Toward a Transformative Teaching Practice: Criticity, Pedagogy and Praxis

One method to teach a multicultural class: a teacher walks in to a room calls the class to order, steps to the lectern and begins to deliver knowledge. Socially acquired information is disseminated; that gained over years of study and experience. Another view: I walk into a class where my students are sitting quietly at their desks pen and paper at the ready and quietly ask: shall we form a circle? The students agree and after having done so I follow up with a generative (Freire, 1970): what are your current understandings of Diversity? In following the work of Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, bell hooks, and Maxine Greene among others I undertake an auto-critical approach to the classes I teach. It is a given for me that students bring knowledge to the table, my classes become our classes; we engage in dialogue to interrogate our subject matter: culture and schooling in societies. As the classes I teach are designed for future educators we engage our discussions to push pedagogy and transform teaching