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what are some of the
major concepts in critical pedagogy?
Critical pedagogy, a term coined by Paolo Freire in his seminal book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, redefines the teacher as not merely the holder of all knowledge, which s/he then deposits into the empty mind of the student the way money is deposited into an account. Instead, critical pedagogy locates power in the hands of the students, not the teacher. Freire suggests instead that we view students as experts in their own lives and see learning as a shared endeavor in which all participants have something to contribute and learn from each other. Back to top.
Critical pedagogy urges resistance to power structures and power relations that merely preserve the status quo, ensuring that power stays in the hands of the elite that already possesses it. It calls on students to think critically about structures and systems within which they exist and operate. Back to top.
Critical pedagogy gives a voice to those who have traditionally been silenced. Ideally, all voices are equally valid and important, but particularly those who are normally unrecognized and unacknowledged by the academy and other social institutions (see race/class/gender) need to be heard--and taken seriously. Back to top.
conscientizacao - conscientization This is also Freire's term. It describes the state of growing awareness of those who have been disempowered, disenfranchised, and oppressed. Critical pedagogy raises awareness so students develop the critical consciousness necessary for their own empowerment. Conscientization includes learning to ask more and better questions, and to understand and become more aware of one's own choices in learning and in life. Back to top.
One of the goals of critical pedagogy is to increase awareness of oppression, so that those living under oppression as well as those who no longer wish to tolerate it for others begin to fight back. Literacy, education, learning, knowledge, and a greater awareness of the difficulties of others as well as the power structures within which one operates lead to greater self-determination and empowerment. Back to top.
Critical pedagogy says that when students discover their own powerlessness they also begin to discover their own power. Increasing educational literacy is a crucial tool in the process of empowering students who have been marginalized. Back to top.
Liberatory practices include thinking more critically, asking why as well as how, and becoming more aware of the power structures that govern our lives so we can operate outside of those structures if we choose. Throughout the process of learning and growing awareness, students can craft their own liberatory narratives that guide students on even as they are enacted. Liberatory pedagogy helps students gain a subject position, a position of agency, in their own lives. Back to top.
Critical pedagogy seeks to empower students to become fully aware, engaged participants of democracy, but also to become more aware of which individuals and groups have been traditionally excluded from full participation (see race/class/gender). In a true critical pedagogy approach, the concept of social justice is problematized—who determines what justice is? and for whom?—but a true critical pedagogy asks these questions in a spirit of negotiation and inquiry. Back to top.
Awareness of representation--how things are presented, what our narratives about them are, what myths we perpetuate--is very important to examine in critical pedagogy. Traditional learning enshrines power in its established institutions; the myths of the dominant powers, therefore, must be challenged in a process of demythification that unpacks our stories, our myths, and what we unquestioningly accept as truth and "common sense." Back to top.
Both students and teachers have equally legitimate intentions about learning. They must work together in a conscious dialogue about the process of acquiring knowledge and what constitutes knowledge. Control is not solely in the hands of the teacher; goals set for the classroom, what kind of knowledge should be pursued as well as how to pursue it, occurs in a process of negotiation and communication in which the intentions of all participants are articulated, acknowledged, and respected. Back to top.
Critical pedagogy seeks to disrupt the social order, challenging and displacing the dominant ideology and the hegemonic culture that maintains specific imbalances of power and seeks to replace them with a new and better social order, one that distributes knowledge and resources more fairly and is committed to social justice. Back to top.
Just as critical pedagogy challenges the dominant myths that keep social hierarchies of power in place, the process of demystification seeks to illuminate those areas of knowledge and power that are normally preserved and contained in the hands of only a few. For an example, see rationality below. Back to top.
In demystifying what some call the Cult of Rationality, one view of critical pedagogy tries to validate and accommodate the whole student. As with feminism and other radical pedagogies, a critical stance explodes the boundaries of more traditional methods of education and takes emotions into account as well as intellect, recognizing however that rationality can be a mode of resistance as well as of accommodation. Back to top.
Critical pedagogy recognizes the importance of naming. In part, this is connected to the process of finding and developing one's own voice. In part, how we define reality, how we name things, not only describes but co-creates that reality. Students learning to think critically become more aware of the process involved in name, and learn to ask questions such as: who gives something a name, who does not? What are they naming, and how is it named? etc. Back to top.
Power relations are crucially important in a critical pedagogical approach. Questions of power--who posseses it, in what situations, who does not, how is it acquired and maintained--are central to critical pedagogy. Only an awareness of how power relations are maintained and structured enables students to better challenge and disrupt hegemonies of power. Back to top.
The great triumvirate of critical pedagogy, human beings have often been marginalized according to their classification and status in these three categories. Power dynamics and definitions of identity have classically fallen along the three lines of race, class, and gender. Identity becomes a core question in critical pedagogy, i.e. examinations of Self and Other and how they are defined, as well as of how power is distributed and delineated. Related to these classic definitions of identity are theories of culture, postcolonialism, disability, sexual preference, religious identity, etc. See also Whiteness, below. Back to top.
This is subcategory of study along the delineations outlines above. Whiteness--and blackness, and race--are a matter of definition rather than identity. Race is a choice; skin tone is not. Critical pedagogy helps students become more aware of the arbitrariness of such cultural definitions, their implications, and the power relations that underlie them. Back to top.
Furthering the aims of democracy is a core objective of critical pedagogy. Democracy belongs to all citizens, but only those who have a voice can be participants. This calls for learning to operate in what Mary Louise Pratt has called the "contact zone," that contested and not necessarily safe space of the critically-based classroom that demands that students explore the big questions. Back to top.
Critical pedagogy recognizes a world of pluralization, i.e. heterogeneous systems of logic and values that are continually contested and constantly re-negotiated. Pluralization hypothesizes many identities, not only of groups but of individuals themselves. Back to top.
Check this out. Man, those guys were cute. Back to top. |
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Writing Center Teaching Guide Ball State University site designer: Dani Weber © 2007 last updated 12/8/07 |
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