Breaking the Silence within Critical Pedagogy

There is a wide and rich scientific literature about Gender Violence (GV) in diverse institutions and contexts, now including Isolating Gender Violence (IGV). However, there is an almost absolute silence about GV and IGV within the field of critical pedagogy despite its pretention to influence children’s education. This paper is part of a long research program on GV and presents the first evidence about its existence within critical pedagogy. The communicative methodology of this research has included interviews to 15 authors of critical pedagogy and 1 discussion group. The gender dimension is key in this research, most lists of outstanding critical pedagogists include only white males and most of them from North America, in this research there are 15 women of the 21 interviewees and diverse gender options and cultures are represented. The results clearly show that, as in any other social institutions and domains, within critical pedagogy there are upstanders against GV, those who maintain a guilty silence and harassers making direct GV and/or IGV.

Crests and Troughs in Inclusion: Narrative Expressions of a Black Teacher in Independent Schools

The current article draws from Critical Diversity Literacy (CDL) to analyse narrative expressions of a black South African teacher’s experiences of moments of exclusion (troughs) and inclusion (crests) after twenty years of service in two predominantly white independent schools. Data was generated from one South African teacher who was prompted to reflect on crests [inclusive moments that deserve to be embraced and celebrated] and troughs [moments of exclusion that seek to assimilate/ignore diversity] in her teaching journey spanning two decades at two independent schools. Using the interpretivist paradigm, we attempt to understand the teacher’s journey which shows amongst others, that agents of exclusion with tendencies to demand compliance and subsequent assimilation, include other teachers, school leaders, learners as well as some parents. The teacher was however, provided with an opportunity to read the situation and may, depending on her agency, work to circumvent oppressive and exclusionary tendencies. Crests celebrating diversity were noted in her second school. I conclude that diversity remains multi-perspectival and therefore simultaneity should be borne in mind when dealing with inclusion in the teaching fraternity.

Project-Based Learning as a Pedagogical Tool in Teaching the Safe Management of Pesticides in an Agricultural-Rural Community

Project-based learning (PBL) is a teaching method that has proven effective in stimulating student learning through meaningful experiences that focus on solving problems, many of which are part of the learners' everyday lives. Therefore, this research aimed to use PBL as a pedagogical tool to identify environmental problems caused by the inefficient use of pesticides in agricultural communities by implementing and developing a school research project in natural sciences. To achieve the objective, we use a direct sample of 80 students (66.3% girls) aged between 15 and 17 with an average age of 16.1 (SD = 70), and an indirect sample of 338 agricultural workers (57.20% men) aged between 17 and 61, with an average age of 26.9 (SD = 11.12). Our results showed that the PBL is an adequate tool to teach content situated in the population's needs and be adequate to educate rural populations informally. This pedagogical strategy can improve the environmental awareness of the students through their participation in the community. Educational and socio-community implications are discussed

Importance and possibilities of development of critical thinking in the university: the teacher's perspective

In our globalised, pluralistic, and often information-swamped society, critical thinking is recognised as an important competence to be developed in university education. In order to investigate this, 142 Latin American and Spanish teachers were asked about the importance of and potential for developing critical thinking in university education. Their responses were subjected to an inductive analysis, which lead to 13 categories about the reasons why it is important, and 11 categories about the potential and limitations for developing it in university education. These categories were found to remain statistically unchanged regardless of age, years of teaching experience, area of knowledge, gender and geographical area. Results show that teachers consider important to teach critical thinking at university and mainly for students to become good professionals in a complex world. Teachers believe it is possible to teach it, as long as active methodologies are used, in addition to other reasons, such as taking into account the lack of interest and preparation about critical thinking that students bring to university. Getting to know university teacher´s views about the importance and possibilities of teaching and learning critical thinking is crucial for the establishment of meaningful curriculum plans and learning activities for its development.