The Flipped Classroom

The Flipped Classroom is a hierarchical student-centric method of teaching pioneered by french theorist Jacques Ranciere after his experiences during a period of civil unrest in France during May of 1968. The students of 'L'Ecole de Beux Arts'  in Sorbonne, tired of what they perceived to be authoritarian teaching practices and wanting a fairer and more accessible education for all, not just the snobbish elite, took direct action against the educational elites, occupying the university and declaring it 'open all day and night' to all worker. The students saw 'education as initiation' as the catalyst for all societal problems regarding gender and income inequality, seeking liberation through the challenging of visual communication as a product in service of capitalism, seeing the arts as a weapon in their so called 'revolutionary struggle', shunning the established avenues for art such as what they perceived to be bourgeois art galleries, instead using their skills and talents to further societal revolutionary ends.

Equalite! Libertie! Sexualite!

Ranciere was a student at the university in 68, and thus had a first hand account of the events. He was tutored by famed French Marxist Louis Althusser, who similarly believed society was controlled/oppressed by ideas, but ultimately believed that the educational system in its current form at the time could serve as a sort of 'ideological training', to equip students with the skills and ideals necessary to influence and implement societal change. His students on the other hand, including Ranciere, believed differently however and in '68 a rift emerged between the teachers and students at 'L'Ecole de Beux Arts'. Teachers such as Althusser believed that experts, in this case teachers, were necessary for revolutionary change in society, much to the dismay of students such as Ranciere, so much so that he based some of his future writings off his experiences, challenging Althusser's methods of teaching and suggesting his own alternatives in his essay 'The Ignorant Schoolmaster'.

In 'The Ignorant Schoolmaster' Ranciere challenges the ideas of what defines a 'student' and what defines a 'teacher'. In his essay, Ranciere references a school teacher from the french colonies in the late 1800s called Joseph Jacotot. Jacotot taught students in a different language to their native Flemish, but instead of translating the texts into Flemish, Jacotot told them to translate the material themselves in order to 'become masters of their own learning'. The result was, the students wrote and spoke better French that Jacotot's students back in France. Ranciere took this as evidence for his theory that in order to create independent learners, educational hierarchies needed to be abolished in order to help emancipate students and stop reinforcing what he perceived to be structures of oppression.

Ranciere proposed a system of learning which was the antithesis to what he called in his essay 'The Politics of Aesthetics' the 'society of contempt'. He proposed a system which swapped out individualistic learning for collective learning, a classroom where the teacher validates the students contribution to a system where students peer assess each other and where passively following instructions is replaced with an environment where students are encouraged to actively engage, challenge and raise questions. The Flipped Classroom scenario is something that since learning about it I have started to pick up in our CoP seminars. Richard's seminars for CoP very much conform to the decidedly hierarchical, non-conformist learning environment outlined by Ranciere. We are actively encouraged to raise questions and challenge the status quo and at Level 5 especially we are put in charge of deciding on our own learning, choosing our own essay questions relating to subjects which interest us specifically in our creative practice.