Critical Pedagogy

Peter McLaren
Critical Pedagogy: A Look at the Major Concepts

In practice, critical pedagogy is as diverse as its many adherents, yet common themes and constructs run through many of their writings. In what follows, I will outline in more detail the major categories within this tradition..

A dialectical understanding of schooling permits us to see schools as sites of both domination and liberation; this runs counter to the over-deterministic orthodox Marxist view of schooling, which claims that schools simply reproduce class relations and passively indoctrinate students into becoming greedy young capitalists...
The concept of cultural capital, made popular by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, refers to the general cultural background, knowledge, disposition, and skills that are passed on from one generation to another.