UMass Boston

Course Overview

Description

Historical Foundations and Contemporary Issues in Critical Pedagogy is an introductory course to critical theory and the ways it has affected and shaped educational theory, pedagogy, and classroom practice. This course will draw upon the seminal work of a diverse group of theorists, including writings from the Frankfurt School (Marcuse, Adomo, Horkheimer), Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, and others. Within a historical context, the course will focus on early theories of social and cultural reproduction, theories of resistance, and the hidden curriculum. The latter part of the course will situate some of the early reform issues about schooling within a more recent context in order to illuminate how such issues resonate with current public discourses on schooling and radical pedagogy. We will examine the work of Critical Pedagogues such as Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, bell hooks, Stanley Aronowitz, Michael Apple, etc. Finally, we will look into the application of Critical Pedagogy framework to classroom practice for language teachers. Major themes of the course include: education as cultural force, hegemony and the politics of hidden curriculum, popular cultures, public pedagogy and cultural politics, capitalism, neo-liberalism and education, and the role of educators as public intellectuals.