Mentorship at the HBCU: An Alternative Approach to Critical Pedagogy

Abstract

Critical pedagogues across a multitude of disciplines continually search for effective pedagogical tools and practices that can efficiently create a student-centered empowering critical classroom. In the decades since its inception, critical pedagogy has been criticized for falling short of this goal and “no longer blundering for a change... [just] simply blundering (Durst). “Mentorship at the HBCU: An Alternative Approach to Critical Pedagogy” will seek to identify the ways in which Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) have employed critical practices in order to achieve the goals of Critical pedagogy. Through interviewing alumni of HBCUs to collect and analyze perceptions of the mentorship that occurs within the “HBCU experience,” this thesis will identify the ways in which pedagogical tools unique to Historically Black Colleges and Universities enact “the core terms of critical pedagogy...student empowerment, social justice, liberation, democracy, and responsible citizenship” (Thomson-Bunn). The goal of this project is to understand what tools HBCUs have utilized in order to create a system that successfully empowers (primarily disempowered African-American working class) students and how this empowerment simultaneously achieves the goals laid out by the “Dewey-Freire model of education” (Shor).