ANN B. VIBERT, JOHN P. PORTELLI, CAROLYN SHIELDS and LINDA LAROCQUE CRITICAL PRACTICE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS: VOICE, COMMUNITY, AND A CURRICULUM OF LIFE1

This paper examines the differences and similarities in approaches to community, voice and curriculum among three Canadian elementary schools with respect to their potential to enact central aspects of a critical pedagogy: to extend voice to students and community; foster participatory, democratic education; and to cultivate critical reflection. The three schools offer different conceptions and practices. In one, a deficit model of education seems to dominate; in the second, we found an individual growth model of education; and in the third, a critical practice model of education was the foundation for more democratic educational practices. We argue that not all change initiatives and approaches are equally valuable, and that the latter model provides a more profound and just educational experience for students. This paper examines the differences and similarities in approaches to community, voice and curriculum among three Canadian elementary schools regarding their potential to enact central aspects of a critical pedagogy: to extend voice to students and community; to foster participatory, democratic education; and to cultivate critical reflection (Apple & Beanne, 1995; Beyer, 1996; Goodman, 1992; McLaren, 1994; Simon, 1992). Understanding the philosophies underlying each school’s approach to student engagement permits a demonstration of the value of clearly articulated assumptions and criteria. Not all change initiatives or approaches are equally useful, and unless schools articulate their underlying value frameworks, reforms will tend to conform to the lowest common denominator. This paper grows out of research data collected in connection with a three-year pan-Canadian research project on student engagement in learning and school life2 in which the authors studied three elementary schools in different provinces.3 The schools had similarities and differences in student populations: all three were small (under 350 students); two were in urban centers, one in a suburb; two served communities where average incomes were low, one a more middle class community; one served an ethnically and culturally diverse population, two a predominantly (but not exclusively) Caucasian population. Journal of Educational Change 3: 93–116, 2002. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 94 ANN B. VIBERT ET AL. Within the confines of a paper in which predominant qualities of each school are selected in order to illustrate general approaches to pedagogy, much of the character of the school is necessarily omitted. It is impossible to capture all the complexities, tensions, and contradictions that characterize these schools and at the same time establish their general milieu in order to provide an analysis. While selection, brevity, and the necessities of argument tend to transform the schools into caricatures of themselves,4 such snapshots also have their place and purpose in providing an image we recognize. Our purpose is not to develop portraits of ‘real’ schools in all their messy vitality, but to provide an analysis of (and some cautions about) various forms of progressivism as they are sometimes embodied in practice. The examples depicted here are not intended to represent so much the actual schools upon which they are based as the types of schools to which they belong. While each of these schools would claim that it takes curriculum, voice, and community seriously by enacting a curriculum that is rooted in the life of the students, the schools have different conceptions and purposes that frame their understanding of the major concepts in question, and their practices take different and, at times conflicting, forms. In the first school, these concepts are largely derived from a ‘deficit model of education’ (Valencia, 1997); in the second school they are conceived from an ‘individual growth model of education’; in the third case, from a ‘critical practice model of education’ that provides a more profound and just educational experience for the students. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES Our analysis is guided by an understanding of critical pedagogy very much grounded in the ‘dailyness’ of practice in these three sample elementary schools. Competing versions of critical pedagogy – Marxist, feminist and post-structuralist – offer different social analyses and different implications for educational practice. Nonetheless, within the arena of public school pedagogy the commonalities of tenet and processes among these different versions assume more significance than their finer distinctions. The following (partial) descriptions of critical pedagogy illustrate the central tenets which influence our analysis. Kelly (1997) articulates the methodological assumptions upon which our analysis rests: Critical [pedagogy] is a [pedagogy] of social transformation in which the ideological foundations of knowledge, culture, schooling, and identity-making are recognized as CRITICAL PRACTICE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS 95 unavoidably political . Its curriculum is the everyday world . its pedagogy is situated, interrogative, and counter-hegemonic. (p. 10) Simon (1992) describes the social and political ends toward which we see a critical pedagogy working: . critical pedagogy is centrally concerned with the moral and analytical task of assessing whether specific social forms encourage and make possible the realization of differentiated capacities . critical pedagogical practice is concerned with the educational and political tasks of constructing new forms that would expand the available range of social identities and possibilities. (p. 123) McLaren (1995), meanwhile, characterizes a broader project of critical pedagogy, highlighting the importance of recognizing, questioning, and transforming the politics of everyday life in the classroom and the culture. Critical pedagogy commits educators to take seriously a number of concerns: the democratic purposes of schooling; the inevitability of the political dimensions of education and teaching; the importance of dealing explicitly with issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and all embodiments of social difference as a concern for social justice; the centrality of the notion of ‘praxis’ (Freire, 1998); and the inter-connectedness of voice, community, and curriculum. Hence, the salient question we are asking of the data is to what extent and in what ways do these schools exemplify the possibilities of a critical pedagogy in practice.