Dismantling Hierarchies in Student-Lecturer Engagement: A Critical Pedagogy Approach in Higher Education

Abstract

The education system is built on the binary student-lecturer relationship. Each player is located on the other side of the wall, which was unsettled by the effects of COVID-19. The aim of the study is to dismantle the wall of separation which is widened by unequal power dimensions where the lecturer is set above the student. Framed within dialogic engagement in Freirean critical pedagogy, the study utilizes self-reflections of both postgraduate students and their lecturer. These reflections are handled within auto-ethnography. Two postgraduate students, reading for a master’s degree in English Studies at the Faculty of Humanities, and their lecturer in the discipline of English Studies provided the reflections that informed the study. The reflections are presented through the tradition of ethnographic thick description located in the qualitative paradigm of participant observation. The reflections are subjected to a narrative analysis. The findings point to the varied academic experiences between public and private institutions. This highlights the often-neglected part of rich experiences that students bring which are beneficial to the co-construction of knowledge. Furthermore, the findings point to a reversal of roles where the lecturer becomes a student who must learn from the experiences of students, and students assume the role of a lecturer as they teach through their experiences. The implication of these findings is that future academic engagement will no longer be conceived in terms of sole student recipients versus sole lecturer providers. The principal conclusion is that both players become equal partners and the rules of engagement will no longer be hierarchical. Reflexivity is therefore recommended as a solution of levelling the playfield between students and university academics, administrators and management.