Description
Critical consciousness is highly valued as a point of departure in educational efforts to effect social justice. Yet educational literature reveals a growing concern that critical pedagogy often fails to meet its objectives of social transformation towards greater justice and equality. In particular, the resistance of white teachers and students to forms of critical pedagogy is found to be problematic. This study employs a discourse analytic approach to explore the development of critical consciousness of white teachers who self-identify as critically conscious. This genealogical work suggests that contemporary discourses of critical consciousness and education reform in Canada re/produce colonial discourses and power relations between the dominant and normative white Anglo center, and marginalized racial and cultural Others. Lisa Comeau completed her PhD in the Faculty of Education, University of Regina, Canada, where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses in anti-racist education and women studies. Her work explores the systemic and discursive re/production of racial and cultural hierarchies within the Canadian multicultural framework, specifically within education.
