Decolonising and reimagining instructor–student relationships in a communication and media studies fourth-level seminar

This chapter draws on the author’s teaching experiences and engagements with senior undergraduate students to critically reflect on relationships between instructors and students. The chapter begins by observing that the kinds of instructor–student relationships in many media and communication studies courses are modelled on colonial ways of education that give prominence to an all-knowing educator and position students as passive recipients of knowledge. Drawing on theorisations by Freire (1970) and hooks (1994), this chapter proposes ways of reimagining instructor–student relationships. Moving away from classes organised in hierarchical ways that prominently feature educators as the sole custodians of knowledges, instructors are invited to facilitate spaces where students comfortably draw on their lived experiences and prior knowledges to contribute to in-class conversations.