The Importance Of Critical Pedagogy

“Critical pedagogy involves problem posing, reflective thinking, knowledge gathering, and collaborative decision making. It helps students and teachers find and express their voice, in oral and written form” (Ovando & Combs, 2012, p.110). Creating lessons that connects to the students’ life experiences will help with student engagement, but that alone will not develop higher level thinking skills and generate reflective thinking. Teachers need to create a learning environment that stimulate student questioning. Project based learning and collaborative learning are also methods of creating an active learners instead of a classroom where the teacher merely deposits information. Being adaptive and flexible are characteristics that a teacher

I figured that the students needed some hands on activity during their brainstorming session, in order to continue to expand on their thoughts. The following day, each student received an empty shoe box. On the top of the lid, I had the students label it with “how I think that others feel about my culture”. On the underside of the lid they were to label it “how I feel about my culture”. Around the outside of the box they were to label it with, “how I think that others see me” and on the inside of the box they put, “how I see myself”. Students were to find images and wording from magazines and/or create sketches that would symbolize how they felt about each section of the box. They were to organize the visuals to match the labels and glue them down. The inside of the box is personal and can be kept private from others if the student chooses. I also posted the following essential questions on the board to help guide them: How do we form and shape our identities? How does what others think about you affect how you think about yourself? In a culture where we are bombarded with other people trying to define us, how do we make decisions for ourselves? How does an individual’s point of view affect the way they deal with conflict? To what extent do belief systems shape and/or reflect culture and