Syllabus and Course Documents
Engagement Description
Engagement and Participation in this Course
In his critique of the “banking” model of education, Paulo Freire (1970) articulates how, in this framing, students are empty vessels who obtain knowledge only through their educator. There’s an unshakeable hierarchy where the educator is the expert and the students are passive recipients of knowledge, with little value assigned to the students as inherent knowledge keepers, or to the potential for teaching and learning to happen student-to-student or student-to-teacher. The framework of the banking model that Freire discusses is really recognizable in colonial university systems, and his discussion of non-hierarchical teaching-learning dynamics is relevant to how we are framing engagement in this course. Thinking again with the banking model, student engagement is constructed as this fairly narrow range of behaviours that become “student participation,” which is evaluated by educators as proof of students’ efforts and ability to receive knowledge. For example, students are usually called on to participate in class discussions verbally or through written forum responses. Good participation usually means speaking or writing in a way that is substantial but concise, on topic, legible, formal and polite. It should be ‘grammatically correct,’ frequent but not too frequent within each class, it should not be highly emotional, and should reference class material explicitly to show that we are keeping up with reading each week.
Within these spoken and unspoken parameters we could track naturalizations of white supremacist ideologies of respectability and intelligence, the privileging of often non-disabled and normative ways of communicating, and neoliberal expectations of productivity and time. This traditional idea of participation encourages us to engage in a way that is palatable and productive within academia, nestled within the wider structure and aims of the colonial project (Harney & Moten tie in?). And because it privileges – or in many ways, demands – one way of “participating” at the cost of all other ways, it stifles the potential for crip ways of knowing and being to happen in the classroom. Though in some ways we are continuing to rely on or reproduce this system, we want to emphasize crip wisdom and knowledges and explore engagement in this learning as something that is expansive, varied, and evolving.
Foundationally, the purpose of participation should be to serve our individual and shared learning process, to deepen our learning and develop meaningful praxis and relationality. Participation is not graded or measured. Participation in class can be a lot of different things. Here are some of the frameworks we think might be useful to start from:
Alternative Ways of Engaging in this Course
- Participating in class/Discord discussions
- Note: If it works for you and feels useful to add to in-class and Discord discussions, that’s valid – if it doesn’t, that’s valid too. We can imagine and practice different ways to engage, and attend to moments of access friction with the intention to develop crip-centred ways of sharing space and learning together.
- Adding to your learning journal – writing (in point form, long form, stream of consciousness, whatever clicks), drawing, recording audio or video clips, collaging
- Discussions with instructors during office hours
- Discussions with classmates during or after class, on or off discord
- Contributing to shared reading notes
- Taking in the lectures while doing something else – bring your switch or DS to class, crochet, beading, etc
- Wearing your noise cancelling headphones in class
- Let’s add more together!
Here are some ways that we are creating flexibility in this course to facilitate various forms of engagement:
Frameworks within the course
- This project has certain established “due dates” and “deliverables” because of the work we will be doing with arts organizations. However, you are not required to meet these alone, or meet them at all if at any point they stop being doable for you. All the time, but in particular during this time of collapse and multiplicitous crises, we cherish sharing space in a way that does not demand productivity, “professionalism,” or promptness. Crip time is sacred and we welcome your participation and contribution in whatever form, and regardless of how much time, resources, and spoons you have to bring to the project.
- Attendance isn’t marked or measured. You are welcome to attend on person, online, or a mix of both.
Let’s discuss and create some guidelines/intentions together for what participation can be in this course, things we might want to try, concerns and ideas we’re bringing to the group.
Link to the Discord Server: https://discord.gg/e7vbz4NF
Some questions to consider:
- Are there any examples you can think of when your engagement with learning felt particularly meaningful to you?
- How do you know when it’s working for you? When engagement is deepening your learning/making meaning?
- Are there ways of engaging that you know don’t work for you, that you find frustrating/distracting/inaccessible?
- How do you know when it’s not working?
Link to document: Participation/Engagement