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Disrupted order: Engaged critical pedagogy in context
Abstract
"Disrupted Order: Engaged Critical Pedagogy in Context" is about my struggles to enact Paulo Freire's pedagogical ideas and about the evolution of my thinking about teaching. It isn't easy to enact Freire's ideas within specific pedagogical contexts; there is no method that can be absorbed and then utilized in every situation. It isn't easy, either, to maintain a sense of hope and love when I encounter stumbling blocks, when I mis-step, when I falter. It's hard and it takes not only perseverance, but also the support of committed colleagues. I begin my exploration of what I have come to call engaged critical pedagogy with a description of Freire's pedagogical ideas and the original context in which they were written and enacted before moving to an account of how Freire's work has been appropriated by the critical pedagogy movement in North America, specifically theorists such as Henry Giroux, Ira Shor, and Peter McLaren. In critiquing that appropriation, I re-vision critical pedagogy as engaged critical pedagogy by taking another look at Freire's work, as well as that of Anne Berthoff and bell hooks. The dissertation then moves into specific pedagogical sites as I trace the evolution of my thinking about pedagogy and the complexities of implementing Freire's ideas in actual classroom situations. I look specifically at the place of reading in the composition classroom, the complexities of conferencing with students, teaching both subject and genre based courses, implementing computer technology in the classroom, and the place of aesthetics in the composition classroom. I examine the actualities of practice, or what actually happened when I attempted to implement my evolving theories of pedagogy. In all of these specific pedagogical instances it is necessary for me to be continually critical and self-reflective about my teaching; such a continual audit of my teaching is part of an engaged critical pedagogy which focuses on problem-posing, dialogue, and critically self-reflective questioning within specific contexts of teaching and learning.
Subject Area
Rhetoric|Composition|Educational theory|Language arts|Educational software
Recommended Citation
Jacobs, Dale Alan, "Disrupted order: Engaged critical pedagogy in context" (1997). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9736935.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9736935