We warmly invite the campus community to the annual Teaching and Learning Conference on Friday, May 9, 2025, at the International House.
This event aims to foster a community of colleagues engaged in effective teaching and learning on our campus and present model cases of educators experimenting with a diverse range of teaching and learning strategies in UC Berkeley classrooms.
The Call for Proposals and Conference Registration open on January 27, 2025.
Conference Theme: Student Voice, Liberation, and the Places We Teach
For this year’s theme, we hope to explore the relationship between student voice and liberation at UC Berkeley. This theme is grounded in the work of Paulo Freire and his awareness of education as a means for learners to develop a critical consciousness of oppression and, in the process, discover their own agency for change. What does it mean for UC Berkeley to be a site for liberation?
There is undeniable tension between the pursuit of liberation and higher education as a system of learning. For example, Dr. Gina Garcia’s Organizing Framework for Decolonizing HSIsholds important implications for ways in which institutions can fail to recruit, retain, and value minoritized students and their racial and cultural identities and histories. Our Teaching and Learning Conference is an opportunity to confront this reality from the level of classrooms, pedagogy, and our interactions with our students.
We look to you, the members of our campus community, to tell your story as it relates to empowering students toward their own liberation and, perhaps, discovering liberation for yourself in the process. Garcia’s work reminds us that liberation is a community responsibility: students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees, and community partners “must believe in the mission and work toward the purpose” (138).
