Download Incorporating critical pedagogy in the classroom

INTRODUCTION
http://www.freireproject.org/content/critical-pedagogy-tv
“Critical pedagogy is basically the study of oppression in education, the
study of how issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, colonialism will shape
the nature of what goes on in education, shape the purpose of education”
(Joe Kincheloe)
“Critical pedagogy is the teachers asking ‘why’, and the students being
allowed to freely ask the same question ‘why am I learning this’”
(Christopher Stonebanks)
Definitions
"Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath
surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official
pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere
opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context,
ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object,
process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass
media, or discourse." (Ira Shor Empowering Education, 129
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_pedagogy))
Henry Giroux
• [Critical] pedagogy . . . signals how questions of audience, voice, power,
and evaluation actively work to construct particular relations between
teachers and students, institutions and society, and classrooms and
communities. . . . Pedagogy in the critical sense illuminates the
relationship among knowledge, authority, and power. (Giroux, 1994: 30
(http://www.21stcenturyschools.com/Critical_Pedagogy.htm))
Peter McLeran
“Critical pedagogy resonates with the sensibility of the Hebrew
symbol of tikkun, which means ‘to heal, repair, and transform the
world, all the rest is commentary.’ It provides historical, cultural,
political, and ethical direction for those in education who still dare
to hope. Irrevocably committed to the side of the oppressed, critical
pedagogy is as revolutionary as the earlier view of the authors of
the Declaration of Independence: is history is fundamentally open
to change, liberation is an authentic goal, and a radically different
world can be brought into being.” (Life in Schools 1989, p. 160)
Some terms
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Humanising education/pedagogy
Transformative education/pedagogy
Emancipatory pedagogy
Radical pedagogy
Critical theory
History
• Influences of the Frankfurt School of critical theory.
• Dewey, Gramsci and others.
• Paulo Freire “the inaugural philosopher of critical pedagogy”
(McLaren, 1999, p. 49 in Stinson, Bidwell and Powell,
International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, Vol 4 (1) (2012) pp
76-94)
• On being asked when critical pedagogy began, Henry Giroux
“.....Paulo’s work is really the first to mark that moment. The
archives should begin there”.
(http://www.freireproject.org/content/critical-pedagogy-tv)
Paulo Freire (1921-1997)
• “Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)”
• Traditional education is oppressive. The banking method dehumanises the
learner and creates people who agree to the unjust order of their society,
and therefore are passive in striving for change.
• “Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate
integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system
and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the
means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality
and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”
Key principles of Critical Pedagogy
 “Education and society are intrinsically interrelated and the fundamental
purpose of education is to improve social justice”. (McArthur, 2010, p. 493)
 Breaking down the barriers of all types of discrimination including; race,
class, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, and ability, critical pedagogy ‘s strives
for emancipation for all in the society.
 It is a pedagogy of critically questioning everything that goes on, rather than
accepting the status quo.
 They key to a democratic society is democratic education in which learners
are empowered to be active/reflective participants of their own learning, not
passive consumers.
 Is opposed to market-based models of education which is geared to
serve the interests of the dominant.
 Education is through a dialogic approach. Therefore, the teacher and
learner continually swap roles in the process.
 Through education, critical pedagogy’s ultimate goal is to eradicate all
types of oppression and human suffering. It is a humanising pedagogy.
Some of the Main Contributors
– Henry Giroux
– Joe Kincheloe
– Michael Apple
– Jonathan Kozol
– Peter McLaren
– Ira Shor
– Antonio Darder
– Howard Zinn
– bell hooks
The importance of theory
• When considering the major concepts of critical theory the school is
considered as a social space that promotes and aims to empower students
in a range of areas such as social justice.
• For every question, there are many sides and each side is often linked to
various aspects of society such as class, sex, and race.
• In the classroom, critical theory hopes to allow students to draw
connections between what they learn in school with greater social
functions of particular kinds of knowledge.
Critical Pedagogy and the Social
Construction of Knowledge
• “What are the social functions of knowledge?”
• Critical theory suggests that knowledge is socially constructed; “it is the
agreement or consent between individuals who live out particular social
relations.”
Forms of Knowledge
• Technical Knowledge: Knowledge that can be measured and quantified.
• Practical Knowledge: usually gained through describing and analysing, this
type of knowledge can then be applied to the outside world and other
social situations.
• Emancipatory Knowledge: This type of knowledge allows individuals to be
aware of how social relationships are changed or influenced by a higher
power and brings the understanding that oppression can be overcome
through collective action.
Why Critical Pedagogy is Important?
• Why do we teach what we teach, and the way in which we teach it?
• The school and what happens in the classroom is the beginning of the
creation of a foundation that will later influence each young person in
their social relationships and in the world.
• For a student critical pedagogy means understanding why they learn what
they learn, and what it means. Why is the information we provide them
important, as well as how the information is presented.
Challenges of Critical Pedagogy
- It’s not always easy to differentiate between critical pedagogy, active
learning, and the learner- or learning-centered approaches. Each is
predicated on the notion of student engagement and proposes involvement
via such strategies as collaborative and cooperative learning and problembased learning. All recommend a move away from lecturing.
- Critical pedagogy is the most extreme of the three and has some unique
characteristics. It can be described as the eradication of the teacherstudent contradiction “whereby the teacher teaches and the students are
taught; the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing; the
teacher talks and the students listen; and the teacher is the subject and the
students are mere objects.” Critical pedagogy also has a political agenda; it
views education as a means to achieve social justice and change.
Challenges of Critical Pedagogy
- Whether or not a teacher is philosophically comfortable with the principles of
critical pedagogy, implementing it in the classroom presents teachers with the
same dilemmas that emerge when using active learning or learner-centered
approaches.
- One problem that becomes clear early on is the discomfort students feel
when teachers solicit their opinions and acknowledge the relevance of previous
experiences. More students prefer traditional approaches—those that have
them record and then regurgitate information. They aren’t used to having their
voices recognized and respected.
Benefits and challenges of using a critical
pedagogy approach
- A critical pedagogy approach offers students a way to bring texts
into their lives in an immediate way: They learn how their thoughts
and their actions connect. Critical pedagogy also encourages students
to explore how they can make effective arguments. Also, by finding
ways to critique and change practices in their own communities,
students realise that they are ultimately responsible for their
communities.
- Assignments may consist of papers or presentations that combine
literary analysis with historical research or proposals for change.
Teachers may also ask students to design their own assignments,
responding in a way they see fit to the issues raised in class.
How can we use critical
pedagogy in our
classroom?
Incorporating critical pedagogy in the
classroom
- In the classroom, teachers can introduce critical thinking by comparing
texts that reflect in different ways on a single political question. A teacher
might ask students to compare different kinds of texts that refer to the
same issue (for example, two memoirs, one Chinese and one African
American, both of which focus on the politics of beauty).
- By comparing cultural practices from a variety of perspectives, students
learn to read critically. In addition, critical pedagogy often forces students
to lay aside prejudices about cultures unfamiliar to them. Cultural
practices that at first may seem unusually barbaric such as foot-binding or
neck extensions but after critical thinking and further consideration it
becomes less horrific and can be compared to "acceptable" practices in
their own culture such as dieting or cosmetic surgery.
Incorporating critical pedagogy in the
classroom
• Teachers will also want to focus on texts with strong
political content, such as memoirs that describe the
experiences of people of colour, for example, or novels
that explore the social and cultural practices of a given
community. These texts can help students to locate
similar practices in their own communities, so that they
can become active participants in their worlds.
Critical Pedagogy for the Third World
Some examples
The role of dominant school:
Schools perform
important functions
in society, such as
training ans
socialising the youth,
fostering social
cohesion,
transforming culture,
and sorting
students ,
ostensibly by talent,
for further training
and employment .
How they do it:
Schools put poor students
into low-ability classes and
more affluent students into
high ability classes.
Eventually this results in
students occupying positions
in the occupational structure
similar to those occupied by
their parents. Indigenous
Australian students suffer
more from this process.
“Culture is simultaneously the fruit of a people’s
history and a determinant of history".
“A people who free themselves from foreign
domination will be free culturally only if ...
they return to the upward paths of their own
culture, which is nourished by the living reality
of its environment, and which negates both
harmful influences and any kind of subjection
to foreign culture. Thus, it may be seen that if
imperialist domination has the vital need to
practice cultural oppression, national
liberation is necessarily an act of culture.”
--Amilcar Cabral, “National Liberation and
Culture”
Nicaraguan Revolution and
Literacy campaign
ACTIVITY: in small groups discuss
• “What is really important is not to read
alienated and alienating histories, but rather
to make history and to be made by history”
• a) What is the idea of education and the role of the educator in that
statement?
• b) Alienated and alienating knowledge is what Freire calls “pre-packed
knowledge”. What would that concept mean to you?
CHALLENGES OF
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
FAQ’s
• What right do critical pedagogues have to speak for
the oppressed and marginalized, particularly when
"speaking" comes out of a middle class university or
other teaching position.
• Critical pedagogy is theoretically visionary but lacks
the practical tools to accompany it
• Uses very complex language / can be very abstract
Misunderstanding of key concepts:
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Schooling Vs Education,
Control Vs Democracy,
Authority Vs Authoritarianism
(de)Skilling Vs Re-Skilling
Individualism vs Individuality,
Traditional Literacy vs Critical Literacy
—Kanpol, Barry (1998)
CHALLENGES OF
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
Micro level: classroom environment
• Resistance of some students and teachers
• Development of appropriate assessment methods
Macro level: Political agenda
• Ideological context: current liberalisation and
marketisation of education
Current debates in the
Australian Context
• Current debate: Gonski review
• OECD statement on Education (May 2012): “making
sure students from all backgrounds and origins can
fulfill their potential.”
• AEU debate on education recognised that addressing
inequality should be a priority