Teaching Politics Otherwise: A Pedagogy of Refusal School of IR Teaching Forum with Kate Schick and Claire Timperley

Many of us have inherited a vision of education that emphasises Euromodern ideals of objectivity, rationality, certainty and individualism. These ideals are incentivised by the market-driven, neoliberal imperatives of contemporary higher education, which position students as consumers and degrees as a form of capital. For over a decade, we have contested this framing of pedagogy, arguing that learning is deeply contextual, relational and embodied. In our nascent book project, we ask: what if we refuse rationalist visions of education to teach politics otherwise?

In this seminar, we share our conceptualisation of a pedagogy of refusal, exploring four strands of refusal that contest dominant assumptions of Euromodern pedagogy via the centring of relationality, care, vulnerability and community. We provide examples of the ways this subversive vision can inform alternative teaching practices