Teaching facts or teaching thinking? The potential of hooks' 'engaged pedagogy' for teaching politics in a 'post-truth' moment

Joe Greenwood-Hau

doi:10.1080/13562517.2021.1965567

Teaching facts or teaching thinking? The potential of hooks' 'engaged pedagogy' for teaching politics in a 'post-truth' moment

Joe Greenwood-Hau

Politics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)

45 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The rise of populism has sparked a debate about the role of facts in public discourse. How should higher education teachers respond? This article reviews the literature on approaches to teaching and identifies and problematises a tension between emphases on facts and thinking. It then outlines the current 'post-truth' challenge, which suggests reasserting the importance of facts. The institutional, disciplinary and personal context of the article are considered before it proposes hooks' (1994) 'engaged pedagogy' as a prescient response to the current post-truth moment. That approach provides an anti-authoritarianism that has the potential to break down barriers between teachers (experts) and students (trainee experts), accommodate different ways of knowing, and promote collective science. This is illustrated with an example of teaching practice from a first-year undergraduate seminar on politics in ethnically divided societies, which highlights how, despite its limitations, engaged pedagogy can facilitate incorporation of facts within thinking.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	75-92
Number of pages	18
Journal	Teaching in Higher Education
Volume	29
Issue number	1
Early online date	14 Aug 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1965567
Publication status	Published - 2024

Funding

This article was written during the author’s employment as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and Political Science. It was revised during the author's employment as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (award number: PF20/100039) in the School of Government & Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde. I am very grateful for the opportunity to write this article that was afforded by the Enquiry into pedagogic practice module offered as part of the LSE Eden Centre PGCertHE course. In particular, this article would not have been possible without the reassuring support and insightful comments of Dr Colleen McKenna. I am also grateful to Anna Wolmuth and Philip Rauber for their enthusiastic and supportive comments on an earlier version of the article, which instilled in me the enthusiasm to continue working on it. Finally, I am especially grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments and suggestions, which prompted considerable improvements and shaped the final argument of the article.

Keywords

teaching practice
facts
thinking
post-truth
engaged pedagogy
hooks

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10.1080/13562517.2021.1965567

Greenwood-Hau-THE-2021-Teaching-facts-or-teaching-thinking-the-potential-of-hooks-engaged-pedagogy-for-teaching-politicsAccepted author manuscript, 315 KB

Cite this

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Teaching facts or teaching thinking? The potential of hooks' 'engaged pedagogy' for teaching politics in a 'post-truth' moment

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Keywords

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