Pedagogical practice as ‘feeling-thinking’ praxis in higher education: a case study in Colombia

ABSTRACT

Some critical perspectives about neoliberal trends in higher education have resulted in exploring different types of collaborations aimed at creating spaces for academics to promote pedagogical practice as praxis. Drawing upon a case study informed by a Latin American intellectual tradition of dialogue as praxis and praxis as political action, as well as by practice theory, it is argued that it is difficult to understand and address what enables and constrains pedagogical practices as praxis if academics fail to put themselves at the centre of a feeling-based reflection process. From this perspective, this study revealed two enablers and four constraints of five pedagogical practices as ‘feeling-thinking’ praxis, which emerged from dialogue as praxis in a group of eight academics from four Colombian universities. Feelings of exhaustion, sadness, disappointment, indignation, annoyance, gratitude, anxiety, confusion, and relief were key so that their ethical-political actions could contribute to rehumanise higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• pedagogical practice
• praxis
• practice theory
• Colombia

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participants of this case study for their valuable contributions, as well as to the group of researchers of the ‘Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP)’ network involved in the conversations about higher education pedagogy. Also, a special thanks to the reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The term ‘academic’ is used to make reference to any member of the academic community.

2 Authors translated excerpts from Spanish into English.

3 Each excerpt is presented by making reference to the participant (pseudonym), followed by the number of the three-hour Teacher Talk session (TT1 or TT2) and the lines where the excerpt can be located in the corresponding transcript.

4 The English word ‘teacher’ is used in the excerpt to make reference to any person who teaches in higher education. In Colombian Spanish, words such as ‘profesor’, ‘maestro’, and ‘docente’ are used for a person who teaches at any educational level (early childhood, primary, secondary or higher education level). The connotation of the English word ‘teacher’ as referred to the person who teaches in a school does not apply in this context.

5 Harper (2021) says that research comes from French recercher (1530s), which means ‘seek out, search closely’. It is composed of the prefix re- (intensive) and cercher ‘to seek for’.