Towards a critical pedagogy: an action research investigation into democratic practices in a primary school classroom

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of a primary school teacher researching her classroom practice within the broader struggle for a People's Education for People's Power. The specific aim of the project was to investigate how a primary school teacher could go about her work in a more democratic search method used in the study was that of action research, and the empirical basis for argument in the dissertation lies in the use of data created during the process of researching that classroom practice. A fundamental assumption of the study is that teachers are the central driving force in any meaningful development of a critical pedagogy. Teachers, acting as transformative. Intellectuals can work towards socialist transformation because viewing teachers as intellectuals redefine their work and the political nature of schooling. The study, therefore, takes the problematic relationship between authority and emancipation as central to its concerns and tries to develop a rationale for making an emancipatory view of authority, and thus a rationale for a particular notion of professionalism, a central category in the development of a critical theory of schooling.