The concept of critical pedagogy can be traced back to Paulo Freire's best-known 1968 work, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire, a professor of history and the philosophy of education at the University of Recife
in Brazil, sought in this and other works to develop a philosophy of
adult education that demonstrated a solidarity with the poor in their
common struggle to survive by engaging them in a dialogue of greater
awareness and analysis. Although his family had suffered loss and hunger
during the Great Depression,
the poor viewed him and his formerly middle-class family "as people
from another world who happened to fall accidentally into their world."His intimate discovery of class and their borders "led, invariably, to Freire's radical rejection of a class-based society."
The influential works of Freire
made him arguably the most celebrated critical educator. He seldom used
the term "critical pedagogy" himself when describing this philosophy.
His initial focus targeted adult literacy
projects in Brazil and later was adapted to deal with a wide range of
social and educational issues. Freire’s pedagogy revolved around an
anti-authoritarian and interactive approach aimed to examine issues of
relational power for students and workers.The center of the curriculum used the fundamental goal based on social
and political critiques of everyday life. Freire’s praxis required
implementation of a range of educational practices and processes with
the goal of creating not only a better learning environment but also a
better world. Freire himself maintained that this was not merely an
educational technique but a way of living in our educative practice.
Freire endorses students’ ability to think critically about their
education situation; this way of thinking is thought by practitioners of
critical pedagogy to allow them to "recognize connections between their
individual problems and experiences and the social contexts in which
they are embedded." Realizing one’s consciousness ("conscientization," "conscientização") is then a needed first step of "praxis,"
which is defined as the power and know-how to take action against
oppression while stressing the importance of liberating education.
"Praxis involves engaging in a cycle of theory, application, evaluation,
reflection, and then back to theory. Social transformation is the
product of praxis at the collective level."
Critical pedagogy explores the dialogic relationships between
teaching and learning. Its proponents claim that it is a continuous
process of what they call "unlearning", "learning", and "relearning",
"reflection", "evaluation", and the effect that these actions have on
the students, in particular students whom they believe have been
historically and continue to be disenfranchised by what they call
"traditional schooling".
The educational philosophy has since been developed by Henry Giroux and others since the 1980s as a praxis-oriented "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop a consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive action." Freire wrote the introduction to his 1988 work, Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning. Another leading critical pedagogy theorist who Freire called his "intellectual cousin," Peter McLaren,
wrote the foreword. McLaren and Giroux co-edited one book on critical
pedagogy and co-authored another in the 1990s. Among its other leading
figures in no particular order are bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins), Joe L. Kincheloe, Patti Lather, Antonia Darder, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Peter McLaren, Joe L. Kincheloe, Howard Zinn, Donaldo Macedo, Sandy Grande,Michael Apple, and Stephanie Ledesma. Educationalists including Jonathan Kozol and Parker Palmer are sometimes included in this category. Other critical pedagogues known more for their Anti-schooling, unschooling, or deschooling perspectives include Ivan Illich, John Holt, Ira Shor, John Taylor Gatto, and Matt Hern.
Critical pedagogy has several other strands and foundations.[7] Postmodern, anti-racist, feminist, postcolonial, and queer
theories all play a role in further expanding and enriching Freire’s
original ideas about a critical pedagogy, shifting its main focus on
social class to include issues pertaining to religion, military identification, race, gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, and age. Much of the work also draws on anarchism, György Lukács, Wilhelm Reich, postcolonialism, and the discourse theories of Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault. Radical Teacher
is a magazine dedicated to critical pedagogy and issues of interest to
critical educators. Many contemporary critical pedagogues have embraced Postmodern, anti-essentialist perspectives of the individual, of language, and of power, "while at the same time retaining the Freirean emphasis on critique, disrupting oppressive regimes of power/knowledge, and social change."
Well-conducted, and with good health status.
1. Application Form
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2. Health certificate
Photocopy of notarized foreigner physical examination record (for durations of study over 6 months)
3. Photocopy of valid passport
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4. Passport photo
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5. Undergraduate school transcript
6. Bachelor's degree diploma
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certificate in languages other than Chinese or English should be
translated into Chinese or English and be certified by notarization.
7. Two letters of recommendation
From professor or associate professor or equivalents
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