Currere and critical pedagogy: thinking critically about self-reflective methods

Abstract

As a self-reflective method of inquiry, currere, and by extension autobiographical work, engage with the personal histories, aspirations and subjectivities of our students. Extensive academic work has gone into refocusing scholarly work to privilege the student and teacher experience in an attempt to foreground these histories and subjectivities. However, such work is subject to censure that problematizes this type of work’s utility as a method of eliciting more systemic understandings of the educative experience. In this paper, I explore the ways in which a seemingly opposed theoretical framework, critical pedagogy, might be able to offer some insights for a more attuned and structurally responsive personal reflection. Although critical pedagogy is not without fault, the cognizance of the structural and political context that it demands can help students and teachers develop insights into the ways in which the political, ideological and social world may structure our lives. Consequently, I argue that critical pedagogy (or, given the context, a different but equally critical paradigm) can help to texture autobiographical methods such as currere by invoking in students and teachers critical engagements with the contexts that shape(d) their lived experiences.