Exploring equity and inclusion in team-based learning: A critical pedagogy perspective

Abstract

Background: Team-Based Learning (TBL) is widely used in medical education to promote active engagement, yet its structured format raises questions about how power, voice, and cultural inclusion are negotiated. Using a critical pedagogy lens can illuminate how students experience these dynamics.

Methods: This mixed-methods study explored Year 2 international medical students’ experiences of inclusion, participation, and cultural responsiveness within a TBL-based curriculum. Forty-two students completed a 13-item survey, analysed descriptively, and 11 students participated in focus groups, analysed thematically.

Results: Students valued TBL for fostering collaboration, critical thinking, and respectful peer dialogue. They also acknowledged the exposure to diverse perspectives in the TBL classroom and valued the agency to challenge and critique content peers and their educators. Educators were not consistently perceived as embedding culturally diverse examples and some students experienced participation barriers linked to language and accent.

Conclusion: The TBL classroom embodied many aspects of critical pedagogy in practice; structures which promoted learner engagement through a dialogic process and reimagining the role of the educator as a facilitator for critical learning. However, while TBL offers a supportive structure for peer learning, inclusive and culturally responsive outcomes are not guaranteed. These depend on educator facilitation and intentional design that centres equity and critical dialogue. In order to achieve the emancipatory education envisioned by Freire, educators and institutions must commit to critical reflection, create safe dialogic spaces that value all learners’ voices, and intentionally disrupt power imbalances embedded in learning environments.