Teaching Radical Love: Implementing Critical Positive Communication Pedagogy in the Classroom

Abstract

This article presents critical positive communication pedagogy (CPCP), which synthesizes the fields of critical pedagogy and positive communication pedagogy to promote positive communication practices that develop a social justice sensibility among students. We argue that CPCP contributes to the creation of learner-centered classrooms that promote interpersonal connection, foster feelings of inclusion and belonging, and aid students in achieving sustainable happiness. We provide examples of CPCP in business and professional communication classrooms to promote diversity and inclusion, specifically related to issues of gender and sexuality, race, disability, and class.

Keywords

positive communication pedagogy critical communication pedagogy positive communication scholarship business communication social justice

Critical pedagogy has a history of promoting the positive experiences studied by positive communication scholarship (PCS), which explores “behaviors and speech acts that are constructive, and which reflect from the individual a higher degree of confidence and excellence” (Mirivel & Fuller, 2024, pp. 746–747). Themes of love, inclusion, liberation, hope, and creativity pervade critical pedagogy scholarship (e.g., Fassett & Rudick, 2018; Frey & Palmer, 2014; hooks, 1994; Russell & Jovanovic, 2023), and these themes align with many human needs that PCS promotes and explores, including actualization, belongingness, creation, freedom, love, participation, praxis, social support, and understanding (T. J. Socha & Beck, 2015). PCS also shares with critical pedagogy a focus on improving communication, as PCS “aims to cultivate excellence, inspire social change, and lead the co-creation of better social worlds” (Mirivel & Fuller, 2024, p. 748).

Prior research on positive communication pedagogy has focused, predominantly, on the development of students’ individual capacities for positive communication, their human needs satisfaction, and their personal development, with less attention paid to critical thinking, collective well-being, and diversity and inclusion. For instance, scholars have studied themes of individual student well-being, character development, and resilience (Frey & Loker, 2020; Kern & Wehmeyer, 2021; White, 2019). These studies share a focus on the individual student as the unit of change, often encouraging the students’ adaptation to social structures rather than changing the root causes of unhappiness embedded in those structures. In contrast, only some studies have focused attention on the potential of positive communication pedagogy to promote inclusion of marginalized identities (Lopez-Cobo et al., 2019) and systemic change (Kern & Taylor, 2021)—two essential aspects of critical pedagogy that encourage individuals to change systems of power to address the root causes of injustice.

We agree with Leach et al. (2024) that PCS and critical scholarship “are largely synergistic rather than incompatible” (p. 29) and hold much potential for theoretical development and praxis. Therefore, we extend Leach et al.’s argument into the realm of pedagogy to offer critical positive communication pedagogy (CPCP), which synthesizes the fields of critical pedagogy and positive communication pedagogy to promote “positive communication practices among students while simultaneously encouraging them to develop a social justice sensibility” (Russell et al., 2024, p. 20). CPCP articulates a pedagogical approach that roots positive communication pedagogy in critical theory, in contrast to prior research that treated critical thinking and systemic change as occasional accessories to positive communication pedagogy.

This article offers strategies for implementing CPCP in business and professional communication courses. We argue that CPCP creates learner-centered classrooms that promote interpersonal connection, foster feelings of inclusion and belonging, and aid students to achieve sustainable happiness, which is “happiness that contributes to individual, community, and/or global well-being without exploiting other people, the environment, or future generations” (O’Brien, 2010, p. 2). We begin with a review of PCS and business and professional communication pedagogy, followed by an explanation of the commitments of CPCP. Then, we offer examples of CPCP applications through experiential learning that promotes diversity and inclusion, specifically related to issues of race, gender and sexuality, disability, and class in professional communication classrooms. We conclude with a discussion of CPCP’s significance for educators and its contributions to PCS.

Literature Review

Positive Communication Scholarship

Positive communication refers to communication that creates positive processes or outcomes (Mirivel & Fuller, 2024). Various communication phenomena have been studied, based on their potential for facilitating happiness, well-being, excellence, and a host of other constructive virtues and goals (Mirivel & Fuller, 2024; T. J. Socha & Beck, 2015). PCS investigates constructive communication across contexts, ranging from workplaces to classrooms. Mirivel and Fuller (2024) characterized four features of PCS: (a) systematic scientific inquiry into excellent communication; (b) attention to both processes and outcomes to create new knowledge; (c) an affirmative posture toward human potential; and (d) cultivation of communication as an improvable practice. Additionally, PCS scholars have attended to human needs fulfillment (T. J. Socha & Beck, 2015). The needs-based approach has influenced business communication and educational contexts, and it informs CPCP’s aim to address collective and not merely individual needs (Ahmed, 2020). Another pertinent area of PCS for the present study is the shift away from hedonic happiness—communication that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain—and toward eudemonic happiness—communication that enables people to use “signature strengths” for others (T. J. Socha & Beck, 2015, p. 176). CPCP celebrates this shift and seeks to inspire communication practices oriented toward the needs and well-being of communities.

Central to the development of PCS has been a paradigm shift away from negative or problematic communication and toward the positive (Ahmed, 2020). However, Mirivel and Fuller (2024) note the frequent presence of tensions between positivity and negativity in PCS. Furthermore, the field’s emphasis on praxis means that best practices for positive communication may vary across contexts. What counts as excellent or unacceptable communication may resemble different skill sets or processes for recently matriculated new hires than for business communication students (Coffelt & Smith, 2020). Moreover, positive communication practices may be uncovered from critical investigations into communication perceived as problematic or negative. While seemingly contradictory, this rationale for juxtaposing critical and positive sensibilities in business and educational contexts has its precedents. For instance, in their discussion of positive organizational communication scholarship, Leach et al. (2024) argued that the framework of critical theory is compatible with PCS, despite seeming at odds. Similarly, research into positive deviance in the workplace provides a flexible framework for finding innovative or positive communication practices through considerations of norms, disruptive communication, and power dynamics (Bisel et al., 2020). Thus, CPCP extends this prior work exploring critical theory and positive communication into the classroom context.

Positive Communication Pedagogy

Positive communication pedagogy (PCP) is a nascent subfield of PCS that provides groundwork for CPCP. This research has integrated positive communication concepts into education, through individual courses and policy initiatives. In one course, T. Socha (2008) applied the PCS concepts of strengths and happiness to interpersonal and group communication. Socha encouraged students to articulate not only positive communication experiences but also positive communication values. Similarly, White (2019) advocated for teachers to take process-based approaches toward recognizing and growing signature strengths, for both themselves and for students. To combat student anxieties about social crises, Frey and Loker (2020) illustrated ways communication educators can encourage students to develop resilience and collective coping mechanisms. This connection of classroom activity with the effects of social issues for students informs CPCP’s orientation toward community and care for the Other. At the policy level, McGee (2024) applied positive deviance to a study of how primary and secondary public schools collectively adapted to the turbulence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, Lopez-Cobo et al. (2019) encouraged educators to engage their communities and pursue institutional policy changes. Altogether, this research demonstrates a thread of structural and collective approaches to positive communication education, something CPCP makes a central concern.

Critical Communication Pedagogy and Business Communication

Critical communication pedagogy (CCP) arose as “an extension or respecification” approach that blended communication theory and critical pedagogy (Fassett & Rudick, 2018, p. 3). The three central themes of CCP are (a) communication is constitutive, (b) social justice is a process, and (c) the classroom is a site of activism and interpersonal justice (Fassett & Rudick, 2018). CCP extends the goals of critical pedagogy by emphasizing the role of language in the dissemination of power and hegemony in society (Kahl, 2013). CCP remains an evolving expansion of critical pedagogy, with ongoing scholarship designed to address a recentering of the goal of concrete and actionable hope (Fassett & Rudick, 2018), as well as redoubling efforts to implement activist learning beyond the classroom (Kahl, 2017).

CCP can align with business, technical, and professional communication pedagogy, especially through the implementation of service learning with a social justice lens (N. N. Jones, 2017). Service learning through a critical pedagogical approach aims to create activist learning that reaches outside of the classroom space. Further, Lavine et al. (2022) advocated for critical pedagogies to move beyond scholarship to a form of systemic activism:

The call for emancipatory learning environments (Freire, 1993) invites full consideration of the experiences of dominant and marginalized groups in our classrooms and work organizations, and critically examining the power dynamics and integrated systems of discrimination and exclusion in organizations. (p. 31)

Through immersive service learning as outlined by N. N. Jones (2017), students can grapple with the realities of power, discrimination, and marginalization within organizations through both classroom pedagogy and direct engagement with businesses, experts, and institutions as part of their educational learning outcomes.

Though service learning with a social justice lens has long been viewed as a critical communication practice, the increase in positive communication research within the business communication discipline (Mirivel & Fuller, 2024) presents an opportunity for reorienting both approaches with greater regard to one another. Several scholars have recently advocated for not viewing critical theories and positive communication research as harsh binaries but rather as two areas, which when combined, could offer an opportunity for theoretical and practical expansion (Lavine et al., 2022; Leach et al., 2024).

In pursuing CPCP, critical communication pedagogy and positive communication research provide a foundational approach for using communication for liberation through business and professional communication. CPCP, therefore, acknowledges the political nature of teaching and the role of educators to disrupt power systems through dialogue, communication values, and concrete and actionable hope. Critical communication pedagogy, when combined with positive communication theory, creates opportunities for students and educators to move toward inclusion, justice, belonging, love, and participation.

Critical Positive Communication Pedagogy

CPCP shares with PCS an “affirmative stance” toward the study and praxis of teaching and focuses on affirming human potential and celebrating forms of communication “that inspire and move to better social action” (Mirivel & Fuller, 2024, p. 748). CPCP is about teaching students the communication orientations and practices necessary to live in accordance with virtues of compassion, courage, love, and justice—a critical feature of PCS (Mirivel & Fuller, 2024).

CPCP is grounded in four key tenets—radical love, dialogue as aesthetic experience, community connection, and collective freedom—and its purpose is to help students achieve sustainable happiness and promote social justice. The first tenet of CPCP draws from Freire’s (1970) concept of radical love for the Other. Radical love, as an ethical orientation, aids educators and students in bridging the gap between the personal and the political. That is, radical love stems from collective anger at injustices experienced by certain (groups of) people and proposes solutions that address the root causes of that misery (Torres Olave et al., 2023). Radical love attends to history and context, a recognition that a person’s suffering may have resulted from an immediate communication infraction, but it avoids falling into sympathetic sentimentality by also considering the histories of violence, oppression, and injustice that likely contributed to the infraction (Zembylas, 2017). Because transformational dialogue only is possible in the presence of love for people and the world, radical love is an essential orientation for dialogue with the Other (Freire, 1970). Radical love fosters individual agency and encourages the positive communication practice of truth-telling (e.g., the interconnectedness of all beings and the historic legacies of oppression that contribute to present inequalities).

Second, CPCP emphasizes the practice of dialogue as aesthetic experience. Drawing from the philosophy of Martin Buber (1958) and Emmanuel Levinas (1982), we understand dialogue as an essential component of critical pedagogy that facilitates student action (Freire, 1970). With this understanding, dialogue is not simply a conversation but rather an ethical orientation that enables a humanistic encounter between people managed through communication. In CPCP, teacher-learners employ dialogue as a positive, aesthetic experience of flow that enables feelings of interconnection, love, curiosity, and freedom. As students practice dialogue (with each other, with the instructor, and/or with people outside the classroom), they can interrogate hegemonic ideologies that reinforce the false consciousness of separation between Self and Other and begin replacing those oppressive ideas with new schemas of understanding wherein all people are seen as interconnected. CPCP thus aligns with Mirivel’s (2014) positive communication model of asking open-ended questions, and CPCP expands the function and scope of positive communication from interpersonal discovery to the exploration of systemic injustices as students leverage interpersonal connections to challenge historic inequities.

Third, CPCP emphasizes the importance of community connection. CPCP places community support and connection at the center of efforts to promote positive communication experiences, because feelings of community support are essential to promoting personal well-being and happiness (Dixon, 2021). Thus, in CPCP, students are encouraged to find ways to extend their positive communication skills and orientations into the broader community to find identification with groups and/or institutions that can satisfy human development needs. The emphasis on community connection reinforces the social justice sensibility of seeking identification with others (Frey et al., 1996), realizing that no one is free until everyone is free. To that end, in the classroom, CPCP promotes community engagement whenever possible (e.g., through service learning).

Finally, CPCP privileges collective freedom instead of negative freedom. In their article, Leach et al. (2024) argued that PCS has been constrained by an ethnocentric, Western, Euro-American definition of “positive.” In response, they drew from Buddhist philosophy to expand the cultural scripts that define “positive communication.” Similarly, we contend that the definition of “freedom” most often emphasized in Western psychology and PCS is negative freedom: an absence of barriers to performing an action, typically associated with individual agency (Carter, 2019). Examples of negative freedoms include hegemonic conceptions of free speech, the right to bear arms, freedom of religion, freedom from unnecessary search and seizure, and others. Such a focus on only one definition of freedom is ethnocentric and insufficient.

Therefore, we draw from radical Black scholars to expand the cultural scripts that define “freedom” and focus CPCP on collective freedom, which recognizes people’s material constraints and offers the possibility of engaging in behavior to take control of one’s life (Carter, 2019; Davis, 2012). Collective freedom emphasizes the collective over the individual, where “freedom” only is meaningful to the extent that each person participates in democratic processes and can therefore exercise their power (Carter, 2019). Examples of collective freedoms include the right to vote, the right to a living wage, the right to quality healthcare, freedom from violence, sexual freedom, the right to shelter, and the right to high-quality education. Collective freedom highlights the ways that interdependence promotes one’s self-actualization.

In CPCP, educators explore collective freedom to understand the structural barriers that prevent all students from flourishing, and instructors strive to practice communication that addresses those barriers and aids students in exercising their collective freedom. Thus, CPCP encourages students to turn outward, toward the Other in pursuit of freedom, instead of the inward turn toward the Self as the predominant source of agency and self-actualization.

These four tenets of CPCP (radical love, dialogue as aesthetic experience, community connection, and collective freedom) are implemented to aid students in achieving sustainable happiness. Given these commitments, CPCP contributes to a culture of diversity and inclusion in classrooms, as we demonstrate next.

Applying CPCP in Business and Professional Communication Classrooms

One of the major critiques of critical communication pedagogy is the tendency for theory to supersede praxis, which can lead to a reticence to utilize these pedagogies (Kahl, 2017). To avoid such paralysis, we offer examples of CPCP in the classroom, for educators ought “to use their knowledge of communication to recognize and respond to hegemony that they encounter in their lives” (Kahl, 2017, p. 119). Additionally, service learning has been an effective operationalization of critical pedagogy for business and professional communication classrooms (N. N. Jones, 2017). As CPCP is a framework that combines positive communication pedagogy with critical pedagogy, we offer here concrete ideas for educators, primarily through the lens of immersive service learning (N. N. Jones, 2017). We outline below some methods of applying each tenet of CPCP (radical love, dialogue as aesthetic experience, community connection, and collective freedom) while also acknowledging the complex reality of enacting CPCP in a business communication classroom space. By highlighting four facets of identity and oppression—race, gender/sexuality, disability, and class—the direct application of CPCP for students and teachers is explored in greater detail.

Race and Radical Love

In the words of Angela Davis (2012), “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.” As such, when utilizing CPCP, teacher-learners must be willing to accept that education is a political act, which makes their classrooms political spaces situated within varying power structures (Kincheloe, 2008). This view acknowledges the potential of educators to become agents of change with notable social influence in their classrooms (Mhonde & Hingle, 2021), while also requiring reflexivity to embrace teaching as a radical practice rather than a neutral process (Rudick, 2016). By operating under this anti-racist approach to educating, instructors—especially White instructors with privilege—can gain awareness of their own complicity in perpetuation of oppressive institutional cultures, as well as the interpersonal “communicative acts that minimize or target students of color or recenter white experiences” (Rudick, 2016, p. 161). Such awareness is crucial to curating a space for students to develop, experience, and sustain radical love for themselves, their classmates, their teachers, and the world at large.

In praxis, radical love contributes to the goal of anti-racist education, as it seeks to utilize counternarratives through historical context and contemporary issues as frames to examine race, both in the classroom and beyond. By situating exploration of race through the lens of radical love, the ability to develop a collective indignation for injustice and oppression emerges. Further, this framing underscores the importance of discomfort and deconstructed power structures in classrooms to develop a deeper empathy and love for others.

Anti-racist education requires a willingness to accept how those with privilege often benefit from, and assist in, perpetuating racist systems on micro, meso, and macro levels (Ladson-Billings, 1995). As such, educators must remain vigilant in listening to students of color and not catering to White student discomfort but rather reframing unease as a necessary process for meaningful learning and engagement. Radical love aids students in pushing through discomfort, for if one seeks to love their neighbor, then they will bear that discomfort to better understand the Other’s experiences and one’s privilege. Teacher-learners also should accept that there will be times where they will err in the pursuit of anti-racist classrooms, which requires bravery to engage in reflection and transformative action (Mhonde & Hingle, 2021).

Historicity and symbolic factors

N. N. Jones (2017) offered two areas of immersive service learning relevant for implementing CPCP in business communication courses: historicity and symbolic factors. Historicity “allows students to reflect and acknowledge that injustice and inequality are persistent” (N. N. Jones, 2017, p. 17). Additionally, symbolic factors engage both class discussions and reflection assignments to allow students to explore their changing attitudes around social justice.

Using CPCP to explore race presents the opportunity to leverage counternarratives to promote truth-telling (Ladson-Billings, 2013). Counternarratives exist to challenge and deconstruct the master narrative that is often taught in our educational systems (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Radical love requires situating the contemporary through the lens of history, as they are inextricably linked and showcase the chronic nature of oppression and injustice. As such, educators can seek to combine both historicity and symbolic factors in business communication by having students learn about important topics such as redlining, Black Wall Street, and surveying current corporate attitudes in relation to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Doing so situates the current context under the lens of history, while enabling students, particularly White students, to explore practices related to businesses and organizations that they perhaps have never explored in an academic setting. Students should have space for discussions as a class, followed by written reflections where they can “grapple with the impact of their ideals, beliefs, and emotion on learning” (N. N. Jones, 2017, p. 16).

However, educators utilizing CPCP should build the joy of liberation into the curricula. This can take the form of inviting students to seek out opportunities to interview members of their local communities for counternarratives to share with their classmates. For instance, North Carolina was the site of the first truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) in the United States (Jovanovic, 2012), which was formed in response to a racist massacre of labor union organizers. In one of our courses, students watch a documentary about the Greensboro TRC, discuss the positive communication practices and values necessary to achieve reconciliation, and identify the white supremacist organizational values that undermined the union drive at that textile mill. One student group then created a short documentary featuring interviews with residents about the racist oppression they experienced and the anti-racist resistance they practiced, to identify narratives of marginalization and, more importantly, stories of truth, hope, and perseverance in the face of dehumanizing discourses, thereby presenting pathways for achieving reconciliation and justice. Practicing anti-racist education through CPCP presents an opportunity to move beyond only centering stories of suffering and exploitation and toward also highlighting the profound joy of liberation and emancipation.

Gender, Sexuality, and Dialogue as an Aesthetic Experience

Gender and sexuality constitute two areas of pedagogy that necessitate an acceptance of “otherness” through a celebratory and uplifting lens (LeMaster & Johnson, 2019). Such work also requires self-reflexivity for both teacher and student (Fassett & Warren, 2006). However, reflexivity involves discomfort as one moves “beyond self-reflection to the often uncomfortable level of self-implication” (R. G. Jones, 2010, p. 122). Additionally, educators seeking to utilize the CPCP framework in their classrooms should emphasize the performative nature of gender and sexuality (Butler, 2006), as well as pushing students toward deconstructing learned notions of gender or sexuality as existent only within binary modes of thought and dependent upon genetics. In other words, teaching gender and sexuality is complicated (LeMaster & Johnson, 2019, p. 189). By applying the CPCP tenet of dialogue as an aesthetic experience toward exploring gender and sexuality in the classroom setting, we offer some suggestions for this complex and nuanced area of identity and oppression.

Narrative and autoethnography

CPCP connects individual experience and the structural causes for oppression and injustice through dialogue. As LeMaster and Johnson (2019) state, “Subjective gender is defined in, through, and against macro-cultural mechanisms, including normative gender expectancies” (p. 195). While gender and sexuality are identities performed by individuals, one also must acknowledge the societal and cultural implications of Otherness. Thus, we contend that by utilizing dialogue as an aesthetic experience, educators can engage students in meaningful learning around gender and sexuality. Applying CPCP to gender and sexuality in the classroom can take the form of creating autoethnographies around their experiences with gender and sexuality, especially in centering these identity markers through cultural learning (e.g., Where, when, and from whom did they learn their concepts of gender? How did they come to explore and understand their sexuality? What are their experiences with those of different genders or sexualities? How do they perform gender and sexuality in the workplace compared to in their social lives?). Autoethnography also can utilize the service learning practice of narrative as described by N. N. Jones (2017).

Autoethnography is a long-utilized practice by critical pedagogues (Kahl, 2011). Most importantly, instructors should offer readings that explain the goals of autoethnography clearly, where students gain the understanding that they are “working with marginalized groups, not for them” (p. 224), which is particularly salient to business communication because of the nature of service-learning partnerships (N. N. Jones, 2017). Students may need support with reflexive writing to align with the goals of autoethnography.

Following this self-reflexivity, asking students to read excerpts/perform their autoethnographies can allow space for an aesthetic encounter with alterity and sitting with varied lived experiences through truth-telling. Performing autoethnographies in class also creates space for “nurturing tension” around difficult discussions of power and privilege (Fassett & Warren, 2006, p. 133). As business communication students who will be joining a diverse workforce, learners should have opportunities to explore their own experiences and attitudes around gender and sexuality and the sociocultural expectations about the performance of gender and sexuality in the workplace before interacting with clients and colleagues. Thus, allowing students to explore, share, and engage in reflexive dialogue around gender and sexuality can contribute to an understanding of interconnectedness through radical unlearning—in this case, unlearning heterosexism, misogyny, and the gender binary.

Disability and Community Connection

We adopt the terminology put forth by Gabel (2002) around disability, namely, the use of ability diversity and disability. Ability diversity “should be considered among other diversities (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, culture, etc.), whereas disability should be considered as a status of oppression or identity that usually stigmatizes an individual but that preferably involves consent” (Gabel, 2002, p. 183).

Similar to conversations about gender, sexuality, and race, how educators frame the Other in dialogue is particularly salient to disability justice through the lens of CPCP. As Erevelles (2000) highlighted,

That these assumptions of “normalcy” or “wholeness” are themselves illusions becomes vividly apparent when one examines how constructions of the normative self are in fact predicated on the existence of the disabled Other. (p. 36)

Thus, intentional language choices are a vital first step for educators enacting CPCP, especially when considering a demographic of people who have had their agency consistently removed or lessened because of ability status. Such framing matters because educators must be mindful not to address ability diversity as a deficient state of being, but rather, simply, a different state of being. Such awareness also reinforces Freire’s (1970) point that language is never neutral. Thus, educators must undergo reflexivity in evaluating their own prejudices—both conscious and unconscious—around disability before they can fully deploy CPCP praxis in their classrooms.

Actional factors in service learning

As with race, examining disability requires willingness to work through discomfort to create opportunities for meaningful dialogue. Considering disability in business communication classrooms can be assisted by N. N. Jones’s (2017) discussion of actionable factors, which prioritize student understanding of the power of language. We take this view a step further beyond stylistic choices and toward deconstruction of prior learning around ability.

As CPCP focuses on how to move beyond the micro-level to the meso- and macro-levels in seeking to form community connections, there is the need for educators to incorporate intentional dialogue and opportunities related to disability in their classrooms. Therefore, college classrooms—which, historically, have been inaccessible or hostile to ability diversity (Gabel, 2002)—offer a meaningful space to move perception of disability beyond the individual and toward a societal perspective. Disability advocate Norman Kunc (2016) summarized the importance of community-level analysis by stating, “To relocate the problem means we go from the presumption that people should not be disabled into the idea that disability is an inherent part of the human experience” (9:47–10:00). As such, teachers ought to help students unlearn the notions about ability they have been taught throughout their lives.

Disability in business and professional communication courses also aligns with the engagement of service learning as to move beyond academic to professional contexts, with a goal of synchronizing community engagement and classroom learning. Practical options for educators include (a) working with local community resources for class assignments, such as promotional campaigns (e.g., advocacy groups, Meals on Wheels, Special Olympics, and nonprofits); (b) volunteering with agencies who support disabled individuals for service learning credits (through learning about grant writing or business proposals and planning); or (c) pursuing research opportunities within the disabled community as semester-long projects (e.g., building strategies to increase outreach to new populations for business growth). With this service-learning approach, classrooms move toward being more inclusive and equitable for all students while simultaneously connecting them to resilient communities of solidarity that are the inheritance of decades of disability justice activism.

Class and Collective Freedom

At the intersection of race, gender, and disability looms the ever-present matter of class. Capitalism sits at the root of the other issues we have discussed so far, as gender and sexuality, disability, and race function to keep the working class divided among itself and therefore unable to challenge hegemony (Robinson, 2020). Critical educators may avoid explicitly addressing class because “when social class is discussed, it is usually viewed as relational, not as oppositional, not as liberatory or emancipatory” (McLaren, 2003, p. 65). However, given the impacts of neoliberalism upon higher education (Giroux, 2014; McLaren, 2003), educators must not neglect class consciousness in their employ of the CPCP framework. After all, neoliberalism is responsible for deteriorating beliefs around schooling as a collective social benefit, while levying a new conviction that education now only exists for individual achievement (Giroux, 2014). As postsecondary education often is the vehicle students believe will lead to elevation in—or even emancipation from—economic class, the reality of contending with tensions between individual success and collective oppression provides unique challenges to instructors (Heyman & Luykx, 2006).

At first glance, business communication classrooms and critical engagement with class may seem mutually exclusive; however, we argue the implementation of CPCP can align pedagogy with practice toward the goal of a more socially just worldview for business communication students. Business communication courses are especially ripe for critical engagement around class, as these courses often socialize students into workers who, in capitalist economies, will be alienated from the surplus value of their labor. Students ought to understand the dialectic of labor under capitalism: that workplaces are sites of (sometimes egregious) labor exploitation, and yet, they also are potential sites of and engines for profound social change (e.g., through inclusive workplace cultures, labor union organizing, and/or the products or services generated by the organization). This is no small task, and doing so asks educators to devote themselves to seeing and believing in a world that is free of the shackles of capitalism:

This means acknowledging global capital’s structurally determined inability to share power with the oppressed, its implication in racist, sexist, and homophobic relations, its functional relationship to xenophobic nationalism, and its tendency toward empire. It means acknowledging the educational left’s dependency on the very object of its negation: capital. (McLaren, 2003, p. 89)

As such, we use the final tenet of CPCP, collective freedom, to explore class status through the connection between the individual and the collective, and the hopeful belief in liberation as a positive freedom.

Collective freedom in praxis rests on the belief that “no one is free until everyone is free, and actors resist the tendency to reproduce social hierarchies” (Russell & Gardner, 2021, p. 112). However, as Heyman and Luykx (2006) explained, students often may view macro (societal) “structures” and micro (individual) “agency” as mutually exclusive, rather than complex parts of a larger interconnected system (p. 10). This tendency underlines the importance of emphasizing collective freedom in class struggle—that is to say, educators must hold space for celebration of individual accomplishments, while also elevating the need for solidarity across various social groups for liberation to occur.

Exposure to experts in service learning

Helping business and professional communication students see inequality through the lens of class can take several forms, including studying readings or other materials that explore the macro-level causes of inequality (especially through the prism of intersectionality), creating room for dialogue about students’ experiences of workplace alienation, and studying working-class struggles for liberation (e.g., labor movements, the Black Power movement, and so on). As such, understanding their own positionality in relation to class status is important for students, which can be explored through classroom discussion or written reflections. Such activities can help students learn to identify (or reinforce their pre-existing identification) as/with the working class and its legacy of positive struggle for liberation and social justice.

Collective freedom also requires action beyond the classroom. N. N. Jones (2017) illustrated the importance of exposure to experts in social justice service learning for business and professional communication classrooms. We posit that exposure to experts allows students not only to network and engage in community activism but also to see freedom as far more than an individualistic effort. With this view, educators can create opportunities for students to engage in service-learning projects, which may span the length of an entire semester. Such projects engage students with local communities not as passive observers but rather as active participants. Some practical examples of assignments for exploring class in a business communication context include partnering with local agencies to explore skills such as grant writing; learning how to engage business community stakeholders in constructive dialogue; or working alongside organizations seeking unionization (or developing case studies) to explore the process and gain practical knowledge and negotiation skills used in collective bargaining.

To advance student learning outside their classrooms, educators can propagate hope and emphasize the ways individuals can make a difference to—and are inherently bound up with—the collective. The insidious nature of neoliberalism permeates postsecondary education, which necessitates an intentional cultivation of resistance to that ideology within teacher-learners and student-teachers. Using the collective freedom tenet of CPCP requires all to interrogate, analyze, and resist class inequities, while helping students envision a better future, wherein the need for liberation reaches far beyond the individual and out into the world at large.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this article, we have offered practical examples of implementing CPCP in classrooms. We began with a brief overview of positive communication scholarship, critical pedagogy in business communication courses, and CPCP. We next provided strategies for experiential learning through CPCP that promotes diversity and inclusion, specifically related to issues of gender and sexuality, race, disability, and class. Each subsection illustrated how one of the tenets of CPCP (radical love, dialogue, community connection, and collective freedom) could be applied to address that topic. Of course, instructors may choose different CPCP values to apply to different topics, or multiple tenets across an entire semester. Instructors may even use CPCP in standalone activities. For instance, the three of us use conversation prompts from the card game Story Stitch¹ as an ice breaker at the start of each semester, thus setting the tone for dialogue and inclusion on the first day of class. Ultimately, we have argued that CPCP can contribute to the creation of learner-centered business communication classrooms that promote interpersonal connection and foster a social justice sensibility among students.

The positive communication practices and critical thinking that students learn through CPCP have benefits for professional contexts and, more importantly, for society. The skills students learn through CPCP (e.g., listening, empathy, dialogue, truth-telling, consensus-building, and others) combined with the systemic analysis of root causes of injustice are beneficial in numerous fields, including education, healthcare, journalism, and other social services. For instance, imagine a student who becomes a case manager at a shelter for people experiencing homelessness. The skills and critical analysis developed through CPCP are invaluable for working with such people pushed to the margins of society while simultaneously acknowledging that one of the root causes of homelessness is a lack of affordable housing rather than a person’s life choices. Even in so-called “white collar” occupations, the skills practiced through CPCP can help young professionals promote inclusive and respectful work environments, support unionization efforts, provide empathetic customer service, manage conflicts, and search for the root causes of workplace issues, whether it be supply-chain problems, ineffective management, logistical errors, or worker retention.

Most importantly, CPCP is a pedagogical approach that contributes to the revitalization of democracy, similar to the other critical pedagogical approaches we discussed earlier. Young people today are poised to inherit an increasingly unstable world. In the coming years, climate change most likely will cause environmental changes that modern humans have never seen before. In response, hundreds of millions of people—as well as flora and fauna—are and will continue to migrate as they flee unlivable conditions. Additionally, sociopolitical instability is increasing as countries around the world are descending into authoritarianism and fascism. In just one decade, from 2012 to 2022, countries underwent historic levels of autocratization that erased the past 35 years of democratic advances worldwide (Varieties of Democracy Institute, 2023).

What is yet to be determined, however, is how workplaces, schools, and communities will be affected by these changes. People’s economic, social, and political structures likely will face extreme strains (and may even break). Given these polycrises, we argue that today’s students, in the future, will have to make communication choices about how to respond to them. CPCP provides those students with skills for compassionate, democratic, and just responses that see the immigrant at the border as one’s neighbor instead of an invader, that privilege cooperation over competition, and that resist hegemonic discourses by identifying the root causes of injustice.

As a scholarly intervention, CPCP extends the fields of both positive communication pedagogy and critical pedagogy by synthesizing some of their premises. CPCP contributes to positive communication pedagogy by providing ways to promote inclusion and social justice, systemic analysis on the part of students, and students’ identification with others as a path toward self-actualization—cognitive abilities that, as we explained at the beginning of this article, have been addressed minimally in the literature thus far.

CPCP also contributes to critical pedagogy by humanizing the Other and expanding the toolkit for promoting critical thinking (e.g., through joy, celebration, and positive aesthetic experiences). Scholars have criticized critical approaches for their tendency to focus too much on flaws and shortcomings in phenomena without offering solutions (Taylor, 2019) and to engage in armchair criticism that lacks sufficient first-hand engagement with the community under analysis (Carbaugh, 1989). Such tendencies can dehumanize the Other by failing to consider their agency and perspective, effectively subsuming them to the scholar’s moral and analytical superiority. Additionally, the focus on flaws can drag educators and students into a demoralizing morass of oppression, trauma, and the seemingly insurmountable power gaps between the privileged and the oppressed.

CPCP extends critical pedagogy scholarship by addressing these issues through its emphasis on radical love for and dialogue with the Other, as well as its focus on positive experiences that aid students in seizing their power to pursue social justice. We are not the first scholars to emphasize positive experiences in the struggle for social justice; others have demonstrated the efficacy of art, creativity, and community engagement in teaching toward liberation (e.g., Rivera Santana & Akhurst, 2019; Schwittay, 2023). Instead, CPCP’s contribution is that it draws from positive communication scholarship to provide theoretical and empirical support for the ability of such efforts to promote human flourishing. The challenges facing students and educators may be innumerable, but they are not insurmountable. CPCP aids teacher-learners in grasping the revolutionary spirit of love and joy and then wielding those commitments for the sake of social justice.

Footnotes

Author Note

A prior version of this manuscript was presented at the 2024 National Communication Association Annual Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States.

Ethical Considerations

Not applicable.

Consent to Participate

Not applicable.

Consent for Publication

Not applicable.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

ORCID iDs

Vincent Russell

Grace Cheshire

Gabriel Wisnewski-Parks

Notes

Author Biographies

Vincent Russell, PhD (he/him/his) is an assistant professor in the Communication Department at Western Carolina University, where he teaches intercultural communication. He is the author of Reimagining democracy: Communication activism, social justice, and prefiguration in participatory budgeting. His research focuses on communication activism scholarship, community-based learning, and public dialogue and deliberation.

Grace Cheshire, EdD (she/her/hers) is an instructor of Human Communication at Western Carolina University, where she teaches the foundational communication course. Her research interests as a scholar-practitioner focus on belongingness, dialogic communication, media literacy, and faculty cultural competence in predominately white institutions.

Gabriel Wisnewski-Parks (he/him/his) is an instructor of Human Communication at Western Carolina University, where he teaches foundations of communication and courses in media studies. His research focuses on communication education and how social media influences culture and politics.

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