A Critical Analysis from
Contextual Perspective
Li-chin (Crystal) Huang

What are these?

• A collaborative project
from CI 8131 - Critical Examination of Curriculum in Context.
Instructor- Dr. Tim Lensmire
• A analysis from the critical and
contextual perspectives
on a movie – The Freedom Writers, which was a true story
based on The Freedom Writers Diary - a collecting writings by
a group of labeled as rough, racial and ethnic diverse with
high-risk teenagers. They were dubbed by administrators as
"unreachable” students. in Room 203 at Woodrow Wilson High
School in Long Beach, California, 1994.
• Erin Gruwell
was this inspiring educator whose perseverance and dynamic
pedagogy transformed the adversities into hope and success.

The familiar patterns of
schooling to which we have
all been exposed are often the
learning of stereotypes manifested
in the various binary forms of the
socially constructed ideologies.
Both teaching and leaning are about the
new that comes about from
challenging, deconstructing, o
r decoding those repeatedly
“redistributed” languages, in
other words, the needs of the creation
of the cutting edge. - Davies, 1993

• Conceptualized as knowledge
that enabled human beings to
emancipate themselves from
forms of domination through
self-reflection and took
psychoanalysis as the paradigm
of critical knowledge.
Note: From Jurgen Habamas of the Frankfurt School in the late
1960s.Frankfurt In the late 1960s.

• Addressed the construction of
knowledge and relations of power
structures within the interplaying
contexts of social (in particular, the
intersection of race, gender, social
class), historical, and political
spheres in the educational setting.

Macro Level:
The External Environment
1. Racial issues imbedded in culture and history
2. After the Rodney King riot era
3. Racial and ethnic segregation and integration
problems in school districts
4. Intersection of social class and
race/ethnicity
Meso Level:
The Internal Power Structure
1. Teachers and Administrators
2. Senior instructors vs. junior and new teachers
3. Racial/ethnic segregation and integration
problems in school districts
4. Limited resources and funding
Micro level:
The Classroom Dynamics
The interaction b/w
Instructor’s unconventional
Pedagogies carrying specific content knowledge
to engage with students

• Racial issues imbedded in culture
and history
• After the Rodney King riot era
• Racial and ethnic segregation and
integration problems in school districts
• The intersection of social class and
race/ethnicity

The unbreakable iron curtain of power
structures/hierarchy challenged a young,
inexperienced student teacher:
• Teachers vs. Administrators
• Senior instructors vs. junior and new teachers
• Racial/ethnic segregation vs. integration
problems in school districts
• Limited resources vs. funding
• Honor students vs.
“unteachable, at risk” students.

Gruwell enabled her students to reread and
rediscover their lives via trust and sharing, in
particular, the timing journal writing strategy.
The sources of the classroom dynamics consist
of the following components:
1. The teacher imbues with passion, caring, and
construction the trustful teaching and learning
environment through unconventional curricula and
pedagogy.
2. Guide students to re-read, rediscover students’ own
lives.
3. Empower student to reroute the deemed pre-destined
predicaments into strength and actions

•Erin Gruwell’s endeavors as a
social change agent suggests that curricular
and pedagogical reform retails the courage
to teach and to address the complexities of
anti-oppressive education.
•Individual endeavors and system
scaffolding are the two keys components
to facilitate teaching and learning journey.

“There are no
un-teachable students.
They just learn in
different time and in
different ways”.

“Only what is comforting
goes hand in hand with a
resistance to learning what is
discomforting, and this
resistance often proves to be
a formidable barrier to
movement toward social
justice…”
- Kumashiro (2002).