“We’re All Adults Here”: Elizabeth Ellsworth and the Poststructuralist Classroom
Date
2021-09-17
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Abstract
The most influential adult educator in the last century was the Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire. Freire (1970) advocated for a critical pedagogy in which students are empowered through dialogue with the teacher to critique structures of power and oppression (Roberts, 2007). Elizabeth Ellsworth is critical of critical pedagogy. She says that “strategies such as empowerment and dialogue give the illusion of equality while in fact leaving the authoritarian nature of the teacher/student relationship intact” (Ellsworth, 1989, p. 306). “‘Emancipatory authority,” she continues, “implies the presence of…an emancipated teacher,” a teacher “who knows the object of study ‘better’ than do the students” (Ibid., p. 307). But no teacher is free of “learned and internalized oppressions” (Ibid., p. 308).
Ellsworth identifies as a poststructuralist philosopher. If structuralist thought is bound to reason, poststructuralist thought is bound to discourse, “literally narratives about the world that are admittedly partial” (Ibid., p. 304). Ellsworth advocated for classroom discourse which acknowledges that “there are partial narratives that some social groups or cultures have and others can never know” (Ibid., 319). For her, however, this is a “condition to embrace and use as an opportunity to build a kind of social and educational interdependency that recognizes differences as ‘different strengths’ and as ‘forces for change’” (Ibid.).
Description
In this session, we will explore the idea that instructor and students are equals, engaged in discourse leading to some form of change. Participants will be asked to reflect on their own classrooms and the extent to which they embrace – and resist – poststructuralist thought.
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