Critical Pedagogy: The Struggle and the Community

A few years ago, when having breakfast with a former instructor (now friend), I told her with excitement that I had stumbled across the concept of critical pedagogy.  After 20 years of unknowingly serving as a critical pedagogue, I was super elated to learn there were other educators out there with a similar passion and commitment for asking tough questions about the location of power within practice. Only being in contact with other critical pedagogues by the literature, I thought I had finally found my educational community.

But, as I have come to meet other critical pedagogues through Twitter, I have found myself wrestling and questioning this new sense of community.  It is this wrestling and the apparent shared struggle of aloneness that drew me to Paul Thomas’s piece about “The Other.”

The year I returned to pursue a doctorate, my first book was published.  In this book…