Do What I Say, Not What I Do: An Instructor Rethinks Her Own Teaching and Research

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of self-reflexivity in challenging traditional academic assumptions about learning, teaching, and “appropriate” ways for students and teachers to interact. In attempting to implement a critical pedagogy in two undergraduate reading classes for preservice teachers, I ended up reinforcing much of what I had attempted to disrupt. Multiple sources of data inform this descriptive study: students’ written assignments, exit cards, two sets of focused class writes, my journal, and my recollections. This article explores the way in which my unacknowledged biases/expectations sabotaged my conscious attempts to change the traditional power structures created in college classrooms. I also aim to further the discussion of unsettling traditional methods of analyses by sharing how I moved through the actual process and fought my own biases about what was “valid.” Similarly, I seek to show how the process of implementing a critical (liberating?) pedagogy can be as much of an internal struggle for the teacher as one of teacher against “the system” and/or the students.