WHAT CRITICAL PEDAGOGY TAUGHT ME ABOUT STUDENT ENGAGEMENT IN THE UNIVERSITY BUSINESS CLASSROOM

(an assignment for a Master in Adult Education Course)

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July 24, 2026 

 

When I began my Master’s in Adult Education eight months ago, I expected to learn new practical strategies such as more inclusive assessment tools, how to incorporate reconciliation in lesson planning, culturally responsive classroom activities, or new approaches for increasing student participation. Instead, I found myself reading theories on adult education written 50 to 100+ years ago.

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Initially this was disappointing, as I wondered how those voices could be as important as current voices, and how theories from a different era could help me address immediate challenges in my first-year business classroom. Then I began to see some connections.  Instead of providing me with a toolkit or classroom activities, critical pedagogy challenged me to rethink the educational assumptions and power dynamics that shape student engagement.

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The biggest connection for me was with Paulo Freire’s concept of Banking education (see references below). I was open to reading his work because I knew he had influenced bell hooks’ writing. Freire highlights that this practice can be colonizing, capitalist, and prejudicial, positioning students as passive recipients of knowledge, with learning reduced to the transmission and storage of information rather than critical engagement with ideas and experience. It does not "critically consider reality” or share lived experience the way Freire’s problem-posing model of education would.  

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I recognized this as what is called the "sage on the stage” teaching style, something I actively avoided during my five years of teaching business at a community college. 

 

Last year, during a very welcoming department meeting at StFX University, a professor explained to me (as a new faculty member) that I should not “call on” students because they don’t like it and then they leave bad teaching reviews.  My number one goal has always been engaging students but I wondered if students had complained about my classroom activities or class discussions.

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Freire’s work supports mutual trust between teachers and students, generating true dialogue and engaging in critical thinking. Before reading Freire, I understood engagement primarily as participation. I knew that adult learners come to class with a wealth of knowledge and experience to share, but after exploring these ideas with my classmates, I began to see that students bring more than experience. They bring perspectives shaped by unique social, cultural, and personal situations; Freire refers to this as "situationality." When these perspectives are explored through dialogue and critical inquiry, students can develop a deeper connection to the material, to themselves, and to the society in which they live.

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Freire helped me rethink engagement, while bell hooks helped me rethink belonging, voice, and inclusion in the classroom. Like hooks, I want my students to be active participants in their learning, and after reading her work I also see the connection between self-actualization and how learning can enhance one's life and ability to live fully.

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I was relieved to learn that hooks might approve of me telling students that I am "neurospicy." I find that my vulnerability warms the atmosphere, increases participation, and somehow opens the door to students sharing their own experiences, and different learning styles. This tendency to be vulnerable with my students is something I once kept to myself, but hooks writes that a teacher's empowerment and growth are also served by vulnerability. Rather than creating distance between teacher and student, it can help build trust and connection. In many ways, it is this authenticity that allows education to become a practice of freedom.

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Last year I had an international student from Mozambique who was not attending classes. After we exchanged many emails about catching up and how the work could not be done independently (because it was experiential work), they asked to meet with me. We had a long visit, and I learned that they were depressed, homesick, socially anxious, lonely, and that they missed playing soccer.

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Rather than focusing only on their academics, I felt their attendance would be most influenced by a sense of belonging and well-being. I suggested they connect with the Black Student Advisor and the Wellspring study space, and I told them about open soccer games in town. This aligns with bell hooks’ concept of engaged pedagogy, which recognizes that students bring their whole selves into the classroom.

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Then, after reading Chapter 1 of her book, I realized that I had not fully examined my assumptions that the student would feel comfortable walking alone into unfamiliar spaces and introducing themselves because they had travelled across the world independently. I had not paused to consider how their cultural background, experiences, or worldview might shape their ability to access these supports. I should have walked them over and personally introduced them to others. They were struggling not because they lacked information, but because they lacked connection. I was trying to be supportive. I had good intentions, but hooks helped me recognize that engaged pedagogy also requires educators to continually examine their own assumptions and biases.

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While reading my course resources, especially those that discuss education as empowering and self actualizing, and the educator’s role in addressing oppression, I am increasingly aware of the complexities of teaching business.  Business education and management practices are often tied to systems of oppression, exploitation, and harm. I already teach students to look at how business can be “for good”, but critical pedagogy has me thinking about how I can create classes where students question the assumptions behind business best practices, such as the goal of maximizing shareholder wealth.

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I sought out the work of Lacerda and Sadeghi not just because it is current (for a nice change), but because they address the challenges of bringing critical thinking to business schools. I have also been thinking a lot about how I could redesign my business courses for the coming school year so that they not only incorporate new teaching perspectives but also encourage student reflections, critiques, and solutions.

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Lacerda and Sadeghi taught a management course over three years that examined 10 common management practices through student reflections, questioning the status quo. Their approach reflects Freire’s ideas about dialogue and problem-posing education because they did not use traditional lectures, they engaged students in dialogue. Their work suggests that pedagogical practices can transform the role of educator and encourage engagement, while questioning traditional business school classroom culture.   

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Lacerda and Sadeghi (2026) ended their discussion with a quote from Freire that captures this tension: “Education needs technical, scientific and professional training as much as it needs dreams and utopia” (p. 15). Critical pedagogy has taught me to think differently about student engagement, teacher-student relationships, and vulnerability. It has also challenged me not just to seek new classroom activities, but to rethink how I design my business lessons, how I foster student participation, and how I encourage them to question the business practices they may one day help shape.

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References

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Freire, P. (2000). Chapter 2: The “banking” concept of education as an instrument of oppression: The teacher-student contradiction. In Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary ed., pp. xx–xx). Bloomsbury Academic.

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Freire, P. (2000). Chapter 3: Dialogue: The essence of education as the practice of freedom. In Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary ed., pp. xx–xx). Bloomsbury Academic.

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hooks, b. (1994). Chapter 1: Engaged pedagogy. In Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom (pp. xx–xx). Routledge.

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Lacerda, D. S., & Sadeghi, Y. (2026). There are alternatives! Navigating tensions in critical management education. Management Learning. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076261422427

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