Neutrality or complicity?

Developed by Paulo Freire, critical consciousness (CrC) is a philosophical, theoretical, and practice-based framework encompassing an individual’s understanding of and action against the structural roots of inequity and violence. This article explores divergent CrC scholarship regarding CrC theory and practice; provides an in-depth review of inconsistencies within the CrC “action” domain; and, in an effort to resolve discrepancies within the existing CrC literature, presents a new construct—transformative action (TA)—and details the process of TA development. Comprising three hierarchical levels of action (critical, avoidant, and destructive) for each level of the socio-ecosystem, TA serves as a model for community-based practitioners, such as those working in the fields of social work and public affairs. The authors argue that transformation is necessary to deconstruct the social institutions in the United States that maintain and perpetuate systemic inequity, creating dehumanizing consequences. Through critical TA, community workers can make visible hidden socio-structural factors, such as institutionalized racism and White privilege, countering the historic trend of community workers acting as tools of social control—that is, socializing individuals to adapt to marginalized roles and accept inferior treatment; maintaining and enforcing the status quo; and facilitating conformity with inequitable societal norms and practices. The authors also discuss the implications of community-based TA practice.

This article as a theoretical overview explains and introduces the basic concept of the critical perspective on educational technology for early childhood education, especially for the Indonesian audience. The critical perspective derived from the critical pedagogy notions is very important as a critical tool of analysis on examines the creating, using, and managing of the learning media and method for early childhood education. The critical analysis result would be the prominent consideration on educational technology activities (creating, using, managing) and the critical pedagogy notions itself become the reference paradigm and foundation for those activities. The subtantial objectives of the early childhood education from the critical pedagogy perspective are tend to bring the learning practice more democratic, emancipatory, dialogic, participatory, and transformative for the childs' cognitive, afective and psychomotoric development. The concern of the critical pedagogy for early childhood education is not insist to build the childs' critical consciousness, but to nurture the childs' need for critical inquiry, in this case the teachers position is important to develop and practicing the learning practice based on the critical pedagogy notions and also examine critically the early childhood education policy, its curriculum, and etc.

Background: This paper argues that achieving social and cultural transformation in healthcare, and beyond, needs to come from an orientation of an explicit ethical stance around critical awareness and articulation of the affects of historical, political, social and cultural structures of oppression. There is discussion around how practice development language forms a discourse of harm, and how practice development environments reproduce and maintain structures of oppression. Aim: Drawing on the work of feminist critical social praxis concerned with corporeal experiences and the affects emanating from embodied practices, this paper will bring to the fore marginalisations and oppressions experienced by particular bodies, and ask what do practice developers need to consider and act on to make practice development more socially just? Method: Application of feminist critical social praxis, a theoretical dimension thus far unexplored in the practice development field, as a framework for asking what practice development can learn. Particular attention is drawn to the benefits of orientating a new formation in practice development around the work of Black feminists and feminists of colour – of looking to the margins and bringing those centre. Findings: Illumination of new insights into how to build a feminist critical social justice oriented practice development through the explicit practice of naming and raising consciousness around the lived experiences and materiality of oppressed and marginalised peoples. Conclusion: Achieving radical cultural, social, political and economic transformation needs to come from an orientation of explicit critical awareness and recognition of the politics of affects of neoliberal, neo-colonial capitalist systems. Implications for practice: A feminist critical social justice ethical stance can enable practice development, as a methodology, and practice developers as implementers of that methodology, to respond to this paper’s invitation to stand in solidarity against systematic structural oppressions and form a new more reflective, critical and socially just practice development.

Textbooks are an integral part of everyday teaching in Nepalese classrooms. They mirror the objectives mentioned in several policy documents at the National level. The Constitution of Nepal, the School Sector Development Plan, and the National Objectives of Education all strive to develop conscientious individuals by eliminating all forms of discrimination prevalent in the country. This study reveals how much the secondary English textbook of Nepal supports achieving those goals. This critical content analysis aims to explore the presence of texts from the perspective of critical pedagogy. This study has analyzed the secondary English textbook of grade 9 published by the Curriculum Development Centre, Nepal. For analysis, five different critical themes were ascertained on the basis of the literature review. The reading texts present in the book were examined against it. The finding revealed an inadequate presence of critical texts (27.77%) in the grade 9 English textbook. Instead of developing critical consciousness in students, the textbook looks more like a practice book for different linguistic structures. The students are less likely to change, challenge, and contest perceived inequity through the book.

The ongoing debate on the ecological climate and the possible courses of action suggests the need for a global consensus or mitigation towards an informed pedagogical approach on climate change. In 2006, a UK government white paper (Stern report) “identified climate change as a current challenge, not a future threat. The influential Stern report also identified three key elements in response to climate change, of which two – technological transfer and behavioural change – have clear implications for education” Freire argues: ‘When people lack a critical understanding of their reality, apprehending it in fragments which they do not perceive as interacting constituent elements of the whole, they cannot truly know that reality.’ The report also pointed to the critical human unawareness of climate change. Conscientization or critical consciousness of climate change is crucial. Critical consciousness being a moral awareness, Mustakova-Possardt argues, propels individuals to dis-embed from their cultural, social, and political environment, and engage in a responsible critical moral dialogue with it, making active efforts to construct their own place in social reality and to develop internal consistency in their ways of being. An informed pedagogical approach to climate change relates to social change and empowerment within communities creating what Freire would identify as ‘praxis’. The critical question posed in this paper is what level of critical consciousness does the population currently possess and are the communities engaged adequately empowered to develop an informed pedagogical approach? Codification is identified by Freire as a way of gathering information in order to build up a picture (codify) around real situations and real people. This method has been consciously applied throughout this research. The paper is underpinned by a set of Freire concepts (conscientization, praxis, codification, community engagement) as an intellectual framework to evaluate the field-work findings. Given that Freire’s concepts advocate knowledge, action or practice and reflection, and the ultimate aim of global environmental issues, and this paper, is to instil these concepts on a critical mass scale, it seems more than appropriate to apply these concepts to this study. This paper, in essence, explores levels of environmental conscientization on an international scale, giving examples from field research and case studies based on active participation and community engagement, and collaboration with three diverse communities. The concern with 'participation' in social change processes builds on the work of participatory approaches to social transformation outlined by Freire. He explains: “This early work was essentially a form of popular education that saw participation as a means of engaging the excluded and disempowered in processes of learning and social transformation that would enable them to become aware of and able to overcome the structures of oppression that shaped their lives.” In this paper the ability of these different communities to react to social and environmental transformations are evaluated. The pedagogical approaches applied in engaging with these communities and their impact or added value are compared and contrasted. The level of conscientization regarding this subject among the case study groups research is evaluated, and those communities’ perceptions of potential social and political change is also explored. The research concludes with theoretical and practical suggestions on how to mobilise social change towards an applied conscientization regarding environmental issues. It considers the implication of such suggestions on local and global communities, and the extent to which applied volunteering can add value and empower people to make a positive impact. Consequently, this involves moving beyond the ‘banking model of education’ on environmental matters to a more ‘praxis/reflex’ model.

26 4 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Andrew Feenberg, Lukdcs, Marx and the Soures of Critical Theory. Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981. Pp. xiv + 286. $~4.5 o. Marx's theory was always a tenuous synthesis of disparate elements: a theory of alienation, of historical materialism, of capitalist economic dynamics, of ideology and cultural "fetishism," and of the politics of capitalist breakdown and socialist transformation . As the demise of" that synthesis has become increasingly evident, philosophers concerned with revivifying Marx's project in some form have tended to take their point of departure from one strand or period in this theory and to discard many if not all of its remaining aspects.' The author of the present volume has followed this route but in a manner somewhat out of favor in recent years despite the abiding interest in Marx's 1844 Manuscripts. Like Marcuse who was his teacher, Feenberg has chosen to return to the Manuscripts , to consider how its problematic of a "philosophy of praxis" was further and somewhat differently developed by the early Luk~cs, and then to fuse the best from each attempt into a new effort at a fully satisfactory version. Such a theory would have to be both philosophically coherent and politically realistic, while at the same time avoiding the resignation and despair of Adorno's "negative dialectics." Given a goal so ambitious, one is hardly surprised to discover that Feenberg has not quite succeeded. Yet the path of this discovery is so strewn with rich and keenly analytical reconstructions of the earlier projects, as well as supple and original philosophical departures, that there is no student of Marx and Marxism who will not be enormously indebted for the privilege of having been led along. Feenberg defines a philosophy of praxis as "the attempt to show that the 'antinoroles ' of philosophy can be resolved only in history" (5)' Such an attempt necessarily takes the modern tradition of "identity philosophy" (Descartes through Hegel) with utmost seriousness. It refuses to discard the goal of subject-object identity in favor of a merely empirical and sociological reconstruction of capitalism and its historical background. (The latter is the strategy of the later Marx, which Feenberg regrets). But a philosophy of praxis necessarily also goes beyond this tradition by taking fundamental historical change seriously as the mode by which antimonies are resolved . In a suggestive formulation, Feenberg writes that "[br Lukfics traditional philosophy is in essence theory of culture that does not know itself as such..., reflection on cultural structures misinterpreted as eternal principles disconnected from the accidents of history and social life" (87). To vindicate such an audacious claim, a philosophy of praxis would have to demonstrate its coherence and vitality at both sociological and ontological levels. ' For an earlier reconstruction based essentially on the Marx of ~844 see Bertell Ollman, Alienation (Cambridge, 1971). For one based on The German Ideology of 1845-46 see Helmut Fleischer, Marxism and History, transl. E. Mosbacher (London, 1973). For recent and somewhat different reconstructions based on the 1859 Preface to the Critiqueof PoliticalEconomysee G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx~ Theory of History: A DeJence(Princeton, 1978) and Melvin Rader, Marx~ Interpretation of History (New York, 7979). For a reconstruction based heavily on the Grundris,se see Alfred Schmidt, Hi,~toryand Structure, transl. J. Herf (Boston, 198 l). BOOK REVIEWS 265 Feenberg maintains (persuasively and in contrast to the interpretations of Habermas and Schmidt) that Marx had a fully ontological philosophy of praxis in his early works, but that his attempt there to establish a "deontological ground of revolution" was insufficiently developed and then hopelessly compromised by the more naturalistic tendency of his later historical materialism. Moreover, Marx's theory was inherently unsatisfactory because, in taking human labor as its starting point, its claim that man could overcome all opposition through social revolution became absurd. It remained for Lukfics to perceive that the "key to developing an adequate Marxist theory of revolution" lay in reconceiving Marx's late economic project as a "critique of formal rationality" (58). Much of the rest of the book aims at showing how fruitful this perception was. Yet Lukfics ultimately runs into a difficulty in many respects the opposite...

The article starts from Paulo Freire literacy method and reflects particularly on the following issues: anthropological concept of culture; culture of silence; generative word. It reflects, therefore, on these elements of Paulo Freire's educational philosophy in connection with principles expressed by critical pedagogy. Starting from this reflection, we ask ourselves how to give life to a proposal of participatory didactics, generative of dialogue, critical conscience and social transformation.

Social critical consciousness, understood in terms of one's awareness of his/her social identity and positionality, is a crucial component of social transformative action, particularly in multicultural contexts. While there is a vast literature examining the significance of social critical consciousness among practitioners in social fields, there is not much evidence of such a reflection in Church environments. The present study explored the relationship between social critical consciousness and pastoral action for social transformation in two international missionary religious orders ministering within the Catholic Church in Kenya. The qualitative data was gathered using interviews and focus group discussions involving 34 participants (26 male and 8 female), who were purposefully sampled from the religious orders. A sample of archival documents were also analysed. The findings indicate that generally pastoral practitioners avoid the challenge of owning their social identity and positionality, and rather take refuge in the charismatic identity of their religious orders. They exalt their mission without due focus on their own identities. The outcome of this lack of social critical consciousness is a fragmented pastoral and charity work rather than systematic social transformation. The study proposes a positive engagement with complexity by integrating positionality and allyship in missionary methodology and focusing on building a social critical community prior to any pastoral action for social transformation.

This paper discusses the insightful and illuminating findings of teaching critical reading within the theoretical framework of critical pedagogy. More specifically, this paper examines the impact of a critical-reading course on students’ reading skills and beliefs about discourse production and interpretation. The course was conducted according to the principles of transformative participatory action research and, thus, a corpus of 50 essays, written by a convenience sample of 25 post-graduate students in the pre-test and post-test phases, was analyzed to examine the effect of the course on students’ reading-habits and their representations of different discourses. Pretest findings showed that most students used to think that discourses are innocent and ideology-free and that reading a text consists in understanding its general idea, extracting its writer’s viewpoint, making sense of its vocabulary, and paraphrasing it. As far as text’s function is concerned, most students used to believe that a text’s basic function is delivering information. In addition, most of them were unaware of the fact that a text has ideological and socio-political functions. Post-test findings revealed that students’ discourse awareness and reading habits have become more critical and developed at two levels: the worldview level and the meta-language level. The t-test statistics suggest that there is a significant difference of p˂.001 between students’ reading scores before and after the intervention. Therefore, the null hypothesis which says that there is no significant difference between studying critical reading from a critical pedagogy perspective and studying it from a functional or conventional perspective is false.

Using Alexis Jemal’s conceptualization of transformative potential, founded on Paulo Freire’s idea of Critical Consciousness, a guiding transformative justice approach and accompanying questionnaire are provided here that can be adapted into any existing early childhood or elementary curriculum for children. The approach provides teachers with a methodology to search for new books and resources and use existing ones to foster their own and their students’ critical social consciousness. The transformative justice approach has two objectives: one, to enable teachers to help understand, guide, and mediate differences in the context of equity and social justice; and two, to equip children with social awareness and critical consciousness to identify stereotypes and biases, and to build solidarities between and among themselves. The transformative justice approach does not actively avoid books or resources with stereotypes or biases, but seeks to build skill sets in children and teachers to recognize and counter biases and stereotypes using texts as learning tools. It synthesizes and builds on anti-bias and culturally-sensitive pedagogies to intentionally center structural and systemic inequities, as well as fosters social awareness and critical thinking in both teachers and students by reimagining the classroom as a collaborative learning space.

The critical pedagogy perspective is currently being promoted in education to advocate for inclusion and equity. However, few have considered the prospect of its application in the role of education towards poverty alleviation. This research discusses the contribution of Paulo Freire's thoughts on the idea of pedagogy of the oppressed which discusses the education of the oppressed. The education of the oppressed is education for humans who are involved in fighting for their freedom from the shackles of structural poverty created by education. Oppression referred to by Paulo Freire is any form of thought, structure, system, or culture that dominates, blackmails, deprives, dehumanizes, and prevents others from affirming themselves as dignified human beings. This research uses a systematic or narrative review to examine various theoretical literature and empirical research then analyzes all source materials using content analysis techniques. The results show that education can reduce poverty, as it will provide opportunities to get a decent education that can encourage participation in more decent work. In addition, critical education will increase critical awareness in solving problems and communicating through various means. This research argues that education plays a role in reducing poverty. Not only that, through the view of critical pedagogy, it can encourage individuals to be able to develop the potential they have in themselves, so that they can live independently. Critical pedagogy should be taught to students from an early age to generate critical thinking in addressing the realities of life.

The article approaches the relationship between the aims of Paulo Freire’s education for liberation and the praxis of popular communication in Brazil. The goal is to understand the extent to which aspects of Freire’s thoughts can intersperse with concepts and practices of popular, community, and alternative communication in Brazil. The study is based on bibliographic research on Freire’s work while reflecting on some of the principles of the education for liberation, particularly those embedding the praxis of popular communication in social movements. This paper concludes by arguing that principles such as ‘communication as dialogue’, ‘critical consciousness’, the ability to become a ‘subject’, ‘education as a practice for freedom’, ‘connection to reality’, and ‘social transformation’ lie prominently in the concept and practices of popular and community communication.

Introduction: The aim of this study is to examine children’s moral reasoning and logical reasoning processes and the relationship between these two mechanisms. In the present study the focus is on the relationship between the factors such as fair sharing, equality, merit, ownership, opportunity in the resource allocation and logical reasoning among the children aged 5-7. Methods: In this study, which aims to examine how the logical thinking skills differ according to the children’s moral reasoning process, a survey design approach was used. Participants were 92 children aged 5 (female N=13, male N=14) and aged 6 (female N=17, male N=18), aged 7 (female N=17, male N=13). The data collected from the moral and logical reasoning tasks were analyzed in two steps. At the first step the answers of the participants were scored. At the second step their justifications were categorized. To test out hypotheses we used two general linear models to examine the age effects of Age (5-7 years) and Reasoning (equality, ownership, merit, opportunity) on children’s evaluations of the vignette characters’ actions. Age-related changes in children’s evaluation and their logical reasoning skills related to initial distribution and transfer status were analyzed by the variance analysis. Results: Based on the findings of the study it can be stated that the children in the age group of 6-7 evaluated negatively the reward distribution based on the outcomes due to their concerns about the inequality in the opportunities and the violation of the principle of equality. The findings of the study indicate that there is no significant difference in children’s logical thinking skills depending on their age. As a result of the study, it is found that although there is no direct relationship between the moral and logical reasoning processes of children, the children who can reject the AC type inference predominantly emphasize the principle of equality. Although there is no significant relationship between moral reasoning and logical reasoning processes, it can be said that children with higher levels of logical reasoning much more frequently emphasize the principle of equality in moral reasoning process. Discussion: Research indicates that children aged around 5 consider the reward distribution based on the outcomes fair. Older children, on the other hand, evaluate the inequalities in resource distribution as unfair. These findings support the results of the study suggesting that older children consider inequal source distribution both at the first case and at the transfer cases unfair. The children’s approval or disapproval of the transfer varies based on their reasoning processes. They support transfer if they emphasize the principle of equality, but they do not support it if their focus is on the principle of ownership. Older children are found to have a commitment to the principle of equality, and the difference between the 5-year age group and the 6-7-year age group is remarkable in this regard. Similar findings are reported in the previous studies, and it is generally stated that younger children are more selfish and that the tendency to distribute resources equally becomes dominant due to the increase in the age of children. Although there is no significant relationship between moral reasoning and logical reasoning processes, it can be said that children with higher levels of logical reasoning emphasize the principle of equality in moral reasoning process much more frequently. Conclusion: Cognitivists argue that cognition and particularly reasoning have significant roles in making moral decisions. It suggests that children whose logical thinking skills are higher than others understand the necessity of equality to ensure fairness. The basic information on logic should be taught and introduced to the children from an early age. In addition, children should be ensured to use these methods through connections with both daily life and other courses at schools. It is thought that having basic logic knowledge by children will affect positively their cognitive, affective and social development. In order to examine this effect, a logic program including simple logic rules and basic inference types should be developed and the effects of such programs on the cognitive, affective and social development of children should be examined.

We are living in challenging times. Whether in the Global South or Global North, an alarming sweep of nationalism, populism, authoritarianism and racism threatens the health, wellbeing, rights and freedom of millions. The report Democracy in Retreat: Freedom in the World 2019 notes a steady decline over the past 13 years in measures of freedom and democracy throughout the world (Freedom House, 2019). The aggregate scores for Brazil (75/100) and the United States (86/100) lag behind countries mostly in northern and western Europe but also regionally-e.g. Uruguay (98/100) and Canada (99/100).

The COVID-19 pandemic exposes countries and people in sub-Saharan Africa to severe risks because of structural global inequalities. There is a simultaneous risk of the use of public health action to enact oppressive governance policies, which is happening in response to COVID-19 in many countries. In this commentary, we use the example of 20th-century pandemic control in pre-apartheid South Africa to illustrate how public health crises can engender oppressive social, economic, and spatial transformations.