critical pedagogy

Over the past several months, as we've all attempted to embrace Remote Learning, there is a topic that has repeatedly surfaced and clearly merits discussion: Online Chemistry Labs. From Stacey Lowery Bretz's early call to lab course justification in her J. Chem.

• Grades are not good incentive or effective feedback • Grades are not good markers of learning • Grades encourage competitiveness over collaboration • Grades pit students and teachers against each other • Grades are mechanisms of institutional control • Grades aren’t fair

“A certain level of comfort eliminates the spark that pushes one to seek social change – among both students and teachers. But a critical education must take place among both the oppressed and the oppressor if we hope to achieve a more compassionate and just society.” (Katz, 2014, p. 1)

“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy…Urging all of us to open our minds and hearts so that we can know beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable, so that we can think and rethink, so that we can create new visions…”(hooks, 1994, p.12).