Institute of International Education

Department of Education

Creating conscious people

A critical review of critical pedagogy

Assignment for the course

International and Comparative Education

Tania Rempatsiou

October 2015
Table of Contents
Abstract........................................................................................................................................3

Introduction.................................................................................................................................3

Definition of critical pedagogy...................................................................................................4

History and root.........................................................................................................................4

Theoretical context of critical pedagogy...................................................................................4

Aim of the educational method.................................................................................................4

Critical Pedagogy in International and Comparative Education..........................................5

Macro-level and micro-level research…………………………………………………..…….6

Bray’s cube………………………………………………………………………………..…..6

The tasks of critical pedagogy……………………………………………………………..….7

Qualitative research…………………………………………………………………………...7

Policy and politics.…………………………………………………………………………....7

Critique on critical pedagogy....................................................................................................8

From theory to practice.............................................................................................................9

Is the aim reachable?.................................................................................................................9

Educational strategy.................................................................................................................10

The language............................................................................................................................10

Gender reference and representation........................................................................................11

Psychological effects of liberation...........................................................................................11

Connection to education and society.......................................................................................12

Conclusion..................................................................................................................................13

List of references…………………………………………………………………...…………14

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Abstract

The assignment deals with the theory of critical pedagogy. The study tries to detect and
analyze the parts of the theory that may look inefficient and need to be developed. It has been
divided into chapters and categories of analysis in order to help the reader perceive the topic of
analysis in every case. The critique was made by deepening in the core of the theory and by
searching for examples of application in education. The whole study was based on the course
literature in combination with some individual readings, as Paulo Freire’s writings and spare
articles.

Introduction

I had difficulty in deciding the topic that I was about to study further before I decide
critical pedagogy. The reason that I decided to make a contribution to this specific theory is
because, of my point of view, it is the most contemporary and crucial theory of education, within
an era that humanity is about to deal with great social, political, economic and environmental
changes and at the same time to take great decisions for the future. However, as even history
showed, unaware people who have not cultivated a conscious understanding of themselves and
of the world are not that capable of making these decisions. It is a matter of democracy, freedom
and equality. At this part, the responsibility of education is crucial because it is the way through
which people of tomorrow will be educated.

Critical pedagogy itself is a quite challenging theory because it is not officially a part of
an educational system and it became praxis in specific time and place in the recent history of
education. It is also my personal goal to deepen into this subject theoretically, so that in the
future I will be able to contribute to the conversion of the theory to action or praxis, as the
critical theorists named it. It is important however that we study the critical theory through a
critical view and not as a fact. Otherwise it will be pointless to talk about critical thinking if we
have already from the beginning cancelled the theoretical core.

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Definition of critical pedagogy

History and roots

Critical pedagogy or literacy was based on John Dewey’s philosophy that occurred at the
beginning of the 20th century and for the first time placed the students at the center of the
learning process and emphasized on the participation of citizens in democratic life. This
philosophy however had to wait until the 1970s to be converted into a well-developed theory.
Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, first actually introduced the term of “critical literacy”. He
used to practice this method in adult schools in rural Brazil. During the next decade, at the 1980s,
the theory was introduced in the US society by some alternative educators who described
education as a means of reproduction of the ideology and power of the dominant groups. Some
of the most important critical educators of that period were Peter McLaren, Ira Shor, Henry
Giroux and Michael Apple.

Theoretical context of critical pedagogy

The theory of critical pedagogy is the educational evolution of the critical theory, which
is also known as “the Frankfurt school”. Critical theory is the development of neo-Marxist
philosophy in Germany of the 1930s that claims briefly that we should critique and analyze
society beneath the surface in order to change it as a whole and lead people to liberation. As an
evolution of that idea, critical pedagogy is trying to create “critical consciousness” of the
students so that they can connect their personal situation to the social situation of their
environment. As Paulo Freire described “The radical, committed to human liberation, does not
become the prisoner of a ‘circle of certainty’ within which reality is also imprisoned. On the
contrary, the more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that,
knowing it better, he or she can better transform it.”(p.39, Freire, 2000)

Aim of the educational method

According to Michael W. Apple and Wayne Au “Critical pedagogy generally seeks to

expose how relations of power and inequality, (social, cultural, economic) in their myriad forms,

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combinations, and complexities, are manifest and challenged in the formal and informal
education of children and adults” (p. 991, Cowen, Kazamias and Unterhalter, 2009). In order to
achieve that, critical pedagogues follow the inductive method in the educational process. To be
more specific, during the lesson the educator motivates the students to think, criticize and
experiment on an issue. The students form an idea about this issue that is usually based on their
personal experience. Afterwards, they intent to transfer the idea from their personal sphere to a
situation of their social environment and to verify it.

Through the educational process students are supposed to cultivate their critical
interpretation of the reality and therefore their “critical consciousness” that will lead them to
“praxis”. According to Pepi Leistyna, critical consciousness “is the ability to analyze,
problematize (pose questions), and affect the sociopolitical, economic, and cultural realities that
shape our lives” (p.18, Leistyna, 2004). The Freire Institute in the United Kingdom interprets the
“praxis” concept in education as follows: “It is not enough for people to come together in
dialogue in order to gain knowledge of their social reality. They must act together upon their
environment in order critically to reflect upon their reality and so transform it through further
action and critical reflection.” (Institute, 2015)

I have tried to summarize in some specific sentences the aim/stages of critical pedagogy.
As a result, the critical method is trying to help students:

 Conceive and recognize the authority relations

 Develop consciousness of freedom
 Convert their knowledge to power for constructive action (praxis)
 Achieve social transformation

Critical Pedagogy in International and Comparative Education

From my point of view, critical pedagogy contributes significantly to the development of

ICE. Development is accomplished by the fact that critical theory by its nature has a critical
attitude and can investigate in a deeper way the educational issues, question them and introduce

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them through a critical aspect. This way, new factors can be revealed that maybe other
educational/social theories would ignore. Moreover, critical researchers are quite adequate to
judge and criticize not only the methodology, but mainly the sources on which a research is
based, whether they are trustworthy or not.

Macro-level and micro-level research

As far as comparative research is concerned, we have the possibility to discover the

relationship between macro-level factors (social, economic, political) and micro-level factors
(school, classroom, students as individuals). Besides, critical educators already do this
correlation using the inductive method. To explain it further, through the lesson critical educators
help their students to conceive and understand their personal education (micro-level) and to
connect it to the social, economic and political situation of their environment (macro-level). As a
result, students perceive that their personal situation, failures and difficulties are not exclusively
a result of their personal choices. They are connected to a wider social, political and economic
system that affects their lives.

Bray’s cube

Moreover, as I was studying articles on critical literature I realized that at a regular basis
critical researchers use specific parts of Bray’s cube, on which comparative research in education
mostly rely. If we take into consideration the three parts of the cube we can notice that critical
researchers focus mainly on the “geographic/locational levels” by using as examples distant
countries, districts, schools, classrooms and last but not least individual students, who are their
basic interest. They also focus on the “aspects of education and of society” and especially on
teaching methods and political change which are both key concepts in critical pedagogy and on
“nonlocational demographic groups” like ethnic and gender groups. (p.9, Bray, Adamson and
Mason, 2007).

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The tasks of critical pedagogy

Furthermore, in the “International Handbook of Comparative Education” (Cowen,

Kazamias and Unterhalter, 2009), the topics of critical educational research can help us
understand better the role of critical pedagogy in comparative education. According to my
understanding, critical researchers doubt and redefine the concept of “research”, they examine
the world through a well-defined political aspect focusing on the social classes and the role of
hegemonic groups in education, they maintain vivid memories of situations of the past that the
collective memory tend to forget through the pressure of hegemonic groups and finally they must
consist, as Gramsci said, “organic intellectual” , not an elite group, that participates in the
“progressive social movements”.

Qualitative research

International ad Comparative Education is actually a critical social science especially if

we take also into consideration the qualitative research that focus mainly on deep social
structures, political aspects and economic influences and also studies and compares different race
and gender groups. According to Yang Rui’s interpretation of Neuman “qualitative research
relies largely on the interpretive and critical approaches to social science, and critical researchers
usually give the historical context a major role, critique social conditions, and reveal deep
structures of social relations” (p.258, Bray, Adamson and Mason, 2007). However, I believe that
critical researchers may not be quite specialized in quantitative researches as these are out of
their theoretic context. Quantitative researches may be more suitable for technocratic theorists,
who I perceive like quite distant from critical theorists.

Policy and politics

As Yang Rui claims and I totally agree is that “Critical theorists emphasise that the two
words policy and politics came from the same root, and that policy necessarily involves politics.”
The fact that the words “policy” and “politics” have the same conceptual and vocabulary root I

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can assure it by searching their meaning in ancient Greek. Both words are a linguistic evolution
of the ancient Greek word “polis” that means “city” or “state”. Moreover, in Modern Greek we
use the same word for either politics or policy. As a result, I perceive that we do not use these
words randomly, but they represent a strong connection behind a hidden meaning.

Therefore, in my opinion, critical theorists may be correct. Policies are actually a matter
of politics, not a neutral, objective field, but not necessary in the narrow sense of elections and
political parties. According to critical pedagogues, there is a war between social classes over
whose interests are going to be promoted and dominate over the others’. The competition
between social classes is a matter of politics and therefore a matter of policy and of education in
general. In this part however I may detect an internal contradiction. Do critical educators
envisage reality with a critical, holistic view or they focus only on the political aspect? And in
order to make it more clear: should we confront the world as a whole or as divided in social/
racial/gender categories?

To sum up, critical pedagogy is a crucial part of qualitative comparative research as it can
reveal the deeper relations between social and political structures and even doubt and question
what for other researchers might be perceived as a fact. In the context of comparative education,
critical pedagogy creates a correlation and analyses the macro-level and micro-level categories.
On the other hand, even if it is important to start a research with a hypothesis, I believe that
through the critical view the result may be “preordained” and dependent on the theoretical neo-
Marxist basis of the critical philosophy that is trying to affirm it. As a result we might have a
partially true outcome that will not represent the whole reality. This is a case that could challenge
the scientification of comparative education.

Critique on critical pedagogy

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 As I was studying the literature of critical pedagogy many ideas have been raised in my
mind and some possible contradictions that I would like to present below. The ideas are divided
into categories related to the topic of each idea.

From theory to practice

To begin with, critical pedagogy is a theory that could easily be described as “over
politicalized” and that could be justified if we study its philosophical basis. As the theory has the
basis on neo-Marxist theory is inevitable not to deal reality with that spectrum. However, this is
not necessarily a problem if we keep in mind that every theory deals reality within a specific
spectrum that depends on the philosophical basis of the theory.

From my point of view, there is a problem on the actualization of the theory in the
classroom. As the theory supports some specific statements such as the social class oppression,
the educators may guide the students to adopt the same philosophy and they may not help them
produce their ideas. As a result, the theory of liberation is debunked. Nonetheless, I do not claim
that this is the actual purpose of critical pedagogues. We have to consider them as people who
have their own cultural and personal biases which they may unwillingly impose on their
students. I do not believe that educators can ever exclude themselves from their biases. However,
they should try to manage them in a critical way during the educational process.

We should not criticize the critical educational method strictly as it has been practiced in
certain times and places in the history of education. It seems to belong more in the sphere of
unofficial education. However, critical pedagogues are struggling to legitimate their theory in
academic environments and in the field of official education. To achieve that, they have founded
institutions of critical pedagogy. The majority of them are located in western world (North
America, Europe) and I have found only two of them in South Africa and Brazil.

Is the aim reachable?

Furthermore, I should remind the reader that the aim of critical pedagogy is social
transformation that will establish freedom, equality and prosperity for all people. Is this possible?

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Is the aim of critical education a utopia? I will answer: yes, it might be. Should we abandon, for
that reason, this philosophy and methodology? Although the aim of critical pedagogy might be
utopian, it establishes very high standards in education in general. Even if the world will not
reach the final aim, the utopia, the critical methodology will have contributed to make the world
a better place. A place where concepts such as liberty, equality, prosperity and self-management
will be promoted. Therefore, we should not blame the aim if there are any inefficiencies in the
critical theory.

Educational strategy

On the other hand, to my understanding, there may be an issue in the lesson planning.
From what I have already studied, I cannot form a clear idea of a lesson that is based on critical
methodology. I cannot find a coherent lesson structure that occurs from the theory of critical
pedagogy. It seems to be based more on each teacher’s interpretation of the theory. The types of
interpretation may vary and as a result the concept of critical pedagogy becomes wider. This
way, many lessons can be called “critical”, even if they do not follow the ideas of critical
pedagogy. This is a case that could question the critical methodology. For this reason, to my
mind, it is important that contemporary critical educators define the lesson planning strategy.

The language

While I was studying some articles of critical pedagogues, I have reached the conclusion
that they use quite complex language. I had difficulty in understanding the meaning of some
texts. From my point of view, when a specialist discusses social matters, which are quite
complex and multilayered, he or she cannot always avoid using complex expressions.
Nonetheless, some critical pedagogues use concepts or expressions that are hard to be understood
by many people. This is quite contradictory, because they supposed to deal with oppressed
groups, who may not have a high-level of education, nor belong to the academic world. This
way, they may be excluded from the participation in the idea of critical pedagogy. This issue
may have as a result the transformation of critical pedagogues to a group of elitists, but I do not

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believe that this is the goal. Paulo Freire was maybe the only critical educator so far who used
quite simple language, combining deep meaning and understandable expressions.

Gender reference and representation

One more issue that I would like to raise is gender representation in the literature of
critical pedagogy. As far as I have studied there is a lack of references in feminism movement
and modern social movements on sexual orientation. Especially in the texts of Paulo Freire there
are quite few references in gender oppression and of course none reference in oppression due to
sexual orientation. As I am not the only one that I have noticed it, Pepi Leistyna asked in an
interview Paulo Freire about gender oppression. To my understanding, he claimed that he
focused on social class as a means of dominance. He continued by mentioning: “I just want to
say that I am, and always have been, sympathetic to their causes. I’ve been expressing solidarity
with these causes since I was a boy, and certainly in much of my writing.” (p.23, Leistyna, 2004)

Although the intentions of Paulo Freire may be good, this way, he may have excluded
groups of people that experience different kind of oppression than the social-economic one. For
this reason, it seems to me necessary that critical pedagogy connects to progressive social
movements that are related to gender and sexual orientation, like post-feminism wave. In
addition to, I believe that it is not a matter of luck that there are few women that deal with critical
pedagogy. It is to me one more clue that critical pedagogy should take into consideration gender
issues.

Psychological effects of liberation

Critical pedagogy is trying to achieve through the lesson the deconstruction of the social
structure and the revelation of its rickety basis in the eyes of the students. Critical pedagogues
actually want to present that the social system, which is based on capitalism, creates a deep gap
between rich and poor people, unequal opportunities and exploitation. Therefore, the students

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may discover that any political reforms based on this system are superficial. Afterwards, they
may be lead to a philosophical deadlock and finally they may search for the solution in social
transformation, as they were supposed to do.

However, there is a question raising on my mind. Is there any possibility that the
deconstruction of their world provoke a sense of instability and insecurity in their psychology?
According to Erich Fromm, a well-known critical theorist and psychologist, “This isolation is
unbearable and the alternatives he {the man}is confronted with are either to escape from the
burden of this freedom into new dependencies and submission, or to advance to the full
realization of positive freedom which is based upon the uniqueness and individuality of man.”
(p.4, Fromm, 1941) This statement might be the answer to my question. To my understanding,
people have the choice either to be afraid of the first-known independence or to deal with it as a
chance to construct a better world.

Connection to education and society

Last but not least, I feel that critical pedagogues are quite abstracted from the educational
reality. From the literature that I have studied and the coherences that I have participated in, it
seems that they are discussing education from a distant aspect. The reason might be that many of
the critical educators are academics who have not been involved many times in a teaching
process with oppressed or marginalized groups of people. As a result, there is not enough
correlation between theory and educational reality. This might be also the reason that we cannot
find a specific critical strategy of the lesson planning.

Even though theory is the important basis, educators should not be attached only to it.
The active involvement of critical pedagogues in classrooms with excluded of the system people
is also necessary. Especially in our days that there are many illiterate people, adults and children,
in what it is called third-world, Roma people, refugees and immigrants.

Even in the western world education there is need for critical pedagogues to intervene.
However, they should not act on their own. It would be better to connect to other educators,
teacher unions and progressive schools and create all together a common side. When groups of

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people that have common goals are unified, it is easier for them to be established and get
legitimation in the society and the academic environment and also to achieve their final goal.

Moreover, it is important not to connect only to groups that have a close relation to
education. Critical pedagogy as a theory and practice should connect to contemporary
progressive social movements. Some of them might be the antiracist movement, movements
related to gender and sexual orientation, organizations against poverty and exploitation, workers’
rights unions and environmental organizations.

Conclusion

To conclude, I would like to define that I am doing this review with purpose to deal
critical pedagogy with a critical view and at the same time to detect and criticize the weak points
of this theory. Moreover, I intent to give reasonable answers to any matters or contradictions that
have been raised during my studying. The reason I have chosen to do that is to contribute to the
development of critical pedagogy, as I believe that this theory have a lot to offer in education and
society. It may work as a means of emancipation and freedom based on consciousness,
awareness and personal responsibility. Therefore, I have a positive view on this subject.

In this part, I would like to summarize the basic points of the chapters that have been presented
above.

Critical Pedagogy in International and Comparative Education: Comparative Education is

actually a critical study, therefore the theory of critical pedagogy is already in some way
included in it. This can be justified as both methodologies have two levels of comparison and
analysis, the macro and micro level. Moreover, critical pedagogy uses in its analysis parts of the
Bray’s cube, which is the main tool of researchers in comparative education. Critical pedagogy
also inserts a different view of the concept “research”, the methodology and the context analysis
and it focuses basically on qualitative research.

Critiques in theory and practice of Critical Pedagogy: I have tried to make a critique and
analysis in critical pedagogy about the theory in relevance with practice and educational strategy,
the aim, the gender references and representations, the language used in critical literature, the
psychological effects that may occur by the deconstruction of reality and also the role in
education and society. The final conclusion is that critical pedagogy should have an active role in

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educational environments and introduce the theoretical and practical part also in the field of
official education. In order to achieve that it is quite necessary to connect to progressive social
movements and expand the theoretical range in other issues rather than the social class.
Additionally, in my opinion, it is crucial that critical pedagogues cooperate with organizations
that are involved in education, especially of oppressed groups, like Paulo Freire did in the past.
This way, I believe that they may gain the legitimation that they need in order to enter the
official sphere of education and gain legitimation in the academic world.

List of References

Bray, M., Adamson, B. and Mason, M. (2007). Comparative education research. Hong Kong,
China: Comparative Education Research Centre, the University of Hong Kong.

Cowen, R., Kazamias, A. and Unterhalter, E. (2009). International handbook of comparative

education. Dordecht: Springer.

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.

Institute, F. (2015). Freire Institute - Concepts Used by Paulo Freire. [online] Freire.org.

Available at: http://www.freire.org/paulo-freire/concepts-used-by-paulo-freire [Accessed 11
Oct. 2015].

Leistyna, P. (2004). Presence of Mind in the Process of Learning and Knowing: A Dialogue with
Paulo Freire. Teacher Education Quarterly, winter 2004, pp.17-29.

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