Pedagogy, most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as an academic discipline, is the study of how knowledge and skills are imparted in an educational context, and it considers the interactions that take place during learning. Both the theory and practice of pedagogy vary greatly as they reflect different social, political, and cultural contexts.
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. His influential work Pedagogy of the Oppressed is generally considered one of the foundational texts of the critical pedagogy movement, and was the third most cited book in the social sciences as of 2016 according to Google Scholar.
Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture.
Michael W. Apple is an educational theorist specialized on education and power, cultural politics, curriculum theory and research, critical teaching, and the development of democratic schools.
Peter McLaren is a Canadian-American scholar and Emeritus Professor of Urban Education at the University of California, Los Angeles, having taught at UCLA from 1993 until 2013. Prior to that, he taught at Miami University of Ohio (1985-1993). Most recently, he served as a Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies at Attallah College of Educational Studies, Chapman University (2013-2023) until his retirement, where he was Co-Director of the Paulo Freire Democratic Project and International Ambassador for Global Ethics and Social Justice. He is the Honorary Director of the Center for Critical Studies in Education at Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China. According to Stanford University's database, McLaren belongs to the top 2% of the world’s most influential scientists.
Juha Suoranta is a Finnish social scientist, and public intellectual. He is currently professor in adult education at the University of Tampere. Previously he worked as professor of education at the University of Lapland (1997–2004), and Professor of Adult Education at the University of Joensuu (2004–2006). He is also adjunct professor in music education at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, and in media education at the University of Tampere. In sum he has published 38 books and umpteen scientific articles.
Wendy L. Brown is an American political theorist. She is the UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Previously, she was Class of 1936 First Professor of Political Science and a core faculty member in The Program for Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley.
Douglas Kellner is an American academic who works at the intersection of "third-generation" critical theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School, and in cultural studies in the tradition of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, or the "Birmingham School". He has argued that these two conflicting philosophies are in fact compatible. He is currently the George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
David Stanley Hill is a British Marxist politician, academic and educational activist. He is Research Professor (Emeritus) in Education at Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, England, and also visiting professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, and in the Social Policy Research Centre at Middlesex University, London. He was an elected Labour Party councillor for East Sussex County Council and Brighton Borough Council in the 1970s and 1980s and has been a candidate in thirteen local, national and European elections since 1972, most recently as Parliamentary Candidate in Hove and Portslade in the 2015 general election for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC). In Britain, he is currently a member of the Labour Left Alliance, the Socialist Labour Network, and the Campaign for a New Workers Party.
Peter Mayo is a professor, speaker, editor, writer, and former head of the Department of Arts, Open Communities and Adult Education at the University of Malta, in Malta. He is responsible for the UNESCO Chair in Global Adult Education at the same university. He formerly served as the university's head of the Department of Education Studies from 2008 to 2012. Mayo was a member of the Collegio Docenti for the doctoral research programme in Educational Sciences and Continuing Education at the Università degli Studi di Verona. He teaches in the areas of sociology of education and adult continuing education, as well as in comparative and international education and sociology in general. He was previously employed as a school teacher and later as Officer in Charge of Adult Education in the then Department of Education, Ministry of Education, Malta. Mayo has held visiting professorial appointments at multiple universities and was a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Education, University College London during 2014. He was previously a member of the Collegio Docenti for the international doctorate in intercultural sociology and education at the University of Messina and was the President of the Mediterranean Society of Comparative Education (MESCE) from 2008 to 2010. He was visiting professor at the Institute of Education, University College London
Shirley R. Steinberg is an educator, author, activist, filmmaker, and public speaker whose work focuses on critical pedagogy, transformative leadership, social justice, and cultural studies. She has written and edited numerous books and articles about equitable pedagogies and leadership, urban and youth culture, community studies, cultural studies, Islamophobia, and issues of inclusion, race, class, gender, and sexuality. Steinberg was the Research Chair of Critical Youth Studies at the University of Calgary for two terms, executive director of the Freire Project freireproject.org, and a visiting researcher at University of Barcelona and Murdoch University. She has held faculty positions at Montclair State University, Adelphi University, Brooklyn College, The CUNY Graduate Center, and McGill University. Steinberg directed the Institute for Youth and Community Research at the University of the West of Scotland for two years.
The Rouge Forum is an organization of educational activists, which focuses on issues of equality, democracy, and social justice.
Antonia Darder is a Puerto Rican and American scholar, artist, poet and activist. She holds the Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Leadership in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University. She also is Professor Emerita of Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Michael Adrian Peters is a New Zealand education academic. He is currently a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University and Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
Robin Truth Goodman is a professor of Literature at Florida State University. Trained as a comparatist and as a scholar in postcolonial studies, Goodman specializes in the issues of critical pedagogy, feminism, and postcolonial theory. A cult following has been developing around her second book, Strange Love: Or How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market, which was one of the earliest titles on the cultures of neoliberalism. One of her books, World, Class, Women was considered a "pathbreaking book" that "examines how theory and literature can be used to reclaim feminism, schooling, and economic justice as part of a broader effort in imagining a global democratic public sphere" by Henry A. Giroux, a leading scholar of education. Her recent work also includes a book on Post-September 11 US policies and another acclaimed book, Feminist Theory in Pursuit of the Public, on the need for feminist theory to reclaim the public sphere. She is also the author of Gender Work: Feminism After Neoliberalism.
Terry A. Osborn is an American academic who is Professor of Education at the University of South Florida and an authority in applied linguistics and interdisciplinary curriculum. He served twice as Interim Chancellor, Vice Chancellor of Academic and Student Affairs, and was previously Dean of the College of Education at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. Osborn taught public school for six years. He was on the faculties of Fordham University, Queens College of City University of New York and the University of Connecticut.
Jaafar Aksikas is a Moroccan-born American academic, activist, media personality and cultural critic. He is currently Professor of Cultural Studies and Media Studies at Columbia College Chicago, United States, where he teaches at the intersection of politics, media and culture. He is also President and CEO of the Institute for Global Media, Democracy and Culture. He was also President of the Cultural Studies Association (2014-2016). Jaafar Aksikas was educated both in Morocco and the USA and holds a Ph.D in Cultural Studies from George Mason University, USA and an MA in the Humanities from the prestigious Royal Al Akhawayn University, Morocco. His teaching, research and activism are at the intersection of media, politics, law and culture. His books and edited volumes include:
Self-managed social centers, also known as autonomous social centers, are self-organized community centers in which anti-authoritarians put on voluntary activities. These autonomous spaces, often in multi-purpose venues affiliated with anarchism, can include bicycle workshops, infoshops, libraries, free schools, meeting spaces, free stores and concert venues. They often become political actors in their own right.
Lisa Duggan is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Duggan was president of the American Studies Association from 2014 to 2015, presiding over the annual conference on the theme of "The Fun and the Fury: New Dialectics of Pleasure and Pain in the Post-American Century."
Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life is a nonfiction book about critical pedagogy by Henry Giroux. In the book Giroux analyzes and critiques various concepts of pedagogy, arguing that schools should not be subservient to the existing power structure but should instead be sites of struggle and exist in solidarity with the oppressed. He adopts the framework of citizenship education, defining citizenship as the struggle for empowerment.
