Critical Pedagogy: Creatively Responding to Government Education Agendas

11 September 2007
Subject: Critical Pedagogy: Creatively Responding to Government Education Agendas
Time: 08:08:00 o'clock BST
Author: rikowskigr

Critical Pedagogy: Creatively Responding to Government Education Agendas

British Sociological Association (BSA) Sociology of Education Study Group / BSA Conference Warwick 2008

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Sociology of Education study group are running a joint symposium with the Researching Students study Group at the 2008 conference on the theme of "Critical Pedagogy" (see below) proposals are welcome, please send a brief outline to:

joycecanaan@blueyonder.co.uk

Critical Pedagogy: Creatively Responding to Government Education Agendas

Increasingly, educators at all levels are in part being cajoled if not coerced by the government’s ongoing neo-liberal restructuring and partial privatising of education to teach students skills of ‘employability’ they can take to the workplace they will hopefully join when they finish schooling. Educators are concomitantly facing growing strains on their curricula and pedagogies due partly to the entrepreneurial logic that underpins this restructuring/privatising and partly to having less government resources, growing student numbers and ever-increasing and changing regimes of accountability that further work-intensify them. Those working in primary and secondary schools are told they must xxx and those in HE are encouraged to see students as ‘consumers’ of/’customers’ receiving a service to prepare them for employment. It is hardly surprising, then, that many students respond to these instrumentalising strategies by being more strategic learners.

Partly in contradiction to the above, however, government and its quangos are now promoting the reworking of learning space physically and virtually in more open and engaging ways. These efforts rely upon a pedagogy of “active and collaborative learning” (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISC%20learning%20spaces.acc.pdf) antithetical to the conventional ‘banking’ model of depositing knowledge in students who passively receive it model that Freire described. Additionally, Virtual Learning Environments like Moodle that rest on social constructivist ideas about actively and collaboratively engaging students in dialogue with one another and with tutors are being encouraged by schools, colleges and universities alike (Dougiamas 1998).

In this contradictory climate, a small, growing body of researchers/teachers are using insights from critical pedagogues such as Freire, Giroux, Habermas, hooks and others to build, progressive pedagogies and curricula (the latter most notably in HE where lecturers still largely determine their curricula) to encourage students’ critical thinking about and active engagement with the world. This stream of papers explores individual and collective efforts, considering the degree to which they work with and against the above contradictory trends and their efficacy with regard to encouraging greater student engagement with learning.

References

Dougiamas, Martin (1998) ‘A Journey into Constructivism’, http://dougiamas.com/writing/constructivism.html, accessed 10.03.07.

JISC (2006) ‘Designing Spaces for Effective Learning: a guide to 21st century learning space design’, http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISC%20learning%20spaces.acc.pdf [Accessed 15.07.07].

Stephen J Ball FBA: Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education, Editor Journal of Education Policy, Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL

Journal of Education Policy: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/tedpauth.asp

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