Elementary Critical Educators' Approaches for Sustaining and Growing Critical Pedagogies

• In Event: Humanizing Critical Sociocultural Knowledge: Explorations of How Teachers Conceptualize and Enact Culture Across Contexts

Abstract

In the current scholarship on teachers’ learning of critical pedagogies, little research examines how teachers continue the growth of their humanizing critical sociocultural knowledge (Brown, 2013) after they have been introduced to critical theories and pedagogies as practitioners. The literature suggests that teachers are unlikely to be supported in this pursuit of critical sociocultural perspectives in the context of school (e.g., Alford & Jetnikoff, 2016). This study examines how three self-identified critical educators sought to sustain and grow their enactment of critical pedagogies as elementary literacy teachers.

Brown (2013) defines sociocultural knowledge as “referring to social, cultural, economic, political and historical knowledge that informs how societies and schools operate” (p. 319). In this general definition, sociocultural knowledge is not intentionally grounded in a critical stance that recognizes and acknowledges power. However, the term “critical sociocultural knowledge” (Brown, 2013) denotes a critical standpoint toward power structures; individuals demonstrate this form of knowledge when they analyze how schools and societies operate in order to challenge and disrupt dominant narratives.

I took an ethnographic approach to data collection (one academic year); and I used qualitative and discourse analytic methods to analyze within and across multiple data sources, including audio-and video-recordings, transcriptions, classroom artifacts, memos, and field notes. I drew on Brown’s (2013) theory of humanizing critical sociocultural knowledge as I designed my study and analyzed my data.

My analysis revealed that teachers sustained and grew their enactment of critical pedagogies by designing an “all-encompassing” curriculum of experiences (Brown, 2013) across their professional and personal lives, engaging in social justice praxis, and pursuing opportunities to learn new critical sociocultural knowledge. I use the term “curriculum” to describe the experiences that these teachers pursued and engaged in to increase their critical sociocultural knowledge. Analysis indicated that as critical educators, Ms. Martinez, Ms. Smith, and Ms. Barker had all spent years undertaking an intentional journey to solidify their anti-oppressive approaches to education. In addition, analysis revealed that each teacher’s self-developed, all-encompassing curriculum was situated in both in- and out-of-school contexts. I define in-school experiences as those that occurred within participants’ official role of teacher for their independent school districts (ISDs). I define out-of-school experiences as those that occurred outside of this official role.

An implication for teachers in the field, or in teacher education programs, is the importance of teachers striving to continually develop their own humanizing critical sociocultural knowledge (Brown, 2013) in their work to be critical educators. Across the three cases in this project, the teachers shared that they did not feel a sense of solidarity (Freire, 1970/2000) with their school-based colleagues/administrators; however, they developed community with their students, with their own families (e.g., their daughters), with colleagues at local universities (e.g., faculty and preservice teachers), with families of their students, and with grass-roots organizations (e.g., locally or through social media). It was through interactions and work with these communities that the teachers continually grew their own awareness and developed their own critical sociocultural knowledge.

Author

• Saba Khan Vlach, The University of Iowa