Learning-in-Relation: Implementing and Analyzing Assets Based Pedagogies in a Higher Education Classroom (original) (raw)

2020, Equity & Excellence in Education

This article discusses the assets-based pedagogical theories used in one higher education classroom while analyzing the ways the co-authors, instructor, and students' learning process and identities were impacted by such pedagogies, lessons, and structures. We examine the ways members of the classroom community were impacted and impacting one another as a result of trialogic interactions-with one another, with multiple scholars whose pieces were read and discussed, and with/in themselves. We then offer pedagogical implications while discussing main themes that emerged from reflective discussions: grappling, citationality, and incompleteness. We frame this work as a community of learners who came to understand their own incomplete and in process growth as learners. This article details a case study for the ways projects in humanization, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and storying can be operationalized in classroom spaces to center moments of tension, grappling, and awakening. "We should see ourselves as stewards not of specific pieces of knowledge but rather of the productive and generative spaces that allow for finding knowledge."-Leigh Patel (2015, p. 79) Pedagogical practices and theories have remained largely unexplored in higher education (Bozalek, Ng'ambi, Wood, Herrington, Hardman & Amory 2014). 1 Educational research should focus on the equitable pedagogical practices instructors use in higher education classrooms that center the experiences, lived realities, tribal and cultural knowledges, and histories that students bring with them (Tachine, Cabrera & Yellow Bird 2017). Although not always the case, much of the teaching practices that occur in higher education rely on what Freire (1970) refers to as the banking style of education, where instructors/professors hold all the pertinent knowledge related to the course and their job is to transfer that knowledge to students. The assumption of the banking style of education is that students have little to no knowledge currency. Often, this results in unidirectional learning settings where instructors make knowledge deposits to students. To counteract inequitable learning settings, Webb and Alvarez (2018) argue for the importance of moving "beyond an adult-centered or institution-focused approach to social capital and wellbeing" and toward "community-building capacities and cultural agency" (p. 419) for students and instructors within schooling settings. Many pedagogical theorists have countered banking styles of education; however, the context of such research usually lies in K-12 school settings, rather than in higher education settings (K.