Are there any critical educators out there? Perspectives on teachers and transformation

Abstract

My intention in writing this paper is to explore -- in a formal, theoretical manner -the possibility that teachers can be recruited in the task of critical education, and to examine the conditions under which this possibility becomes a probability. By critical education I refer to both a theory and a practice -- hence critical pedagogy -- which draws on the depiction of human persons by social theorists of the Frankfurt School as rational, self-conscious beings who are bound to "strive (perhaps incoherently) for ever greater freedom, fulfillment. and self-critical awareness" (Inglis, 1985, p.16).