Critical Communication Pedagogy
Critical communication pedagogy (CCP) is a perspective that situates itself at the
“intersections of communication, critical theory, and instruction” (Warren & Fassett,
2010, p. 283).
Instructional communication is how it is that instructors of any given subject or
student population utilize communication to educate or enhance learning. Critical
pedagogy examines the distinctive forms of power, identity, and difference inside
the classroom.
CCP is built upon the foundation of critical pedagogy and the work of Paulo Freire,
who argues that “educational processes are not neutral; they can either domesticate
or liberate” (Allen, 2011, p. 104).
CCP extends critical pedagogy by viewing language and meaning as central to all
social interaction to understand how power functions and how people can work
against its imbalance. Therefore, CCP’s first concern is the way that language serves
to privilege or oppress. Allen (2011) explains that CCP contributes to critical
pedagogy “by acknowledging how everyday interactions help to (re)produce
knowledge, (re)construct identities, and (re)iterate ideologies” (p. 108).
Paulo Freire might say students are oppressed and the teachers are the oppressors.
Scholars state that students can only be liberated from this oppression through a
teacher. Removing power and offering it in a more democratic form within the
classroom. Creating a new social reality is at the center of CCP.
CCP is the critique of the various sites of knowledge through communication
practices, which invite change and open spaces for mediation through their relation
to power and privilege/oppression. CCP signals how questions of audience, voice,
power, and evaluation actively work to construct a particular relation between
teachers and students, institutions, and society, classrooms, and communities. It’s
impossible to think of language without thinking of the ideology and power.
The Application of Critical Communication Pedagogy in a classroom
The classroom is a microcosm of worlds, a melting pot of cultures that makes it also
a site of social change. It is a meaningful environment for engaging difference; for
creating community, and for envisioning the kinds of social organization we want for
ourselves.
The classroom should be considered as a “safe” places for dialogue and sharing;
perhaps students feel these spaces are a “time-out” from more competitive or
divisive arenas.
The teacher has a role to discuss with the whole class on social justice topics so that
respect for diversity permeates all aspects of class inter- action and learning.
CCP can be applied in a classroom by the teacher taking the role of a facilitator
instead of the traditional teacher, the instructor may use the problem-posing
method as suggested by Freire (1996) that involves asking students what issues and
concerns they had and wanted to change which he deemed as” humanizing”.
In movies that are centered in the classroom such as “Freedom Writers”, “Dead
Poets Society”, and “Half Nelson”, the role of the educator strays from normalcy and
breaks free from the oppressor mindset that CCP mentions. The instructor breaks
the oppressive system by making the students feel comfortable in the learning
environment. Students can break free from oppression by distancing themselves
from the oppression field system in ways such as mimicry, sarcasm, or just general
critique.
The teacher can implement CCP by re-configuring the student-teacher relationship
and relinquishing some of their authority in the classroom, hence making both
students and the teacher, vulnerable. This is an effective way for students to feel
comfortable and express themselves freely. The teacher can share their experiences
of oppression, privileged perspectives, and social justice by being self-reflective.
Teachers should be attentive and responsive to socio-emotional issues raised by
students. Teachers can arrange for students to have interviews, or interactions with
people of different socioeconomic classes, races, beliefs, backgrounds to learn and
understand complex concepts such as hegemony, ideology, privilege, praxis, and
social construction. Teachers should also be aware of responding to painful
consequences of raising students’ consciousness and encourage students to honor
and value emotionality and rationality.
Teachers can assign readings, movies, podcasts about difference and higher
education to exemplify course concepts such as socialization. Teachers could also
develop assignments and assessments that invite students to critically analyze power
dynamics in their roles and relationships in higher education or to conduct critical
case studies of differences in their educational contexts. Teachers could also
propose ways to transform those contexts. Teachers should prepare students to
become democratic, tolerant, and advocates for social justice. If oppressed people
have their minds liberated, they can then use their articulate voices and speech in
the struggle against injustice.
The Importance of Power in a Classroom
Because CCP views power as arising from social interaction, CCP scholars
study social interaction to understand power (Allen, 2011; Deetz &
Mumby, 1990).
Power in the classroom is important because it can be used effectively
to achieve desirable classroom outcomes (positive and negative
classroom behaviors). Power can also be used in the classroom to elicit
compliance from students.
CCP considers teachers as “transformative intellectuals” located in a
position to radically transform culture to change an imbalance of power
in society by developing students’ and teachers’ critical consciousness of
how power benefits some and marginalizes others.
Power is understood by many scholars in the context of student-teacher
interactions. Teachers can give students a language for intervention to
help them view power as multi-level.
Foucault (1977) reminds us that power is never a one-to-one
relationship—that power is never housed easily in one site; rather,
power is fluid, flowing through all of us all the time. It is because power
is so slippery that it makes it hard to pinpoint, hard to undermine.
Students must be controlled in the classroom and trained to serve
educational needs. The teacher uses power to pinpoint and train
students.
The fluidity of power in the classroom where the teacher shares power
with the students to remain vulnerable is in the hope of working with
students and realizing their potential as change agents. Students should
be able to exercise the provided power within the classroom and beyond
(communication activism).
The shift of power from the teacher to the students makes students
more open to difference and view social problems as contextually and
historically informed. It is the CCP researchers’ responsibility to make
sure that discipline embraces its responsibility to realize a society where
concentrated power does not overcome social justice.
The teacher can use space between students in a classroom to control
and discipline students. Activities can be used by the teacher to regulate
students’ movements so that students can be where they are supposed
to be at the prescribed time and taught what had been planned for
them.
Classification can be regarded as a systematic formulation of ideology
and power and has been used as a way to establish social control
through institutionalized spaces.
Power is about making institutional members function as a machine—a
well-organized and precisely fluent process that repeats and regenerates
itself.
Foucault’s characteristics of power are not only communicative, but it is
in and through communication that we come to see how they function
and to what end.
CONCLUSION
Critical communication pedagogy is about identity, subjectivity, social re(production,
power, about who we are as people, people who are invested and produced in the
process of education. CCP deconstructs the traditional hierarchy of the classroom,
blends the heteroglot of cultural and social experiences into a special moment of
expression and excitement. A commitment to CCP means no longer knowingly using
students’ lives for intellectual profit, no longer knowingly writing violence into flesh
in our classrooms.
REFERENCES
Warren, J. T., & Fassett, D. L. (2010). Critical communication pedagogy: Reframing the field. In D. L.
Fassett & J. T. Warren (Eds.), The Sage handbook of communication and instruction (pp. 283–
291). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Allen, B. J. (2011). Critical communication pedagogy as a framework for teaching difference and
organizing. In D. K. Mumby (Ed.), Reframing difference in organizational communication studies:
Research, pedagogy, practice (pp. 103–125). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications
Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Deetz, S., & Mumby, D. K. (1990). Power, discourse, and the workplace: Reclaiming the critical tradition.
In J. Anderson (Ed.), Communication yearbook (Vol. 13, pp. 18–47). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE
Publications.