My teaching philosophy
I learned from bell hooks that the classroom is a very political space - this guides my practice as an educator, inspiring me to strive for anti-racism in my classroom and be politically-engaged, compassionate, caring and inclusive in my teaching practice.
The principles that guide my teaching
I strive for teaching that is:
1.Historicised - setting the events/issues we teach in historical context, to enablestudents to think in structural terms and with a wider perspective on social,economic, cultural, and political developments.
2. Theorised - making use of critical social theory to frame, explain, deconstruct, describe and challenge social realities.
3. Relational - related to the point above, critical social theory can also enablestudents to see the relationships between contexts/places/events. The principleof relationality helps highlight the connection between struggles and developments over time, but also the interconnectedness of communities. This is not about cosmopolitanism or other such vague liberal dicta, but rather about highlighting world histories and the enduring global systems of exploitation, including coloniality, racism, patriarchy, and capitalism.
4. Grounded - basing discussions on empirical examples to encourage students to think critically about their present and localised realities. In this respect, I find it useful to bring in current news and current events in class discussions and activities, so that students can use theoretical concepts to analyse and discuss their present situation.
5. Reflexive - perhaps the most difficult aspect to operationalise and implement, but also a crucial one. This principle refers to situating ourselves as researchers and educators, and our students, relationally but honestly vis-a-vis the topics we teach. It involves self-questioning, soul-searching, and reflecting on our power and position within systems of domination and institutions. We might ask suchquestions as: how does this apply to our lives, our institution, our communities? How are we implicated, complicit, involved in domination? How are we responsible and in what ways may we enact such historical responsibility? The hope would be to encourage and enable students to enter their own journeys of political engagement and critical being in the world.
Source: Dragoș, S. (2021). Reflections on Critical Theory and Anti-racist Pedagogy from the Perspective of a Romanian. in A Resource Guide to Bringing Critical Romani Studies into Anti-Racist Pedagogy. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360161443_A_Resource_Guide_to_Bringing_Critical_Romani_Studies_into_Anti-Racist_Pedagogy [accessed Jun 07 2023].