FLUX Pedagogy: Transforming Teaching & Learning during Coronavirus
Throughout March we explored research design, with a focus on theory and conceptual frameworks.
In March we were just beginning to realize the impact of the Covid 19 pandemic. This post from the Mentor in Residence for March, Dr. Sharon Ravitch, catalyzed new thinking. She went on to develop a Flux Pedagogy course, and has a must-read new post on the Harvard Business Publishing Education page: "Why Teaching Through Crisis Requires a Radical New Mindset: Introducing Flux Pedagogy."
Find more about teaching and learning here.
Changing Teaching in Changing Times
“We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.”
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Many instructors have experienced the 1st week of classes since the outbreak of COVID-19 forced us inside and apart. Coming together in our virtual “classroom” is emotional. So much has changed. Our lives are different. The world is different. Our minds have been transformed into a kind of shock-induced survival mode, our best laid plans are unraveling before our eyes. What we see now in technicolor is our shared humanity, laid bare before us through a haze of disorientation. Our lives have changed in immeasurable ways, most of which we don’t yet even understand.
- Sharon Ravitch
In this moment of the COVID-19 pandemic, life is in an indefinite state of flux. Students have unprecedented concerns about their academic lives and career trajectories—what will happen to them? How do we try to allay their fears? They’re concerned about their families and communities, their lives are disrupted in ways that affect their livelihoods now and for the foreseeable future. Many have had to move under duress, some are in interim housing, others are unable to return to their states or countries given travel restrictions. Some are separated from their loved ones. Concerns about coursework and research include participant well-being, issues of access and recruitment, lost ability to travel, funding, library access.
These are embodied concerns in a time of radical flux—global displacement, universities shut down, people looking for jobs, juggling family responsibilities, worried about their own health, family health, and public health. The lines between well and sick, healthy and unhealthy have blurred, as have other suddenly-irrelevant binaries like safe and unsafe, productive and unproductive, distancing and connection. From this moment of relational and educational uncertainty, upheaval and reverberation, of taking everything we do in person online, arrives the dire need for an emergent and humanizing education approach—flux pedagogy.
Flux Pedagogy
'Pure experience' is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.
- William James
Flux pedagogy is a term I’ve come up with to refer to the integration of relational and critical pedagogy frameworks into a transformative teaching approach in times of radical flux. It is constructivist, student-centered, relational, and reflexive; it’s a humanizing pedagogy that examines the goals and processes of education in moments of uncertainty with a goal of mutual growth and transformation.
Some of the main purposes of our courses have shifted seemingly overnight—from specialized teaching and learning to more broadly solutionary and connective in both humanitarian and pedagogical ways. Flux pedagogy supports an inquiry-based, emergent design teaching mindset that is adaptive, generative, and compassionate; it is a framework for balancing radical compassion for students with high-yet-humanistically-calibrated expectations for learning in our courses. This global moment requires us to learn a set of new skills for designing and enacting humanizing and transformative pedagogy with our students as we teach them specific content areas.
Flux pedagogyintegrates critical relational frameworks into a complex adaptive pedagogicalapproach that identifies and addresses lived problems as a form of radicalaction. Developing your class as an onlinecommunity of practice that pushes against real-time inequities in relation to COVID-19can be the beginning of a critical literacy forsocial and educational transformation—an extension of Appiah’s (2006)cosmopolitanism as a literacy of human interdependence—a universality ofconcern for all people coupled with the belief that people are entitled to liveinto their own priorities and ideals without the imposition of what otherswould choose for them.
The key primary dimensions of flux pedagogy are:
1) Trauma-Informed Pedagogy;
2) Emergent Design, Student-Centered, Active Teaching;
3) Inquiry as Stance;
4) Critical Pedagogy;
5) Racial Literacy Pedagogy; and
6) Brave Space Pedagogy.
In this post, I discuss each of these dimensions of flux pedagogy in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. I then offer strategies to help engage flux pedagogy with students to co-construct your courses to be an online brave space community of practice.
Trauma-Informed Pedagogy
“My lifetime listens to yours.”
- Muriel Ruckeyser
In this moment of collective trauma—both our own trauma and vicarious trauma—instructors must attune ourselves to possible student trauma (both past and present) as a necessary first step to co-creating online communities of learning. Trauma-informed pedagogy foregrounds understanding trauma—personal, communal, and generational—and its social and emotional reverberations, cultivating a learning environment comfortable to those who’ve experienced trauma, and recognizing the resilience and resources of individuals and communities who have experienced or are experiencing trauma (Pak & Ravitch, in review).
Right now students need a place to name and process their trauma in community. This is a necessary foundation for all other kinds of learning and thought partnership to happen—so begin each class with a warm check-in, compassionate hellos, and state the need for everyone to engage in self-care.
Trauma-informed pedagogy foregrounds the affective dimensions of teaching and considers possible trauma histories as they play out in learning. Right now during the pandemic, it’s vital to understand that while our students are all traumatized, all traumas are not the same and do not land the same ways. While the pandemic is shared trauma, it lands into the lives of already-vulnerable populations (including some of our students and their families and communities) in ways that can cause more severe diffusion effects. As well, some students already have trauma histories separate from COVID-19 that must be considered in relation to current shared challenges.
Instructors must educate ourselves so that we can identify possible signs of trauma and not assume disengagement or apathy. Further, it is important to be intentional with language around student distress and traumatic events. Below is an example of proactive communication that is compassionate and trauma-sensitive.
Examples for Communication to Students:
Principles (Adapted from a piece by Dr. Brandon Bayne, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)
1. No one signed up for this.
Not for the sickness,not for the social distancing, not for the sudden end of our collective livesand collaboration together on campus.
Not for an online class,not for teaching remotely, not for learning from home, not for learning newtechnologies under duress, not for limited access to learning materials.
2. The humane option is the best option.
We will prioritizekindness and supporting each other as humans.
We will prioritizesimple solutions that make sense for the most.
We will prioritizesharing resources and communicating clearly.
3. We cannot just do the same thing online.
Some assignments are nolonger possible.
Some expectations are nolonger reasonable.
Some objectives are nolonger valuable.
4. We will foster intellectual nourishment,social connection, and personal accommodation.
Accessible asynchronouscontent for diverse access, time zones, and contexts.
Optional synchronousdiscussion to learn together and combat isolation.
5. We will remain flexible and adjust to thesituation.
No one knows where thisis going and what we’ll need to adapt.
Everyone needs supportand understanding in this unprecedented moment.
A second communication, this one to teachers, written by Chris Lehmann (@ ChrisLehmann), the principal of my sons’ high school, Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, captures the blended ethic of flexibility and care that both teachers and students of all ages need in these times: https://practicaltheory.org/blog/
Suggested Practices
Notice each student’s body language and eye contact during each class session. Check for signs of self-care, shame, or withdrawal.
Create pathways for students to communicate trauma and distress (e.g., in a google doc, open office hours online).
Be sure to model self-care and well-being for your students.
Attune yourself to trauma—your own trauma (which is important to be in touch with right now), students’ trauma, and vicarious trauma that some of our students face in their research in communities and practice in schools or other internship sites. Work to familiarize yourself with trauma-informed pedagogy so that you come to understand trauma more complexly. Be mindful of deficitizing language and trigger words. (See: Focusing on Student Well-Being in Times of Crisis and Social and Emotional Well-Being. )
ALWAYS READ THE FULL CHATS CAREFULLY AFTER CLASS, students sometimes share distress, even veiled in humor. (Note: In most videoconference platforms, chats can be downloaded.)
Emergent Design, Student-Centered, Active Teaching
“Everything is in a state of flux, including the status quo.”
- Robert Byrne
Learning happens best when it is active, responsive, and contextualized. In this moment of global, institutional, and personal flux-induced stress, instructors must pause to consider the ways this crisis lands into each student’s life, how it may land differently given status and finances, whether or not students have family or community supports, and how students (like us) have unique coping mechanism formed from past experiences that may or may not be serving them well.
For the social-emotional health and well-being of your students, actively consider their level of stress while planning each class, sending out communications about changes in the syllabus or assignments. Specifically, be aware of how a student’s situation may influence their ability to collaborate on group projects. To co-create a supportive learning environment with students:
Engage in active listening and perspective-taking.
Re-envision communication and process norms to push into power asymmetries.
Ask students what they need as a group. Group discussion of online norms is helpful.
Discuss reciprocity of efforts and supports within the group.
Learning is embodied. Remember to breathe, give breaks, honor physicality even when the class is online. One instructor noted: I began my classes this week for the first time ever with a deep breathing and visualization exercise.
Consider students with learning differences and physical disabilities and check in with them proactively and ongoingly. Be sure to do so outside of class time.
Provide structure amidst chaos. Abide by start and end times, share a clear agenda, set up breakout rooms and other formats that support collaborative learning (do so ahead of time). This is your responsibility so get the technical support you need if need be ahead of time. Do not ask students to take on these responsibilities.
Learning experiences during COVID-19 mustapproach emotional well-being as central to learning, help students traversecomplex systems in difficult times, build relational trust, and viewpedagogical flexibility as an ethical stance, wherein everyone’s knowledges andinsights are actively called into play, thereby shaking hierarchical norms tobecome more of a collective in a time of chaos and shared vulnerability. Thisapplies to changes in assignments, responsibilities, and presentations thatwere assigned prior to the pandemic.
Suggested Practices
Re-Envision and Co-Construct
Re-assess assignments with your students.
Ask: What is the mostresponsive way to achieve equally valuable learning outcomes given currentchallenges students face?
Re-calibrate the structure of sessions with students.
Discuss: Talk with students (andcolleagues) about new ideas, watch videos of different teaching approaches,re-imagine new ways of teaching (e.g., break-out rooms, using chat and screenshare functions strategically).
Re-imagine assessment. Ask students (and colleagues): Whatalternative or bespoke evaluation frameworks make sense in such a dire moment?
One great way to do this is to look at the syllabus with students asan artifact of a pre-pandemic mindset and note what has shifted and how toaddress that.
Become an Introspective Ethnographer
TRY TO CURIOUSLY NOTICE:
If/how students seem engaged, excited, agitated, or withdrawn andin which moments and activities. Work to be curious, not judgmental.
Non-verbalcommunication, verbal statements and interactions, group dynamics, emotions,and assumptions that seem to go unnoticed.
Emotionalreactions as windows into what people value and care about, what they arestressed about and why.
Engagingin meta-analysis of class interaction is useful to build a more critical andcompassionate interpretation of students and situations.
Schedule informal conversations with individual students soon. Tryto feel into for whom this might be a burden and work around their needs.
As well, you can send brief, open-ended questionnaires or a singlewriting prompt that asks students to prioritize their most pressing questions,needs, ideas, concerns, etc.
Fosterdialogic engagement and collaboration by promotingand supporting opportunities for structured collaboration on and offline insmall and large groups.
Inquiry as Stance
“For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.”
- Paulo Freire
Inquiry as stance is a reflectivelearning stance on ourselves, our practice, and the contexts—near and far—thatshape our practice through engaging in intentional, continuous self-reflection.An inquiry stance situates practitioners as“legitimate knowers and knowledge generators, not just implementers of others’knowledge” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). Inquiry as stance is a continualprocess of making current and typically dominant arrangements problematic. Fourcentral dimensions of an inquiry stance are:
Rejecting the dualistic divide of formal knowledge as different from practical knowledge to instead focus on local knowledge in global contexts.
Practice as the interplay of teaching, learning, and leading, as well as an expanded view of who counts as a practitioner.
Views practitioner communities as the primary medium for enacting inquiry-as-stance as a theory of action.
Seeks to provide and position education for a more just and democratic society.
While these are evergreen values, inthese fraught COVID-19 times, prioritizing relational authenticity, validation,and care for our students (rather than sustaining hierarchies that can bedistancing) is everything. By situating yourself as a learner, which we all arein such unprecedented times, you open up possibilities for dialectical growthand reciprocal learning and transformation with your students in and beyond yourclasses (Nakkula & Ravitch 1998).
Suggested Practices
Situate Yourself as a Learner
Situate yourself as a learner in relation to becoming an online community of practice. Introduce and ongoingly communicate your learner stance by trying phrases such as, “I don’t know,” “thank you for teaching me that,” and “we’re all learning.”
Listen carefully to a range of students to understand the macro and micro socio-political forces present in their educational experiences during COVID-19. This means focusing on issues of structural inequity and intersectional social identities and how they are playing out right now, including in schools and workplaces.
Consider your own communication style to gain deeper insights into how others perceive you. Remember that understanding has less to do with what is said or intended as it does in how the messaging is perceived, which is mediated by culture and context.
ALWAYS REMEMBER: To be aware of and sensitive to possible mental health issues and to the suffering that students feel related to the imposter syndrome.
Critical Pedagogy
“Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future.”
- Susan Sontag
Critical pedagogy situates students asagentic knowers who can investigate, question, and critique the construction ofsocietal and educational norms in relation to their own experiences; itchallenges traditional educational practices that serve to reinforce hegemonicideas such notions of students as passive recipients for teachers’ knowledgetransmission. Critical pedagogy positions students as critical citizens who canact as agents of social change. Cultivating students’ critical consciousness ispart of the process of building education as a practice of freedom (Freire, 1970).Right now, this stance helps to create the conditions for students to cultivatea sense of agency in relation to what many experience as individual andcollective helplessness.
Education for critical consciousnessrefers to the intentional development of critical understandings of social lifethat enable reflection on social and political contradictions as grounding fortaking systematic action to improve life conditions as they are illuminated byemergent understandings. As applied to teaching during COVID, criticalconsciousness creates openings to cultivate more critical understandings of thearrangements and limitations of our own educational experiences and totransform them as part of social and educational disruption and reinventionduring a pandemic (Pak & Ravitch, in press). Thismeans, I believe, that we must move into our most flexible and humanizingpedagogies, which are pedagogies of hope and love (Freire, 1970; hooks, 1993), aswe work to minimize opportunity costs in our courses by supporting abundance incritical learning. This is the heart of critical pedagogy, and it’s vital toshow our students active compassion and care.
Suggested Practices
Critical Storytelling Use the participatory approach of semi-structured storytelling to start sessions and/or end sessions. Can relate the pandemic to course material through personal narratives.
Critical re-storying is aform of critical pedagogy, an intentional approach to cultivatingintra- and inter-personal awareness and reflexivity. The intentional process oftelling and listening to stories helps us to examine the roots of ourideologies, examine our belief systems and the broader social, cultural, andpolitical spheres that shape them. In these moments of disorientation, storytellingcan be a means of learning, confirming, and/or contesting reality, building andpreserving community, and conveying knowledge, values, beliefs, and emotions inreal-time; it allows us to co-construct theconditions in which we and our students can consider re-storying ourselves bylearning to re-frame and re-index this current COVID experience with ever-newand more critical insights generated by equity-focused dialogue and reflection.
Racial Literacy Pedagogy
“The lion's story will never be known as long as the hunter is the one to tell it.”
- West African Proverb
Racial literacy is the ability to read,recast, and resolve racially stressful encounters and to consider and addressidentity-related stress more broadly. Reading means decoding racial subtexts,sub-codes, and scripts. Recasting means reducing stress in racially stressfulencounters using racial mindfulness. Resolving means negotiating raciallystressful encounters toward a healthy conclusion. Racial literacy means thatyou are able to read, and thus experience, interaction through an activeempowerment framework (Stevenson, 2014). It enables people to see the specifictools and coping strategies they can immediately employ if they find themselvesstressed or tense during conversations about identity and equity (and thenthroughout their everyday lives). It is of the essence to remember that thereare always varying levels of racial literacy and identity-related self-awarenessas well as different levels of tolerance for tension and disagreement aboutthese realities and issues (Stevenson, 2014).
While there is no panacea for handling theidentity-based stress—your own and others’—that can emerge during conversationsabout topics related to identity and inequity, building racial literacy helpsyou to facilitate discussions (and teach others to) in ways that contribute to1) a more open and communicative milieu, 2) a safer emotional environment, 3)helping people feel less helpless and alone, and 4) preventing or de-escalatingtensions or heated disagreements. Improving your own racial literacy isnecessary in order to be able to support others to do the same. It helps tobuild and sustain a course culture that is not afraid to examine issues ofsocial identity and racialized stress and inequity (especially right now) andthat can do so productively.
Storytelling is a means of learning,confirming reality, preserving community, and conveying knowledge (Khalifa,2018) and it allows educators to “ease into self-reflection and becomeself-critical without public scrutiny” (Stevenson, 2014). Through stories, wecan reflect on and reexamine what we know, explore and challenge theauthenticity of the information we have, reflect on our own actions and theirroot motivations, and reflect on the ways that context and history informpatterns of discrimination in the present (Stevenson, 2014). Storytelling is acentral tenet of critical race theory, as counter-storytelling serves to castdoubt on the accepted truths told through majoritarian narratives ofminoritized communities (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). In these crisis times,wherein social identity shapes many facets of people’s pandemic experiences, storytellingis a powerful tool to build understanding; it creates the conditions forstudents to share about what’s happening for them right now in relation toCOVID-19, to learn from each others’ experiences, and over time, to morecritically understand the impacts of broader social, cultural, and political spheresaround our lives.
Suggested Practices
Introduce storytelling as auseful method for practicing recasting and resolving identity-related stress storiesand experiences. Create a forum for shared storytelling in relation to identity-relatedstress and COVID. As a class, reflect on the process and see what it helped thegroup to develop in terms of 1) self-awarenessand reflexivity; 2) inter- and intra-personal insight; 3) relational acumen andauthenticity, 4) comfort ambiguity and discomfort, 5) mindfulness and presence,and 6) empathy, perspective-taking, and compassion.
Model and teach racialliteracy no matter what else you’re teaching. For example, attune yourself tothe norm that students of color are often expected to do emotional labor forwhite people in classes, the ways that white fragility plays out, and so on.
Address inequities andmicroaggressions—including new kinds that stem from COVID-relatedassumptions—as they arise during a course session (e.g., one student makes anassumption about another student based on social identity). If you realize thishappened after a session ends, be sure to bring it into the group in the nextmeeting.
Work to learn in each class,from each student, where you are missing the mark. This requires openingyourself up to feedback. For example, share that you’re working on yournon-binaried gender language or language to refer to minoritized populationsand invite students to correct you.
Brave Space Pedagogy
“If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.”
- Paulo Freire
Brave spaces refer to a set ofcommunication and process norms that invite authentic and critical dialogicengagement. When discussing issues that some may find difficult, uncomfortable,or challenging or in which people tightly hold onto strong beliefs, a typicalresponse is to create “safe spaces” for dialogue. The term “safe space”generally means a place where everyone feels comfortable enough to speak openlyabout their opinions and to share their experiences, feelings, ideas, concerns.However, the concept of “safe spaces,” is often not what it seems; what feelssafe to one person might feel aggressive, overly polite, inauthentic, ornegligent to another. In strong contrast to safe spaces, brave spaces requireand create more critically authentic dialogue and the co-construction ofequitable norms from and for the group (Arao & Clemens, 2013). Brave spacesrequire group bravery as well as ongoing instructor modelling and engagement sothat groups can discuss issues that live at the heart of education in ways thatgo a layer deeper than what is typically discussed given that these safetyrules serve to uphold white male middle class values and norms of communication(Ravitch & Carl, 2019).
We need to develop our own and ourstudents critical competencies to enact asset-based pedagogies, to foster theconditions for brave spaces over safe spaces. Importantly, the very act ofexploring the concept and meaning of a “brave space” marks the beginning of anew group dynamic because it begins an acknowledgement of what anyone who ismarginalized in the room already knows: only people with more social and/orinstitutional power get to decide what constitutes appropriate communication(Arao & Clemens, 2013).
Comparing Safe and Brave Spaces
Safe Spaces
Brave Spaces
Prioritize notions of politeness of some
Prioritize honesty and authenticity for all
Place primacy on a socially -and positionally-constructed idea of comfort when discussing difficult issues, comes with invisible rules
Acknowledge discomfort is inevitable in discussing difficult issues and invite it into the space as a constructive process/experience
Can lead to defensiveness, lack of authenticity and reflexivity, and deflection
Value risk taking, vulnerability,learning and being challenged to reflect
Narrowly define safety, usuallystemming from a dominant White male middle class ableist perspective that isimposed as a normative backdrop
Contend that safety means differentthings to different people/groups and attend to the ways individualssee/experience it in order to reach group understanding and norms
Tend not to prepare participants for engaging in difficult conversations, reinforce “taboo topics” and marginalization of POC
Prepare groups for difficult conversations, develop understandings of critical dialogic engagement as professional development
(Adaptedfrom Ravitch & Carl, 2019)
Suggested Practices
1. Move away from the inauthentic language andconcept of safe spaces.
2. Introduce Brave Space Pedagogy: Have studentsread “FromSafe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue around Diversity andSocial Justice” [RSM6] (it’s brief) and come toclass prepared to co-create inclusive and affirming group norms. Prepare to facilitateBrave Space norm-setting with the group.
Conclusion: Moving into Flux Pedagogy
Contemplating these emergingrealities, the words of bell hooks (1994) call to me,
The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created…. with all its limitations, [it] remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.
- bell hooks
I believe that even with its limitations and constraints, education a location of immense possibility, especially right now in the world. The possibility we need right now lies precisely in finding, creating, and recreating the desire to view working towards freedom as an opportunity. The work of demanding of ourselves, our students, and our colleagues, an openness of mind and heart can help us to face the realities of the less-than-ideal society in which we live as we strive to move beyond the borders that confine our lives and our work. While the work of socially transformative teaching requires considerable focus and energy, our freedom, borne of growth, is truly what is at stake. We are in this together, and the teachers of the world need to teach that way and support each other.
If you’d like to stay in touch, or have questions, follow me on Twitter @SharonRavitch.
References
Appiah, K.A. (2006). Cosmopolitanism:Ethics in a world of strangers. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
Arao, B. & Clemens, K. (2013). “FromSafe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue around Diversity andSocial Justice.” In The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections fromSocial Justice Educators, Ed. Lisa M. Landreman (Sterling, VA: StylusPublishing, 2013), 135-150.
Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L.(2009). Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for the next generation.New York: Teachers College Press.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of theoppressed (MB Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum, 2007.
hooks, b. (1994). Teaching totransgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York, NY: Routledge.
Khalifa, M. (2018). Culturally responsive school leadership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
Nakkula, M. J., & Ravitch, S. M.(1998). Matters of interpretation: Reciprocal transformation in therapeuticand developmental relationships with youth. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Pak, K. & Ravitch, S.M. (in review). CriticalLeadership Praxis. New York, NY: Columbia Teachers College Press.
Ravitch S.M. & Carl, M.N. (2020). Qualitativeresearch: Bridging the conceptual, theoretical, and methodological. (2ndEd.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Ravitch, S.M. & Carl, M.N. (2019). Appliedresearch for sustainable change: A guide for education leaders. Cambridge,MA: Harvard Education Press.
Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23-44.
Stevenson, H.C. (2014) Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools: Differences that Make a Difference. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.