Cultivating change: an introduction and invitation to critical interpersonal and family communication pedagogy

ABSTRACT

bell hooks explains that “the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy,” and that through teaching, we can “provide students with ways of knowing that enable them to know themselves better and live in the world more fully.” However, as teacher–scholars of interpersonal and family communication (IFC), this promise of possibility is largely missing from our pedagogy. In this essay, we challenge teacher–scholars of IFC to (re)imagine their curriculum in conversation with critical perspectives and to (re)consider their ethical and social responsibilities inside of the classroom. We present our vision for a critical interpersonal and family communication pedagogy framework, providing three key considerations for engaging this perspective: (1) teach to transform; (2) create reflexive classrooms; and (3) abolish the public–private binary. For each consideration, we highlight the potential and praxis for IFC and IFC-adjacent curricula.

KEYWORDS:

• critical pedagogy
• critical communication pedagogy
• critical interpersonal and family communication pedagogy
• communication pedagogy

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the many teachers who have contributed to our understanding of what critical pedagogy is and the possibility it holds. We would like to thank our former students for growing alongside us. Finally, we would like to thank our reviewers and the themed issue Guest Editors, Jimmie Manning and Katherine J. Denker, for their insight and support in crafting this piece.

Notes

1 bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (London: Routledge, 1994), 12, 194.

2 Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum, 1970); Deanna L. Fassett and John T. Warren, Critical Communication Pedagogy (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2007).

3 Deanna L. Fassett and C. Kyle Rudick, “Critical Communication Pedagogy,” in Communication and Learning, ed. Paul Witt (Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2016), 591.

4 Jimmie Manning, “Examining Whiteness in Interpersonal Communication Textbooks,” Communication, Culture & Critique 13, no. 2 (2020): 254.

5 hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 22.

6 Fassett and Rudick, Critical Communication Pedagogy, 592.

7 Ahmet Atay and Satoshi Toyosaki, eds., “Introduction: Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy,” in Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2018), ix.

8 Rona Tamiko Halualani, “Demarcating the ‘Critical’ in Critical Intercultural Communication Studies,” in Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy, ed. Ahmet Atay and Satoshi Toyosaki (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2018), 3.

9 Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, and Charlton McIlwain, “#CommunicationSoWhite,” Journal of Communication 68, no. 2 (2018): 254.

10 Richard Shaull, “Foreword” to Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 34 original emphasis.

11 Ibid.

12 For example, see “Critical Interpersonal Readings and Teaching Ideas,” https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HCphB1rk0xyUUGtBBid-TFt64dlVq_mhBillKxElyUw/edit (accessed June 8, 2021); “Expanding Our Understanding of Family Communication: Ethnic-Racial and Global Diversity in Scholarship and Teaching,” https://docs.google.com/document/d/1maK0cRF6xaIM8EGQlVQ1LVqPZgAvKDKL4oc_pG1ZHTc/edit (accessed June 8, 2021); William R. Frey, “Uprooting Whiteness [Supremacy & Domination]—Resources,” https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F8v8BQOcN3kODBxntkPS7snNjIuV1Cz5QDLEeq5XPa8/mobilebasic?fbclid=IwAR04U5Tx_V9LWf0rE1hl6Fg50CeYRTDi5KdRApSoeQKaD7rGeZa1KM30X0s (accessed June 8, 2021).

13 Rebecca S. Anderson, “Why Talk about Different Ways to Grade? The Shift from Traditional Assessment to Alternative Assessment,” New Directions for Teaching & Learning 74 (Summer 1998): 8.

14 Ibid.

15 Fassett and Warren, Critical Communication Pedagogy, 112.

16 Robert Atkinson, The Life Story Interview (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998).

17 hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 19.

18 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

19 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1990): 1241–99.

20 hooks, Teaching to Transgress.

21 Ibid., 8 original emphasis.

22 Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade, “Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete,” Harvard Educational Review 79, no. 2 (2009): 186.

23 Ira Shor and Paulo Freire, A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1987), 22.

24 Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 53.

25 Ministry of Funny, “Asking STRAIGHT People Questions LGBT People Get!” YouTube, June 30, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmDCoLKtDQk.

26 Yea-Wen Chen and Brandi Lawless, “Teaching Critical Moments within Neoliberal Universities: Exploring Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy,” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 48, no. 5 (2019): 553–73.

27 Shadee Abdi, “Revisiting a Letter for Someday: Writing Toward a Queer Iranian Diasporic Potentiality,” in Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, ed. Shinsuke Eguchi and Bernadette Marie Calafell (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), 47–62.

28 Rachel Alicia Griffin and Noell Ross Jackson, “Privilege Monopoly: An Opportunity to Engage in Diversity Awareness,” Communication Teacher 25, no. 1 (2011): 1–6.