Teaching for transformation: higher education institutions, critical pedagogy and the political imagination

Writing over 20 years ago, bell hooks (1994) highlighted her concerns that the dominant discourse on teaching portrayed it as the dreary underdog of academic practice, with research being the jewel in the academic crown. Needs and expectations of students and of future employers are changing; to succeed in this increasingly competitive market, we argue that universities will need to undertake a drastic move away from transmission methods of teaching to approaches that inspire the political imagination. We believe that as educators our ontological and epistemological perspectives underpin our teaching; our positions inform our understanding of historical, economic and social structures and, for us, determine how we view our role as educators. Our ontological commitment to social justice affects what we teach, how we teach and how we approach and interpret the space of the classroom. They inform who we are as humans and determine what we see, how we see it and how we choose to interpret it. In the same way that there has been increasing recognition within the social sciences of the need to examine how our ontologies influence, direct and alter our research, we argue that we must do the same with our teaching in order to create learning environments that engender critical political engagement. This interactive discussion will facilitate a reflection on the role of scholarship in developing this political imagination. We hope to provoke dialogue on ways in which we can avoid reactionary changes to teaching as a result of the shifting expectations of students and employers while meeting the demand for social impact through creative, critical pedagogies that recognise the potential role of educators in social transformation.