Radical Praxis Pedagogies: A Critical Podcast Methodology

Abstract

Podcasts in academia have largely been employed as either a supplementary resource to lectures, as an alternative for giving student feedback, or as a specific text to be utilized for research analysis. Largely overshadowed by the prior, there are few examples of podcast ethnographies and even fewer examples of researchers that are experimenting with podcasts as an alternative medium for academic publishing. However, what is largely absent from the literature is research examining how podcasts have the potential to be utilized as a pedagogical tool inextricable from offering rich opportunities as qualitative arts-inquiry research. This dissertation explores these possibilities for education research in the form of Critical Podcasting Methodology (CPM). Drawing on critical arts-inquiry research, this dissertation introduces CPM as the use of podcasting as both a research method and pedagogical tool so as to facilitate potential learning spaces of critical and reflexive dialogue, meaningful community relationship building, and public pedagogy.

The theoretical framework informing Critical Podcasting Methodology builds on anarchist philosophies, with specific influences from eco-anarchic activism and education research, to present a Radical Praxis Pedagogies (RPP). Parallel with how praxis is the synthesis of both theory and action, RPP combines both theories of eco-democracy (Social Green Anarchism, EcoJustice, Earth Democracy, Social Ecology) with the anti-hierarchical actions of democratic education and diverse historical social activism (Escuela Moderna, Illichian “Conviviality,” Argentinian Horizontalidad social activist organizing, and the ongoing feminist anti-capitalist political project of Rojava in northern Syria). Informed by this theoretical foundation, Critical Podcasting Methodology culminates as a qualitative arts-inquiry bricolage which is also informed by, and drawing direct inspiration from, Critical Race Theory and Decolonizing Indigenous Methods. Thus, Critical Podcasting Methodology emerges in the form of several components: Critical Reflexivity, Voice(s) (i.e., Polyvocality and Conflict Consensus), Counter Narratives, The Dialogic Spiral, and Public Pedagogy-Journalism.

Accompanying an introduction to Critical Podcasting Methodology as part of a Radical Praxis Pedagogy in the dissertation CPM is put to use in the context of teacher education, specifically in a preservice teacher education Social Studies Methods course co-taught at a large land grant university in the Pacific Northwest. This emerges as a “Critical Social Studies Question Bridge” which, drawing from Chris Johnson’s “Question Bridge: Black Males transmedia project” with ongoing applications of Question Bridges utilized in educational foundations course dialogues over time, facilitates a continuous multi-semester dialogue between preservice teachers exploring and reflecting social studies content and teaching in collaboration with one another. Some of the vignettes which emerge evidence how preservice teachers engage in collaboratively exploring topics and model inquiry based learning through co-generated questions that thematically include: teaching the truth in social studies, human/children/Indigenous people’s rights, opinions vs. facts in the midst of fake news, and concerns and anxieties of navigating teaching in the current political climate. The findings of this work informs and invites future researchers, artists, scholar-activists, and educators to research that is inextricable from teaching and centers critical inquiry and dialogue. Furthermore, the research in this dissertation calls for continued dialogue open to radical ideas in both research methods and pedagogical tools for transformative justice through both formal and informal educational settings.