Critical Pedagogy: An Exploration of Contemporary Themes and Issues

This accessible text provides a clear overview of the contemporary themes and challenges within critical pedagogy, and suggests a path towards a more conscientious world for all through education. Boronski encourages us to imagine radical alternatives to current approaches, not merely for ideological reasons, but due to increasing necessity for environmental and sociological perspectives. With case studies, discussion tasks and exemplars from global history woven throughout, each chapter considers a prominent societal and educational issue, tackling some difficult and unsettling areas. Embedded in this exploration is an understanding and application of key concepts, such as justice, equality, rights and power, and how these relate to a range of topics in UK schooling. These include the role of teachers in an age of hyper surveillance and performance monitoring, alternative approaches to education, and the growing fear of the ‘other’. Essential reading for Education Studies students at undergraduate and Master’s level, this comprehensive text will also be of interest to students of Social Policy, Sociology and Politics programmes.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: A Pedagogy for Change 2. Imagining an Alternative World 3. Alternative Ways of Being and Educating 4. Austerity in a Time of Spectacular Wealth 5. Decolonising the Curriculum and Society 6. Higher Education as a Site of Liberatory Practice 7. Schools and the Pursuit of Social Justice 8. Critical Pedagogy and Promoting Social Justice

About the Author :
Tomas Boronski is former Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for Education Studies at University of East London, UK. He has worked in education at all levels from Primary to Higher Education, and has authored publications on a range of topics within Education.

Review :
"Boronski's contribution to the evolving literature on critical pedagogy is both contemporary and challenging. Pedagogy for change becomes even more applicable during uncertain and unprecedented times. This is a key text for undergraduate and postgraduate students in education and the wider social and political sciences." - Dr. Richard Race, School of Education, Roehampton University, UK "Students of critical pedagogy – this book is a biblical gift! Boronski has carefully crafted a text that is accessible and sophisticated. The book does not shy away from telling it like it is. It takes you through a no-nonsense journey that is rich in diversity and originality, provoking you "to see the world from the perspective of the powerless" with a critical pedagogic lens. Impassioned, relevant, and essential for emerging critical scholars and activists – I couldn’t recommend it more." - Dr Alpesh Maisuria, Associate Professor of Education Policy in Critical Education UWE, UK "At a time when the world faces a global pandemic issues of inequality, oppression and injustice are urgent concerns of critical social theory and pedagogy. This comprehensive book not only defines the field of critical pedagogy, within its historical context. but also provides a contemporary account of emerging areas of social justice and decolonisation. It will inspire discussion and debate between students, and their lecturers, concerning the pressing issues of our time regarding the position of pedagogy in global struggles." - Professor John Preston, Department of Sociology, University of Essex, UK "In a world dominated by conflicts and pandemics, this book offers crucial ways of understanding how theories and practices justifying inequalities and oppression come to dominate. Through critical pedagogies the book offers new ways of thinking about how education at all levels could be reconstructed towards challenging current ideologies and policies and create the conditions for greater equality, social and economic justice. Alternative ways of educating and living are possible and societies can choose to live in more egalitarian ways." - Professor Sally Tomlinson "This is a timely and much needed intervention. Boronski has produced a fine book, that exemplifies many of the qualities of critical pedagogy that it examines; it is generous, wide-ranging and inclusive, using vivid examples from different parts of the globe, mobilising contemporary scholarship in the social sciences to offer a trenchant and persuasive vulnerable in societies. Yet, Boronski is sensitive and open to the possibilities and evocations of radical change and transformation inherent in the sociopolitical project of critical pedagogy, and the significance of human agency in forging more just and equitable societies. This is a highly readable account of what critical pedagogy, broadly construed, means today and what it has to offer us as a form of living and enacted theory of society." - Dr Ayo Mansaray, FRSA, Lecturer in Sociology of Education and Policy, Kings College London, UK