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Counter-Contemporarized Constructivism                                         Based on my initial impression, I noticed a lot of historical and professional influence from various approaches towards challenges within critical pedagogy with a focus in constructivism, where we need first principles as the foundation within the social change and justice.

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Counter-Contemporarized Constructivism                                         Based on my initial impression, I noticed a lot of historical and professional influence from various approaches towards challenges within critical pedagogy with a focus in constructivism, where we need first principles as the foundation within the social change and justice.

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How can you use what you learned from the reading in the future?

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How can you use what you learned from the reading in the future?

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Critical pedagogy is a practice, and as a practice it does not stay completely bound to the classroom praxis, but must expand outward into the educator's life. If critical pedagogy is only ever construed as "student-centred" classroom activities then its justice will forever remain individually structured rather than inspired by the larger collectivities of diversity within social justice in the larger world beyond the classroom.

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I found it interesting that the author focused on the lineage and genealogies of critical pedagogy theorists and practitioners. I wonder if it would have been useful to consider the practicing context of the 17 interviewees. What are their teaching and research disciplines? What are their teaching and research parameters? What are the social, economic, political climates of the institutions where these 17 practitioners work? What are the social, economic, political backgrounds of their learners?

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When a scholar or educator  "de-camps" from the main theorists (Marx was noted) and creates liberators in the associated areas of identity (gender, sexuality, disability, race) this is seen by some as a "dilution" of the Marxist roots of socio-economic inequality. It is hard to read because the "camp" mentality becomes a "purity" discussion that revolves around intellectual "dillution" and negates the value of the praxis as it enters new collectives of activity. In spite of the clear "purity" issue around maintaining the classical theory, the statements go even further in demonizing identity politics and post structuralism, "McLaren and Farahmandpur further assert that the postmodernization of the Left and its accompanying retreat from class struggle has resulted in a laissez-faire evangelism." We know this argument as it rages even today in statements about "the church of social justice"

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I liked the tension in the article between constructivist approaches that are simply "student-centred" or "student-led" that can evacuate the more practice-base of "social justice". If there is no practice in social justice than constructivism alone may not fully reflect critical pedagogy.

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This reading interviewed 17 self-identified "critical pedagogues" and asked them to define critical pedagogy and reference the theorists who influenced them. Some key findings was that male theorists were over-represented as influences on the critical pedagogues, with only 7 out of 37 theorists mentioned being women. Critical pedagogy was strongly linked to praxis, activism, democracy, critical consciousness, and constructivism. However, the tangible link in pedagogy between these concepts was unclear. Like another poster here, the actual "how-to" of critical pedagogy is largely left out.

Some feelings that emerged for me were validation and frustration. I recently read Ellsworth (1989) which is a fantastic theoretical critique of critical pedagogy. A lot of the findings in this article (Brueing, 2011) confirmed some of the issues Ellsworth (1992) explores, such as the problem with utopism and/or idealism that proliferates critical pedagogy theory. Frankly, the frustration came from the feeling that critical pedagogues are often hypocrites, as evidenced by the anecdote Breuing (2011) shares about her friend informing her that "to her surprise, this particular professor [a theorist cited by her participants] taught very traditionally and demonstrated a lack of congruence between his theory and practice" (p. 20). This is wholly unsurprising to me as critical pedagogy is male and white dominated. I would not be surprised if the theorist in this anecdote was Henry Giroux, whose work I've always found annoying because of its lofty idealism with no concrete pedagogical practices invoked.

Something I will take forward is to always contextualize and problematize critical pedagogy when I refer to it. I believe it carries too much idealism and power on its own. To simply drop "critical pedagogy" into the conversation is not enough to acknowledge the power dynamics in a classroom. Ellsworth (1989) argues that the "critical" in critical pedagogy overwrites *actual* social justice orientations such as anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-ableism, anti-classism, anti-heterosexism in order to make these projects more palatable. If and when I invoke critical pedagogy, I intend to link it directly to these projects.

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Using interviews as part of a qualitative research method, “Problematizing Critical Pedagogy” seeks to figure out how practicing critical pedagogues define critical pedagogy. It also records the pedagogues’ main theoretical influences in hopes of “problematizing” critical pedagogy’s contradictory and sometimes disparate theoretical genealogies. The most important findings were that some pedagogues found it difficult to offer a clear definition of critical pedagogy, the reported aims of critical pedagogy were often conflicting, and that female critical theorists were underrepresented in the self-reports of theoretical influence.

I found that the stakes of this article for Praxis were not as clearly drawn as I would have hoped. The author’s concern regarding a hegemonically male lineage for critical pedagogy is a valid one. However, in addition to this concern, I think the practical desirability for a unified theory of critical pedagogy could have been problematized a bit more. While some survey participants noted unwillingness to confine their practice to a single all-encompassing master definition of critical pedagogy, I wonder if the author could have been more clear towards the practical need for self-reflexive matters of definition. The most interesting part of the article for me was the anecdotal evidence of a critical pedagogue supposedly not practicing his theory. Along these lines, I would have liked to know how these different pedagogue’s theoretical self-fashioning played out concretely in their teaching methods. Common across these three readings is a privileging of a relentless pedagogical self-reflexivity over practical teaching methods. Hewing close to the dialectical nature of the critical pedagogical enterprise, I would have liked to see how this idealist self-reflexivity interacted with and against its practical manifestations in the classroom.

I learned that (despite being someone who values theory in my research life and political life more widely), I think I tend to desire concreteness in discussions of pedagogy (if only because I see the concrete lacking from the discussions of critical pedagogy I have been exposed to thus far). My frustration with this reading (and the others) comes from the fact that though the “critical” in critical pedagogy is abundantly clear at this point, the “pedagogy” is often left all-too unclear. In the future, I would like to explore more concrete discussions of pedagogical method rather than techniques of pedagogical self-reflexivity.

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Does critical pedagogy have to look different for post-secondary educators in comparison with K-12? 

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Does critical pedagogy have to look different for post-secondary educators in comparison with K-12? 