Pedagogical Mixtape #2: Critical Pedagogy and Social Justice

Due: September 15, 2026
Points: 20
Minimum Length: 250 words

This week, we are thinking about the relationship between education, power, knowledge, and freedom. Our readings from bell hooks and Paulo Freire invite us to consider how the ways we organize teaching and learning shape the roles students and educators are able to take in the classroom. We will also think about what it means to create educational spaces where students can question, participate, develop their own thinking, and engage knowledge rather than simply receive it. This directly aligns with the September 15 focus on Critical Pedagogy and Social Justice Education in the course syllabus.

For your second Mixtape, select a song, image, artwork, film clip, podcast, article, social media post, speech, historical artifact, community text, or another cultural or intellectual source that you believe belongs in conversation with this week's learning.

Suggestions

Your selection might help us think about:

• the relationship between education, power, and freedom
• who holds knowledge and authority in educational spaces
• the role students should play in their own learning
• the difference between receiving knowledge and actively engaging with it
• how education can reinforce or challenge existing ways of thinking about the world
• an idea from hooks or Freire that you want to extend, question, or complicate

These are suggestions, not questions you are required to answer. You may take your Mixtape in another direction as long as you can explain its relationship to this week's learning.

What to Submit

Include your selection or a link to it and a minimum 250-word reflection.

Briefly identify what you selected, but spend most of your reflection explaining why you selected it and what it contributes to our thinking. Your selection might extend, complicate, challenge, historicize, connect, or offer another perspective on something from the readings, our class discussion, or your own experiences.

The goal is not simply to show that your selection relates to critical pedagogy or social justice. Explain what it helps us see, question, or understand differently about education, power, knowledge, or the possibilities of teaching and learning.