Critical Pedagogy: Praxis and Social Reform through Education

Critical pedagogy, a term first coined by Henry Giroux in Theory and Resistance in Education (1983), is a theory and practice “fundamentally committed to the development and enactment of a culture of schooling that supports the empowerment of culturally marginalized and economically disenfranchised students…this pedagogical perspective seeks to help transform those classroom structures and practices that perpetuate undemocratic life”. Paulo Freire is widely credited as the pioneer in the critical pedagogy tradition, and in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1971), he introduced an emancipatory educational paradigm, which merged curriculum and instructional practices with social agency, empowerment, and democratic participation. Central to his project was a fierce critique of the ‘banking’ model of education, where learners were passive and literal receivers of knowledge from teachers who held unquestioned authority in both content and delivery. To Freire, the teaching–learning dynamic is a practice of freedom that features conscientization, or critical consciousness, as the fundamental skill or mindset for students to acquire. Critical consciousness provides students with the tools to question, engage, and reform oppressive social structures and should be the focal point of instruction.