Abstract

Current educational policy promulgates what Freire has deemed the banking model of education in that it expects students to gain knowledge that can be measured through standardized tests. In critical pedagogy, though, we hope that our students will be active participants in learning and producers of knowledge. However, sparse empirical literature explores whether adolescents adopt new ways of speaking about learning and knowledge after immersion in a critical pedagogy. This study investigates through discourse analysis how high school students describe knowledge and learning after experiencing critical pedagogy across all of their classes in their ninth and tenth grade years. After notable features of the students’ discourse were identified, the discourse was sorted into McLaren’s (2007) three types of knowledge: technical, practical, and emancipatory/critical. Findings show that most students used the discourse of practical knowledge but fell short of the knowledge and learning characteristics that we might imagine students immersed in critical pedagogy would develop.

Keywords: critical pedagogy, knowledge, adolescents, discourse analysis

How to Cite:

Hurst, H., (2024) “What It Means to Know: Adolescents’ Discourses of Knowledge and Learning in Critical Pedagogy”, International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 13(1), 7–28.