According to critical views, knowledge about the social world is created by people in a particular cultural and historical context. For example, think about how societal views of women in the workplace have shifted over time. What we used to know about women and work has thus shifted along with social and cultural norms. In critical pedagogy, we do not just deliver this type of knowledge about the social world as fact. Instead, we question, with learners, how that knowledge has come to be created and accepted as truth. To challenge the dominant way of viewing a social issue, we can, for example, present educational material (e.g. a video, a text) that presents alternative views of that same issue. By doing this in combination with dialogue, we can disrupt long-held assumptions that limit how we see and act, and in so doing, imagine different ways forward.

Please see Activity 3.