Critical pedagogy, counterstorytelling, and the interdisciplinary power of podcasts

Abstract

This article outlines the benefits to adopting podcast-oriented pedagogies in the liberal arts undergraduate classroom setting. We detail the transformative potential that podcasts can bring to a course, drawing upon experiences teaching across respective disciplines—sociology, anthropology, and English—on a range of topics including social justice, civic engagement, media and sociolinguistics. Podcasting not only provides instructors with an opportunity to rethink course content and delivery but, more importantly, podcasts offer students a medium through which to celebrate public scholarship and to construct counterstories that challenge dominant societal narratives. The use and production of podcasts can act as an accessible curricular tool from which to invite new voices into a course. Further, podcast pedagogies allow students to better understand the power of their own voices and their relationship to standard language ideologies and other prescriptivist ideas about language, learning, and storytelling.