On the Limits to Empowerment Through Critical Pedagogy and Feminist Pedagogy

Gore (2018) discusses the limitations associated with radical and feminist pedagogy through alternative classroom practices and the successful alternatives that are challenging to produce. Gore (2018) argues that the pedagogical/Instructional/classroom methods are not attached to the specific pedagogical methodologies. Ideally, conflating the teaching approaches only limits what can be done in terms of the techniques(Gore, 2018).Declaring that some approaches are not critical or not radical limits the wide range of specific instructional strategies available to the learners.

Radical pedagogy limits teachers’ empowerment even though the teachers are positioned as the conduits and sources of radical pedagogy hope (Gore, 2018).  For instance, critical and feminist pedagogies have attempted to limit teachers’ authority in the name of offering more democratic classrooms. The teachers have to ensure that all the students’ voices are heard through a more student-centered classroom than traditional classrooms. Therefore, for the teachers to accomplish these changes in the classroom teaching techniques and power relations, they have to step aside or back to join their students as equal partners in the shared or equal learning experience(Gore, 2018). The feminist and critical pedagogy have been limited in their capacity to change the schooling institution and society. They are also limited in what they can achieve when it comes to the empowerment of learning activities. Therefore, examining and acknowledging how these limitations are constructed or produced is a way of strengthening the radical pedagogy.

 

 

References

Gore, J. M. (2018). On the limits to empowerment through critical and feminist pedagogies. In Power/knowledge/pedagogy (pp. 271-288). Routledge.