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By: Sebastián Martínez Sánchez
Under the supervision of Dr. Giuliana Cucinelli
Department of Education at Concordia University
Welcome! This is a non-linear Literature Review of the Technologies of Critical Pedagogy. Its purpose is to analyze the applications and relationships of the technologies of critical pedagogy. In conducting this project, my goal is to explore how the development of each idea and each tool informs another, to elucidate the links between the different technologies, both physical and conceptual, that critical pedagogists use to conceptualize, design, and carry out their practice.
I have selected ten texts from three collections of essays in critical pedagogy. These are The sage handbook of critical pedagogies (eds. Steinberg and Down) from 2020, Social Justice Education for Teachers (eds. Torres and Noguera) from 2008, and Freire for the classroom: A sourcebook for liberatory teaching (ed. Shor) from 1987. I narrowed in on these three collections because they provided me with a good variety of approaches across time and place, all the while remaining clearly within the field of critical pedagogy. The ten articles I have selected specifically because they revealed an interesting use of one or more tools and because their approach cut across the Realms in my model. They are not singled out for being the best, but for affording me an opportunity to test out my model against high-quality, varied, complex understandings of what it means to be a critical educator.
To facilitate a systematic approach to my inquiry I have developed a model to evaluate the different fields of application for any given technology. Each Realm of application is constructed around a few central questions, and a technology is associated to the Realm when it meaningfully addresses or provides an answer to these questions. Note that this is not a classification system, and I am by no means making any ontological arguments when associating any given technology with a Realm of application. Instead, the purpose of the model is to explore how some ideas will have application only within one Realm, while others will straddle and connect questions in different Realms. Elucidating these connections and questioning how answers in one Realm inform answers in others is the central purpose of this review. Thus, in reviewing each article, I will focus on how the described ideas and physical artifacts answer one or more of the key questions of my model, and thus belong to a number of my described Realms of application.
Since the model is still in an experimental stage, a secondary purpose of conducting this review is to test it, to question it and my understanding of educational technology through it. As such, the model has evolved throughout my time reading and reviewing these articles, and what is presented here has not been constructed a priori, but rather in parallel and in dialogue with the readings included in this review.
A Non-Linear Review
I was inspired by McLuhan and Powers’ (1989) ideas of visual and aural space to create this non-linear review. In it, I have explored how the order in which information is presented affects both the writer and the reader. This is an ongoing experiment, which includes not only this review but its companion, a linear (traditional) version. Though the non-linear one is longer, both are constructed to be broadly equivalent to each other, and most of the text in the linear version can also be found in this one. Thus, I urge the reader to look not for differences in content, but rather in how the way the works are structured affects your understanding of what I argue.
Though it might resemble a wiki, this review is not one. Unlike wikis, which are built of self-sustaining articles designed as reference documents, the articles in this review build on and inform each other. This is a cohesive work, where none of the articles you read are expected to stand on their own, but rather to complement the ones around them.
If you wish to read more about the experience of constructing this non-linear review, feel free to go to the Conclusions page, where I dwell on the process of creating it. Otherwise, you are ready to dive into the review itself, and I recommend starting in one of three ways:
- If you wish to gain a broad-level understanding of what this project implies, what I mean when I talk about technology and about critical pedagogy, and how my model is constructed, start with the articles in the Overviews folder: on Technology, on Critical Pedagogy, and on the Realms of Application of Educational Technology.
- If you would prefer to focus first on one or more Realms of Application, read through the articles on each one in the folder called Realms of Application. These are: Context, Learning, Lesson, Methodology, Research, Teaching, and Theory.
- If, however, you would like to start from the ground-up, then go through the page for each article, all contained in the folder called Works Reviewed. These are: Blikstein (2008), Elsasser and Irvine (1987), Fasching-Varner et al. (2020), Frankenstein (1987), Freire (2020), Gadotti (2008), McLean (2020), Puiggrós (2008), Sagaram (2020), and Zimmet (1987).
Regardless of where you start, I strongly encourage you to navigate the review by using the links in the text. All the articles here are connected to each other, and the texts examine different aspects of the same base materials. Thus, there is no correct path through: the review is designed to facilitate you following your interest through, rather than dictating what you should know first.