Critical Pedagogy Essay Example

đź“ŚCategory: Education
đź“ŚWords: 1399
đź“ŚPages: 6
đź“ŚPublished: 20 March 2022

While defining critical pedagogy is difficult to do due to its outreaching concepts, it is important to note how one can implement such an expansive topic into one’s teaching and educational values. Critical pedagogy is defined as “not a set of ideas, but a way of ‘doing’ learning and teaching” (Hinkle, 2005). All in all, critical pedagogy demands the challenge to dismantle dangerous power dynamics and critique certain structures of power and oppression, especially when teaching English as a second language. It is important to do this, as, throughout history, English has been forced onto individuals as a means of control. This has only been perpetuated in situations where the standard-based assessment has occurred, such as the SAT and ACT. For something that holds such heavy weight in a student’s collegial life and the ability to educate themselves in the United States, it is ravished with Western thinking and ideologies. The use of critical pedagogy allows students to view standardized tests in a new light, hopefully giving them more ammunition in being able to surpass expectations when taking these assessments. 

In order to use assessments in terms of a critical pedagogy classroom, it is important to  take a new approach in how one creates, distributes, and grades assessments. You must completely dismantle the education system as a whole to properly allow students to shine through this idea of teaching. Assessments must be “centered on dialogic interactions so that the roles of teacher and learner are shared and all voices are validated.” (Kessing-Styles, 2003). One way in doing this would be to allow the students to have some role in creating the assessment itself or the grading rubric. By allowing students to have a role in creating the assessment, you are not only allowing them to have a full understanding of what is expected of them, but also giving them important confidence and hands-on experience of teaching. This allows them to have a powerful weapon in their arsenal; leadership skills in terms of education. If you allow a student to take a front-seat spot in their own learning, it allows them to be more prepared for assessment criteria and makes it more likely that they will implement more of these practices in their everyday workload. 

While our current education system deems high importance of standards being taught in a uniform manner, it is important to challenge that notion. In the United States, in particular, standards are pushed onto teachers in a manner that forces them to comply with a cut-and-dry framework for how they run their classroom. They do this in a way that makes educational expectations “clear and measurable” and “sets high expectations for all students.” (H. Douglas Brown, 2018). The goals of the ESL standards in the United States expect the students to use English to communicate in social situations, to use English to achieve academically in all content areas, and to use English in socially and culturally appropriate ways. If one wants to achieve all these standards while using the concepts of critical pedagogy, a teacher must involve the students from the very beginning of lesson plans. 

When contemplating whether critical pedagogy is the method of teaching for you, you must first dig deep into your own learning path. How were you taught as a child? How do you view certain political events? You must challenge yourself first before you attempt to challenge your students. If you have not thought critically in terms of ESL, you cannot feasibly expect your students who are at the very beginning of their learning paths to. You must seek out answers to difficult questions, challenge all your current thinking about learning, and start fresh. 

Then, you must start to dismantle the power dynamic between the student and teacher. If you are teaching students to question authoritative individuals, you must set the dynamic quickly that you are on the same level as them. This is extremely difficult. You cannot consider yourself a friend to the students, you must simply acknowledge that while you are in a position of power over them, you will work to enable their understanding of how to cope and handle authority. One thing that is extremely important is teaching students to acknowledge and question inequity and oppression, especially in school systems. Doing this may be as simple as rearranging how your classroom looks. Instead of having students in a line of desks where you are at the forefront of the classroom, you can utilize a circle layout instead. This alone allows students to feel more comfortable talking and speaking throughout lectures. It would also be important to try to steer away from lecture-based education, and instead, form discussion-based lesson plans where the students learn by communicating amongst each other rather than simply listening to an educator. 

When teaching language skills, it is important to note the drastic change in language throughout cultures. While English is considered the main language of the United States, there is so much difference in how one speaks throughout the country. People in say, Pennsylvania, speak drastically different than those in California. While you cannot feasibly explain and dissect every language and regional dialect from across the country, it is important to note the grammatical differences and where they stemmed from. African-American Vernacular English is a prominent example of how English can be spoken differently. It would be important in an ESL classroom to take different dialects into example due to how the dialects form. So, while you are still learning important grammatical skills, you are doing so in a manner that allows important discussions to occur. 

In a true critically pedagogical classroom, assessments do not hold as much weight as they would in traditional classrooms. When discussing oppressive and confining ideologies, how could one expect students to learn and do well throughout multiple choice questions? If you must use assessments due to constrictions, use assessments that the students have had a part in. Ask students which concepts they struggled with during a lesson and emphasize those on assessments. Challenge critical thinking skills rather than challenge memorization skills. You want students to be functioning on the idea of learning rather than competing for grades. It is of the utmost importance to allow students the ability to educate themselves while guiding them to learn things that they (and the school board) deem important. 

An easy way to utilize critical thinking skills in terms of ESL would be to use short stories and essays in which students are expected to summarize small chunks of literature and relate them back to their own lives. Using short-answer responses allows teachers to critique grammar and sentence structures while enabling students to reflect information back onto their own personal experiences. Using excerpts that contain meaningful dialogue and ideologies can enable students to have important conversations. 

It is also important to take into account how particular students learn. In Western civilizations, schools run differently than, say, Asian cultures. You have to prepare for this in teaching in communities that you are not native to. You also have to understand that certain students may not be even able to grasp the complexities of the English language in the beginning due to how different our language functions as opposed to their own native language. Taking these issues into mind, it makes teaching ESL a  more meaningful and comprehensive activity for those who are taught. 

One of the most important aspects of teaching in a way that enables critical pedagogy to occur is how the teacher forms relationships with their students. Within traditional teaching, teachers are considered as an agent for learning to occur, while students are considered the consumers of this education. It is a situation in which the teacher is held in high regard, they instruct students and the students must submit to the learning. Taking a look at this dynamic, one can infer that a power-dynamic has taken place, which can form hostility. It sets the dynamic that students cannot teach and that teachers cannot learn. This concept is discussed in Elmira Norrozisiam’s article “Teaching English through Critical Pedagogy”. While teachers were not aware that they were implementing critical pedagogy, they did; mostly through utilizing journal entries and the such that allowed students to think critically about current events in their communities. Teachers, while they were not experts on the idea of critical pedagogy, thought highly of the concept as a whole, going as far as to say that students were more likely to participate in class-work if it was centered on ideals of pushing past the theoretical envelope of language courses. 

As seen in Norrozisiam’s article, utilizing critical pedagogy as a way to engage students works wonders. One thing that most teachers struggle with is keeping students on track. Implementing critical pedagogy into your classroom can engage students in a meaningful manner while still remaining to foster connectivity to education. A student will be far more likely to discuss current events in their target language as opposed to simply answering questions about how to conjugate a verb. Giving students power in their own learning enables them to begin the important skills necessary later in life.

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