"Critical pedagogy explores the dialogic relationships between teaching and learning!!!".

Critical pedagogy is a teaching approach inspired by critical theory and other radical philosophies, which attempts to help students question and challenge posited "domination," and to undermine the beliefs and practices that are alleged to dominate.

Emotions are one important mode through which members of a learning community literally feel their relationships with each other and with course content. They are thus crucial to how students and teachers understand their place in classroom spaces. In some instances, emotions in the classroom can become so excessive that they challenge the capacity of both teachers and students to maintain a classroom climate that is conducive to individual and collective learning. Fear, guilt, defensiveness or hostility over challenging topics such as homophobia and colonialism can manifest in ways that damage collegiality and trust, which affect not only individual students and teachers, but the broader learning community. Certain challenges that can be grouped into three main categories: (1) challenges relating to teaching the subject matter and constraints in using ent repreneurial pedagogies and inadequacy of financial resources); (2) challenges relating to the students themselves (students’ lack of prior knowledge in the subject, scaffolding tasks in mixed ability classes, immaturity of students in relation to subject content and misconceptions by students that the subject is difficult); and (3) challenges relating to policy such as the inability to implement pedagogies prescribed in the syllabus. How should we, as teachers, understand and approach these emotions and their effects in the classroom? we should work with each other and with the workshop leader, using their personal classroom experiences, to develop a conceptual framework and a set of pedagogical strategies for engaging emotional encounters in spaces of teaching and learning.

Who is the educator of critical pedagogy?

"Pr axis involves engaging in a cycle of theory, application, evaluation, reflection, and then back to theory. Social transformation is the product of praxis at the collective level." Critical pedagogy explores the dialogic relationships between teaching and learning.

Critical Pedagogy Brings New Teaching and Learning Challenges

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 problem-based learning. All recommend a move away from lecturing.

Critical pedagogy is the most extreme of the three and has some unique characteristics. The authors below describe its basic tenets as eradication of the teacher-student 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.” (p. 26) Critical pedagogy also has a political agenda; it views education as a means to achieve social justice and change.

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. The article referenced below does an excellent job of articulating some of these challenges and offering advice on how instructors might respond.

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, but they do quickly adapt. The next challenge for the teacher is to ratchet up the ante so that the opinions students express are informed, their views are supported, and they learn to tolerate ambiguity more constructively.

As soon as students are recognized for what they can teach (as they do in most group work settings), a whole set of challenging questions emerges for the teacher. “How do we invite students to be co-teachers if we … begin from a position of intellectual authority?” How can we let students have a say about what they learn when there is a discipline-specific body of knowledge we are expected to cover in the course? “How do we De-center authority when we are working to gain authority?” (as might be the case with new teachers, especially persons of color or women in male-dominated fields). (p. 28)

The answer here is sanguine whether an instructor is using groups or giving students some say over course policies and procedures. “The goal is not to abdicate responsibilities or to deny or conceal our knowledge but to create a genuine space for students to contribute to the curriculum: ‘to teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge.’” (p. 28-29—the internal quote is attributed to Paulo Freire.)

If students now have a role in making some of the decisions about learning, and teachers use authority more sparingly, what happens when it’s time to evaluate student work and assign grades? And right behind that question is one relating to appropriate assessment measures. These instructional approaches make some of the traditional assessment strategies quite inappropriate. You can’t be expecting and encouraging students to collaborate and work cooperatively on projects if the grading schematic is competitive. It is possible, though, to begin to involve students in both the generation and the critique of those rubrics that will be used to assess their work. Their involvement helps to create clear expectations and makes the whole assessment process more transparent.

Paulo Freire and the Role of Critical Pedagogy. An important key concept in this is emancipation. It is emancipation, liberation from oppressive social relations, which critical pedagogy is committed to. ... The liberation from oppression and human suffering should be an important dimension in education.

Critical pedagogy is a teaching method that aims to help in challenging and actively struggling against any form of social oppression and the related customs and beliefs. It is a form of theory and practice which serves to let pupils gain a critical awareness Critical pedagogy is a type of pedagogy in which criticism of the established order and social criticism are essential. Critical pedagogy wants to question society in its understanding of the role that education has. From this point of view, social critique is necessary if one does not want an upbringing and education that contributes to the reproduction of inequality

An important key concept in this is emancipation. It is emancipation, liberation from oppressive social relations, which critical pedagogy is committed to. Social critique leads to social change. With this mode of critique we want students to see clearly that phenomena like inequality are not necessary, but arose in a certain historical context that has been established and produced by man-made social processes. Upon becoming aware of this reality, a person no longer needs to feel like a manipulable object anymore.

According to the critical pedagogy, education is inherently political, and any kind of pedagogy should be aware of this fact. A social and educational vision of justice and equality should be the basis for any kind of education. The liberation from oppression and human suffering should be an important dimension in education.

Education should promote both emancipatory change as well as the cultivation of the intellect. It should be kept in mind that the current education system is a reflection of the interests of the existing system of exploitation. This dynamic must be exposed by critical pedagogy, understood, after which action should be taken against it as part of a praxis towards social change; a cycle of theory, practice, evaluation and reflection.

Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”

Paulo Freire is the grandfather and one of the major contributors to critical pedagogy. Freire, who became a professor of history and philosophy of education at the University of Recife in Brazil, experienced and learned from the plight of poverty and hunger during the Great Depression of 1929. This experience imbued in him a deep concern for the poor, which influenced his views on education.

He is best known for his book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” in which he described how people have have been untaught or have never learned to think critically about their situation. Most people accept their situation as inevitable and as belonging to life itself. Only when they become aware of their situation and are able to assign meaning to it (collectively called a process of “conscientization”), the step a step can be made toward changing the situation.

Four levels of consciousness

Freire speaks in this context of four levels of consciousness:

1) Magical consciousness; at this level of consciousness people experience themselves as completely impotent to do something about their personal and socio-economic position. They are, as it were, controlled by outside forces like the gods in mythology who could intervene in the life of man without being able to defend oneself against them.

 2) Naive consciousness; at this level one is able to make a distinction between oneself and the outside world. Life is not seen as something that just happens to you, but it gets contours in the sense that there are things that are within your reach, and other things that you think you need others for. They know that they can do something about their situation, but is also convinced of not being capable of a lot of other things as well. The difference between the first and second level of consciousness is that magical consciousness has been transcended by a more thorough understanding of the existing situation.

3) Critical consciousness; at this level, one discovers not only the distinction between self and others, but one is also, due to the distinction, able to change things. At this level there is a growing understanding of one’s own capabilities and because of that also a way of relativizing the power of others. One will recognize how oppression occurs, which role one has in that situation and how one can fight it by intervening.

4) Political consciousness; on this highest level people discover from their perception of reality that others share their perception of reality, and they also share some of the same problems. This leads to that people combine their strengths and try to influence politics and negate the situation of oppression. According to Freire “Nobody liberates nobody, nobody liberates themselves alone: human beings liberate themselves in communion.”

People create their own consciousness of struggle by changing reality and freeing themselves from the oppression that is embedded by traditional pedagogy. Similarly, when one learns a new way of thinking, the understanding of one’s own social status has a transformative effect. Freire’s method has thus two successive moments: the first relates to the awareness of reality that one is oppressed and is submitted to the decisions imposed by the oppressor, the second refers to the initiative of the oppressed to fight and emancipate themselves from the oppressors.

Critique of educational banking

Freire criticized the traditional education method of simply depositing knowledge, or what he called the “banking concept of education”; which only strengthens the established order. Instead of communicating with the students, the teacher gives deposits which the students have to patiently receive. They are not considered as able to do more than to organize and accumulate the deposits.

This “banking” concept is the reflection of the dichotomous oppressive society we live in: the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing, the teacher thinks and the students are being thought, the teacher talks and the students listen obediently.

The success of this method depends on the willingness to swallow. Those who are not willing to cram themselves with deposits remain supposedly ‘undeveloped’.

Freire looked for a method that is conscientizing and thus comes to the basic principle of his educational theory: Education can never be neutral, it is either an instrument of liberation or an instrument of domestication. Or as Richard Shaull formulated it in the preface of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

“There is no neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate the integration of generations into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes the 'practice of freedom’, the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”

Freire adds that this does not depend on the content of the education provided, nor the good will of the educator, decisive here is the educational process itself.

If the individual does not fight for its interests, and its cultural and social emancipation, it seems that one has lost the love for life. Thus the necrophilia, that prevails in the world today, is reproduced by the type of education given at school. The pedagogy that Freire proposes is the opposite of that described above. It suggests that the individual has a love for life, teaches a cultivation of being - by being in the world, not of or under the world - a condition brought about by liberation. This necessitates a kind of education that isn’t alienating and mechanistic.

Education that liberates the individual must be a conscious act in which the content is understood and analyzed, with the dichotomy that exists between teacher and student is transcended; it should negate the unidirectional (coming from one side) relationship to replace it with bidirectionality (coming from both sides) to contribute to the education of both parties, because both have the elements to offer each other insights. The teacher is hereby turned into the pupil of his own pupils. “Nobody educates anybody else, nobody educates himself, people educate each other through their interactions of the world.”

The role of the teacher is to problematize the world, thereby creating the right conditions so that learning process transcends the 'doxa’ (undoubted axioms) to get to the level of “logos” (actual understanding). This type of learning helps people to create new with the expectations and reach a reflective state where they discover their own reality. It creates new challenges that instigates pupils to self-construction of the world,  in which they have a real and direct participation in the activities in which they are involved. All this demands that we problematize the individual as such, without mediation by artificial experiences in the learning process.

Dialogics and conscientization

Man is not allowed to understand reality and change it in an education that is just one method to adapt to reality. To bring the awareness process in motion there must be dialogue, because man does not create oneself in silence, but by words, actions and reflection. The use of such a dialogue is the main element in the learning process.

To understand the reasoning of Freire one should start from his image of man. Through their actions people work on the world, they change the world. Because of their ability to reflect, people take distance from themselves, from their actions, from the world; this reflection again leads to action. The aforementioned cycle forms the praxis, that is to say the way in which the human being is manifested in the world. “To become human” happens in praxis. No seperation can therefore be made between action and reflection.

Dialogue can only happen by the speaking of “own words” with which the individual reflects its reality, it is the only way to get the understanding of this reality and change it. In opposition to the depository education system that maintains the system, Freire proposes the problematizing education with consci?ntisering (coming to consciousness) as a goal. Learning is not 'eating’ of false words, it is not programming, learning problematizing by raising questions. The subject matter is the life situation of the pupil.

Dialogics and antidialogics

Freire recognizes that the practice of conscientization that he recommends can run up against “limiting situations”, and that these situations are a product of the resistance by the oppressing classes to any change of the status quo, which is so important to them. This can lead to defeat and apathy among the oppressed classes. According to Freire it is “not the apathy of the masses which leads to the power of the elite, but it is the power of the elite, which makes the masses apathetic.”

For this Freire worked out opposing frameworks for cultural action, antidialogics and dialogics, the former being the oppressive one, and works through submission, division, manipulation, and cultural invasion and the latter the liberating one, which works through cooperation, association, organization, and cultural synthesis.

The oppressor uses antidialogics in different ways in order to maintain the status quo. He subdues the oppressed with an unwavering unilateral dialogue , in which the communication is transformed into a necrophiliac act . The ideological instrument is often used here for complete submission.

The oppressor also attempts to dissuade people to unite through dialogue. One of their main activities is to weaken the oppressed through alienation , with the idea that this will provide internal divisions, and that in this way things will remain stable. In their implicit discourse they warn that it is dangerous for “social harmony” to talk about concepts like association and organization. Compared with those who fight against them, the oppressors seem the the only ones who can maintain the needed harmony in life. But this is only an attempt to ensure divisions. If an individual decides to fight for liberation the person is stigmatized, all in an attempt to avoid the historically inevitable realization of freedom.

The oppressor also uses antidialogics by abusing ideology to manipulate people and to agree with the goals proposed by the oppressor, but entirely at the expense of the oppressed.

Freire discussed as the last feature of antidialogics that of cultural invasion, where the oppressed are the turned into objects, while the oppressors are the actors and authors of the process. This is a subliminal tactic that is used to control and leads to the inauthenticity of individuals. The greater the level of imitation by the oppressed, the greater the calm for the oppressors. What happens to the masses is a loss of values , a transformation in their way of speaking and willingly supporting the oppressor.

In contrast with antidialogics, dialogics is a form of community empowerment. This process is not due to the presence of some prophetic leader, but by the covenant that occurs when there is communication and interaction between the leader and the masses in order to to achieve liberation and discover the world, instead of adjust to it. This happens when there is mutual trust, so that a revolutionary praxis can be developed, where humility and constant dialogue is needed by all participants.

To complement this collaboration it is necessary to form associations with the joint effort towards liberation. This implies a form of cultural action that teaches to join a revolutionary aspiration without falling into ideological hyperbole. Instead, the goal should be described as something it really is, namely a human act, not some exaggerated event. Dialogical action also requires the organization to avoid ideological coercion from above.

Organization is a necessary element of revolutionary struggle, it implies coherence between action and practice, courage, radicalization without sectarianism and the courage to love. All these aspects should be present without naivety . Of course, for revolutionary action, there must also be discipline, order, precise objectives, clear tasks to be fulfilled and accountability, but dialogics is mainly about the awakening that is required from the encountered oppression.

The final characteristic of dialogical action is the cultural synthesis that aims to overcome the contradiction created by the oppressor. This addresses the strength of one’s own culture as a creative act and avenges the oppressed by giving another perception on the world than the one imposed without consultation or assessment.

The role of revolution

Revolution is for Paulo Freire removal of the structures and mechanisms that cause different forms of oppression in the society. It is about overturning political and economic powers that the are the cause of the oppression of the majority. The conscientization is assigned an essential role here. The oppressed must be made not only aware of their own value, they must also be freed from their image of man that they derive from the oppressors with whom they have an ambivalent relationship.

For Freire dialogue belongs to the essence of being human: human life is not live 'alone’, they live 'together’ in the world. In that sense, the oppressor maimed his own humanity, because he is not 'the others’. Revolution implies, in addition to the empowerment and recognition of the human dignity of the oppressed, at the same time humanizing the oppressors.

Freire want individuals to forms themselves rather than being formed (from above). With this goal in mind, he suggests that subjects must be taught that come from the everyday experience of the individual and that we have to avoid the pitfalls of current education to gravitate towards artificial oppressive experiences.

• Paulo Freire teaches us that only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, can bring forthh critical thinking. He proposes to problematize one’s life to realize that one needs both another situation without oppression as well one can really achieve such a situation. Is this utopian? Maybe. But utopia serves as the receding horizon, where the journey never ends, and the effort of the journey can makes the chance of a more humane society, where peace reigns, larger every day.

What is critical pedagogy in the classroom?

One of the central tenets of critical pedagogy, especially as it is outlined by education scholar Paulo Freire, is the establishment of classrooms in which teachers and students learn together. Critical pedagogy allows students to speak with greater authority because they are drawing on knowledge they already possess.

Pedagogical Challenges and Opportunities

“Why are you complaining about slavery? If it was so bad, then why did Africans kidnap and sell their own people into slavery?” As an undergraduate taking social psychology, I was shocked to hear this quote from one of my white classmates. His comments were a hostile response to an African American speaker who shared personal stories of racial segregation and growing up poor in East Tennessee in the 1940’s and 1950’s. I often reflect on this classroom experience now that I teach courses focusing on prejudice, discrimination, and group inequalities. Although I wish things were different some 15 years later, teaching about social issues inevitably leads to an array of student reactions that present pedagogical challenges while simultaneously presenting collective learning opportunities.

Anyone who has ever included sensitive topics as part of a course’s curriculum has faced some of the unique challenges associated with teaching and learning about social issues. The first time I included readings addressing white privilege on my syllabus, a student accused me of being “racist against white people” on my course evaluation sheet. Teaching my first class as the instructor of record in Cincinnati became complicated by the police shooting of yet another unarmed black youth. That quarter, Cincinnati faced racial unrest, also called “riots” by some, that yielded classroom comments such as “Black people are violent savages.” As inexperienced as I was, I attempted to move the class toward discussion of what institutional and social factors might lead to the looting and violence we were experiencing in the city. Although some of the students of color and white students in the classroom offered explanations of intergroup relations and oppression, I consider my facilitation of that emotionally charged discussion a complete failure.

Last year, my Psychology of Women class viewed a film called “The Way Home,” in which women from various racial and ethnic backgrounds discuss the impact of race and racism in their lives. During our discussion of the film, a student declared that “ninety percent of Iraqis are terrorists anyway.” Much to my delight, four hands immediately shot up around the room. As I called on each student to contribute their comments, I became more and more dismayed that not one of them addressed the terrorist comment. This experience taught me that my perceptions of what should happen colored my assumptions about student responses when I saw eager faces raise their hands. After taking time to reflect on this classroom event, I used the online course space to craft several questions for discussion that brought the Middle Eastern women’s voices from the film back to the center of our discussion. Moments like these remind us that we must find effective ways to balance the need to meet our students where they are and the task of deconstructing such stereotypical beliefs. How do we avoid shutting down the conversation while maintaining a safe environment for all in the classroom?

As social issues teachers, we face what I like to call “teaching-social-issues issues.” That is, there are distinct pedagogical “issues” that come along with teaching and learning about social issues. Whether facing student resistance to reading works by lesbian authors or the broader challenge of designing a course on social policy analysis, faculty may feel isolated if colleagues in their departments do not include these topics in their courses. They may feel further marginalized if their colleagues question the legitimacy of infusing social issues into the curriculum. In addition, concerns about administrative views of such teaching practices may present unique performance review obstacles for social justice teachers. Given the lengthy list of challenges, why do we choose to teach about social issues?

Benefits and Opportunities

For nearly 75 years, SPSSI (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues) members, passionate about social issues research, have introduced this passion to students through their teaching and mentoring efforts. We teach courses focused solely on social issues and incorporate social issues into traditional courses as a reflection of our values. Introducing students to new theories about intergroup relations and social systems, for example, facilitates student consumption of and thirst for multiple perspectives. Nothing brings a smile to my face quicker than when a student expresses a newly formed perspective on the world as a result of our time learning together. As SPSSI teachers, we are privileged to witness amazing growth among our students (e. g., a student begins questioning her hometown’s support of the KKK) while recruiting new social issues researchers. Although arguably the greatest teaching challenge, teaching social issues produces unimaginable teaching rewards.

Characteristics Of Critical Digital Pedagogyby TeachThought Staff

“Pedagogy is not just a delivery device for the digital humanities. It should be at the core of what the digital humanities is as an academic discipline.”

Shift the practice of pedagogy as a vehicle for “teaching” to something more whole–considering the humanities not as a school of thought or academic genre, but rather a reason for being. Humanities teach. The “digital” reaches. Therefore, the digital humanities should reach and teach as a matter of concept and design. That’s what they’re for.

Stommel offers four characteristics of critical digital pedagogy. Put another way, these are four things we might notice if digital teaching and learning is doing what it’s supposed to do.

4 Characteristics Of Critical Digital Pedagogy

 1. It centers its practice on community and collaboration

2. Must remain open to diverse, international voices, and thus requires invention to reimagine the ways that communication and collaboration happen across cultural and political boundaries 

3. Will not, cannot, be defined by a single voice but mus gather a cacophony of voices

4. Must have use and application outside traditional institutions of education 

The presentation is mostly macro thinking of what education can be, quoting from Freire, Dewey, and even Emily Dickinson to make the case for what’s possible in a modern–digital and connected–learning environment. Definitely worth a look as you consider what you consider what the results of your practice should ultimately “do” in the real world–and the kinds of thing it should “break.”

WHAT IS CRITICAL PEDAGOGY?

} In 1968 Freire published his most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where he outlined the characteristics of what he called Critical Pedagogy.

What is Critical Pedagogy?

 Critical pedagogy is a teaching approach which attempts to help students question and challenge domination, and the beliefs and practices that dominate them.

 It tries to help students become critically conscious.

Key Objectives of Critical Pedagogy

Including the excluded

 One of the key objectives of critical pedagogy is to allow students to gain the necessary social skills to allow them to actively participate in a transformed & inclusive democratic community.

When you can identify the sources of power, recognize your own position in relation to power and understand the political nature of what you learn you can develop your own social actions.

Critical pedagogy seeks to give those who have been excluded from power the right and ability to have an input into civic life.                                             

Banking concept of education

Students are empty vessels to be filled by the teacher

Follows oppressive attitudes and practices

 End of “Banking System” of Education

Students should not be viewed as an empty “account” to be filled in by the teacher.

Teachers should know that students have life experiences and their own knowledge that is key in shaping their education and learning.            

Good schools do not blame students for their failures or strip students of the knowledges they bring to the classroom.                                

Culture of silence

A characteristic of oppressed people in colonial countries who do not have a voice in their society.

The dominant culture silenced the oppressed

Dialogical method

Abandon lectures

Open communication among teacher and students

All teach and all learn

 a teacher who learns and

 a learner who teaches   

Humanization

 The vocation of each individual is to become more fully human, configured as an emancipation from oppression

Alleviation of Poverty

Libratory education

Raises students consciousness, preparing them to engage in larger social struggle for liberation

Conscientization

Learning to perceive social, political and economic contradictions

Developing a critical awareness

So that individual can take action against the oppressive elements

Praxis

Paulo Freire defines praxis in Pedagogy of the Oppressed as "reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it." Through praxis, oppressed people can acquire a critical awareness of their own condition and with their allies struggle for liberation.

Power and know how to take action against oppression

Characteristics of Critical Pedagogy

Anti-Colonial

Indigenous Knowledge

Awareness on the Political Nature of Education

Justice & Equality in Education

Lessen Human Suffering

Promote Emancipation & Intellectual Growth

Critical teachers, therefore, must admit that they are in a position of authority and then demonstrate that authority in their actions in supports of students... [A]s teachers relinquish the authority of truth providers, they assume the mature authority of facilitators of student inquiry and problem-solving. In relation to such teacher authority, students gain their freedom--they gain the ability to become self-directed human beings capable of producing their own knowledge.

— Joe L. Kincheloe, Critical Pedagogy Primer End of “Banking System” of Education