6 When Being Online Hinders the Act of Challenging Banking Model Pedagogy Neo-Liberalism in Digital Higher Education

Critical Pedagogy

Critical pedagogy can be difficult to define with precision since it is interpreted and implemented in widely differing contexts; it is perceived at times very differently because it merges critical theory and postmodern thought (McLaren, 2020) and, as such, reconciles what are frequently radically different theoretical perspectives. Critical theorists, for example, place much emphasis on minority identity, on the discourse of oppression, and on the sense of affiliation shared by marginalized individuals in the use of common language to describe identity. Postmodern thinkers, conversely, shift progressively toward a distinct view of oppression and end up rejecting language (e.g., “racialized” or “LGBTQ2S+”) that defines marginalized identities as categories because they believe that this language can perpetuate marginalization.1 This can cause significant tension within CP circles, and, though most scholars have similar aims when it comes to challenging power dynamics in education, they can have opposite ideas about how to challenge hegemonic power dynamics.

There are, however, key features always present in the formulation of critical pedagogy (Villanueva & O’Sullivan, 2019). As mentioned in the previous section, CP rejects the banking model, seen as traditional teaching approaches that focus on the passivity of the learner and on the mistaken perception of knowledge as a commodity transferred by the teacher in an almost mechanical way. CP argues that the role of the educator is to awaken learners out of this torpor by making them conscious of how traditional education is oppressing them. CP then focuses on supporting learners’ search for voice and their eventual efforts at emancipation from oppressive practices (Blanchard & Nix, 2019; Giroux, 2011). In practice, this might, for example, encourage racialized students to challenge the hegemonic whiteness of academia (Vidal-Ortiz, 2017), Global South and Indigenous students to seek the decolonization of the curriculum and assessment practices (Malik, 2017), or LGBTQ2S+ students to query the heteronormativity of disciplines (Boustani & Taylor, 2020).

Online Learning and Critical Pedagogy

Perhaps because of its emphasis on the learner voice, dialogic learning, and justice, CP has had an ambivalent relationship with online teaching and technology more generally (Boyd, 2016). During the emergence of the internet, many critical pedagogues were predictably and vehemently opposed to the web, seeing in its emergence a plethora of ways that it might end up accentuating social inequities. It is in this context that the concept of the digital divide was created and developed (AlSadrani et al., 2020). It took over a decade before critical scholars started rethinking this opposition and acknowledging the potential of the web to serve as an affordance in the process of emancipation of oppressed and marginalized individuals (Mapotse, 2014). Since then, a large body of literature has focused on the numerous ways that technology, virtual platforms, software, and social media have all played key roles in developing CP online. There have been CP initiatives developed online with LGBTQ2S+ students, homeless youth, racialized learners, Indigenous students, and students with disabilities (Alvarez, 2019). Digital literacy as a field, in particular, has been an exceptionally dynamic locus where CP and technology have been blended and integrated with great success.

The pendulum swing has not been smooth or complete. The CP field now has a huge potential for transformative action via the internet but remains suspicious of the virtual world, like any space, in which polarization and discrimination occur, particularly as a result of organized and concerted action by political entities (Mizan & Ishtiaque Ahmed, 2018). This dichotomous positioning has become crystallized in the creation of an entirely new field of scholarship: critical digital pedagogy (CDP). This body of literature emphasizes the dual nature of the internet as a place of simultaneous emancipation and oppression (Young, 2019). It calls for extreme scrutiny from users and practitioners and a focus on power dynamics when integrating online technology in teaching and learning (Williamson et al., 2020), when developing open practices (McKenzie, 2020), when supporting minority voices in these spaces (Kumi-Yeboah et al., 2019), and when navigating the hyper-commercialization of higher education online practices (Nichols & Stahl, 2019).

The very existence of a scholarship on CDP supported my original assumption that shifting my course on CP online would be conducive to rich engagement and dialogue. The course in its in-person format supported the participants in challenging traditional banking model practices and seeking authentic dialogical practices. It explicitly discussed CP and its objectives. Moving the course to an online format should therefore have widened the opportunities for rich, genuine discussion of CDP; the online design that I produced indeed seemed to provide more systematic opportunities for the amplification of learners’ voices, for a shift in the instructor’s role as facilitator rather than lecturer, and for a fluid renegotiation of traditional learner habits within an innovative medium. This is not how it eventually unfolded, however, as I explain below. The exploration of this transition in design is addressed from my subjective experience through the process and driven by a stance that aligns with phenomenology.

Methodological Reflection: Phenomenology in Educational Research

Phenomenology is increasingly used as a perspective in research on higher education, particularly in regard to teaching and learning (Webb & Welsh, 2019). This paradigm is focused on examining the lived experiences of individuals in order to analyze the “meaning making” that they carry out as they interact with specific phenomena in their everyday existence (Neubauer et al., 2019). It is a powerful perspective in research because it acknowledges the fact that subjective, individually crafted realities are important and worthy of analytical, empirical, and scientific investigation. These subjective constructions of realities are indeed often the key variables necessary to understand complex human interactions within the social sciences (Sandi-Urena, 2018). Phenomenology is focused on examining meaning making as a process worthy of analysis in its own right.

Phenomenology is particularly well aligned with a reflection on the teaching of CP online. CP indeed pushes instructors, perhaps more than any approach to teaching and learning, to reflect deeply and personally on how their identity, being, lived experience, and affiliation or lack of affiliation with hegemonic or minority groups shapes their teaching. Teaching CP with authenticity becomes a systematic and experiential process of self-reflection and unpacking of self (Tien, 2019). Phenomenology is uniquely positioned as a theoretical lens to frame and support this deeply personal professional experience.

Reflections: Working toward Dialogic Teaching and Learning

I examine here my experience as a faculty member responsible for the delivery of a course on CP at the Master of Education (MEd) level. From the start of 2016 to the end of 2018, I was employed as an assistant professor within a Faculty of Education on a Canadian campus. In this role, I was allocated a course on CP that I developed and taught each semester to in-person cohorts. Since 2018, I have continued to teach on this campus as a sessional instructor, and I was asked on three occasions to offer the same course to online cohorts. I present and analyze here my experiences as an instructor offering the same course, and the same opportunities to challenge the banking model, in two different formats. The course was radically redesigned for online delivery, but the objectives remained the same, though the assignments were adapted to the new medium. The opportunities for key discussions among participants were retained but triggered in different ways. I carried out, throughout the delivery of the course online, a deep reflection on its design but did not identify any specific issue with the design itself. In short, though the designs differed, both the online course and the in-person course dealt with CP in significant ways and modelled its key tenets in the delivery and assessment format.

I offered the same master’s-level course on CP seven times in an in-person format with some online elements over a period of two and a half years. I was extremely invested in this course from the start and determined not solely to construct an engaging course but also to model the concepts taught to the greatest extent possible. I therefore included elements of dialogic education from the first class, with a renegotiation of the classroom space and of the power dynamics symbolized by the traditional class layout: screen and instructor desk at the front of the class, instructor in control of the projector screen, students in rows, et cetera. The course also modelled elements of curriculum co-creation. It challenged banking model practices by rejecting the notion of a course reading list dictated by the instructor and replacing it with a flexible, personalized, student-centred approach to the selection of class readings, within which students were encouraged to select specific examples of CP in a real-world context and readings associated with their examples.

Each unit kicked off with an open discussion of media features meant to offer the opportunity for personal and reflective debates on current issues in social justice arising from the learners’ everyday concerns and positions within society. The course also integrated elements of active learning in the sense that learners spent a large amount of classroom time investigating and critically evaluating real-world examples of CP implementation in classrooms. This process inevitably led on each occasion to an examination of how the course itself stood up compared to these case studies and illustrations. The course also included an active and dialogic exploration of films that deal with CP or its key themes. A detailed analysis of the complex relationship between popular culture, particularly motion pictures, and CP was central to course development. This section created much enthusiasm and engagement among students. Some of the films explored and integrated into the course were Entre les Murs (2008), Half-Nelson (2006), La Haine (1995), Dear White People (2014), Girl (2018), Rabbit Proof Fence (2002), CRAZY (2005), Polytechnique (2009), and Get Out (2017).

Importantly, when the course explored indigenization and decolonization, participants were actively invited to debate how the course could be improved, become more authentic in this respect, and succeed in integrating yet more Global South and Indigenous perspectives and voices into the syllabus. Course evaluations through these seven iterations were high, and I was consistently surprised by the exceptional degree of engagement among participants, their authentic reflection on self as a learner, and their desire to challenge almost every aspect of traditional pedagogy remaining in the format.

Friction and Resistance in Online Spaces

Delivery of the same course in an online format, despite the careful redesign, did not go according to plan. The opportunities for dialogic interactions with the learners were retained—and even extended—in the redesign for online delivery. In each unit, spaces were created to discuss readings, class concerns, and a large number of media pieces extracted from the news. Since this is a course with a dialogic format and flavour, students’ reactions were evident from the beginning. Areas of friction and resistance are indicated below.

• Students who engaged online felt intimidated by the curriculum co-creation components; they repeatedly expressed their preference for predetermined course content.
• Students were resistant to engaging in the dialogic dimensions of the course, perceiving them from the start as overly time consuming; they compared the workload with that of other online courses that they had taken in which the format was what they described as “read and post,” requiring no challenge to the teaching and learning format.
• There was a general reluctance among the participants to embrace elements of choice incorporated throughout the course even though learner identity, voice, and emancipation were central and explicit concerns of the course. A frequent comment was that participants were content to read about it but not insistent on experiencing it first-hand. Self-determination in regard to possible readings was outright rejected, students suggesting that the reading list should be narrowed down and made compulsory.
• There was little enthusiasm for the exploration of popular culture and CP; nor was any genuine engagement demonstrated in regard to the films introduced. Once again the argument about time was used, and this activity was seen as overly time consuming for a three-credit course. The message was clear on three occasions that this course was offered online: make it less organically and democratically free flowing; anchor it down with teacher-led decisions; discuss CP but do not attempt to model it since it is too resource intensive for the participants.

Although the experiences described above summarize the majority views on the course on the three instances that it was offered online, some students did engage in a wider reflection beyond the time frame for completion. Some participants remained in contact with me and carried out their own reflections on some of the resistance that they had experienced, identifying the tensions between their initial reactions and the explicit course objectives and questioning the causes of the phenomena that they had experienced. This was a deep and rather painful exercise in self-reflection for some of these learners, but it occurred after the 12-week course.

On the third occasion that this course was offered online, some students specifically placed their resistance in the wider context of the marketing of the online version of the MEd program, the branding of the courses in the faculty catalogue, and the business-like approach that the campus adopted in relation to students’ time commitment and ability to complete courses while working.

There can be many reasons that a student engages differently in an online versus an in-person environment, including mental health considerations (Patterson Lorenzetti, 2015), disabilities (Perera Rodríguez & Moriña, 2019), family commitments, employment workload (Farrell & Brunton, 2020), or simply inexperience with virtual spaces (Mishra et al., 2020). An instructor’s lack of comfort in online spaces is also a frequent factor in student disengagement online (Kebritchi et al., 2017), and my phenomenological analysis included this process of self-reflection on design and online pedagogy. Although I have engaged in deep reflection about the specific design needs of learners, for the rest of the chapter and for an ongoing exploration of the above arguments, I will focus on neo-liberalism as an underexplored dimension affecting learners’ perceptions of engagement in an online course of this type.

Through my phenomenological analysis, I observed how the wider and endemic phenomenon of master’s degree students’ perceptions of online instruction—its goals, potential, and limitations—often seemed to be the rather unidimensional product of a societal construction of online instruction and of a historical branding of online learning after a decade of a particularly powerful neo-liberal branding of mere convenience (Kentnor, 2015; Manhaus, 2012). The perception of the higher education student as a consumer is now omnipresent (Silverio et al., 2021). In such a landscape, convenience, speed, ability to navigate employment while completing graduate degrees, and ability to take courses in multiple formats (in terms of both length and type) have become key values (Andrade, 2018; Harrison & Risler, 2015; Lederman, 2018). I argue here that this positioning as consumers affects learners’ expectations of deep engagement and personal investment in the curriculum itself and as a result can hinder genuine dialogic opportunities when teaching CP in online formats.

The observations in this chapter should not be interpreted as an inherent and insurmountable hurdle when it comes to teaching critical pedagogy online. Conceptually, there is nothing that might make it challenging to teach CP in an online format. In fact, the key features of CP make it particularly adaptable to the virtual environment: it is a teaching approach, after all, that encourages students to challenge conventional pedagogical practices and take on non-traditional roles; it might even be tempting at first to assume that students can find it easier to do this in the virtual environment since it is innovative and fluid (Green & Chewning, 2020). CP seeks to challenge the banking model, and in principle the online space remains a privileged locus for this reflection to happen (Bradshaw, 2017; Chun, 2018; Pandit & Rahaman, 2019).

The Impact of Neo-Liberalism on Learners’ Perceptions of Online Teaching

From my experiences with the online version of this course, the potential of online delivery to support CP is less in question than the perception of online teaching among many students (Fidalgo et al., 2020). Online education—indeed education in every modality—must be examined within a wider neo-liberal context within which it has been reshaped and portrayed over the past two decades: it has indeed been branded in terms of convenience, cost effectiveness, time efficiency, and lower engagement that is easy to integrate into busy lives (Broucker et al., 2020; Toufaily et al., 2018). In this particular faculty, the course on CP is now offered not just online over 12 weeks but also online over 6 weeks and even as a face-to-face intensive course over 10 days. Often these alternative formats have little to do with a realistic exploration of pedagogical outcome or content (Ball, 2016) and become marketing exercises that seek to fit course objectives into student expectations and life commitments—whatever they might be. Higher education institutions are highly aware of the competitive landscape in which they operate, and delivery formats become primarily marketing and branding strategies (Van Vught & Huisman, 2013).

Neo-liberalism is a theory from the field of economics that unexpectedly has become prominent in the field of education since the 1980s (Tight, 2019). It is a lens that magnifies market forces as key in social structures and shows that the markets need to be free to achieve optimal outcomes for the majority of stakeholders (Azevedo et al., 2019). It has led to the adoption of a business model approach that currently frames most dimensions of the postsecondary sector. As a result, students are often perceived as customers, and courses marketed as commodities, with value for money, convenience, time efficiency, and ease in achieving outcomes seen as key desirable and commercially competitive features (Olivares & Wetzel, 2014; Pizarro Milian, 2017; Pizarro Milian & Quirke, 2017; Toma, 2012; Tomlinson, 2017).

The neo-liberal packaging of online learning often positions students to expect more superficial engagement, less interaction, and faster progression through topics (Brown & Carasso, 2013). The current image of online learning necessarily leads learners to expect fewer radical challenges to the banking model and less authentic, deep, rich experimentation with student-led learning (Munro, 2018). In my experience, this particular branding might have led some students within this specific course to think that they could retain fairly traditional roles, akin to the banking model, and avoid deep interaction with the process required within CP. Interestingly, having been confronted repeatedly now with students’ reluctance in this course to engage deeply online with processes that could lead to conscientization, I have created more spaces for open discussions about these feelings. In these interactive spaces, students have offered narratives on the time element, minimal interactive nature, and directive feel that they considered the features that attracted them to the online courses.

The key outcome, and call for action, suggest that the aims of CP could be achieved online but that any course of this nature delivered virtually would have to create a process of conscientization first (for more on conscientization, or critical consciousness, see Chapter 13 of this volume) among learners regarding the impacts of neo-liberalism on their perceptions of online course objectives and format of engagement. This has been my key practical takeaway as an instructor and the main recommendation that I offer colleagues. Instead of delivering a course on CP online despite this resistance and pushback, we can integrate the experiences of students proactively, leading to a wider reflection on how critical pedagogy and critical digital pedagogy need to be positioned within a neo-liberal landscape of higher education in order to be palatable and meaningful to learners. In my current offering of the course at this stage, the need to address these spontaneous concerns, disruptions, and discussions has become a course activity of its own that tends to occur organically and can almost be planned for.

This does mean in practice not only that such a course on CP would have to be designed differently for online delivery but also that a significant portion of the course would need to focus on the process of conscientization on the impact of neo-liberalism on learners’ expectations described above. A conceptual takeaway emerges here: critical digital pedagogy in higher education cannot hope simply to transfer critical pedagogy to a virtual medium; rather, it must include a deep and challenging reflection on the ways that learners perceive online learning.

Neo-Liberalism in the Context of COVID-19

This discussion is particularly relevant in the current COVID-19 crisis. The world has observed since March 2020 a rapid pivot to emergency online delivery (Witze, 2020). This contingency online teaching is tainted with the same ambivalent image of expediency, superficiality, and limited authentic engagement (Herman, 2020; Moore et al., 2021). It is not online learning per se, however, that is described in the numerous but less than flattering features that have popped up worldwide about the COVID-19 pivot (Wong, 2020); it is instead a poor alternative, equivalent simply to a unidimensional shift from on-campus design to an alternative platform or medium (Lederman, 2018). Beyond that even, the disillusioned discourse observed about the online pivot echoes a rhetoric that existed before the COVID-19 crisis: except on rare occasions and exceptionally invested campuses, online teaching was then already much viewed as a “less than” alternative (Fain, 2019; Muthuprasad et al., 2021). This perception was the result of over a decade of neo-liberal marketing that implicitly associated it with few genuine pedagogical values and instead with connotations of convenience and ease (Munro, 2018).

The COVID-19 crisis, though it has dramatically highlighted public deficit perceptions of online teaching and learning, might offer a silver lining. The health crisis indeed has triggered significant debate and reflection on the true essence and nature of online learning, and a positive narrative is emerging, filled with hope about pedagogy in virtual space (Dhawan, 2020). This narrative seeks to deconstruct and reframe perceptions and embrace new ambitions and dreams for online teaching since it is now here to stay (Zhu & Liu, 2020). It is hoped that in the decade to come the field might see more students genuinely willing and able to engage authentically in online courses with concepts such as CP. This might represent an eventual shattering of the rather wobbly and counterproductive neo-liberal image of online pedagogy (Troiani & Dutson, 2021).

Conclusion

Although this chapter builds its reflection upon a feeling of unease—the perception of being proven fundamentally wrong about one’s assumptions in regard to the offering of a course on CP online—it quickly shifts to a radically different perspective. This reflection unearths an opportunity to reshape our collective views and perceptions of online teaching, a reflection that could not have come at a more opportune time in the context of the pivot required by COVID-19 and the numerous questions that it leaves unanswered.

As I have asserted in this chapter, there are numerous misunderstandings of the notion of online teaching, and some of these misconceptions are the result of the commercial branding that online teaching and learning have been given for over a decade within the increasing omnipresence of neo-liberalism in the landscape of higher education. The illustration offered in this chapter of the friction that occurs when instructors attempt to teach profoundly dialogic courses online indicates the momentous work that must take place to reframe online learning in the eyes of students. I argue that CP in particular, as course content, can serve as a key cathartic tool to help reshape radically the potential, format, and ambition of online pedagogy in the eyes of students of higher education. Courses on critical pedagogy offered online might therefore become a primary battle ground for this reflection to occur.

Key Takeaways

• The unexpected tension that can arise when shifting courses in critical pedagogy to online delivery should be explored.
• This tension should be analyzed in a way that avoids reductionist interpretations that might portray critical pedagogy as incompatible with online modes of teaching.
• The subtext of this perceived tension and how neo-liberalism shapes the branding of online teaching and in turn learners’ attitudes toward learning should be examined.
• This reflection should be situated within the context of COVID-19, in which online delivery has become a requirement rather than a choice.

Note

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