Keeping A ‘Vigilant Critique’: Unpacking Critical Praxis As Teacher Educators
Source: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume 24, Issue 3, 2011, pages 363-378.
This article explains the authors' involvement in an urban in‐district master’s program with a mission that included developing a ‘critical praxis’ for all participants.
The authors claim that their students challenged them to rethink their stance as ‘critical educators’ when they resisted the readings written by teacher researchers.
This resistance required the authors to question whether their pedagogy was honoring their experiences as well as inviting the collaborative generation of knowledge that they professed to encourage.
Drawing the methodology from Freire’s notion of ‘generative words’ and Bakhtin’s notion of ‘writing the self into the text’, this article analyzes artifacts collected from the authors' teaching over several cycles using critical discourse analysis.
This analysis reminds teacher educators to remain ‘vigilant’.
That is, not to ignore difference but to look carefully for often hidden opportunities offered for deeper learning when multiple perspectives come into contact.