Education that authentically promotes empowerment needs to draw on the critical pedagogical tradition.  Critical pedagogy is an approach to education which attempts to raise learners’ awareness (consciousness) of unjust social systems and expand learners’ capacities for transforming their world in the direction of a more just social order.  

 

This theme of critical practice is one which I have explored fairly extensively in my learning about adult education.  A group-developed website on educational theory also includes a section I prepared on critical pedagogy.

 

Profile:  Paulo Freire

This profile paper provides an introduction to a seminal theorist in the realm of critical pedagogy, Paulo Freire.  It provides a brief overview of his theory of education as 

oriented toward facilitating the oppressed in attaining freedom from their oppression rather than reinforcing it.

 

Critical Community of Practice Paper

This integrative paper, building on an independent study, presents a model of critical pedagogy rooted in an experiential, relational context.  Ultimately, this conceptual model of a “community of praxis" draws on the experiential and relational model of a community of practice while integrating critical theory's commitments to critiquing the oppressive status quo and sustaining hope for a better future.