Reflecting on Academic Freedom Through Fiction: A Theatrical Exploration of the Blurry Contours of the Freedom to Teach

Abstract

This article aims at exploring the contribution that creative forms of research can make to the study of a little-known aspect of academic freedom in the Canadian context – academic freedom in curriculum development. It seeks to address the methodological challenge posed by research on academic freedom, that is, the fact that any academic writing on this topic necessarily draws initially, though not exclusively, from the researchers’ own experiences and perspectives. The article brings to life a fictional faculty meeting, during which questions about academic freedom in teaching are discussed. Although this meeting is the product of our imagination, its starting point is based on real-life events, that is, the implementation in some North American universities of a course developed and initially offered outside of academia by people closely related to a well-known personal development organization.