critical pedagogy

A collection of 31 posts

Critical Instructional Design Featured

The Pedagogy We Practice

On May 20, 2025, I was invited to keynote the Spring Pedagogy Institute at Plymouth State University. The text of that keynote is below, followed by the slide presentation. It’s been awhile since I’ve presented a keynote. And even longer since I presented in person. And the truth

critical pedagogy Featured

Remember who you are

My first job out of school, I worked as a direct mail copywriter. This was in a time before the public internet, before AOL changed the way we relate to our computer screens. Every day, I produced writing for paper-based campaigns—catalogs, postcards, brochures, and the direct mail standard, the

ungrading Featured

Ungrading, AI, and Feedback as Scholarly Work

When we take the time to write feedback, we connect our own thinking to a student’s thinking, thereby opening up the possibility for new knowledge and insight to develop.

critical pedagogy Featured

"if boredom should prevail": A Few Thoughts on Student Engagement

On February 23, 2023, I was invited to present at keynote at the Fierce Education conference. Below is the text of that keynote. A very long time ago, I wrote a letter to my students. I was a teacher then, a teacher of creative writing. And every day, I went

critical pedagogy Featured

Critical Resilience

This piece was originally published on 14 October 2021 by OEB Insights, the newsletter for the Online Educa Berlin conference. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many years ago when my father was still alive, he used to tell me to keep my chin up. I came out of the closet and divorced the person

critical pedagogy Featured

A Primer for the Progressive Educator

On August 3, 2021, I was invited to give a talk to primary and secondary educators at a Human Restoration Project event. The text of that talk is below. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I started my now 20-year career in progressive pedagogy in a very unprogressive way. The first job that I had

critical digital pedagogy Featured

As we step forward, we must stand still: Critical digital pedagogy and the praxis of taking time

We have come upon a watershed moment for digital education. As we climb our way out of the pandemic and the necessary turn to online and remote learning that resulted, we are faced with an opportunity: to remodel our digital pedagogies.

critical digital pedagogy Featured

On Silence: Humanising Digital Pedagogy

The secret to humanising digital pedagogy is asking “Are you there?” and waiting, sometimes on tenterhooks, for the answer.

critical digital pedagogy Featured

Humanizing Digital Pedagogy: the Role of Imagination in Distance Teaching

We have to begin to imagine better digital pedagogies, more critical digital pedagogies, which go farther than the mere implementation of design.

COVID-19 Featured

Best Practices after COVID

The point of any best practice or set of best practices should be to support community, collaboration, and respect in any classroom—online, on campus, or somewhere in between.

critical pedagogy Featured

Reflections on Teaching through the Screen

Critical pedagogy aims to deeply question our epistemological assumptions—about teaching, about education, about power, about expertise—and while this can be exhilarating, it is almost never a picnic.

critical digital pedagogy Featured

Critical Digital Pedagogy after COVID-19

Behaviorism isn’t inclined to offer us any hope. It is not a visionary pedagogy, but a sedentary one. Critical pedagogy on the other hand, remind us that the future is possibility, that education is a practice of freedom.

critical pedagogy Featured

Play is the Companion of Scholarship

To put it simply, just as healthy children play, so good scholars must too. And play must not be reserved just for weekends or vacation, but integrated into the way we think about our work.

critical pedagogy

Cacophony: Open Ed, Digital Pedagogy Lab, and the Challenge of Education Conferences

We need to critically examine all of our assumptions about conferences. How they are run. Who leads them. What kind of learning should happen there?

critical pedagogy

Shame; or, a response to the writers of the anti-Stonewall open letter in the Times

Academic freedom should not bind us to our beliefs, but should free us to explore potential new futures, new cultural realities, and to join in a production of tomorrow.

critical digital pedagogy

To Go Far Enough

The predation of the edtech industry only works if we don’t lift our heads to see it, raise our hands to change it, stand in its way.

critical pedagogy

The Production of Tomorrow

There are incontrovertible facts which should not be considered from inside the shelter of ideas, hypotheses. Poverty, racism, hunger, transphobia. There are incontrovertible facts which require action, not discussion.

critical pedagogy

The Habitus of Critical Imagination

It is urgent that we have teachers. It is urgent that we have teachers with great imaginations. It’s urgent that we have teachers who can see in their students the potential for something startling, something unlikely.

imagination

Imagination as a Precision Tool for Change

The project of critical pedagogy is not simply the project of improving education, or of learning, but rather the project of becoming more fully human.

critical pedagogy

Wide-awakeness and Critical Imagination

What happens when a student who loves to learn is told they are not qualified to to so?

critical pedagogy

An Upsurge of Questioning and Critique: toward a Community of Critical Pedagogy

Be kind. Pay attention. Tell stories. Invite stories. Show you care. Don’t be afraid of love. Close doors when they need to be closed. Keep doors open when they need to be kept open, even if keeping them open is hard on your heart.

critical pedagogy

Adventures in Unveiling: Critical Pedagogy and Imagination

Imagination is important to the project of critical pedagogy precisely because of the responsive nature of its practice. We must be able to think on our toes if education (of all kinds) is meant to be liberative.

kindness

Coming Out; or, Why to Be Kind

Agency isn’t about power. It is a resolution of power. Agency without kindness is just bullying.

critical pedagogy

And so I am grateful too

I will always keep an eye open for new voices, voices that education and academia might not take seriously for whatever reason, I will listen carefully to what they have to say and I will offer them whatever platform I may.

Critical Instructional Design

A Call for Critical Instructional Design

Critical instructional design is an early, emerging attempt to get at some concrete methodologies for creating agentive spaces in online and hybrid learning environments.