Pedagogic Spaces and Identities: Film as Text

Abstract

This article aims to explore pedagogic spaces in autonomous institutions and the identities they enable. It situates this exploration in the undergraduate General English classrooms and works with the uses of differing printed-literary and audio-visual media. It also attempts to show how both writing as text and film as text have equal value in undergraduate classrooms. Films, it is proposed, can be more than supplementary/ complementary texts to the much more conventional written-printed ones. They can and ought to occupy an equally privileged position in the teaching-learning process because they provide possibilities for critical understanding and engagement inside the classroom space. It is also argued that films have serious academic and learning potential than is often presumed to be. The article employs for its analysis reports of reception of films within a pedagogic space from student-respondents. In the process of the analysis, the article seeks to construe how classrooms become pedagogic spaces for identity constructions. By way of conclusion, the article comments on the various ways in which films as texts shape critical thinking and self-critique.