Critical pedagogy emerged in the 1960s and 1970s out of the social movements which shaped the face of the western world in the last half of the 20th century.  With the shift in power structures that came with the success of the civil rights movement and the women's' movement, many scholars and educators started to wonder how those power structures at work within classrooms both echoed and reinforced a social structure which traditionally privileged white middle class men.

Several types of critical pedagogy developed , from bell hooks' 'revolutionary feminist pedagogy' to Paulo Freire's 'pedagogy of the oppressed'.  What all variations on this theme have in common is a focus on the shift in power from teacher to teacher and student together, especially in terms of:

  • who makes the decisions about what and how to learn
  • who does the talking
  • who takes the responsibility for learning
  • who assesses learning and how

Much of what we think of as underpinning '21st Century Learning' has its origins in critical pedagogy.  Student-centered learning, the negotiated curriculum, the differentiated curriculum and many more elements of 'cutting edge education' have their origins in critical pedagogy.
Critical Pedagogy Reading List
The Paulo Freire Institute
Lisa Delpit - Power and Pedagogy in Educating other Peoples' Children
Michael Apple & James Bean - Democratic Schools
Garth Boomer - The Negotiated Curriculum

The central tenets of critical pedagogy are about maximising student agency and decision making while at the same time harnessing the subject-related expertise and 'learning know-how' of the teacher.  Critical pedagogy is about education for social justice and the creation of a more just an democratic society, and modelling of those principles in the classroom.

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