Abstract
This review explores how critical pedagogy, often cited by educators of informal educators as a key influence, actually informs teaching of informal educators in higher education and assesses its potential to do so. It explores the background to critical pedagogy, its principles, aims and approaches and examines its worldwide influence on the teaching of informal educators. The authors argue that critical pedagogy is crucial for the teaching of informal educators, enabling lecturer and practitioners to interrupt the hegemony of neo-liberal and neo-managerial thinking in their practice and in higher education, and re-orientate themselves and examine their positionality within their institutions. It will focus on practical examples of enabling critical pedagogy in the teaching of informal education in higher education institutions.
Highlights
Pedagogy and Teaching InformalFor many years and for many youth and community workers and informal educators the ideas of Critical Pedagogy and the transformative power of education, as described by Paulo Freire [1], have been at the cornerstone of their practice
We offer a step model of how to enact critical pedagogy in higher education and a way of re-thinking about curriculum development that moves from seeing curriculum as a straitjacket, to a curriculum that builds on experiences and cultivates hope
We both recognize the challenges of enacting critical pedagogy in our teaching of informal education, where the modern, neo-liberal university operates as a business, scrutinized by external powerholders, replicating existing hierarchies of knowledge and power [17]
Summary
For many years and for many youth and community workers and informal educators the ideas of Critical Pedagogy and the transformative power of education, as described by Paulo Freire [1], have been at the cornerstone of their practice. Discussion and collaborations led to a successful Erasmus bid for a strategic partnership sharing good pedagogic practice between Finland, Estonia and the UK At the time these were the only countries to have university based specific professionally qualifying courses in informal education and youth and community work in higher education. This review will catalogue and evaluate attempts to incorporate critical pedagogy into courses on informal education with integrity, looking at how we mediate staff, student and institutional resistance, quality frameworks and neo-liberal cultures and evaluative regimes, concluding it is possible—just It will explore how, as lecturers, the demands of an institution’s quality assurance processes, marketisation, expectations around teaching, learning and assessment, and even the professional, statutory and regulatory bodies’ demands seem to straitjacket and curtail his models of empowerment through education. We offer a step model of how to enact critical pedagogy in higher education and a way of re-thinking about curriculum development that moves from seeing curriculum as a straitjacket, to a curriculum that builds on experiences and cultivates hope
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