CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND LEARNING CIRCLE

 

INTRODUCTION:-

     Education prepares the future generations to play their respective roles in the society and teachers play a pivotal role in this process.  The revision and development of curriculum together with modern instructional strategies implies an intension to ensure a progressive change in education.  The motivation for this change has not only been pedagogic but social and political as well.

     Modern instructional strategies are the approaches that we use in the design, development, and delivery of learning to engage our students in learning experiences.  We choose these strategies based on what, how, where and when our learners to learn.

     In the modern instructional strategy the curriculum can be considered as unification of aims, subject matter and controls of learning.  Some of the modern instructional strategies are critical pedagogy and learning circle. 

 

CRITICAL PEDAGOGY

Critical pedagogy is called conscientization for critical thinking.  The term was coined by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his work ‘Pedagogy of the oppressed’.

Assumptions

·       All education is inherently political and all pedagogy must be aware of this condition.

·        A social and educational vision of justice and equality should ground education.

·       Issues of race, class, gender, sexuality religion and physical abilities are all important domains of oppression.

·       Schools must not hurt students or strip students of the knowledge they bring to the classroom.

·       The professionalism of teachers must be respected and the part of the role of any educator involves becoming scholar and a researcher.

·       Education must promote emancipator change and the cultivation of the intellectuals.

The basic tenet of critical pedagogy is that there is an unequal social stratification in our society based upon class race and gender.  Those of high power and status are all the top of society and control the rest of the society.

Democracy and freedom from oppression are the cornerstones of critical pedagogy.  Many renowned educators and theorists work contribute to or support this theory; they include Peter McLaren Hennery Levin, Ira Shore and John Good Lad.

Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that has developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture.

Advocates of critical pedagogy view teaching as an inherently political act reject the neutrality of knowledge and insist that issues of social justice and democracy itself are not distinct form acts of teaching and learning.

The goal of critical pedagogy is emancipation from oppression through an awakening of the critical consciousness encourages individuals to affect change in their world through social critique and political action.

Critical pedagogy is both a way of thinking about and negotiating through praxis the relationship among classroom teaching, the production of knowledge, the larger institutional structures of schools and the social and material relations of the wider community, society and the nation state.

 

Against the banking concept of education

Traditional teaching is characterized by narration and explanation.  A careful analysis of the teacher- student relationship at any level inside or outside the school reveals is fundamentally narrative character,  the content begin taught in the process of begin narrated becomes lifeless and petrified.  Education is thus suffering form narration sickness.  The task of the teacher is to fill the students with the content of his narration.  Narration turns students into containers, into receptacles to be filled by the teacher.  The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.  Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor.  This is the banking concept of education.  Critical pedagogy considers the banking concept in education as a form of pedagogic oppression as it denies the learner of his power to think, internalize and own knowledge.

Key concepts of critical pedagogy

·       Learning through discourse.

·       Critical consciousness

·       Reconceptualizing literacy

·       Honoring lived experience

·       Historical context

·       Praxis- both dialogue and action

·       Reflection

·       Direct honesty

·       Identifying and actively countering hidden oppression

·       Students voice/ empowerment

·       A constructive rather than a banking pedagogy of teaching

·       Acknowledgement of the emotional nature

·       Socialistic vision

Principles of critical pedagogy

·       Education produces political subjectivities

·       Ethics is central education

·       Need to understand difference in identified formation

·       Need to understand how different types of knowledge are given priority in schools

·       Should pursue new forms of culture and knowledge

·       Claims to objective knowledge should be challenged

·       Must include a vision of a better world

·       Teacher should be transformative intellectuals

·       Students need a critically conscious voice

 LEARNING CIRCLE

     A learning circle is a highly interactive, participatory structure for organizing group work.  The goal is to build, share, and express knowledge through a process of open dialogue and deep reflection around issues or problems with a focus on a shared outcome.

     Learning circles shape more than just the classroom, they shape the whole student experience.  Just as the image of a circle evokes inclusion, the learning circle emphasizes that learning is for everyone.

 

Modes

1.     ONLINE

2.     OFFLINE

 

1.     ONLINE LEARNING CIRCLE

·       Online learning circle are teams of distant learners who use technology to acquire a deeper understanding of areas of shared interest.  The structure balances individual ownership with collective responsibility to provide a setting that helps everyone achieve the learning objectives.

·       The circle is managed by distributed leadership and suggests that each participant be engaged in leading one of the group projects.  They can be used in a wide range of formal and informal contexts.

·       The learning is structure for collaborative works that shares features with other community- based learning groups, but also differs in specific ways.

·       These different forms of learning circles; wisdom circles, circle time, study circles and quality circles are all structures for face to face dialogues.

·       But learning circles can also take place over a network in an online or virtual setting.

·       This specific use of the idea of learning circles refers to an online structure for linking participants from different countries to work together using their diversity as a resource to achieve deeper understandings.

·       The spirit of honoring the collective wisdom, and trusting the process to create deeper understanding the heart of circle learning remains constant regardless of their context.

·       The model is described by a ;

o   Set of defining dimensions,

o   Norms that support the interaction; and

o   The phase structure that guides the process

 

2.     OFFLINE /FACE TO FACE LEARNING CIRCLE

·       Takes place in a classroom

 

Tips for implementing OFFLINE learning circles

1)    Take inventory of your space and resources

o   Arranging the classroom in a circle encourages conversation and connection

o   Students face each other rather than the facilitator or the board

o   Facilitator is able to join the students as a member of the circle

o   Resources and space: conference room with wi-fi, students gather around a large center table

2)    Survey students on access to technology

o   Most students use smart phones rather than computer

 

3)    Establish a sense of community

o   attendance is encouraged rather than required

o   it is important to demonstrate a sense of community early on

4)    Set clear expectations

o   By facilitator

o   Facilitator can help students understand how learning circles differ traditional classes

o   In a learning circle attendance is encouraged/ learning is flexible, student led

5)    Prepare meaningful learning activities

o   In addition to lessons on the apps, each learning circle include instructor led lesson

o   Content retrieved from smart phones, apps etc.

6)    Designate class time for using apps

o   Devote class time to complete at least one lesson on the apps

7)    Encourage student leadership

o   student provide info to their peers on smart phones

o   students recommend apps to their feedback

o   students provide feedback about benefits and limitations of mobile learning

8)    Keep the conversation going outside of class

o   Students can clear their doubts from facilitators

 

CONCLUSION

The inclusion of modern teaching methods in this time is necessary as it opposes the idea of traditional forms of repetition and memorization of the syllabus to educate students.  To develop decision making skills, problem solving skills and critical thinking ability, modern techniques are best suited.  The new ways of teaching make students more productive and encourage them to collaborate.  Both methods are effective but which will be done during this time is the question, and clearly, the importance of modern teaching techniques can be felt clearly.