The Re-Emergence of Critical Pedagogy: A Three-Dimensional Framework for Teacher Education in the Age of Teacher Effectiveness

Abstract

In light of the extensive treatment given over its thirty year existence, this article develops a framework for helping teachers understand the applicability and relevance of critical pedagogy in the classroom during this age of effectiveness and standardization. To do this, critical pedagogy is theoretically framed three-dimensionally. The purpose is to help teachers think through critical pedagogy in a way that might encourage them to analyze their own practices and thus create and enact critical pedagogies that are uniquely their own. The first dimension pertains to its contested terrain. An understanding of critical pedagogy must begin with a disclaimer. This disclaimer suggests that though there are common objectives, there are key points of contestation. The second dimension, then, seeks to find the common ground. This dimension focuses on the commitments of critical pedagogy, and thus, the commitments of those who might try. Lastly, critical pedagogy impels teachers to use their classrooms to make life more humane. To aid in this task, teachers engaging in critical pedagogics take certain philosophical positions, the third dimension of critical pedagogy.

The Pedagogical Practices of Clinical Nurse Educators - Les pratiques pédagogiques des infirmières formatrices cliniques

“…Pedagogy is also understood as the transformation of consciousness that takes place at the intersection of three agencies: the teacher, the learner, and the knowledge that they produce together (Harden, 1996). Pedagogy is understood as both the visible and the hidden interactions between student and teacher that are oriented towards learning (Shudak, 2014). With the current understanding of learning as a constructive process engaged in by the learner, the way teaching is understood and implemented has changed.…”

Education for Sustainability: How can Educators Address the Failure of Government?

“…One myth that clearly informed DESD and many other well-intentioned development programs, is the belief in the unlimited growth of economies and populations (cornucopianism) and resulting counterproductive notions of what constitutes progress [85,30]. The need for unlearning follows from the fact that much of education has resulted in the perpetuation of those myths rather than in their critique [23,87]. We therefore suggest that scientific literacy should include the skills for metaethical comparisons and moral reasoning.…”

“…Another is to induce students to apply an adequate measure of critique of current governmental practices and omissions. This requires that classroom practice must be enriched with elements of critical theory [87]. Targets include the many instances where official policies force people to live unjustly and unsustainably.…”

“…In view of this powerful potential of value change, there seems no excuse for continuing the traditionally permissive views and moral relativism in current curricula. In the absence of adequate support from regional ministries, the requisite sea change towards globally equitable human security and justice and ecocentric restoration [23,70] must be driven by teachers, local schools, and local communities [87]. They are best able to facilitate the unlearning of traditional moral norms such as boundless anthropocentrism, wealth as security, commodification of nature, and ethnocultural parochialism.…”

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“…163-164). Similarly, Shudak (2014) informs that even though critical pedagogy is comprised of contested intellectual terrain, critical pedagogists are aligned regarding their educational commitments and the philosophical positions they take to make life in schools humane and just. In continuing the conversation within this recent re-emergence of critical pedagogy, this article develops two Freirean-based concepts necessary to an understanding of critical pedagogy as a way of being in classrooms and society.…”