Implementing Transformative Student-Centered Pedagogies in the Neoliberal Academy: Constraints and Opportunities
Editor
Frederic Fovet
Thompson Rivers University, Canada.
ISBN (Ebook): 978-93-49926-91-2
ISBN (Paperback): 978-93-49926-31-8
ISBN (Hardback): 978-93-49926-11-0
10.46679/9789349926912
This book is available worldwide via EBSCOhost Academic Collection, EBSCO E-books, GOBI, Google Play Books, Amazon, WorldCat Discovery Service/OCLC, CSMFL Bookstore, and 200+ book resellers and academic content vendors.
© CSMFL Publications & its authors.
Published: May 05, 2026
About the book
The book is part of the Educational Innovations Series and includes research output, practitioner perspectives, and reflections on current pertinent paradigms, that throw light on contemporary advances in the fields of theory and practice of educational pedagogies.
Higher education has globally entered, over the last decade, a phase of transformation in which institutions have been compelled to progressively shift their focus from research to teaching. Over this period, the student population in post-secondary has also become increasingly diverse. Faculty are hence increasingly being encouraged to develop pedagogical practices that are student-centered, transformative and inclusive. This objective requires a rapid shift of mindset from instructors, while they are also being constantly reminded, in a contradictory manner, of the need to simultaneously function and thrive within a business model ethos and a neoliberal value system. There is a tangible ambivalence in the messaging faculty receive, and instructors are required to be creative, savvy and versatile in order to navigate this contradiction successfully.
The volume examines the tension which exists between student-centered transformative pedagogies and neo-liberal pressures within higher education, as well as the opportunities being developed in this landscape. While critiques of the neoliberal Academy are not rare, much of the scholarship which highlights the dangers of this shift towards the business model stresses the damage done, the tangible contradictions, and the need for a rejection of neoliberal values. This volume is unique in its desire to highlight the opportunities for transformative work on pedagogy, from within structures that seem resistant to such work of hope and care. It offers unique journeys, insights, and testimonials of educators from around the globe who have developed processes to support and nurture emancipatory pedagogies from within structures that purport to oppose or suppress such work. In so doing, it offers windows of hope and models for sustained innovation to carve out resistance from within and create spaces that remain transformative, unflinching, and empowering inside institutional processes that may otherwise appear oppressive and uncompromising.
These voices from around the global tell a common story: that higher education instructors retain the power to shape classrooms and teaching practices to the image of their hopes, values, and commitments to social justice, even when navigating employment structures, policy, and governance practices that, at best, offer mixed messages and, in the worse of cases, actively discourage such work or hope. Their stories of pragmatic resilience should bring inspiration to many.
Chapters
Preface
by Frederic Fovet
Foreword
by Ted Fleming
01: Who am I to Talk about Race? White Allies, Universal Design for Learning, and Antiracism in Higher Education Today
by Tracy Galvin, Eric Moore and Hillary Goldthwait-Fowles
02: Towards Indigenous Methods and Pathways to Critical Intimacies
by James Simmons
03: Desired, Yet Ignored: Disabled International Students and Neoliberal Higher Education
by Armineh Soorenian
04: Developing Critical Pedagogy in Higher Education: Moving from the Conceptual to Hands-on Implementation while Navigating Neoliberal Realities
by Frederic Fovet
05: International Students in the Policy-making of Internationalization of Higher Education
by Yuanyuan Zhang
06: Navigating the Impact of a Social Justice Curriculum on Adult Learners
by Danielle Peloquin
07: Unleashing the Power of UDL and CRT Within the Academy: An Unfolding Story
by Wendy L. Kraglund-Gauthier and Paula Romanow
08: Surface v. Depth: Maximising the Efficacy of Cohort-Based Learning in Challenging Times
by Kathleen Manion and Susanne Green
09: Personalized Learning in Higher Education Education
by Michael Maser
10: From “I Am not a creative person” to “maybe I Am a little artistic”: Experiential learning, collaborative research, and arts-informed pedagogy in the neoliberal academy
by Marcy Meyer and Kaitlyn Helmer
11: Influences of the Neoliberal Turn on Curriculum and Instruction in Higher Education: Reflections from the Field
by Kevin J. MacLeod
12: Innovating Within the System: Transforming Grading Processes in Online Learning Environments
by Jennifer Schneider
13: Implementing Universal Design for Learning in Large Post-Secondary Classrooms: Marking Inclusive Design A Reality Within the Neo-Liberal Constraints of the Enterprise Academy
by Ann-Marie Farrell and Frederic Fovet
14: Slipping under the Radar: A Polemical Encounter with Neoliberal Policies in South African Universities
by Paul Mason
15: Teachers, Scholars, Union Members, Radicals: Non-Tenure Track Faculty and Non-Traditional Grading in a University Writing Program
by Christina Michaud
16: Empowering Women through Transformative Learning in Neoliberal Times
by Jennifer Van Aswegen
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