

I wonder about students who will not go into research or writing career. How do these exams serve them in their education and future endeavors, beyond passing a course at university? What can students expect to gain from such a task? What can teachers gain as students ourselves - is there a point to these exams beyond fulfilling a grade requirement? (C)

This narrative redirects to hooks's assertion that an engaged pedagogy classroom should meet student needs and foster communal space ( 1994 ). The open exam asked students to design questions as well as format. In the end, students reflected on the activity with mixed responses. In their course evaluation, one student praised that the exam “both tested my knowledge but also my ability to think independently” and another shared that “it was very nice to have a collaborative approach throughout the course, but especially with the exam.” A third student wished for it to be “more grounded in the actual course literature.” These responses highlight the challenges of critical pedagogy within a program and university context where training and expectations demand more narrow performances.

Finally, course activities that prompted participants to reconsider peace education, as we have attempted to do in this paper as well, move us a step further in asking “classrooms for peace, to what end?” and toward fostering radical imagination for a pedagogy of peace praxis. One student evaluated the course as providing a “chance to learn about things I did not know before;” another gained “new perspectives on peace.” These comments point to the benefits of critical course content as well as varied types of content. At the very least, we as teachers and students see increased critical thinking at a deep level among course participants. As a student, Alva adds:

Before this course, I had not been explicitly asked to envision peace in the PCS program. My understanding of peace revolved around what happens if “we” manage to “stop” war and violence. […] After the course, peace became center stage, personal, something I had agency in envisioning, something hopeful. It made me ask myself what I want to contribute with. (A)

To this point, Alva reflects on discussions with classmates, sharing that this course changed not only how they thought about and related to peace as a research topic and everyday phenomenon, but also prompted them to consider the next steps after graduating from the Bachelor program.

This case study illustrates the processes and outcomes of implementing critical pedagogy in a PCS classroom. Reviews and studies in PCS and IR demonstrate that dominant worldviews and teaching methods have shaped PCS as a field that (re)produces study programs, research, and practices along Western, liberal ways of knowing and envisioning peace. We contribute to this important discussion by demonstrating concrete techniques for moving beyond limited views of peace, responding to student needs, and developing critical thinking skills. Designed with components of engaged pedagogy, discomfort, and praxis, the course achieved a caring classroom, practiced reflexivity, and helped envision peace. These outcomes of the critical pedagogy shaped creative environments to stimulate transformative peace action within and beyond classrooms. This study, though presenting a single case and limited perspective, contributes to an emerging current of critical pedagogy in IR and PCS by providing concrete examples, discussing not only critical content (such as theory) but also diversity of media in teaching (for example varied types of activities and incorporation of art). The writing of this paper itself poses a pedagogical contribution. All three co-authors shaped a study dynamic that parallels the course in emphasizing care and well-being, demystifying and troubling hierarchies of knowledge production, and sharing loads of labor. Alva's participation in this project expands upon and contributes to critical debates about who holds and produces knowledge in the classroom as well as researcher/informant silos. Her engagement helps demonstrate an example of teacher-student collaboration toward the radical reimaging of peace education and research.

Reflections and rigorous study on the state of PCS teaching and learning hold implications for contributions to unique university environments, the future of academic peace research, and the implementation of peace programming or interventions. As Reardon and Snauwaert (2011 , 2–3) stress, “Starting from the long-held premise that peace education is education for responsible global citizenship, our task in general terms is educating toward political efficacy [. . .] intended to move the world toward the achievement of a more just and less violent global order.” Students of PCS therefore must continually engage with critical questioning on the role of classrooms: not only course content but the means by which knowledge is created and shared, as well as the connections made (or not) between theory, reflection, and practice.

These encouraging results are instructive also through their limitations. Largely self-reflective, author biases and positionalities bound this study. Not least, all three co-authors express happiness with the course and shared an interest in further reflection to write this paper. Varied input from participants would add much to understanding this instance of implementing critical pedagogy. Even with course evaluations, this study would have benefitted from specific reflections on TLA impacts throughout and after the course, for instance, to gauge fulfillment of participant needs and motivation. Moreover, additional research might focus on the interplay of critical pedagogy with more liberal PCS teaching, and implications for student and teacher experiences and learning as well as for the broader field of PCS.

We encourage further studies exploring critical pedagogy in different classroom contexts, detailing more long-term outcomes for both teachers and students, and connecting critical pedagogies directly with peace “in the field.” What limitations or challenges might this approach pose for educational institutions, individual teachers and students, or programmatic curricula? A deeper study could unpack implications and case-specificities of ethical considerations; for instance, (how) does sharing personal experiences or vulnerabilities trigger harm or good for participants? Are there more or less “safe” ways to implement engaged and critical pedagogies? More broadly, how does the method and content of critical pedagogy influence PCS as a field? Targeted case studies could provide much-needed insight on the impacts of critical pedagogy within the boundaries of “traditional” university settings. With this paper, we engage with and prompt further questions in the continuously developing field of PCS, taking our own classroom experiences as a stepping stone in this larger effort. Implications encourage greater engagement with student needs, both in terms of their experience in the classroom and paths after graduating; activation of reflexivity in teaching and studying peace; and incorporation of creativity in PCS.

We firstly thank the participants of the Peace in the 21 st Century course for creating knowledge, questioning limits, and critically examining what it means to build peace within and beyond the university. Your dedicated engagement and creativity make this pedagogic work possible. We also extend thanks to Lund University's Department of Political Science, especially Roxanna Sjöstedt, for supporting the development of this course, and to the anonymous reviewers and editors at ISP, as well as Carrie Reiling and other colleagues at the 2022 Peace Research in Sweden Conference for your support and generous comments that greatly strengthened this paper.

Data collection and handling took place in Sweden and thus fall under the purview of the Ethics Review Authority for research in Sweden. All identifiable content (quotes, names, positionality statements, personal reflections) are limited to those of the three co-authors. Other quotes and empirical material related to people stem only from anonymized sources such as course evaluations which do not contain identifiers. Because the data does not contain sensitive personal data, involve a physical or psychological intervention on a research subject, or uses biological material, the research does not require a decision from the Ethics Review Authority in Sweden.

Available at https://www.mollycostello.com/

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The Philosophy of Education: Freire’s Critical Pedagogy

First Online: 18 May 2022

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Jennifer L Johnston 4 ,
Nigel Hart 4 &
Annalisa Manca 4

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Multiple social, educational, and clinical discourses influence medical education but few more so than the strongly positivist biomedical tradition, the Foucauldian clinical gaze, and societal privilege. Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy offers a radical reorientation for medical education, focusing on power and structural inequalities. Freire denounced the mindless banking models of education, instead advocating the development of conscientização (critical consciousnes s), a phenomenological way of being in the world and with the world that flattens power structures and empowers learners to address inequality. Using a case study of teaching undergraduate medical students within the clinical context of General Practice in a UK medical school, we demonstrate and model the affordances of this clinical domain to move past the banking model approach, building disruptive dialogic and dialectic educational activities. Personal clinical storytelling and the use of pedagogy as an activist endeavours to embrace knowledge as generative, shared, interactive, co-constructed, and goal-orientated. We end this chapter with a series of suggestions for others to move beyond the banking approach in medical education toward the development of critical consciousness in future doctors.

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Johnston, J.L., Hart, N., Manca, A. (2022). The Philosophy of Education: Freire’s Critical Pedagogy. In: Brown, M.E.L., Veen, M., Finn, G.M. (eds) Applied Philosophy for Health Professions Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1512-3_8

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Critical Theory Pedagogies Guide

Welcome to the Guide

Critical Pedagogy

Anti-Racist Pedagogy
Feminist Pedagogy
Inclusive Pedagogy

Critical Theory

Critical pedagogy is based in critical theory. Critical pedagogy connects the concepts of critical theory with education.

“Many “critical theories”...have emerged in connection with the many social movements that identify varied dimensions of the domination of human beings in modern societies. In both the broad and the narrow senses, however, a critical theory provides the descriptive and normative bases for social inquiry aimed at decreasing domination and increasing freedom in all their forms" (Bohman, J., Flynn, J., & Celikates, R., 2019).

Critical Pedagogy Influences

Critical pedagogy originates especially from the work of Paulo Freire, an educator and philosopher whose work Pedagogy of the Oppressed formed the basis for critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy overlaps with pedagogies such as feminist pedagogy, anti-racist pedagogy, and inclusive pedagogy. These three pedagogies strongly pull from key theories introduced by critical pedagogues.

Education as Political

Critical pedagogy identifies education as being inherently political, and therefore, not neutral (Kincheloe, 2004, p.2). Critical pedagogy encourages students and instructors to challenge commonly accepted assumptions that reveal hidden power structures, inequities, and injustice in society.

Critical pedagogy acknowledges education is political; education has a history of inequalities, oppression, and domination that need to be recognized (Kincheloe, 2004). Likewise, education can become a way in which students are equipped to engage against systems of oppression when existing structures in education are challenged.

"A central tenet of pedagogy maintains that the classroom, curricular, and school structures teachers enter are not neutral sites waiting to be shaped by educational professionals" (Kincheloe, 2004, p.2).

Education and Social Justice

Critical pedagogy connects social justice and teaching/learning. Students are seen as active participants in the classroom, and students, alongside teachers, have power.

Critical pedagogy at its core seeks to recognize systems and patterns of oppression within society and education itself, and in doing so, decrease oppression and increase freedom. As such, social justice is at the core of critical pedagogy.

"Questions of democracy and justice cannot be separated from the most fundamental features of teaching and learning” (Kincheloe, 2004, p.6).

Empowering Students

In order to decrease oppression and domination, critical pedagogy seeks to empower students through enabling them to recognize the ways in which "dominant power operates in numerous and often hidden ways" (Kincheloe). Students and instructors alike are empowered through their knowledge of the hidden influences and politics within education and throughout society that lead to oppression and domination.

In this system, teachers become students and students become teachers. Paulo Freire introduced the concept of the "banking model of education" as a criticism of passive learning (Freire, p.72). Critical pedagogy pushes against passive learning, which places the instructor in a position of much higher power than the student. Active learning is one method in which the instructor can become less powerful in the classroom by having students collaborate in creating the content of the course. Dialogue is also used as a form of education. By allowing many perspectives, students' and instructors' perspectives can be changed and learning takes place.

“We must expose the hidden politics of what is labeled neutral” (Kincheloe, 2004, p.10).

Putting it into Practice

Encouraging Dialogue

Focus on providing activities that encourage dialogue among students and instructor.
Dialogue is an area in which students can offer perspectives and contribute to the instruction as active participants.
Incorporate discussion-based activities into instruction.

Active Learning

Active learning gives students an opportunity to engage in the course using their own knowledge and personal experiences, as well as to learn using multiple methods of engagement. Active learning strategies such as group activities need to have clear expectations and roles, and instructors can check in to make sure students understand the expectations and roles. Brown University provides several examples of active learning strategies outlined below:

Small Discussion

Entry/Exit Tickets - short prompts that provide instructors with quick information. Entry tickets can help students focus on a particular topic. Exit tickets can help determine students' understanding of the material or allow students to think about what they've learned.
Minute Paper/Free Writing: Short, 1-2 minute writing exercises where students can share their thoughts or provide feedback. Can also focus on a particular topic and have students make predictions about a topic.
A Gallery Walk: Prompts are placed around the room (or in a Google Doc if online) and students can go from station to station and answer the prompts.
Think-Pair-Share: Students are given a question or problem to consider on their own. Then, students are grouped into pairs to discuss and share their responses before sharing with the group.
Jigsaw: Students are grouped into teams to solve a problem or analyze something. The teams can work on separate parts of an assignment before sharing to the whole class, or each student in the team can be assigned with a different part of the assignment. The puzzle pieces come together at the end to share a solution or conclusions.

Large Groups

Incorporate pauses: Incorporate pauses into lectures to give students time to take notes or compare notes with peers.
Clicker Questions / Polls: Can help increase participation in the class and facilitate active learning methods. Can be incorporated with other activities (e.g. clicker question, discussion with a peer, large discussion).
Carousel Brainstorm: Students are separated into small groups, and a piece of paper is passed along from group to group with responses being written down. Students vote on the "best" responses.
Role Playing: Role playing can be used to provide a new perspective. Students take on the perspective of historical figures/authors or other characters and interact from that figure's perspective.
Sequence of Events: Students can work together to put a process into the correct sequence of events. This can test their understanding of the process.

Diverse Perspectives

Activities which allow students to experience alternative perspectives can also help invite dialogue and critical thinking.

Key Figures & Theorists

Paulo Freire (1921-1997) - Paulo Freire was a philosopher of education whose work became the foundation of critical pedagogy. Read more about Paulo Freire at the Freire Institute .
Henry Giroux (1943-Present) - A founding theorist in critical pedagogy, professor, and scholar. Read more about Giroux on Henry Giroux's website .
bell hooks (1952-Present) - A scholar, feminist, and activist whose work focuses on intersectionality, feminism, and critical pedagogy.
Peter McLaren (1948-Present) - A leading scholar in critical pedagogy whose work relates to Marxist theory, critical literacy, and cultural studies. Read more about McLaren at his Chapman University faculty profile.
Ira Shor (1945-Present) - A scholar and professor whose research is based in Freire's critical pedagogy. Read more about Shor on his faculty page at City University of New York.
Antonia Darder (1952-Present) - A scholar whose work covers issues of pedagogy, race, and culture. Darder's work is based in Freire's theories. Read more about Darder.
Joe Kincheloe (1950 - 2008) - Joe Kincheloe was a scholar whose work focused on critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and urban studies.
Shirley Steinberg - A scholar, activist, and author whose work focuses on critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and social justice. Read more about Steinberg at her faculty page at the University of Calgary.

Key Readings

Paulo Freire Key Terms

Key Terms Introduced by Paulo Freire:

Banking Model of Education - On the banking model of education, students are empty receptacles and teachers hold the source of knowledge. Students are treated as passive and as lacking knowledge themselves. "Knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing" (Freire Institute).

Praxis (Action/Reflection) - "It is not enough for people to come together in dialogue in order to gain knowledge of their social reality. They must act together upon their environment in order critically to reflect upon their reality and so transform it through further action and critical reflection" (Freire Institute).

Dialogue - "To enter into dialogue presupposes equality amongst participants. Each must trust the others; there must be mutual respect and love (care and commitment). Each one must question what he or she knows and realize that through dialogue existing thoughts will change and new knowledge will be created" (Freire Institute).

Conscientization - "The process of developing a critical awareness of one’s social reality through reflection and action. Action is fundamental because it is the process of changing the reality. Paulo Freire says that we all acquire social myths which have a dominant tendency, and so learning is a critical process which depends upon uncovering real problems and actual needs" (Freire Institute).

Additional Readings & Resources

Foundations of Critical Pedagogy (Stony Brook University) A LibGuide with a collection of readings regarding critical pedagogy.
Interrupting Bias - PALS Approach (University of Michigan) A PDF handout outlining the PALS method of interrupting bias in dialogue. The purpose of this method is to "introduce a new perspective in a way that others can hear."
Four Levels of Oppression (University of Michigan) Including 1) individual oppression, 2) interpersonal oppression, 3) structural/institutional/systemic oppression, 4) cultural oppression.

Referenced Guides & Sources

Bohman, J., Flynn, J., & Celikates, R. (2019). Critical Theory. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Concepts Used by Paulo Freire. (n.d.). Freire Institute.
Kincheloe, J. L. (2004). Critical pedagogy primer. P. Lang.
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DOI: 10.1080/09639284.2021.1997768
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Analysing teaching-practice offers an opportunity to answer questions like what is critical to making a pedagogy democratic, what are the factors that support a teacher to be critical in her teaching? Or what restricts the teacher in being critical in her work? This paper seeks to address some of these questions by presenting the findings of an investigation into the practice of teachers who are committed to the idea of critical pedagogy. The scope of the study is limited to understanding the critical aspects that are related to the teacher's work within the classroom. The paper analyses the theoretical arguments that are relevant to critical pedagogy in relation to teachers' practices as they emerged during the study. The study, conducted in the South Indian state of Kerala, reveals that teacher subjectivity and schooling situations interact in a dialectical fashion to shape the nature of classroom teaching. The political subjectivity of the teachers, shaped by their close interaction with the Kerala Science Literature Movement (KSSP) makes their pedagogy critical in nature. On the other hand, the standardized curriculum and mechanically disciplined school environment continuously challenge the teachers' efforts at being critical in their work.

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Ambuja Sahoo

midhun.k Kulappuram

2.Minutes of the meeting of the Board of Studies in F.ducation (Cd) held on 20-02-2015 3. One day workshop for finalization of syllabus held on 14.05.2015 4. Minutes of the meeting of the Board of Studies in Education (Cd) held on 08-06-2015 5. Minutes of the meeting of the Faculty of Education held on 08-06-2015 .. 6. Letter dated23-07-15 from the Chairmaq Board of Studies in Education (9d) 1. o*r"l The NCTE vide paper read (1) above has made new Norms & Regulation for Teacher Education programmes in India and enhanced duration ofB.Ed. programme from one year to two years. The Board of Studies in Education (Cd) held on20-02-2015 as per paper read (2) above, resolved to revise the curriculum of B.Ed. in tune with the guidelines of NCTE regulation 2014 and a subcommittee was constituted for framing structure, scheme, pattem and guidelines for two year B.Ed. Programme. A workshop as per paper read (3) above was conducted at the University Office, Thavakara on 14-05-2015 to finalize the syllabus for two year B.Ed. Programme. 4. The meeting of the Board of Studies in Education (Cd) held on 08-06-2015 vide reference (4) above, approved the Regulation, Scheme, Syllabus and Model Question Papers of two year B.Ed. Programme. 5. As per paper read (5) above, the meeting of the Faculty of Education held on 08-06-2015 approved the Regulatioru Scheme, Syllabus and Model Question Papers of two year B.Ed. hogramme. Vide paper read (6) above, the Chairman, Board of Studies in Education (Cd) has forwarded the regulation, Scheme and Syllabus for two year B.Ed. Programme for implementation with effect from 2015 admission The Vice-Chancellor, after considering the matter in detail, and in exercise of the powers of the Academic Council, conferred under Section 1l (l) of Kannur University Act, 1996 and all other enabling provisions read together with, has accorded sanction to implement the RegulatiorL Scheme, Syllabus and ]r4odel Question Papers for two year Bachelor of Education Programme with effect from 2015 admission subject to report Academic Council. P.T.O. 2. 3. 6. 7.

Education times , 1(1), 237-47

kunnathodi abdul gafoor

This study in the context of National Curriculum Framework (2005) and constructivist approach to learning and critical pedagogy, gauges the attainment of upper primary students in Malayalam, science, social studies and mathematics in 2011 and compares it with that of their age group during 1999. Overall achievement of students has come down after a decade, especially attainment of higher order competencies. The achievement of especially higher order thinking skills and comprehension has not enhanced, and at times came down. Overall science attainment and attainment in higher order skills in science has become poorer after a decade Even comprehension and deriving conclusions that are especially focused in the present primary curriculum cannot be firmly said to have improved. Only area that could withstand the new pedagogic practice is reading factual and societal issues, as reflected in above or at par performance of present students on passage comprehension, social science achievement and daily arithmetic. Implications and suggestions are made.

Manojan K P

This about how Adivasi children perceive and experience the concern over their traditional knowledge bases in both in community and schooling.

Gurumurthy Kasinathan

Dr. SURESH BABU G.S

Education and the Public Sphere conceptually and empirically investigates and unfolds several complexities embedded in the educational system in India by exploring it as a site of transforming the public sphere. Bringing together a range of contributions from education and the social sciences, this volume analyses and reflects on structures in education and how these mediate and transform the public sphere in post-colonial India. Drawing on fresh research, case studies and testimony, this book debates issues such as the crisis in higher education, privatisation and politicisation of education, the reciprocal relationship between marginalisation and education, and the lasting impact that modern pedagogical practices have on the wider world. It critically reflects on the direct engagement of people, institutions, various cultural sensibilities and public debate to animate how these combined structures affect the teaching and learning process. From a unique interdisciplinary perspective, this book initiates an analytical enquiry into teaching and the culture of learning, generating critical discourses on the system as a whole. This book will be vital reading for researchers, scholars and postgraduate students in the field of international education, education theory and social justice education.

Education and the Public Sphere Exploring the Structures of Mediation in Post-Colonial India Edited BySuresh Babu G.S

Sarvendra Yadav

In recent years we have witnessed public opinions are formed on general assumptions rather than any critical engagement. This has phenomenally affected the quality of open debates in the public sphere. Opinions and consents are “manufactured” on crucial social and political issues on media and social networking sites. This has raised serious concerns over the nature of knowledge being imparted through the education system. Certain forms of knowledge are promoted by neo-liberal educational policies which help in the knowledge economy by the cost of other knowledge forms. This has led to the creation of two kinds knowledge systems. First, knowledge of a market which is driven by the logic of demand and supply and is largely dictated by techno-centric education. Second, knowledge for critical learning which is imaginative, sensitive, in-depth and, socially responsible but less popular, and is advocated by humanities and social science education. These two streams of knowledge systems are derived from different academic cultures. Practitioners of the scientific knowledge system lack humanitarian sympathies. On the other hand, humanities develop an apathetic attitude towards scientists. It is assumed that scientists, although pragmatic and optimistic, have no concern for the humanities. Scientists believe that literary intellectuals totally lack foresight and are not forthcoming towards their fellow men in terms of social commitments (Snow, 1959).

Prof Baiju K Nath

The National Policy on Education (NPE, 1986) proposed the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) as a means of evolving a national system of education, recommending a core component derived from the vision of national development enshrined in the constitution. The KCF-2007 draws upon the National Curriculum Framework of 2005 (NCF - 2005) introduced critical pedagogy and issue based approach in education from the academic year 2008-09. While implementing a new approach in educational system, it requires a thorough research base for its success. Eventhough a lot of works have been conducted in critical pedagogy, majority were in adult learning; and researches in issue based approach are very less. Inorder to transact the new curricular approach in a successful manner, researches in issue based approach and critical pedagogy is to be encouraged. This paper tries to identify the researchable areas in issue based approach and critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy should be perceived as pedagogy for existence or survival. Hence what is critical will be changed by age level, experience, subject of study, type of institutions, etc. Access, equity, and quality are the basic dimensions of any type of education. Conceptual analysis and prioritisation of competencies at each level is the basic issue to be resolved. Though access in terms of institutions is realised, access in terms of resources is not even estimated. The critical concepts required and pedagogy to attain that of elementary level child will be entirely different from that of secondary level pupil.

Journal of Pedagogy

Constantia Charalambous

The main aim of the article is to explore the role of Collaborative Action Research (CAR) in promoting inclusive education within a mainstream school in Cy-prus. The preliminary data for this research were gathered using a mixed methodology approach. CAR was then carried out in a single school with 150 participants. The study then examined the extent to which CAR enhanced inclusive education, using interviews. Finally, the results showed that CAR is one of the factors which can lead to inclusion.

Journal of Indian Education

seema shukla ojha

History is a written record of human experiences across time and space. The learners of history need to relate various kind of available sources to understand historical events and concepts. It is however observed that the classroom teaching in history is blended with a collection of facts, rote memorisation leading to boredom, leaving very little space for critical thinking among students. It is pertinent for teachers to evolve effective ways of learning history to generate and retain interest in the subject. How we can make the teaching-learning of history effective in schools, is a question frequently asked in different forums. This paper is the outcome of an educational intervention, with an objective to explore the effectiveness of integrating student-centred measures in a social science classroom at the elementary stage as a medium to enhance critical thinking skills and student engagement.

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Using a Proposed Library Guide Assessment Standards Rubric and a Peer Review Process to Pedagogically Improve Library Guides: A Case Study

Library guides can help librarians provide information to their patrons regarding their library resources, services, and tools. Despite their perceived usefulness, there is little discussion in designing library guides pedagogically by following a set of assessment standards for a quality-checked review. Instructional designers regularly use vetted assessment standards and a peer review process for building high-quality courses, yet librarians typically do not when designing library guides. This article explores using a set of standards remixed from SUNY’s Online Course Quality Review Rubric or OSCQR and a peer review process. The authors used a case study approach to test the effectiveness of building library guides with the proposed standards by tasking college students to assess two Fake News guides (one revised to meet the proposed standards). Results indicated most students preferred the revised library guide to the original guide for personal use. The majority valued the revised guide for integrating into a learning management system and perceived it to be more beneficial for professors to teach from. Future studies should replicate this study and include additional perspectives from faculty and how they perceive the pedagogical values of a library guide designed following the proposed rubric.

A smiling librarian assists a student who is sitting at a computer located within the library.

Image: “Helpful”. Digital image created with Midjourney AI. By Trina McCowan CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Introduction

Library guides or LibGuides are a proprietary publishing tool for libraries and museums created by the company Springshare; librarians can use LibGuides to publish on a variety of topics centered around research (Dotson, 2021; Springshare, n. d.). For consistency, the authors will use the term library guides moving forward. Librarians can use Springshare’s tool to publish web pages to educate users on library subjects, topics, procedures, or processes (Coombs, 2015). Additionally, librarians can work with teaching faculty to create course guides that compile resources for specific classes (Berić-Stojšić & Dubicki, 2016; Clever, 2020). According to Springshare (n. d.), library guides are widely used by academic, museum, school, and public libraries; approximately 130,000 libraries worldwide use this library tool (Springshare, n. d.). The library guides’ popularity and continued use may stem from their ease of use as it eliminates the need to know a coding language to develop online content. (Bergstrom-Lynch, 2019).

Baker (2014) described library guides as the “evolutionary descendants of library pathfinders” (p. 108). The first pathfinders were paper brochures that provided suggested resources for advanced research. Often, librarians created these tools for the advanced practitioner as patrons granted access to the library were researchers and seasoned scholars. As the end users were already experts, there was little need for librarians to provide instruction for using the resources (Emanuel, 2013). Later, programs such as MIT’s 1970s Project Intrex developed pathfinders that presented students with library resources in their fields of interest (Conrad & Stevens, 2019). As technology advanced, librarians created and curated pathfinders for online access (Emanuel, 2013).

Today, due to the modernization of pathfinders as library guides and their ease of discoverability, students and unaffiliated online users often find these guides without the assistance of a librarian (Emanuel, 2013). Search engines such as Google can extend a library guide’s reach far beyond a single institutional website, drawing the attention of information experts and novice internet users alike (Brewer et al., 2017; Emanuel, 2013; Lauseng et al., 2021). This expanded access means a librarian will not always be present to help interpret and explain the library guide’s learning objectives. Stone et al. (2018) state that library guides should be built using pedagogical principles “where the guide walks the student through the research process” (p. 280). Bergstrom-Lynch (2019) argues that there has been an abundant focus on user-centered library design studies but little focus on learning-centered design. Bergstrom-Lynch (2019) advocates for more attention directed to learning-centered design principles as library guides are integrated into Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Canvas and Blackboard (Berić-Stojšić & Dubicki, 2016; Bielat et al., 2013; Lauseng et al., 2021) and can be presented as a learning module for the library (Emanuel, 2013; Mann et al., 2013). The use of library guides as online learning and teaching tools is not novel; however, their creation and evaluation using instructional design principles are a recent development (Bergstrom-Lynch, 2019).

A core component of an instructional designer’s job is to ensure that online course development meets the institution’s standards for quality assurance (Halupa, 2019). Instructional designers can aid with writing appropriate course and learning objectives and selecting learning activities and assessments that align back to the module’s objectives. Additionally, they can provide feedback on designing a course that is student-friendly—being mindful of cognitive overload, course layout, font options, and color selection. Additionally, instructional designers are trained in designing learning content that meets accessibility standards (Halupa, 2019).

Instructional design teams and teaching faculty can choose from a variety of quality assurance standards rubrics to reference to ensure that key elements for online learning are present in the online course environment. Examples of quality assurance tools include Quality Matters (QM) Higher Education Rubric and SUNY’s Online Course Quality Review Rubric or OSCQR, a professional development course refreshment process with a rubric (Kathuria & Becker, 2021; OSCQR-SUNY, n.d.). QM is a not-for-profit subscribing service that provides education on assessing online courses through the organization’s assessment rubric of general and specific standards (Unal & Unal, 2016). The assessment process is a “collegial, faculty-driven, research-based peer review process…” (Unal & Unal, 2016, p. 464). For a national review, QM suggests three reviewers certified and trained with QM to conduct a quality review. There should be a content specialist and one external reviewer outside of the university involved in the process (Pickens & Witte, 2015). Some universities, such as the University of North Florida, submit online courses for a QM certificate with High-Quality recognition or an in-house review based on the standards earning High-Quality designation. For an in-house review at UNF, a subject matter expert, instructional designer, and trained faculty reviewer assess the course to provide feedback based on the standards (CIRT, “Online Course Design Quality Review”, n. d.; Hulen, 2022). Instructional designers at some institutions may use other pedagogical rubrics that are freely available and not proprietary. OSCQR is an openly licensed online course review rubric that allows use and/or adaptation (OSCQR-SUNY, n. d.). SUNYY-OSCQR’s rubric is a tool that can be used as a professional development exercise when building and/or refreshing online courses (OSCQR-SUNY, n.d.).

Typically, library guides do not receive a vetted vigorous pedagogical peer review process like online courses. Because library guides are more accessible and are used as teaching tools, they should be crafted for a diverse audience and easy for first-time library guide users to understand and navigate (Bergstrom-Lynch, 2019; Smith et al., 2023). However, Conrad & Stevens (2019) state: “Inexperienced content creators can inadvertently develop guides that are difficult to use, lacking consistent templates and containing overwhelming amounts of information” (p. 49). Lee et al. (2021) reviewed library guides about the systematic review process. Although this topic is complex, Lee et al. (2021) noted that there was a lack of instruction about the systematic review process presented. If instructional opportunities are missing from the most complex topics, one may need to review all types of library guides with fresh eyes.

Moukhliss aims to describe a set of quality review standards, the Library Guide Assessment Standards (LGAS) rubric with annotations that she created based on the nature of library guides, and by remixing the SUNY-OSCQR rubric. Two trained reviewers are recommended to work with their peer review coordinator to individually engage in the review process and then convene to discuss the results. A standard will be marked Met when both of the reviewers mark it as Met, noting the evidence to support the Met designation. In order for a standard to be marked as Met, the library guide author should show evidence of 85% accuracy or higher per standard. To pass the quality-checked review to receive a quality-checked badge, the peer review team should note that 85% of the standards are marked as “Met.” If the review fails, the library guide author may continue to edit the guide or publish the guide without the quality-checked badge. Details regarding the peer review process are shared in the Library Guide Assessment Standards for Quality-Checked Review library guide. Select the Peer Review Training Materials tab for the training workbook and tutorial.

Situational Context

The University of North Florida (UNF) Thomas G. Carpenter Library services an R2 university of approximately 16,500 students. The UNF Center for Instruction and Research Technology (CIRT) supports two online learning librarians. The online librarians’ roles are to provide online instruction services to UNF faculty. CIRT staff advocate for online teaching faculty to submit their online courses to undergo a rigorous quality review process. Faculty can obtain a High-Quality designation for course design by working with an instructional designer and an appointed peer reviewer from UNF, or they may opt to aim for a High-Quality review after three years of course implementation by submitting for national review with Quality Matters (Hulen, 2022). Currently, Moukhliss serves as a peer reviewer for online High-Quality course reviews.

After several High-Quality course reviews, Moukhliss questioned why there are no current vetted review standards for the various types of library guides reviewed and completed by trained librarians as there are for online courses and thus borrowed from The SUNY Online Course Quality Review Rubric OSCQR to re-mix as the Library Guide Assessment Standards Rubric with annotations .

Literature Review

The amount of peer-reviewed literature on library guide design is shockingly small considering how many library guides have been created. The current research focus has been on usability and user experience studies, although some researchers have begun to focus on instructional design principles. As Bergstrom-Lynch (2019) states, peer-reviewed literature addressing library guide design through the lens of instructional design principles is at a stage of infancy. Researchers have primarily focused on collecting data on usage and usability (Conrad & Stevens, 2019; Oullette, 2011; Quintel, 2016). German (2017), an instructional design librarian, argues that when the library guide is created and maintained through a learner-centered point of view, librarians will see library guides as “e-learning tools” (p. 163). Lee et al. (2021) noted the value of integrating active learning activities into library guides. Stone et al. (2018) conducted a comparison study between two library guides, one library guide as-is and the other re-designed with pedagogical insight. Stone et al. (2018) concluded that “a pedagogical guide design, organizing resources around the information literacy research process and explaining the ‘why’ and ‘how of the process, leads to better student learning than the pathfinder design” (p. 290). A library guide representative of a pathfinder design lists resources rather than explaining them. Lee and Lowe (2018) conducted a similar study and noted more user interaction when viewing the pedagogically designed guide vs. the guide not designed with pedagogical principles. Hence Stone (2018) and Lee and Lowe (2018) discovered similar findings.

Authors like German (2017) and Lee et al. (2021) have touched upon instructional design topics. For example, Adebonojo (2010) described aligning the content of a subject library guide to library sources shared in course syllabi. Still, the author does not expand to discuss any other instructional design principles. Bergstrom-Lynch (2019) thinks more comprehensively, advocating for the use of the ADDIE instructional design model (an acronym for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) when building library guides. The analysis phase encourages the designer to note problems with current instruction. The design phase entails how the designer will rectify the learning gap from the analysis phase. The development phase entails adding instructional materials, activities, and assessments. The implementation phase involves introducing the materials to learners. The evaluation phase enables the designer to collect feedback and improve content based on suggestions. ADDIE is cyclical and iterative (Bergstrom-Lynch, 2019). Allen (2017) introduces librarians to instructional design theories in the context of building an online information literacy asynchronous course but does not tie in using these theories for building library guides.

As Bergstrom-Lynch (2019) focused on best practices for library guide design based on ADDIE, German et al. (2017) used service design thinking constructs to build effective instruction guides. The five core principles of service design thinking are “user-centered, co-creative, sequencing, evidencing, and holistic” (German et al., 2017, p. 163). Focusing on the user encourages the designer to think like a student and ask: What do I need to know to successfully master this content? The co-creator stage invites other stakeholders to add their perspectives and/or expertise to the guide. The sequencing component invites the librarian to think through the role of the librarian and library services before, during, and after instruction. German et al. (2017) advocates for information from each stage to be communicated in the library guide. Evidencing involves the librarian reviewing the library guide to ensure that the content aligns with the learning objective (German et al., 2017). Both authors advocate for instructional design methods but fall short of suggesting an assessment rubric for designing and peer-reviewing guides.

Smith et al. (2023) developed a library guide rubric for their library guide redesign project at the Kelvin Smith Library at Case Western Reserve University. This rubric focused heavily on accessibility standards using the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool or WAVE. Although Smith et al. (2023) discuss a rubric, the rubric was crafted as an evaluation tool for the author of the guide rather than for a peer review process.

Although Bergstrom-Lynch (2019), German et al. (2017), and Smith et al. (2023) are pioneering best practices for library guides, they take different approaches. For example, Bergstrom-Lynch (2019) presents best practices for cyclical re-evaluation of the guide based on instructional design principles and derives their best practices based on their usability studies. The Smith et al. (2023) rubric emphasizes accessibility standards for ADA compliance—essential for course designers but a component of a more comprehensive rubric. German et al. (2017) emphasizes a user-centered design through the design thinking method. Moukhliss intends to add to the literature by suggesting using a remix of a vetted tool that course developers use as a professional development exercise with faculty. This OSCQR-SUNY tool envelopes the varying perspectives of Bergstrom-Lynch (2019), Smith et al. (2023), and German et al. (2017).

Strengths & Weaknesses of the Library Guide

As with any tool, library guides have their strengths and weaknesses. Positives include indications that library guides can play a positive role in improving students’ grades, retention, and overall research skills (Brewer et al., 2017; May & Leighton, 2013; Wakeham et al., 2012). Additionally, library guides are easy to build and update (Baker, 2014; Conrad & Stevens, 2019). They can accommodate RSS feeds, videos, blogs, and chat (Baker, 2014), are accessible to the world, and cover a vast range of library research topics. According to Lauseng et al. (2021), library guides are discoverable through Googling and integrated into online Learning Management Systems (LMS). These factors support the view that library guides hold educational value and should be reconsidered for use as an Open Education Resource (Lauseng et al., 2021).

However, there are no perfect educational tools. Library guide weaknesses include their underutilization largely due to students not knowing what they are or how to find them (Bagshaw & Yorke-Barber, 2018; Conrad & Stevens, 2019; Ouellette, 2011). Additionally, library guides can be difficult for students to navigate, contain unnecessary content, and overuse library jargon (Sonsteby & DeJonghe, 2013). Conrad & Stevens (2019) described a usability study where the students were disoriented when using library guides and reported that they did not understand their purpose, function, or how to return to the library homepage. Lee et al. (2021) and Baker (2014) suggest that librarians tend to employ the “kitchen sink” (Baker, 2014, p. 110) approach to build library guides, thus overloading the guide with unapplicable content.

Critical Pedagogy and Library Guides

In his publication titled “The Philosophy of the Oppressed,” Paulo Freire introduced the theory of critical pedagogy and asserted that most educational models have the effect of reinforcing systems of societal injustice through the assumption that students are empty vessels who need to be filled with knowledge and skills curated by the intellectual elite (Kincheloe, 2012; Downey, 2016). Early in the 21 st century, information professionals built upon the belief that “Critical pedagogy is, in essence, a project that positions education as a catalyst for social justice” (Tewell, 2015, p. 26) by developing “critical information literacy” to address what some saw as the Association of College and Research Libraries’ technically sound, but socially unaware “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” (Cuevas-Cerveró et al., 2023). In subsequent years, numerous librarians and educators have written about the role of information literacy in dismantling systems of oppression, citing the need to promote “critical engagement with information sources” while recognizing that knowledge creation is a collaborative process in which everyone engages (Downey, 2016, p. 41).

The majority of scholarly output on library guides focus on user-centered design rather than specifically advocating for critical pedagogical methods. Yet there are a few scholars, such as Lechtenberg & Gold (2022), emphasizing how the lack of pedagogical training within LIS programs often results in information-centric library guides rather than learner-centric ones. Their presentation at LOEX 2022 reiterates the importance of user-centered design in all steps of guide creation, including deciding whether a library guide is needed.

Additionally, the literature demonstrates that library guides are useful tools in delivering critical information literacy instruction and interventions. For instance, Hare and Evanson used a library guide to list open-access sources as part of their Information Privilege Outreach programming for undergraduate students approaching graduation (Hare & Evanson, 2018). Likewise, Buck and Valentino required students in their “OER and Social Justice” course to create a library guide designed to educate faculty about the benefits of open educational resources, partly due to students’ familiarity with the design and functionality of similar research guides (Buck & Valentino, 2018). As tools that have been used to communicate the principles of critical pedagogy, the evaluation of institutional library guides should consider how effectively critical pedagogy is incorporated into their design.

The Library Guide Assessment Standards (LGAS) Rubric

For the remixed rubric, Moukhliss changed the term “course” from OSCQR’s original verbiage to “library guide,” and Moukhliss dropped some original standards based on the differences between the expectations for an online course (i.e., rubrics, syllabus, etc.) and a library guide. Likewise, several standards were added in response to the pros and cons of the library guides, as found in the literature. Additionally, Moukhliss wrote annotations to add clarity to each standard for the peer review process. For example, Standard 2 in the remixed LGAS rubric prompts the reviewer to see if the author defines the term library guide since research has indicated that students do not know what library guides are nor how to find them (Bagshaw & Yorke-Barber, 2018; Conrad & Stevens, 2019; Ouellette, 2011). Standard 7 suggests that the librarian provide links to the profiles of other librarian liaisons who may serve the audience using the library guide. Standard 9 prompts the reviewer to see if the library guide links to the library university’s homepage to clarify Conrad & Stevens’s (2019) conundrum that the library guide is not the library homepage. These additional standards were added to ensure that users are provided with adequate information about the nature of library guides, who publishes them, and how to locate additional guides to address the confusion that Conrad & Stevens (2019) noted in their library guide usability study. Additionally, these added standards may be helpful for those who discover library guides through a Google search.

Moukhliss intends to use the additional standards to provide context about the library guide to novice users, thus addressing the issue of information privilege or the assumption that everyone starts with the same background knowledge. Standard 22 was added to negate adding unnecessary resources to the guide, which Baker (2014) and Conrad & Stevens (2019) cited as a common problem. Standard 27 encourages the use of Creative Commons attribution, as suggested by Lauseng et al. (2021). They found that not only faculty, staff, and students at the University of Illinois Chicago were using their Evidence Based Medicine library guide, but also a wider audience. Recognizing its strong visibility and significant external usage, they considered it a potential candidate for an Open Educational Resource (OER). As library guides are often found without the help of the librarian, Standard 28 suggests that reviewers check that library guide authors provide steps for accessing research tools and databases suggested in the library guide outside of the context of the guide. Providing such information may help to negate Conrad & Stevens’s (2019) findings regarding students’ feelings of disorientation while using a library guide and difficulty navigating to the library homepage from the guide.

Standard 30 was added so that students have a dedicated Get Help tab explaining the variety of ways the user can contact their library and/or librarians for additional assistance. Standard 31 was re-written so that the user could check for their understanding in a way appropriate for the guide (Lee et al., 2021), such as a low-stakes quiz or poll. Finally, Standard 32 encourages the user to provide feedback regarding the guide’s usefulness, content, design, etc., with the understanding that learning objectives follow an iterative cycle and are not stagnant. Student feedback can help the authoring librarian update and maintain the guide’s relevancy to users and will give students the opportunity to become co-creators of the knowledge they consume.

UNF’s LGAS Rubric for Quality-Checked Review library guide includes an additional tab for a Quality-Checked badge (available on the Maintenance Checklist/Test Your Knowledge tab) and a suggested maintenance checklist (See Maintenance Checklist/ Test Your Knowledge tab) for monthly review, twice-a-year, and yearly reviews. Moukhliss borrowed and remixed the checklist from the Vanderbilt University Libraries (current as of 8/21/2023). The Peer Review Training Materials tab includes a training workbook and training video on the LGAS rubric, the annotations, and the peer review process. Moukhliss provides a Creative Commons license to the library guide to encourage other institutions to reuse and/or remix at the LGAS’s Start Here page .

Methodology, Theoretical Model, and Framework

Moukhliss and McCowan used the qualitative case study methodology. Gephart (2004) stated, “Qualitative research is multimethod research that uses an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. . . . Qualitative research emphasizes qualities of entities —the processes and meanings that occur naturally” (pp. 454-455). Moukhliss and McCowan selected the exploratory multi-case study so that they could assess multiple student user/learning perspectives when accessing, navigating, and digesting the two library guides.

The theoretical model used for this study is the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. This quality improvement model has evolved with input from Walter Shewart and Dr. Edward Deming (Koehler & Pankowski, 1996). The cycle walks a team through four steps: Plan, Do, Check, and Act. The Plan phase allows time for one to think through problems such as the lack of design standards for library guides. During the “Do” phase, Moukhliss selected and made a remix of the quality review tool SUNY OSCQR. Additionally, she selected a “kitchen sink” (Baker, 2014, p. 10) library guide and redesigned it with the proposed rubric. Moukhliss’s aim was only to remove dead links and/or outdated information when restructuring the guide. The only items deemed outdated were the CRAAP test learning object and selected books from the curated e-book list. The CRAAP test was removed, and no substitution of similar materials was made. The list of selected books was updated in the revised guide to reflect current publications. As Moukhliss restructured the guide, she decided to use tabbed boxes to chunk and sequence information to appease Standards 11, 12, 13, and 15. You may view this restructuring by comparing the original Fake News guide and the revised Fake News guide . The “Do” phase includes Moukhliss recruiting participants to evaluate the two library guides — the original Fake News guide with the Fake News Guide 2 revised to follow the suggested standards and peer review process. Moukhliss and McCowan submitted the library guide study proposal to the Institutional Review Board in November 2023, and the study was marked Exempt. In December 2023, Moukhliss recruited participants by emailing faculty, distributing flyers in the library, posting flyers on display boards, and adding a digital flyer to each library floor’s lightboard display. The librarians added the incentive of 10-dollar Starbucks gift cards to the first 15 students who signed consent forms and successfully completed the 30-minute recorded Zoom session (or until saturation was reached).

Moukhliss interviewed one test pilot (P1) and ten students (P2-P11) for this study and she noted saturation after her seventh interview but continued to ten participants to increase certainty. Although some may view this as a low sample population, the data aligns with the peer-reviewed literature. Hennick & Kaiser (2019) discuss saturation in in-depth interviews and point to Guest et al.’s (2006) study. Guest et al. (2006) determined that after reviewing data from 60 interviews deemed in-depth, they determined that saturation presented itself between Interviews 7-12 “at which point 88% of all themes were developed and 97% of important (high frequency) themes were identified” (Hennick & Kaiser, 2019, para. 5). The Questionnaire framework for this study is centered around Bloom’s Taxonomy. This taxonomy provides a framework of action verbs that align with the hierarchical levels of learning. Bloom’s taxonomy includes verbiage for learning objectives that align with the level of the learning outcomes of remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. McCowan incorporated various levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy as she built the UX script used for this study. Moukhliss interchanged Fake News and Fake News 2 as Guide A and Guide B throughout the interview sessions. After each recorded Zoom session, Moukhliss reviewed the session and recorded the task completion times on the script, recorded the data to the scorecard, and updated data into the qualitative software NVivo. Both script and scorecard are available on the Library Guide Study page . Moukhliss created a codebook with participant information, assigned code names for everyone, and stored the codebook to a password protected file of her work computer to keep identifiable information secure. Moukhliss used the code names Participant 1, Participant 2, Participant 3, etc. and removed all personal identifiers as she prepared to upload the study’s data to a qualitative software system. For coding, the authors chose the NVivo platform, a qualitative assessment tool that can organize data by type (correspondence, observation, and interviews), enable the researcher(s) to easily insert notes in each file, and develop codes to discover themes. Moukhliss coded the interviews based on the LGAS (i.e., Standard 1, 2, 3, etc.). Additional codes were added regarding navigation and content. Moukhliss & McCowan reviewed the codes for themes and preferences regarding library guide design.

The “Check” phase guided Moukhliss and McCowan in considering the implementation of the LGAS rubric and peer review process for library guides at UNF. During this phase, they reviewed participants’ qualitative responses to the Fake News library guide and the Fake News 2 library guide. Data from the “Check” phase will drive Moukhliss & McCowan to make recommendations in the “Act” phase (Koehler & Pankowski, 1996), which will be discussed in the Conclusion.

Interviewees

Moukhliss worked with one test pilot and interviewed ten students for this study. The ten students’ majors were representative of the following: Nursing, Computer Science, Communications, Public Administration, Electrical Engineering, Information Technology, Health Sciences, Philosophy, and Criminal Justice. Participants included two first-year students, two sophomores, three juniors, two seniors, and one graduate student. Eight participants used their desktops, whereas two completed the study on their phones. When evaluating the familiarity of users with library guides, one participant noted they had never used a library guide before, two others stated they rarely used them, and another two students stated that they occasionally used them. Finally, five students stated they did not know whether they had ever used one or not.

Findings & Discussion

Overall, students were faster at navigating the Fake News 2 Revised guide vs. the original guide except for listing the 5 Types of Fake News. This may be because the 5 Types of Fake News were listed on the original guide’s first page. The overall successful mean navigability for the original guide was 39 seconds, whereas the revised guide’s mean was 22.2 seconds for the successful completion of a task. Moukhliss noted a pattern of failed completion tasks often linked back to poorly labeled sections of the new and revised guides.

Although the content was identical in both guides except for the removal of outdated information, dead website links from the original guide, and the updated list of e-books to the revised guide, the students’ overall mean confidence level indicated 4.2 for the original guide’s information vs a 4.4 for the revised guide. The mean recommendation likelihood level for the original guide is 6.4, whereas the mean recommendation likelihood level of the revised guide increased to 7.9.

Regarding library guide personal preferences for a course reading, one student indicated they would want to work off the old guide, and 9 others indicated wanting to work from the revised guide for the following reasons:

Organization and layout are more effective.
Information is presented more clearly.
There is a tab for dedicated UNF resources.
Easier to navigate.
Less jumbled
Easier to follow when working with peers.

Regarding perceptions of which guide a professor may choose to teach with, three chose the original guide, whereas the other seven indicated the revised guide. One student stated that the old guide was more straightforward and that the instructor could explain the guide if they were using it during direct instruction. Preferences for the revised guide include:

More “interactive-ness” and quizzes
Summaries are present.
Presentation of content is better.
Locating information is easier.
The guide doesn’t feel like “a massive run-on sentence.”
Ease for “flipping through the topics.”
Presence of library consult and contact information.

Although not part of the interview questions, Moukhliss was able to document that eight participants were not aware that a library guide could be embedded into a Canvas course, and one participant was aware. Moukhliss is unaware of the other participant’s experiences with an embedded library guide. Regarding preferences for embedding the library guide in Canvas, one student voted for the old guide whereas nine preferred the revised guide. Remarks for the revised guide include the inclusion of necessary Get Help information for struggling students and for the guide’s ease of navigation.

Although not every standard from the LGAS rubric was brought up in conversation throughout the student interviews, the LGAS that were seen as positive and appreciated by students to integrate into a guide’s design include the following Standards: 4, 7, 11, 12, 15, 21, 22, 28, 30, and standards 31. It was noted through action that two students navigated the revised guide by the hyperlinked learning objectives and not by side navigation (Standard 5), thus indicating that Standard 5 may hold value for those who maneuvered the guide through the stated objectives. Moukhliss noted during her observations that one limitation to hyperlinking the object to a specific library guide page is when that page includes a tabbed box. The library guide author is unable to directly link to a specific sub-tab from the box. Instead, the link defaults to the first page of the box’s information. Thus, students maneuvering the guide expected to find the listed objective on the first tab of the tabbed box, and they did not innately click through the sub-tabs to discover the listed objective.

Through observation, Moukhliss noted that six students struggled to understand how to initially navigate the library guides using the side navigation functionality, but after time with the guide and/or Moukhliss educating them on side navigation, they were successful. Moukhliss noted that for students who were comfortable with navigating a guide or after Moukhliss educated them on navigating the guide, students preferred the sub-tabbed boxes of the revised guide to the organization of the original guide. The students found neither library guide perfect, but Moukhliss & McCowan noted there was an overall theme that organization of information and proper sequencing and chunking of the information was perceived as important by the students. Three students commented on appreciating clarification for each part of the guide, which provides leverage for proposed Standard 28.

Additionally, two students appreciated the library guide author profile picture and contact information on each page and three students positively remarked on the presence of a Get Help tab on the revised guide. One participant stated that professors want students to have a point of contact with their library liaisons, and they do not like “anonymous pages” (referring to the original guide lacking an author profile). The final participant wanted to see more consult widgets listed throughout the library guide. Regarding the Fake News 2 Guide, two students preferred that more content information and less information about getting started be present on the first page of the guide. Furthermore, images and design mattered, as one student remarked that they did not like the Fake News 2 banner, and several others disliked the lack of imagery on the first page of the Fake News 2 guide. For both guides, students consistently remarked on liking the Fake News infographics.

Those supporting the old guide or parts of the original guide, three students liked the CRAAP Test worksheet and wanted to see it in the revised guide, not knowing that the worksheet was deemed dated by members of the instruction team and thus removed by Moukhliss for that reason. One student wanted to see the CRAAP test worksheet repurposed to be a flowchart regarding fake news. Moukhliss noted that most of the students perceived objects listed on the original guide and revised guide to be current, relevant, and vetted. Eight participants did not question their usefulness or relevancy or whether the library guide author was maintaining the guide. Only one student pointed out that the old guide had a list of outdated e-books and that the list was refreshed for the new guide. Thus, Moukhliss’s observations may reinforce to library guide authors that library guides should be reviewed and refreshed regularly as proposed by Standard 22 —⎯ as most students from this study appeared to take for face value that what is presented on the guide to be not only vetted but continuously maintained.

Initial data from this study indicate that using the LGAS rubric with annotations and a peer review process may improve the learning experience for students, especially in relation to being mindful of what information to include in a library guide, as well as the sequencing and chunking of the information. Early data indicates students appreciate a Get Help section and want to see Contact Us and library liaison/author information throughout the guide’s pages.

Because six students initially struggled with maneuvering through a guide, Moukhliss & McCowan suggest including instructions on how to navigate in either the library guide banner and/or a brief introductory video for the Start Here page or both locations. Here is a screenshot of sample banner instructions:

A sample Fake News library guide banner being used to point students to how to maneuver the guide. Banner states: "Navigate this guide by selecting the tabs." And "Some pages of this guide include subtags to click into."

As stated, Moukhliss noted that most students were not aware of the presence of library guides in their Canvas courses. This may indicate that librarians should provide direct instruction during one-shots in not only what library guides are and how to maneuver them, but directly model how to access an embedded guide within Canvas.

Library guides have considerable pedagogical potential. However, there are no widely-used rubrics for evaluating whether a particular library guide has design features that support its intended learning outcomes. Based on this study, librarians who adopt or adapt the LGAS rubric will be more likely to design library guides that support students’ ability to complete relevant tasks. At UNF, Moukhliss and McCowan plan to suggest to administration to employ the LGAS rubric and annotations with a peer review process and to consider templatizing their institution’s (UNF) library guides to honor the proposed standard that was deemed most impactful by the student participants. This includes recommending to library administration to include a Get Started tab for guide template(s) and to include placeholders for introductory text, a library guide navigation video tutorial, visual navigational instructions embedded in the guide’s banner, and the inclusion of the guide’s learning objectives. Furthermore, they propose an institutionally vetted Get Help tab that can be mapped to each guide. Other proposals include templatizing each page to include the following: a page synopsis, applicable explanations for accessing library-specific resources and tools from the library’s homepage, placeholders for general contact information, a link to the library liaison directory, a placeholder for the author bio picture, feedback, assessment, and a research consultation link or widget as well as instructions for accessing the library’s homepage.

Following the creation of a standardized template, Moukhliss plans to propose to recruit a team of volunteer peer reviewers (library staff, librarians, library administration) and provide training on the LGAS rubric, the annotations, and the peer review process. She will recommend all library guide authors to train on the proposed LGAS rubric and the new library guide template for future library guide authorship projects and for updating and improving existing guides based on the standards. The training will cover the rubric, the annotations, and the maintenance calendar checklists for monthly, bi-annually, and yearly review. All proposed training materials are available at the LGAS’s Start Here page .

Moukhliss and McCowan encourage other college and university librarians to consider using or remixing the proposed LGAS rubric for a quality-checked review and to conduct studies on students’ perceptions of the rubric to add data to this research. The authors suggest future studies to survey both students and faculty on their perspectives on using a quality assurance rubric and peer review process to increase the pedagogical value of a library guide. Moukhliss & McCowan encourage future authors of studies to report on their successes and struggles for forming and training library colleagues on using a quality-checked rubric for library guide design and the peer review process.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express our gratitude to Kelly Lindberg and Ryan Randall, our peer reviewers. As well, we would like to thank the staff at In The Library with the Lead Pipe, including our publishing editor, Jaena Rae Cabrera.

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A Plan to Protect Critical Infrastructure from 21st Century Threats

By Jen Easterly, Director, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

On April 30 th , the White House released National Security Memorandum-22 (NSM) on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience , which updates national policy on how the U.S. government protects and secures critical infrastructure from cyber and all-hazard threats. NSM-22 recognizes the changed risk landscape over the past decade and leverages the enhanced authorities of federal departments and agencies to implement a new risk management cycle that prioritizes collaborating with partners to identify and mitigate sector, cross-sector, and nationally significant risk. The culmination of this cycle is the creation of the 2025 National Infrastructure Risk Management Plan (National Plan)—updating and replacing the 2013 National Infrastructure Protection Plan —and will guide federal efforts to secure and protect critical infrastructure over the coming years.

As the National Coordinator for critical infrastructure security and resilience, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will develop this National Plan to be forward-looking and employ all available federal tools, resources, and authorities to manage and reduce national-level risks, including those cascading across critical infrastructure sectors. CISA will look to its partners to help us and the other Sector Risk Management Agencies (SRMAs) over the course of the year as we develop this foundational document.

The National Plan Must Account for the Evolution of Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Consequences

Building off the priorities of NSM-22, the 2025 National Plan will articulate how the U.S. government will collaborate with partners to identify and manage national risk. This will be an evolution from the 2013 National Plan which described risk management as “the cornerstone” to strengthening critical infrastructure security and resilience. Eleven years later, the spirit of this concept holds true; yet it must evolve due to pervasive vulnerabilities and an elevated threat landscape, which could lead to cascading regional and national consequences. Fortunately, over that same decade, Congress and successive administrations have established new agencies, authorities, and collaborative partnerships that empower a whole-of-society approach to national risk management. As the National Coordinator, CISA will be the primary driver for operationalizing this approach through the National Plan.

The National Plan will be Informed by a New Risk Management Cycle

NSM-22 details a new risk management cycle that requires SRMAs to identify, assess, and prioritize risk within their respective sectors and develop sector risk management plans to address those risks. With these risk assessments and risk management plans, CISA will identify and prioritize systemic, cross-sector, and nationally significant risk through a cross-sector risk assessment. This assessment will enable CISA to prioritize systemic risk reduction efforts—detailed in the National Plan—that the U.S. government will take in collaboration with relevant federal, state and local, private, and international partners. Most importantly, the National Plan will recognize that the U.S. government cannot make all critical infrastructure immune from all threats and hazards. Rather, it will detail U.S. government efforts to make critical infrastructure resilient against prioritized risks based on the 16 sector’s risk assessments and CISA’s cross-sector risk assessments. All the while, CISA and other federal partners will work closely with SRMAs to manage their unique sector risks.

We Need You for Us to be Successful

This will be a fundamentally new approach to U.S. government risk management. In this era of technological advancements and dynamic global volatility, the security and resilience of our critical infrastructure are of paramount importance. Essential systems, including energy grids, water systems, transportation networks, healthcare facilities, and communication systems, are vital for public safety, economic stability, and national security. The increasing interconnectivity of critical infrastructure systems, reliance upon global technologies and supply chains, and geopolitical tensions make these systems susceptible to a myriad of threats. Addressing these risks will require a coordinated national effort by federal agencies; State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) governments, infrastructure owners and operators, and other stakeholders across the critical infrastructure community.

As those responsible for the security and resilience of U.S. critical infrastructure, we must collectively address emergent risks and an uncertain future while remaining vigilant against longstanding threats like terrorism, natural disasters, and targeted violence. Indeed, trusted, sustained, and effective partnerships between the federal government and private-sector and SLTT partners is the foundation of our collective effort to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure.

Put simply, the 2025 National Plan will not succeed unless our partners collaborate with us to inform its development and its eventual implementation. We ask that you work with your respective SRMAs through the development of your sector risk assessments and sector risk management plans, as these will be core inputs into the National Plan. You can also contact us at [email protected] for any of your ideas. These inputs will be invaluable as we develop a plan that allows the U.S. government to better prioritize our risk mitigation efforts and reduce risk for the critical infrastructure that underpin American society.

For more information on the NSM-22 and CISA’s role as National Coordinator, visit CISA National Security Memorandum on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience | CISA .

Ncswic releases the ncswic video series, prepared together – cyber storm ix recap, securing tomorrow: a recap of cisa’s cyber resilient 911 symposium (central region), opening statement by cisa director jen easterly at the update on foreign threats to the 2024 elections hearing.

What is cloud computing?

Group of white spheres on light blue background

With cloud computing, organizations essentially buy a range of services offered by cloud service providers (CSPs). The CSP’s servers host all the client’s applications. Organizations can enhance their computing power more quickly and cheaply via the cloud than by purchasing, installing, and maintaining their own servers.

The cloud-computing model is helping organizations to scale new digital solutions with greater speed and agility—and to create value more quickly. Developers use cloud services to build and run custom applications and to maintain infrastructure and networks for companies of virtually all sizes—especially large global ones. CSPs offer services, such as analytics, to handle and manipulate vast amounts of data. Time to market accelerates, speeding innovation to deliver better products and services across the world.

What are examples of cloud computing’s uses?

Get to know and directly engage with senior mckinsey experts on cloud computing.

Brant Carson is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Vancouver office; Chandra Gnanasambandam and Anand Swaminathan are senior partners in the Bay Area office; William Forrest is a senior partner in the Chicago office; Leandro Santos is a senior partner in the Atlanta office; Kate Smaje is a senior partner in the London office.

Cloud computing came on the scene well before the global pandemic hit, in 2020, but the ensuing digital dash helped demonstrate its power and utility. Here are some examples of how businesses and other organizations employ the cloud:

A fast-casual restaurant chain’s online orders multiplied exponentially during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, climbing to 400,000 a day, from 50,000. One pleasant surprise? The company’s online-ordering system could handle the volume—because it had already migrated to the cloud . Thanks to this success, the organization’s leadership decided to accelerate its five-year migration plan to less than one year.
A biotech company harnessed cloud computing to deliver the first clinical batch of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate for Phase I trials in just 42 days—thanks in part to breakthrough innovations using scalable cloud data storage and computing to facilitate processes ensuring the drug’s safety and efficacy.
Banks use the cloud for several aspects of customer-service management. They automate transaction calls using voice recognition algorithms and cognitive agents (AI-based online self-service assistants directing customers to helpful information or to a human representative when necessary). In fraud and debt analytics, cloud solutions enhance the predictive power of traditional early-warning systems. To reduce churn, they encourage customer loyalty through holistic retention programs managed entirely in the cloud.
Automakers are also along for the cloud ride . One company uses a common cloud platform that serves 124 plants, 500 warehouses, and 1,500 suppliers to consolidate real-time data from machines and systems and to track logistics and offer insights on shop floor processes. Use of the cloud could shave 30 percent off factory costs by 2025—and spark innovation at the same time.

That’s not to mention experiences we all take for granted: using apps on a smartphone, streaming shows and movies, participating in videoconferences. All of these things can happen in the cloud.

Learn more about our Cloud by McKinsey , Digital McKinsey , and Technology, Media, & Telecommunications practices.

How has cloud computing evolved?

Going back a few years, legacy infrastructure dominated IT-hosting budgets. Enterprises planned to move a mere 45 percent of their IT-hosting expenditures to the cloud by 2021. Enter COVID-19, and 65 percent of the decision makers surveyed by McKinsey increased their cloud budgets . An additional 55 percent ended up moving more workloads than initially planned. Having witnessed the cloud’s benefits firsthand, 40 percent of companies expect to pick up the pace of implementation.

The cloud revolution has actually been going on for years—more than 20, if you think the takeoff point was the founding of Salesforce, widely seen as the first software as a service (SaaS) company. Today, the next generation of cloud, including capabilities such as serverless computing, makes it easier for software developers to tweak software functions independently, accelerating the pace of release, and to do so more efficiently. Businesses can therefore serve customers and launch products in a more agile fashion. And the cloud continues to evolve.

Circular, white maze filled with white semicircles.

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

Cost savings are commonly seen as the primary reason for moving to the cloud but managing those costs requires a different and more dynamic approach focused on OpEx rather than CapEx. Financial-operations (or FinOps) capabilities can indeed enable the continuous management and optimization of cloud costs . But CSPs have developed their offerings so that the cloud’s greatest value opportunity is primarily through business innovation and optimization. In 2020, the top-three CSPs reached $100 billion in combined revenues—a minor share of the global $2.4 trillion market for enterprise IT services—leaving huge value to be captured. To go beyond merely realizing cost savings, companies must activate three symbiotic rings of cloud value creation : strategy and management, business domain adoption, and foundational capabilities.

What’s the main reason to move to the cloud?

The pandemic demonstrated that the digital transformation can no longer be delayed—and can happen much more quickly than previously imagined. Nothing is more critical to a corporate digital transformation than becoming a cloud-first business. The benefits are faster time to market, simplified innovation and scalability, and reduced risk when effectively managed. The cloud lets companies provide customers with novel digital experiences—in days, not months—and delivers analytics absent on legacy platforms. But to transition to a cloud-first operating model, organizations must make a collective effort that starts at the top. Here are three actions CEOs can take to increase the value their companies get from cloud computing :

Establish a sustainable funding model.
Develop a new business technology operating model.
Set up policies to attract and retain the right engineering talent.

How much value will the cloud create?

Fortune 500 companies adopting the cloud could realize more than $1 trillion in value by 2030, and not from IT cost reductions alone, according to McKinsey’s analysis of 700 use cases.

For example, the cloud speeds up design, build, and ramp-up, shortening time to market when companies have strong DevOps (the combination of development and operations) processes in place; groups of software developers customize and deploy software for operations that support the business. The cloud’s global infrastructure lets companies scale products almost instantly to reach new customers, geographies, and channels. Finally, digital-first companies use the cloud to adopt emerging technologies and innovate aggressively, using digital capabilities as a competitive differentiator to launch and build businesses .

If companies pursue the cloud’s vast potential in the right ways, they will realize huge value. Companies across diverse industries have implemented the public cloud and seen promising results. The successful ones defined a value-oriented strategy across IT and the business, acquired hands-on experience operating in the cloud, adopted a technology-first approach, and developed a cloud-literate workforce.

Learn more about our Cloud by McKinsey and Digital McKinsey practices.

What is the cloud cost/procurement model?

Some cloud services, such as server space, are leased. Leasing requires much less capital up front than buying, offers greater flexibility to switch and expand the use of services, cuts the basic cost of buying hardware and software upfront, and reduces the difficulties of upkeep and ownership. Organizations pay only for the infrastructure and computing services that meet their evolving needs. But an outsourcing model is more apt than other analogies: the computing business issues of cloud customers are addressed by third-party providers that deliver innovative computing services on demand to a wide variety of customers, adapt those services to fit specific needs, and work to constantly improve the offering.

What are cloud risks?

The cloud offers huge cost savings and potential for innovation. However, when companies migrate to the cloud, the simple lift-and-shift approach doesn’t reduce costs, so companies must remediate their existing applications to take advantage of cloud services.

For instance, a major financial-services organization wanted to move more than 50 percent of its applications to the public cloud within five years. Its goals were to improve resiliency, time to market, and productivity. But not all its business units needed to transition at the same pace. The IT leadership therefore defined varying adoption archetypes to meet each unit’s technical, risk, and operating-model needs.

Legacy cybersecurity architectures and operating models can also pose problems when companies shift to the cloud. The resulting problems, however, involve misconfigurations rather than inherent cloud security vulnerabilities. One powerful solution? Securing cloud workloads for speed and agility : automated security architectures and processes enable workloads to be processed at a much faster tempo.

What kind of cloud talent is needed?

The talent demands of the cloud differ from those of legacy IT. While cloud computing can improve the productivity of your technology, it requires specialized and sometimes hard-to-find talent—including full-stack developers, data engineers, cloud-security engineers, identity- and access-management specialists, and cloud engineers. The cloud talent model should thus be revisited as you move forward.

Six practical actions can help your organization build the cloud talent you need :

Find engineering talent with broad experience and skills.
Balance talent maturity levels and the composition of teams.
Build an extensive and mandatory upskilling program focused on need.
Build an engineering culture that optimizes the developer experience.
Consider using partners to accelerate development and assign your best cloud leaders as owners.
Retain top talent by focusing on what motivates them.

How do different industries use the cloud?

Different industries are expected to see dramatically different benefits from the cloud. High-tech, retail, and healthcare organizations occupy the top end of the value capture continuum. Electronics and semiconductors, consumer-packaged-goods, and media companies make up the middle. Materials, chemicals, and infrastructure organizations cluster at the lower end.

Nevertheless, myriad use cases provide opportunities to unlock value across industries , as the following examples show:

a retailer enhancing omnichannel fulfillment, using AI to optimize inventory across channels and to provide a seamless customer experience
a healthcare organization implementing remote heath monitoring to conduct virtual trials and improve adherence
a high-tech company using chatbots to provide premier-level support combining phone, email, and chat
an oil and gas company employing automated forecasting to automate supply-and-demand modeling and reduce the need for manual analysis
a financial-services organization implementing customer call optimization using real-time voice recognition algorithms to direct customers in distress to experienced representatives for retention offers
a financial-services provider moving applications in customer-facing business domains to the public cloud to penetrate promising markets more quickly and at minimal cost
a health insurance carrier accelerating the capture of billions of dollars in new revenues by moving systems to the cloud to interact with providers through easier onboarding

The cloud is evolving to meet the industry-specific needs of companies. From 2021 to 2024, public-cloud spending on vertical applications (such as warehouse management in retailing and enterprise risk management in banking) is expected to grow by more than 40 percent annually. Spending on horizontal workloads (such as customer relationship management) is expected to grow by 25 percent. Healthcare and manufacturing organizations, for instance, plan to spend around twice as much on vertical applications as on horizontal ones.

Learn more about our Cloud by McKinsey , Digital McKinsey , Financial Services , Healthcare Systems & Services , Retail , and Technology, Media, & Telecommunications practices.

What are the biggest cloud myths?

Views on cloud computing can be clouded by misconceptions. Here are seven common myths about the cloud —all of which can be debunked:

The cloud’s value lies primarily in reducing costs.
Cloud computing costs more than in-house computing.
On-premises data centers are more secure than the cloud.
Applications run more slowly in the cloud.
The cloud eliminates the need for infrastructure.
The best way to move to the cloud is to focus on applications or data centers.
You must lift and shift applications as-is or totally refactor them.

How large must my organization be to benefit from the cloud?

Here’s one more huge misconception: the cloud is just for big multinational companies. In fact, cloud can help make small local companies become multinational. A company’s benefits from implementing the cloud are not constrained by its size. In fact, the cloud shifts barrier to entry skill rather than scale, making it possible for a company of any size to compete if it has people with the right skills. With cloud, highly skilled small companies can take on established competitors. To realize the cloud’s immense potential value fully, organizations must take a thoughtful approach, with IT and the businesses working together.

For more in-depth exploration of these topics, see McKinsey’s Cloud Insights collection. Learn more about Cloud by McKinsey —and check out cloud-related job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced include:

“ Six practical actions for building the cloud talent you need ,” January 19, 2022, Brant Carson , Dorian Gärtner , Keerthi Iyengar, Anand Swaminathan , and Wayne Vest
“ Cloud-migration opportunity: Business value grows, but missteps abound ,” October 12, 2021, Tara Balakrishnan, Chandra Gnanasambandam , Leandro Santos , and Bhargs Srivathsan
“ Cloud’s trillion-dollar prize is up for grabs ,” February 26, 2021, Will Forrest , Mark Gu, James Kaplan , Michael Liebow, Raghav Sharma, Kate Smaje , and Steve Van Kuiken
“ Unlocking value: Four lessons in cloud sourcing and consumption ,” November 2, 2020, Abhi Bhatnagar , Will Forrest , Naufal Khan , and Abdallah Salami
“ Three actions CEOs can take to get value from cloud computing ,” July 21, 2020, Chhavi Arora , Tanguy Catlin , Will Forrest , James Kaplan , and Lars Vinter

Want to know more about cloud computing?

Cloud’s trillion-dollar prize is up for grabs

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Popular Culture as a Tool for Critical Pedagogy: A Case Study
Popular Culture as a Tool for Critical Pedagogy: A Case Study is approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy - Curriculum and Instruction Department of Teaching & Learning Christine Clark, Ed.D. Kathryn Hausbeck Korgan, Ph.D. Examination Committee Chair Graduate College Dean
Unpacking Everyday Critical Pedagogy: Languaging Critique and Dialogue
This article explores how critical pedagogy unfolds in the everyday interactions between teachers and students. Specifically, Freirean constructs of critique and dialogue were explored in two key literacy events drawn from an ethnographically informed case study of one fourth-grade classroom.
Critical Pedagogy: Challenging Bias and Creating Inclusive Classrooms
Critical pedagogy informs the critical approaches to information literacy discussed in Chapter 2, which urge us to move away from a skills-based, teacher-centered approach to information literacy toward one that questions dominant information structures and adopts student-centered teaching methods. ... case studies, and collaborative work ...
What is critical about critical pedagogy?
As was the case with Socrates and Plato, the issue of autonomy and the transformation of society emerge, and these are of pivotal importance for Critical Pedagogy. ... it was in the 1960s and 70s that Critical Pedagogy truly emerged as a theory and a distinct field of study, and this emergence is directly related to the works of Paulo Freire ...
Full article: Critical pedagogy and quality education (UNESCO SDG-4
The problem, as Walsh so devastatingly demonstrates, is that power is a factor in determining what is 'appropriate' in different contexts. In her own case study of Ecuador, she argues, a nominally progressive government adopted the rhetoric of critical pedagogy but only to dismantle local provision and centralise public educational services.
Re-Imagining Peace Education: Using Critical Pedagogy as a
This case study illustrates the processes and outcomes of implementing critical pedagogy in a PCS classroom. Reviews and studies in PCS and IR demonstrate that dominant worldviews and teaching methods have shaped PCS as a field that (re)produces study programs, research, and practices along Western, liberal ways of knowing and envisioning peace.
Introduction to Critical Pedagogy
Critical Pedagogy is an important framework and tool for teaching and learning because it: recognizes systems and patterns of oppression within society at-large and education more specifically, and in doing so, decreases oppression and increases freedom. empowers students through enabling them to recognize the ways in which "dominant power ...
Getting Started with Critical Pedagogy
Critical pedagogies in praxis: A multiple case study with graduate teaching assistants' co-constructing community and amplifying undergraduate student agency through dialogic discourse. InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, 17 (1).
Doing Critical Pedagogy Together A Case Study in a Norwegian
The Master's degree program enrolls students from wide-ranging academic backgrounds such as pre-school/early childhood education, general teacher education, development studies and pedagogy. One can also add to this the disparate countries students come from and the varying quality of education and exposure to critical pedagogy.
The Philosophy of Education: Freire's Critical Pedagogy
8.6 Case Study: Enacting a Critical Pedagogy Within Undergraduate GP Teaching. Context: The GP course explored here was a four-week module in year four of an integrated, systems-based, five-year curriculum. This was the first substantial introduction to GP work in students' experience to date. An introductory central teaching week was ...
Critical Pedagogy in Practice: A Case Study from Kerala, India
The paper analyses the theoretical arguments that are relevant to critical pedagogy in relation to teachers' practices as they emerged during the study. The study, conducted in the South Indian state of Kerala, reveals that teacher subjectivity and schooling situations interact in a dialectical fashion to shape the nature of classroom teaching.
Critical Pedagogy
Critical pedagogy at its core seeks to recognize systems and patterns of oppression within society and education itself, and in doing so, decrease oppression and increase freedom. ... (1950 - 2008) - Joe Kincheloe was a scholar whose work focused on critical pedagogy, cultural studies, and urban studies. Shirley Steinberg - A scholar, activist ...
PDF Case-Based Pedagogy for Teacher Education: An Instructional Model
Case-based Pedagogy The use of cases in teacher education is accepted as a promising instructional method for creating authentic learning environments (Koury et al., 2009; Levin, 2001; Lundeberg, Levin, & Harrington, 1999). Case-based pedagogy emulates real classroom environments, and thus enables students to think like teachers (Shulman, 1992).
PDF Critical Pedagogy in Practice: A Case Study from Kerala India
journal of pedagogy 2/2018 critical pedagogy in practice: a case study from Kerala, india 37 state. The LDF returned to power in the 2016 elections.
Through students' eyes: case study of a critical pedagogy initiative in
Our case study aims to contribute to the accounting education literature on critical thinking and critical pedagogy. Importantly, we found that dedication experiences often resonated with the belief that critical thinking (as articulated in the course) is marginal to the field of performance-based professional practice.
Critical pedagogy in practice: A case study from Kerala, India
DOI 10.2478/jped-2018-0010 JoP 9 (2): 33 - 54. Critical pedagogy in practice: A case study. from Kerala, India. Vishnu Prakash Kareepadath. Abstract: Analysing teaching-practice offers an ...
Fostering Critical Thinking Through Effective Pedagogy
case studies, I employed qualitative methods to tap multiple sources of data. This led to rich contextual evidence of the types of pedagogy that are associated with the reported enhancement of students' abilities to think critically. Research Methods Data Collection In this study the relationship between pedagogy and critical thinking
Multiliteracies Pedagogy: A Case Study of Critical Reading in Elt
489 Mikhael Misa Multiliteracies pedagogy: A case study of critical reading in ELT classroom by implementing situated practice Moreover, multiliteracy emerges as a response to the evolving landscape of education, which extends beyond the mere teaching of language skills to encompass the complexities of social and cultural enculturation in the ...
Beyond the Classroom: A Case Study on the Relationship Between
Beyond the Classroom: A Case Study on the Relationship Between Education as a Public Good, Social Justice and Critical Pedagogy. Neha Ghatak [email protected] ... Bengaluru, the article establishes that 'critical pedagogy' can become a vital tool to actualise the idea of social justice in education systems and, hence, is at the core of ...
Case study pedagogy to advance critical thinking.
Suggests that the case study or discussion teaching method may foster more critical thinking than the current lecture method. Discussion method teaching also fosters student critical thinking as it builds on ideas, progressing through a sequence of critical thinking out loud. Resultant learning is not so much facts as it is the process of critical thinking to assemble the facts. (PsycINFO ...
Critical pedagogy in practice: A case study from Kerala, India
The word is first used by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1946 48 journal of pedagogy 2/2018 Unauthentifiziert | Heruntergeladen 10.09.19 08:09 UTC critical pedagogy in practice: a case study from Kerala, india Conclusion Educational knowledge, values and relations are analysed in the context of the interplay between dominant and subordinate school cultures.
Using a Proposed Library Guide Assessment Standards Rubric and a Peer
The authors used a case study approach to test the effectiveness of building library guides with the proposed standards by tasking college students to assess two Fake News guides (one revised to meet the proposed standards). ... Kincheloe, J. (2012). Critical pedagogy in the twenty-first century: Evolution for survival. Counterpoints, 422, 147 ...
A Plan to Protect Critical Infrastructure from 21st Century Threats
On April 30 th, the White House released National Security Memorandum-22 (NSM) on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, which updates national policy on how the U.S. government protects and secures critical infrastructure from cyber and all-hazard threats.NSM-22 recognizes the changed risk landscape over the past decade and leverages the enhanced authorities of federal departments ...
Critical Literacy in Practice: How Educators Leverage Supports and
This is a multiple case study that focuses on the pedagogical experiences, supports, and challenges of five high school critical literacy teachers. I used the multiple case study process as outlined in Yin (2018) in order to examine participants' navigation of pedagogical supports and challenges at both the intra- and inter-case levels.
What is cloud computing: Its uses and benefits
Nothing is more critical to a corporate digital transformation than becoming a cloud-first business. The benefits are faster time to market, simplified innovation and scalability, and reduced risk when effectively managed. The cloud lets companies provide customers with novel digital experiences—in days, not months—and delivers analytics ...
Case Study Pedagogy to Advance Critical Thinking
Case Study Pedagogy to Advance Critical Thinking - Sharon A. McDade, 1995. Restricted access. Other. First published February 1995.
The impact of applying digital process innovation to farm management on
Thailand's agricultural sector is the lowest-paying sector. Research on digital process innovation is needed in Thailand, where specific contexts are critical in filling the literature gap. This study investigates how digital process innovations can enhance farmers' welfare. The research method is a multiple-case study with three cases.

5 Critical Pedagogy: Challenging Bias and Creating Inclusive Classrooms

Critical Pedagogy

Bias in the Classroom

Microaggressions

Deficit-Based Thinking

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Using a Proposed Library Guide Assessment Standards Rubric and a Peer Review Process to Pedagogically Improve Library Guides: A Case Study

Introduction

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