Unpacking Everyday Critical Pedagogy: Languaging Critique and Dialogue

Abstract

<jats:p> This article explores how critical pedagogy unfolds in the everyday interactions between teachers and students. Specifically, Freirean constructs of critique and dialogue were explored in two key literacy events drawn from an ethnographically informed case study of one fourth-grade classroom. The events were first examined from an ethnographic perspective to understand how sociopolitical issue(s) were being critiqued (or avoided). These events were then analyzed again through microanalytic discourse analysis to explore how teachers and students jointly accomplished dialogue and critique through proposing and taking up of particular stances toward text(s). By juxtaposing these two analytic lenses, the researchers argue for an understanding of critical pedagogy, particularly the tenets of critique and dialogue, as interactionally co-constructed in the continually evolving, everyday talk between teachers and students. This article closes by considering the implications of this work for classroom-based literacy research that examines critical pedagogy. </jats:p>

Perceptions of English as a Foreign Language Students on Exposure to Literary Theories

“…Another venue for exploration is the correlation between critical theories and critical pedagogies because of their shared spirit. In that sense, different studies (Paul, 2018;Taylor, & Hikida, 2020) have investigated critical pedagogies' capacity for fostering students' perspectives toward many issues that define modern societies (e.g., racism, inequality, and oppression). These authors claim that critical pedagogy resorts to a more horizontal relation between professor and student.…”

“…Furthermore, regarding suggested strategies for the study of critical theories proposed by the participants, the implementation of guided analyses of works of literature appeared to be one of the most frequent answers. The preference for that method contrasts with approaches commonly associated with the instruction of critical theories such as critical pedagogy (Paul, 2018;Leonardo, 2004;Taylor, & Hikida, 2020), which is a pedagogical framework that advocates for a horizontal relationship between professor and students. In that sense, only three students proposed autonomous learning as a strategy for learning about critical theories.…”

Guest editorial: Introduction: Reconstructive discourse analysis as an approach to redressing racism in critical studies of literacy

“…We, in turn, attempted to sufficiently represent the complexity of those classrooms. Specifically, we sought to represent the dehumanizing constraints on teachers' practices, especially in the form of neoliberal accountability (Hikida, 2018;Hikida and Lee, 2019;Taylor, 2019Taylor, , 2023Taylor and Hikida, 2020), and the role of teachers in inflicting dehumanization upon students of color in their classroom, while also intentionally highlighting moments of humanizing pedagogical possibility (Martínez, 2018).…”