On April 1, 2022, The Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Mahidol University organized a webinar on “Critical Pedagogy in Higher Education: Reimagining Universities for Democracy and Human Rights” Against the backdrop of a changing educational landscape resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic as well as democratic backsliding in different parts of the world, this webinar will engage in a conversation with two scholars, Dr. Felisa Tibbitts, UNESCO Chair of Human Rights and Higher Education, University of Utrecht; and Dr. Khoo Ying Hooi, Head of the Department of International and Strategic Studies and also Head of University of Malaya Research Group on Human Rights, the session will be facilitated by Dr. Vachararutai (Jan) Boontinand, Director of the Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Mahidol University.
This webinar focuses on teaching, and the role of critical pedagogy in enabling cultural change. Henry Giroux posits that “critical pedagogy, unlike dominant modes of teaching, insists that one of the fundamental tasks of educators is to make sure that the future points the way to a more socially just world, a world in which the discourses of critique and possibility in conjunction with the values of reason, freedom and equality function to alter, as part of a broader democratic project, the grounds upon which life is lived”. However, the pedagogical basis of much university teaching is quite thin. It can be argued that the transmission or the ‘banking’ model of education is widely practiced in higher education especially in the Asian context.
