Why not be critical?
January 7th, 2010 by Steve LinquistWhen I got back to work I read an article by Henry A. Giroux entitled ‘Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom: Paulo Freire and the Promise of Critical Pedagogy‘. Paulo Freire was an educational theorist and practitioner largely remembered for his book ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’. Giroux was a friend of Freire’s for 15 years prior to his death and gives an account of what critical pedagogy is all about and argues that this approach is more relevant today than ever in American Public schooling stating:
“teachers are increasingly reduced to the status of technicians and deskilled as they are removed from having any control over their classrooms or school governance structures. Teaching to the test and the corporatization of education becomes a way of “taming” students and invoking modes of corporate governance in which public school teachers become deskilled and an increasing number of higher education faculty are reduced to part-time positions, constituting the new subaltern class of academic labor.”
Yeah I know… that damn word starting with P…what would it have to do with e-learning? Well, while Giroux is referring to the education system in America much of Friere’s work raised in this taster article can be applied to teachers and their engagement with e-learning. Why? Because a range of factors are encouraging (if not forcing) teachers to utilise e-learning which in effect requires a partial self-reflection upon one’s practice. As I work largely with teachers in relation to e-learning I am not going to argue the merits of e-learning.
Teachers may say ‘why should I do this?’, ‘whats in it for me’, ‘why fix what aint broken’ etc. Meanwhile educational developers, educational leaders etc may say ‘how do I get teachers to want to take on these new things that will benefit their students and/or the institution?’ In some cases teachers and educational developers become at odds (at least in a subversive way) over the topic of e-learning or is it something else that is the main point of disconnection?
There is not a single answer, however we are not exclusively talking about e-learning technologies as the problem. Therefore the educational developer can only preach so far and in fact needs to find a pedagogy which will encourage teachers to look critically at their reality so that the discussion moves from oppression to opportunity and action.
Often people speak of pedagogy in terms of a method of teaching, something that is either guarded by some kind of secret society or in fact a script of moves that could be compiled in a book and sold to the highest bidder. Giroux sums up a Freirian approach to pedagogy as something which
“is not a method or an a priori technique to be imposed on all students, but a political and moral practice that provides the knowledge, skills and social relations that enable students to expand the possibilities of what it means to be critical citizens, while expanding and deepening their participation in the promise of a substantive democracy”.
In essence its all about encouraging critique that moves to action, and while the political context of the Giroux article may seem far removed, I argue that there is much that can be learn’t from facilitating sustainable e-learning by referring to the work of Freire.
Have a look sometime.
This past week I’ve been stuck primarily in bed and in front of the TV because of an unexpected appendix operation. The interesting observations I’ve made during this week was how twitter was starting to surface even in my un-connected bedridden state. So I’m writing this post just as an observation and will be giving a few examples…