By Shobha Avadhani

This post is based on the important and interesting conversation across the posts on the subject of the “flipped” classroom that our esteemed colleagues have written. The first post [1] raised some vital questions about the assumptions underlying the “flipped” classroom that needed to be unpacked. In the second post [2], the point was made that there is nothing fundamentally new about the notion of the “flipped” classroom, given that deeper levels of interaction between teachers and students – fueled by student reading prior to the classroom engagement on the one hand and by well-designed class activities on the other – have been the life work of good teachers for a long time. The third post [3] responded to this one by acknowledging the need for engagement and interactivity, and elaborating on the ways in which the technologies associated with the “flipped” classroom could be leveraged to deepen interactivity and – as an additional benefit – meet institutional goals.

There is a very valid argument that academics, policy makers and industry leaders make now, about the need for an education in the humanities as our world becomes more technologized (see for example Koh, 2018 [4]) but it occurs to me (borrowing the phrase from my colleagues) that they may not always be prepared to materially respond to the inconvenient truths that a deep engagement with the humanities reveals. At the same time, as teachers we may not always be prepared to deal with the inconvenient truths that lie within our own classrooms. The key question of the humanities is the question of the human itself – of not only what it is to be human but also what is the human in her interaction with the world [5]. I would like to invite my readers to walk with me as I try to look at the “flipped” classroom debate through the lens of the critical theory of technology (see for example Feenberg, 1991 [6], who engages with Marx, Heidegger, Marcuse, Foucault, and Ellul, among others), with a side trip through the lens of critical pedagogy (see for example Freire, 1970 [7]; Giroux, 1988 [8]; hooks, 2014 [9]; McLaren, 2015 [10]).

 

View from critical theory of technology

The term “flipped classroom” is a neologism. What is it that made this neologism the pedagogy du jour? If we trace back through the literature on MOOCs (see for example Ng & Widom, 2014 [11]), it becomes clear that it is the technological imperative that drives this force. Technocapitalism requires a market that is so large that it has to involve state intervention and the interpellation of the technological subject (Metcalfe, 2017 [12]). The “flipped” classroom depends on technological artefacts, platforms, routines and discourses. And so we are all “flipped”, head over heels into a rationality that Evgeny Morozov (2013) [13] calls “solutionism” – the framing of a non-technological problem as technological so that the technological solution is the most obvious one.

Of course it is difficult to speak against this “flipping” without being seen as flippant [14], especially in the face of so many studies whose data appears to support the benefit of “flipping” (Herreid & Schiller, 2013 [15]; McDonald & Smith, 2013 [16]; Roehl, Reddy & Shannon, 2013 [17]). However, as Tang (2017) notes,  we are quick to accept results without critically examining the contexts of the studies. For example Hoofd (2011) [18] argues that:

“In many ways, the push for e-learning is an ambiguous force that is implicated in the global dissemination of a largely Eurocentric and masculine speed-elitism, which may lead to an exacerbation rather than alleviation of intra- and extrainstitutional inequalities, despite (or rather perhaps, because of) its democratic and liberation-oriented rhetoric. This is not to say that e-learning is misguided, but that the teacher’s well-intended implementation of e-learning for student empowerment also engenders various unintended forms of material and symbolic violence” (p. 4)

In similar vein, Friesen (2010) [19] tracks the development of instructional technology and shows how it is closely connected to the US military-industrial complex. His paper “[traces] the imprint left by the US military on instructional technology and design…[and] considers how this influence may now extend, like the Internet itself, into schools and the university” (p. 71).

The lens of critical theory of technology shows that there is indeed enough that is new in the imperative to “flip” the classroom that it provides good reason to hold to account the agencies that advocate for it, and to interrogate their motivations. I want to make clear here that “flipping” classrooms goes beyond introducing instructional technology into the learning space. Granted, there are good reasons to be critical of this technology as well (see for example Selwyn, 2013 [20]). But the call to “flip” the classroom – an imperative to re-structure the entire learning experience according to the logics of technocapitalism, thereby reducing the humanity of the teacher as well as the learner, is one that must be energetically questioned. [21]

 

View from critical pedagogy

We may also wish to examine more critically from the perspective of what goes on in our (now abbreviated) face-to-face classroom interactions the position that there is absolutely nothing new in introducing technologies and their logics into the learning equation. One way in which we can do this is through the lens of critical pedagogy. In “Teaching to Transgress”, bell hooks (2014) makes a strong case for expanding the reach of the classroom beyond an instrumentalist definition of teaching and learning: “As a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence” (p. 8). This feminist approach might appear to be primarily rooted in the synchronicity and co-presence that the physical classroom affords. But at the heart of hooks’s work is the notion of education as a practice of freedom. This leads us to ask – who is unfree?

Together with some of our colleagues, I have been working on how we can make learning more inclusive. One of the insights we gleaned was that when it comes to special needs, rather than viewing students with specific disabilities as needing specific accommodations, we would bring forth many more students in multiple ways by making learning universally accessible (Black, Weinberg & Brodwin, 2015 [22]; Kelly, 2014 [23]; Rose & Meyer, 2006 [24]; Saunders & Kardia, 1997 [25]). This discussion is beyond the scope of my post, but the point I would like to make here with respect to the “flipped” classroom imperative is that it may be seen as an opportunity to introduce more modalities into the classroom. Lam (2018) expands on one aspect of this variation in modality, and there is some value in this, although the question still remains open as to how this is fundamentally different from and better than what can be achieved by keeping classes smaller and protecting students’ time with their teachers. However, I would like to touch upon another aspect.

The face-to-face interactions in the classroom, which privilege neurotypical students, can very often be stressful for students who are on the autistic spectrum, and dividing up the time in an explicit way such that half the work is done independently and the other interactively (a problematic but convenient dichotomy) can help to relieve the cognitive strain, preparing these students for the physical interactions. Thus prepared, they are more able to enrich the classroom with their neurodiversity (Pollak, 2009 [26]). Critical pedagogy gives us a way of viewing disability as shaped by power relations in the classroom (Erevelles, 2000 [27]). From this perspective, the imposition of technocapitalist logics is not the only form of oppression.

We may think about how issues of gender, race and sexuality – other points of marginality – might similarly be revealed in thinking about the “flipped” classroom through the lens of critical pedagogy. In responding to the imperative to “flip” – whether enthusiastically or not – we have the opportunity of confronting the question of what exactly it is we are “flipping”. Like the rock that we turn over to find a teeming ecosystem underneath, we can ask ourselves: which identities are privileged in our classrooms? Which are erased in the silences? What – for example – do we convey to students from ethnic minority groups when we refuse to talk about race?

As teachers we frequently come across students who are “quiet” in class and seem to come alive on online forums. Leaving aside for now the inconvenient question of how the imperative to voice in the classroom is hegemonic, Doherty’s (1994) [28] analysis of women in a writing class who experience “writer’s block” shows us that these “quiet” voices are muted for a reason. Oppression makes voicing difficult, and there are forms of oppression that predate the imperative to “flip”.

 

Conclusion

Two things will have caught my readers’ attention by now, but in case they have not, I will make them explicit. One is my continued use of the quote marks around the word “flipped”. This is a principled stand against the normalisation of a term that, as I have argued in this piece, deserves far more critical examination from the perspective of the humanities.  The other thing is my focus not on the “flipped” classroom per se, but on the imperative to “flip”. This is because I believe that the opportunity afforded by this imperative to reconsider the power relations that shape our classrooms is far more radical in its potential than the actual act of “flipping”. In her work on power, Judith Butler (1997) [29] argues that there is a lack of mechanical certainty in the reproduction of a norm as it moves between the social and the psychic realms. Butler identifies this lack of certainty as containing the scope for agency, because the contingency of the organisation of social relations can be brought to the forefront, and the contours of the conditions of life can be performatively reconfigured. The imperative to “flip” the classroom and to establish this “flipping” as a norm based on technocapitalist logics offers such a zone of contingency.

 

Acknowledgements:

My thanks to Jeremy Fernando, Gene Segarra Navera, and Daron Benjamin Loo for their valuable comments on my draft. Any errors or omissions are entirely my own.

 

Endnotes

[1] Tang, J. (2017). Inconvenient Questions about the Flipped Classroom. CELC SoTL Blog. Available at: https://blog.nus.edu.sg/macadresources/2017/10/27/inconvenient-questions-about-the-flipped-classroom/

[2] Wong, J.O. (2018). Inconvenient truths about the flipped classroom. CELC SoTL Blog. Available at: https://blog.nus.edu.sg/macadresources/2018/05/24/inconvenient-truths-about-the-flipped-classroom/

[3] Lam, A. (2018). Moving forward with the flipped classroom. CELC SoTL Blog. Available at: https://blog.nus.edu.sg/macadresources/2018/06/12/moving-forward-with-the-flipped-classroom/

[4] Koh, T. (2018). Moulding the Future of our Nation: The Role of the Humanities. Speech delivered at the 2018 Humanities Symposium, held at Singapore Chinese Girls’ School on 4 July 2018. Available at: https://www.ipscommons.sg/moulding-the-future-of-our-nation-the-role-of-the-humanities/

[5] I am indebted to Dr. Jeremy Fernando of Tembusu College, NUS, for this articulation.

[6] Feenberg, A. (1991). Critical theory of technology (Vol. 5). New York: Oxford University Press.

[7] Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed (MB Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum, 2007.

[8] Giroux, H. A. (1988). Teachers as intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. Greenwood Publishing Group.

[9] hooks, b. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge.

[10] McLaren, P. (2015). Life in schools: An introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. Routledge.

[11] Ng, A., & Widom, J. (2014). Origins of the modern MOOC (xMOOC). Hrsg. Fiona M. Hollands, Devayani Tirthali: MOOCs: Expectations and Reality: Full Report, 34-47.

[12] Metcalfe, S. (18 August 2017). Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world. The Guardian. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world

[13] Morozov, E. (2013). To save everything, click here: Technology, solutionism, and the urge to fix problems that don’t exist. Penguin UK.

[14] See Sara Ahmed’s work on how the one raising a problem becomes a problem: Ahmed, S. (2014). The Problem of Perception. Blog: Feminist Killjoys. Available at: https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/02/17/the-problem-of-perception/

[15] Herreid, C. F., & Schiller, N. A. (2013). Case studies and the flipped classroom. Journal of College Science Teaching, 42(5), 62-66.

[16] McDonald, K., & Smith, C. M. (2013). The flipped classroom for professional development: part I. Benefits and strategies. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 44(10), 437-438.

[17] Roehl, A., Reddy, S. L., & Shannon, G. J. (2013). The flipped classroom: An opportunity to engage millennial students through active learning strategies. Journal of Family & Consumer Sciences, 105(2), 44-49.

[18] Hoofd, I. M. (2011). The advancement of student empowerment through e-learning in higher education: Some larger concerns. Technology in Higher Education: the State of the Art.

[19] Friesen, N. (2010). Ethics and the technologies of empire: e-learning and the US military. AI & society, 25(1), 71-81.

[20] Selwyn, N. (2013). Distrusting educational technology: Critical questions for changing times. Routledge.

[21] The cyborg as a theoretical device can be very productive in thinking through what it means to be human in a technological society, and I invite the interested reader to start with this paper: Adams, C. A., & Pente, P. (2011). Teachers teaching in the new mediascape: Digital immigrants or ‘natural born cyborgs’? E-Learning and Digital Media, 8(3), 247-257.

[22] Black, R. D., Weinberg, L. A., & Brodwin, M. G. (2015). Universal design for learning and instruction: Perspectives of students with disabilities in higher education. Exceptionality Education International, 25(2), 1-16.

[23] Kelly, K. (Fall, 2014). Fostering inclusion with UDL. Diversity & Democracy. Available at: https://www/aacu.org/diversitydemocracy/2014/fall/kelly

[24] Rose, D.H. & Meyer, A. (Eds.). (2006). A practical reader in Universal Design for Learning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

[25] Saunders, S. & Kardia, D. (1997). Creating inclusive classrooms.  University of Michigan CRTL white paper. Available at: http://www.crlt.umich.edu/gsis/p3_1

[26] Pollak, D. (Ed.). (2009). Neurodiversity in higher education: Positive responses to specific learning differences. John Wiley & Sons.

[27] Erevelles, N. (2000). Educating unruly bodies: Critical pedagogy, disability studies, and the politics of schooling. Educational theory, 50(1), 25-47.

[28] Doherty, P. B. (1994). Women Writing in School: hiding voice. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 22(1/2), 14-25.

[29] Butler, J. (1997). The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.