Critical Theory And Critical Pedagogy Today

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Our educational system is in turmoil. Many would argue that it has been assaulted and oversimplified by the right. There is growing concern that we are becoming a liberal nation-state with an increasingly anti-liberal population and an electorate that is disinterested in politics. In this globalized world, the power of capital is so great that opposition to it is often discouraged and disheartened, leaving many citizens few political precepts by which to consider their institutions. This contemporary failure of vision has opened the way for the unimpeded return of the philosophy of the free market. As a result, social and educational policies are debated almost solely in terms of how they fit with the needs of the market. Social and ethical understandings are replaced by a failed economic theory that requires a radical constraint of our political and economic choices. Compassion for the poor, the market lets us know, is wrong-headed because any interference with the labor market will always result in unfortunate economic and social consequences. Moral issues are eclipsed by market needs. In Critical Pedagogy: Where Are We Now? the contributors discuss how the field of critical pedagogy should respond to such dire conditions in a way that is theoretically savvy and visionary, while concurrently contributing to the struggle to improve the lives of those most hurt by them. Critical Pedagogy is essential reading for every classroom teacher and pre-service teacher. It is also a valuable tool for use in undergraduate and graduate-level classrooms.

The belief in the transformative potential of education has long underpinned critical educational theory. But its concerns have also been largely political and economic, using education as the means to achieve a better - or ideal - future state: of equality and social justice. Our concern is not whether such a state can be realized. Rather, the belief in the transformative potential of education leads us to start from the assumption of equality and to attend to what is "educational" about education. In Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy we set out five principles that call not for an education as a means to achieve a future state, but rather that make manifest those educational practices that do exist today and that we wish to defend. The Manifesto also acts as a provocation, as the starting point of a conversation about what this means for research, pedagogy, and our relation to our children, each other, and the world. Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy invites a shift from a critical pedagogy premised on revealing what is wrong with the world and using education to solve it, to an affirmative stance that acknowledges what is educational in our existing practices. It is focused on what we do and what we can do, if we approach education with love for the world and acknowledge that education is based on hope in the present, rather than on optimism for an eternally deferred future.

This collection of essays incorporates some of the most important and longstanding foundational texts in education developed by the leading educational neo-Gramscian social theorist Peter McLaren

Applies European critical theory to North American educational research.

Key Works in Critical Pedagogy: Joe L. Kincheloe comprises sixteen papers written within a twenty-year period in which Kincheloe inspired legions of educators with his incisive analyses of education. Kincheloe was a prolific thinker and writer who produced an enormous number of books and chapters and journal articles.In a career cut short by his untimely death, Kincheloe led the way with an approach to research and pedagogy that incorporated multiperspectival approaches that examined a wide range of topics including schooling, cultural studies, research bricolage, kinderculture, Christotainment, and capitalism. In these works Kincheloe used accessible, elegantly produced language to capture his emotional yet scholarly ways of engaging with the world. He was a champion of the disenfranchised and his writing consistently examined social life from the perspective of participants who were often treated harshly because of their marginalization. The articles in this book were selected to encompass Kincheloe’s impressive scholarly career and to draw attention to the necessity for educators to take a critical stance with respect to the enactment of education to reproduce disadvantage. Among the theoretical frameworks included in the works are critical pedagogy, research, hermeneutics, phenomenology, cultural studies, and post-formal thought. Key Works in Critical Pedagogy is a comprehensive introduction to the scholarly contributions of one of the foremost educational researchers of our time. The selected chapters and associated scholarly review essays constitute a reference resource for researchers, educators, students of education – and all of those with an interest in adopting a deeper view of ways in which policies and practices shape education and social life to produce privilege and disadvantage simultaneously in ways that are often hidden from view. The critical perspective that permeates these works constitute ways of thinking and being in the world that others can adopt as a framework for analyzing their engagement in education as researchers, teacher educators, policymakers, students, parents of students, and members of the community at large. Responding to each of Kincheloe's chapters is a scholar/teacher who is intimately familiar with the works, theories, and epistemologies of this unique scholar.