Critical Pedagogy as Collective Social Expertise in Higher Education

Abstract

In this article, dedicated to the revolutionary educational work of Peter McLaren, we will deal with the question of practical teaching methods in higher education from the point of view of critical pedagogy. We argue that nowadays teaching and learning in educational and social sciences are too often meaningless from the point of view of critical collective learning. Thus the central task in critical pedagogy, and in reform of higher education, is to understand the oppressive aspects of present college life and overall society in order to generate pedagogical, individual and societal transformation while developing pedagogical strategies and study methods that work toward the elimination of various forms of subordination based on class, gender, race and sexual orientation, and strengthen students’ possibilities for genuine collective learning while empowering them to fight against inequalities in the world. Our reflections stem from our academic life and teaching experiences both in Finland and the U.S. We suggest that in order to teach critically, educators need to use more collaborative and collective teaching and learning methods. Thus the idea of collective social expertise becomes a core aim of teaching in the context of critical pedagogy.

Kaynakça

1. Armbruster-Sandoval, Ralph (2005). Is Another World Possible? Is Another Classroom Possible? Radical Pedagogy, Activism, and Social Change. Social Justice 32 (2), 34-51.
2. Aronowitz, Stanley (2000). The Knowledge Factory. Boston: Beacon Press.
3. Aronowitz, Stanley, Esposito, Dawn, DiFazio, William & Yard, Margaret (1998). The Post-Work Manifesto. In Aronowitz, Stanley & Cutler, Jonathan (Eds.). Post-Work: The Wages of Cybernation. New York: Routledge.
4. Brookfield, Stephen (2005). The Power of Critical Theory. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
5. Bruffee, Kenneth (1981). Collaborative Learning. College English 43 (7), 745-747.
6. Bruffee, Kenneth (1995). Sharing Our Toys. Change 27 (1), 12-19.
7. Byström, J. (1996). Study Circles. In Tuijnman, A. (ed.). International Encyclopedia of Adult Education and Training. Oxford: Pergamon, 663-665.
8. Collins, Randall (1998). Sociology of Philosophies. A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

9. Freire, Paulo (2004). Pedagogy of Indignation. Boulder & London: Paradigm Publishers.
10. Freire, Paulo (2005). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Continuum.
11. Fromm, Erich (1941) Escape from Freedom. New York: Avon Books.
12. Fromm, Erich (1947). Man for Himself. New York: Owl Books.
13. Fromm, Erich (1955). Sane Society. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
14. Fromm, Erich (1962). Beyond the Chains of Illusion. New York: Pocket Books.
15. Fromm, Erich (1964a). Medicine and the Ethical Problem of Modern Man. In Erich Fromm, The Dogma of Christ and Other Essays. New York: Owl Books.
16. Fromm, Erich (1964b). The Present Human Condition. In Erich Fromm, The Dogma of Christ and Other Essays. New York: Owl Books.
17. Fromm, Erich (1976). To Have or To Be? London: Abacus.
18. Fuller, Steve (2005). The Intellectual. London: Icon Books.
19. Gadotti, Moacir (1994). Reading Paulo Freire. Albany: SUNY.
20. Giroux, Henry (2004). Higher Education is More Than a Corporate Logo. http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan04/Giroux0126.htm (02/15/2006)
21. Giroux, Henry & Searls Giroux, Susan (2004). Take Back Higher Education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
22. Gramsci, Antonio (2000). The Antonio Gramsci Reader. Edited by David Forgacs. New York: New York University Press.
23. Horkheimer, Max & Adorno (2000). Dialectics of Enlightenment. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
24. John-Steiner, Vera, Weber, Robert J. & Minnis. Michele (1998). The Challenge of Studying Collaboration. American Educational Research Journal 35 (4), 773- 783.
25. Kelly, Kevin (2005). We Are the Web. Wired 13.08 Retrieved from: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/tech.html (02/13/2006)
26. Leonardo, Zeus (2005). Peter McLaren’s Politics and Ethics of Solidarity: Notes on Critical Pedagogy and Radical Education. In Pruyn, Marc & Huerta-Charles, Luis M. (Eds.). Teaching Peter McLaren: Paths of Dissent. New York: Peter Lang.
27. Margalit, Avishai (2004). Human Dignity Between Kitsch and Deification. At http://www.filosoficas.unam.mx/act_acad/simposio/AMargalit.pdf (02/27/2006)
28. Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich (2005). The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings. New York: Barnes & Nobles Classics.
29. McLaren, Peter (1995). Critical Pedagogy and Predatory Culture. New York & London: Routledge.
30. McLaren, Peter (2005). Capitalists and Conquerors: Critical Pedagogy Against Empire. Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield.
31. McLaren, Peter & Farahmandpur, Ramin (2005). Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: A Critical Pedagogy. Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield.
32. McLaren, Peter, Fischman, Gustavo, Serra, Silvia & Antelo, Estanislao (2005). The Specter of Gramsci: Revolutionary Praxis and the Committed Intellectual. In McLaren, Peter and Companeras y Companeros. Red Seminars. Radical Excursions into Educational Theory, Cultural Politics, and Pedagogy. Cresskill: Hampton Press, 253-281.
33. Moisio, Olli-Pekka & Suoranta, Juha (2006). Critical Pedagogy and Ideology Critique as Zeitgeist Analysis. In Moisio, Olli-Pekka & Suoranta, Juha (Eds.). Education and the Spirit of Time. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 243-255.
34. Natham, Rebekah (2005). My Freshman Year. What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press.
35. Scherr, Albert (2005). Social Subjectivity and Mutual Recognition. In Fischman, Gustavo, McLaren, Peter, Sünker, Heinz & Lankshear, Colin (Eds.). Critical Pedagogies, Radical Pedagogies, and Global Conflicts. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 145-153.
36. Shlomo, Sharan (1994) (ed.). Handbook of Cooperative Learning Methods. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
37. Solórzano, Daniel & Yosso, Tara (2005). Maintaining Social Justice Hopes within Academic Realities: A Freirean Approach to Critical Race/LatCrit Pedagogy. In Leonardo, Zeus (ed.). Critical Pedagogy and Race. Oxford: Blackwell, 69-91.
38. Varto, Juha (2005). Lost in the University. Aikalainen, 12. (In Finnish)
39. Wark, McKenzie (2004). A Hacker Manifesto. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.