Critical Pedagogy in a Time of Uncertainty: A Call to Action

Rethinking the Thinking on Democracy in Education: What Are Educators Thinking (and Doing) About Democracy?

“…Only 10% were born outside Australia, predominantly from English-speaking countries. Their own secondary education split evenly between public and private (Catholic and Independent) schools 8 . Reflecting postwar migration patterns, almost 50% of their parents were born overseas predominantly, in Europe arriving in Australia with less than 12 years of education.…”

“…7 All percentages have been rounded for convenience). 8 Note that education in Australia has the highest percentage of enrolments in private schools in the OECD with almost 50% of all secondary students in non public schools. Private schools have been part-funded by the state since the 1970s.…”

“…The shift and acceptance toward market-based neo-liberalism in education has had a wide range of effects and consequences on society which are well documented and accepted [7].Democracy must be constantly cultivated, conceptualized and re-worked, with less dependence on the formal political process and cycle of elections, and more on critical engagement in developing the conditions for emancipation, enhanced power relations, and epistemological discovery that may lead to some of the virtues that are commonly extolled when discussing democracy (freedom, liberty, rights, common virtues, etc.). Critical pedagogy offers a framework to understand political literacy and social transformation, in which static representations of power, identity, and contextual realities are rejected [8][9][10]. CP is not about providing a checklist against which one can determine the level of democracy within a given society [3], rather, it is concerned with oppression and marginalization at all levels, and seeks to interrogate, problematize and critique power and inequitable power relations.The traditional approach in civics/citizenship education in schools focuses on an understanding of formal political structures, and is often, problematically, isolated to a single unit of study in both primary and secondary education.…”

Education for social change? A Freirean critique of sport for development and peace

“…For Freire (2005), the form that colonialism is assuming at present is predicated on neoliberalism with its concomitant ideology of the free market (Mayo 2004, 89). The 'fatalism' of neoliberalism is an important theme in Freire's later work and reflects a wider social critique that seeks to recapture the vital role that critical pedagogy might play as a language of both critique and possibility by addressing the growing threat of free market fundamentalism (Darder and Mirón 2006;Giroux and Searls Giroux 2006). Freire offers a conceptual and ethical framework that not only challenges the status quo (through what he calls 'denunciation') but also articulates a language of possibility ('annunciation'), a framework that brings together education and politics for humanization as a viable alternative to domination and oppression.…”

The affective spaces of global civil society and why they matter

“…Darder and Mirón (2006) call this 'revolutionary love e a love linked to a struggle grounded in a shared kinship, political self-determination and economic justice' (18e19). If I squint I can see this forming in Gwalior.…”