My purpose as an educator is not to narrate or lecture understanding, where students are seen as containers to be filled; but I need to design experiences that give students the opportunity to develop their own understanding. The school and classroom environment should be one that fosters the questioning of assumptions and validates multiple realities (Freire, 1994; Hinchey, 2010). School should not be a place of hegemonic conformity where students are required to abandon their native language and culture. School and classroom should be places where the social order is reconstructed and the dominant ideology is rebuilt (Dewey, 1902; McLaren, 2007). School and classroom should be spaces of social and cultural production (Macedo, 2003). The purpose of schooling then becomes the avenue by which students learn that a code of power exists, gain access to the system, change the status-quo, and tackle forms of oppression through action (Delpit, 2006). Through this avenue of school, teacher and students become agents of change in the community, bridging the gap between social institution and the society through activism.
Themes that pervade my praxis include social justice issues and inquiry. The major educational philosophies with which I most identify are Progressivism, Social Reconstruction and Critical Theory. I want my students to address social questions through inquiry, dialogue, and value challenging. I also identify with the Existentialist view of helping students understand and appreciate themselves and others. I want my pedagogy to be one of inclusion built on social equity where people teach each other and everyone pursues their full humanity (Freire, 1994; Macedo, 2003). I want my praxis to be one that empowers others to action based on previous inquiry and reflection (Hinchey, 2010).
References
Antrop‐González, R., & De Jesús, A. (2006). Toward a theory of critical care in urban small school reform: examining structures and pedagogies of caring in two Latino community‐based schools 1. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(4), 409-433. doi: 10.1080/09518390600773148
Delpit, L. D. (2006). Other people’s children: cultural conflict in the classroom. New York, NY: New Press.
Dewey, J. (1902). The child and the curriculum. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Freire, P. (1994). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.
Hinchey, P. H. (2010). Finding freedom in the classroom: a practical introduction to critical theory. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Macedo, D. P., Dendrinos, B., & Gounari, P. (2003). The hegemony of English. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.
McLaren, P. (2007). Life in schools: an introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.
North, C. E. (2009). Teaching for social justice?: Voices from the front lines. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.