An instructional theory is "a theory that offers explicit guidance on how to better help people learn and develop." It provides insights about what is likely to happen and why with respect to different kinds of teaching and learning activities while helping indicate approaches for their evaluation. Instructional designers focus on how to best structure material and instructional behavior to facilitate learning.
The philosophy of education is the branch of applied philosophy that investigates the nature of education as well as its aims and problems. It includes the examination of educational theories, the presuppositions present in them, and the arguments for and against them. It is an interdisciplinary field that draws inspiration from various disciplines both within and outside philosophy, like ethics, political philosophy, psychology, and sociology. These connections are also reflected in the significant and wide-ranging influence the philosophy of education has had on other disciplines. Many of its theories focus specifically on education in schools but it also encompasses other forms of education. Its theories are often divided into descriptive and normative theories. Descriptive theories provide a value-neutral account of what education is and how to understand its fundamental concepts, in contrast to normative theories, which investigate how education should be practiced or what is the right form of education.
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.
Experiential education is a philosophy of education that describes the process that occurs between a teacher and student that infuses direct experience with the learning environment and content. The term is not interchangeable with experiential learning; however experiential learning is a sub-field and operates under the methodologies of experiential education. The Association for Experiential Education regards experiential education as "a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people's capacity to contribute to their communities". Experiential education is the term for the philosophy and educational progressivism is the movement which it informed.
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.
Critical literacy is the ability to find embedded discrimination in media. This is done by analyzing the messages promoting prejudiced power relationships found naturally in media and written material that go unnoticed otherwise by reading beyond the author's words and examining the manner in which the author has conveyed his or her ideas about society's norms to determine whether these ideas contain racial or gender inequality.
Critical consciousness, conscientization, or conscientização in Portuguese, is a popular education and social concept developed by Brazilian pedagogue and educational theorist Paulo Freire, grounded in post-Marxist critical theory. Critical consciousness focuses on achieving an in-depth understanding of the world, allowing for the perception and exposure of social and political contradictions. Critical consciousness also includes taking action against the oppressive elements in one's life that are illuminated by that understanding.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a book by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, written in Portuguese in 1967–68, but published first in English, in a translation by Myra Bergman Ramos, in 1970. Later that year a Spanish translation was published. The version in Portuguese was published in 1972 in Portugal, and finally appeared in Brazil in 1974. The book is considered one of the foundational texts of critical pedagogy, and proposes a pedagogy with a new relationship between teacher, student, and society.
Anti-oppressive education encompasses multiple approaches to learning that actively challenge forms of oppression.
Joe Lyons Kincheloe was a professor and Canada Research Chair at the Faculty of Education, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and founder of The Paulo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy. He wrote more than 45 books, numerous book chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including critical pedagogy, educational research, urban studies, cognition, curriculum, and cultural studies. Kincheloe received three graduate degrees from the University of Tennessee. The father of four children, he worked closely for the last 19 years of his life with his partner, Shirley R. Steinberg.
Education sciences or education theory seek to describe, understand, and prescribe education policy and practice. Education sciences include many topics, such as pedagogy, andragogy, curriculum, learning, and education policy, organization and leadership. Educational thought is informed by many disciplines, such as history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology.
The ecopedagogy movement is an outgrowth of the theory and practice of critical pedagogy, a body of educational praxis influenced by the philosopher and educator Paulo Freire. Ecopedagogy's mission is to develop a robust appreciation for the collective potentials of humanity and to foster social justice throughout the world. It does so as part of a future-oriented, ecological and political vision that radically opposes the globalization of ideologies such as neoliberalism and imperialism, while also attempting to foment forms of critical ecoliteracy. Recently, there have been attempts to integrate critical eco-pedagogy, as defined by Greg Misiaszek with Modern Stoic philosophy to create Stoic eco-pedagogy.
Dialogic learning is learning that takes place through dialogue. It is typically the result of egalitarian dialogue; in other words, the consequence of a dialogue in which different people provide arguments based on validity claims and not on power claims.
Shirley R. Steinberg is an educator, author, activist,filmmaker, and public speaker whose work focuses on critical pedagogy, social justice, and cultural studies. She has written and edited numerous books and articles about critical pedagogy, urban and youth culture, community studies, cultural studies, Islamophobia, and issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Steinberg is the Research Chair of Critical Youth Studies at the University of Calgary, 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.
Problem-posing education, coined by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his 1970 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, is a method of teaching that emphasizes critical thinking for the purpose of liberation. Freire used problem posing as an alternative to the banking model of education.
James David Kirylo is professor of education at the University of South Carolina who teaches courses that examine concepts associated with critical pedagogy, curriculum theorizing, teacher leadership, diversity and literacy. Among other books, he is author of Teaching with Purpose: An Inquiry into the Who, Why, and How We Teach, A Turning Point in Teacher Education: A Time for Resistance, Reflection and Change, and Paulo Freire: The Man from Recife, which is one of the most comprehensive texts in English on the life and thought of Paulo Freire, significantly contributing to Freirean scholarship.
Feminist pedagogy is a pedagogical framework grounded in feminist theory. It embraces a set of epistemological theories, teaching strategies, approaches to content, classroom practices, and teacher-student relationships. Feminist pedagogy, along with other kinds of progressive and critical pedagogy, considers knowledge to be socially constructed.
Living educational theory (LET) is a research method in educational research.
Critical mathematics pedagogy is an approach to mathematics education that includes a practical and philosophical commitment to liberation. Approaches that involve critical mathematics pedagogy give special attention to the social, political, cultural and economic contexts of oppression, as they can be understood through mathematics. They also analyze the role that mathematics plays in producing and maintaining potentially oppressive social, political, cultural or economic structures. Finally, critical mathematics pedagogy demands that critique is connected to action promoting more just and equitable social, political or economic reform.
