Critical pedagogy and the student-centered classroom: multicultural approaches to writing courses

Abstract

This study explores the problems of and some possible solutions for the rather exclusive nature of education, especially at the secondary and university levels. The exclusivity of education is particularly evident in writing courses, wherein the students might have opportunities to reflect their personal narratives yet are oftentimes forced to submit to heavily prescriptive notions of ideal writing. One solution is the consideration of social epistemology, recognizing the contributions of students' oral and written text in knowledge creation. This study seeks to illuminate the weaknesses of rejecting a social epistemic view, addressing specifically works by Lynne Cheney and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., because those works are accessible to a wide audience. Another solution relies on the poststructural gestures of attending to micronarratives and decentering authority. A student-centered approach allows students to represent themselves more accurately than they would if assigned to a particular group, a grand narrative, because of ethnicity or gender. Also, students who are granted more authority in their education tend to negotiate institutional, social, and cultural restrictions while they produce knowledge. This study ends with a recognition of the importance of classroom practices as a viable source of research in composition studies, notably in multicultural concerns. Just as students in an inclusive pedagogy are encouraged to contribute to knowledge making, so too are teachers to be understood as diverse and worthwhile creators of knowledge.