A humanizing pedagogy of engagement: beliefs and practices of award-winning instructors at a U.S. university

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study, conducted in the context of a graduate course entitled ‘Teaching Adults,’ investigates the teaching beliefs and practices of eleven award-winning faculty in diverse disciplines at a research-intensive university in the southeastern U.S. Drawing from the framework of humanizing pedagogy, the findings demonstrate that the instructors challenge the banking concept of education (Freire 1970) sanctioned by neoliberalism. In particular, they engage with students, engage with content, engage students with content, and engage with their own teaching as a practice of reflection. In this humanizing pedagogy of engagement, the instructors display an optimism toward their students and their capacity to know, learn, and contribute to making the world a more just place. This multi-dimensional framework celebrates instructors who embrace the whole student and reinforces the belief that, despite the punishing forces of neoliberalism, education can continue to be a public good.

KEYWORDS:

• Humanizing pedagogy
• engaging pedagogy
• neoliberalism
• teacher beliefs and practices

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 We join other scholars in recognizing the problematic nature of excellence in teaching awards which are the by-product of the neoliberal ideology governing higher education (Behari-Leak and McKenna 2017; Giroux 2009; Gourlay and Stevenson 2017; Saunders and Ramírez 2017). We address this later in the paper.