Course Co-creation: On the Transformative Power of Letting Go of Power

ABSTRACT

This critical commentary describes the author’s experience with a course-co-creation process inspired by the popular education approach championed by Paulo Freire and bell hooks in a course on race and ethnicity in America. This process ceded control over certain parts of both the content and form of the class to students, who were positioned as experts in their own lives and meaningful contributors to knowledge about the racial order of the United States. The author found that this process increased students’ sense of mattering in the classroom and decentered her own privileged experience without sacrificing academic or intellectual rigor. However, there are limitations and difficulties with the process, which are outlined here with suggestions on how to overcome them.

KEYWORDS:

• Course co-creation
• mattering
• pedagogy
• race and ethnicity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Materials used to guide these discussions are available upon request from the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carly Elizabeth Schall

Carly Elizabeth Schall is an associate professor at Indiana University–Indianapolis, where she is also director of undergraduate studies. She has published research on race, politics and culture in Sweden and has been teaching courses on race and politics in the United States for over a decade.