Critical pedagogy began during South African apartheid when teachers employed it to subvert the racist curriculum and encourage critical examination of social issues. It combines education with critical theory to help students develop consciousness, recognize authoritarianism, and take constructive action. Critical pedagogy involves relationships between teaching and learning through processes of unlearning, learning, and relearning. Problem-based learning is a student-centered approach where students learn through problem solving in groups, while the teacher facilitates the learning process. Reflective practice involves critically examining one's actions and theories to engage in continuous learning. Experiential learning is making meaning from direct experiences, and genuine learning requires willingness to engage, reflection, conceptualization skills, and decision making.

1. ST.THOMAS TRAINING COLLEGE
ST.THOMAS NAGAR, MUKKOLAKKAL
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
ASSIGNMENT
Prepaired by,
DEEPU.P.KRISHNAN
Optional : MATHEMATICS
Reg.No : 13386002

2. CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
History
During South African apartheid, legal racialization implemented by the regime drove members of
the radical leftist teachers league of South Africa to employ Critical pedagogy with a focus on non
racialism in cape town schools and prisons. Teachers collaborated loosely to subvert the racist curriculum
and encourage critical examination of religious, military, political, and social circumstances in terms of
spirit-friendly, humanist, and democratic, ideologies. The efforts of such teachers are credited with having
bolstered student resistance and activism.
Critical pedagogy
Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social l movements that combines education
with critical theory. First described by Paulo Freire, it has since been developed by Henry Giroux and
others as a praxis-oriented “educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students
develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and content connect knowledge to
power and the ability to take constructive action. Among its leading figures are Michael Apple, Bell
hooks, Joe .L. kincheloe, Peter Mclaren, Henry Giroux, and Patti Lather”.
Critical pedagogy Irashor defines Critical pedagogy as:
“Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first
impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional ciches, received wisdom, and mere
opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, Social context, ideology, and personal
consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy,
mass media, or discourse”.
Critical pedagogy includes relationships between teaching and learning. Its proponents claim that it is a
continuous process of what they call “un learning”, ”learning”, and ”re learning”, “reflection”,
“evaluation”, and the impact that these actions have on the students, in particular students whom they
believe have been historically and continue to be disenfranchised by what they call “traditional
schooling”.
Problem-based learning is a student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject
through the experience of problem solving. Students learn both thinking strategies and domain
knowledge. The PBL format orginated from the medical school of thought too. The goals of PBL are to
help the students develop flexible knowledge. Effective problem solving skills, self directed learning,
effective collaboration skills and intrinsic motivation. Problem-based learning is a style of active learning.

3. Working in groups, students identify what they already know, what
they need to know, and how and where to access new information that may lead to resolution of the
problem. The role of the instructor (known as the tutor in PBL) is to facilitate learning by supporting,
guiding and monitoring the learning process. The tutor must build students confidence to take on the
problem, and encourage the students, while also stretching their understanding. PBL represents a
paradigm shift from traditional teaching and learning philosophy, Which is move often lecture-based. The
constructs for teaching PBL are very different from traditional classroom/lecture teaching.
Reflective practice is the capacity to reflect on action so as to engage in a process of continuous
learning. According to one definition it involves” paying critical attention to the practical values and
theories which inform every day actions, by examining practice reflectively and reflexively. This leads to
developmental insight.
Reflective practice can be an important tool in practice-based
professional learning settings where individuals learning from their own professional experiences,
rather than from formal teaching or knowledge transfer, may be the most important source of personal
professional development and improvement. Further it is also an important way to be able to bring
together theory and practice; through reflection you are able to see and label schools of thought and
theory within the context of your work(2007, Mc Brien).What is important about reflection throughout
your practice is that you are not just looking back on past actions and events, but rather you are taking a
conscious look at the emotions, experiences, actions, and responses, and using that to add to your existing
knowledge base to draw out new knowledge, meaning and higher level of understanding(2013, Paterson,
Chapman).As such the notion has achieved wide take up, particularly in professional development for

4. practitioners in the area of education and healthcare. The question of how best to learn from experience
has wider relevance however, to any organizational learning environment. In particular, people in
leadership positions have a tremendous development opportunity if they engage in reflective practice.
Experiential learning is the process of making meaning from direct experience.ie, “learning from
experience”.
The experience can be staged or left open. Aristotle once said,” for the things we have to learn
before we can do them, we learn by doing them”. David. A .Kolb helped to popularize the idea of
experimental learning drawing heavily on the work of John Dewey, Kurt lewin, and Jean peaget. His
work on experiential learning has contributed greatly to expanding the philosophy of experiential
education.
Experiential learning can exist without a teacher and
relates sloley to the meaning making process of the individual’s direct experience. However, though the
gaining of knowledge is an inherent process that occurs naturally, for a genuine learning experience to
occur, there must exist certain elements. According to David .A. Kolb an American educational theorist,
knowledge is continuously gained through both personal and environmental experiences. He states that in
order to gain genuine knowledge from an experience, certain abilities are required:
 The learner must be willing to be actively involved in the experience.
 The learner must be able to reflect on the experience.
 The learner must possess and use analytical skills to conceptualize the experience: and
 The learner must possess decision making and problem solving skills in order to use the new
ideas gained from the experience.
References
1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective
2. www.heacademy.ac.uk/...../......