Critical Didactics: characteristics and objectives

An approach that consists of developing students capable of thinking for themselves.

Critical didactics, or critical pedagogy, is a philosophy and a social movement that applies concepts of critical theory to the teaching-learning process.is a philosophy and a social movement that applies concepts of critical theory to the teaching-learning process. Being a philosophy, it offers a series of theoretical perspectives that problematize both the contents and the purposes of pedagogy. Likewise, being a social movement, it problematizes the very act of educating and promotes itself as an inherently political perspective.

In this article we will see what critical didactics is and how it has transformed educational models and practices.

Critical didactics: from education to consciousness

Critical pedagogy is a theoretical-practical proposal that has been developed to reformulate the traditional notions and practices of education. Among other things, it proposes that the teaching-learning process is a tool that can foster critical consciousnessand with this, the emancipation of oppressed people.

Critical pedagogy is the theoretical basis of educational practice; and didactics, for its part, is the discipline in which this basis is concretized. In other words, didactics is directly visible in the classroom and in the contents that are taught, while pedagogy functions as the theoretical basis of educational practice.while pedagogy functions as the ideological underpinning (Ramírez, 2008). Both processes, theoretical and practical, are understood from this perspective as one and the same process, so that their characteristics are usually encompassed in the same way under the terms "critical didactics" or "critical pedagogy".

Its theoretical basis

At the epistemological level, critical didactics starts from the consideration that all knowledge is mediated by the categories of understanding (Rojo, ), which means that it is neither neutral nor immediate; its production is included in the context and not outside of it. Insofar as the educational act is fundamentally an act of knowledge, critical didactics takes into consideration its consequences and political elements. takes into consideration its consequences and political elements..

The latter also requires thinking that the school of modernity is not a creation that transcends history, but is linked to the origins and development of a specific type of society and state (Cuesta, Mainer, Mateos, et al, 2005); thus, it fulfills functions that it is important to make visible and problematize.

This includes both the school contents and the emphasis on the subjects taught, as well as the pedagogical strategies and the relationships between teachers and students. It specifically promotes a dialogic relationship, where an egalitarian dialogue is established, strongly focused on the needs of the students. in an egalitarian dialogue strongly centered on the needs of the students and not only the teacher's.

It also considers the effects that teaching practices can have on students, especially those who have historically been left on the margins of traditional education.

Paulo Freire: forerunner of critical pedagogy

At the end of the 20th century, the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire developed a pedagogical philosophy in which he defended that education is a tool that should be used to free people from poverty and poverty. must be used to free people from oppression.. Through it, it is possible to create critical awareness in people and to generate emancipatory practices that are fundamentally communitarian.

Freire was about empowering students in the ability to think critically about their own situation as learners; as well as contextualize that situation in a concrete society.. What he sought was to establish connections between individual experiences and the social contexts in which they were generated. Both his theory of the pedagogy of the oppressed and his model of community education represent much of the basis of critical didactics.

6 theoretical assumptions of critical pedagogy and didactics

According to Ramírez (2008) there are six assumptions that must be considered in order to describe and understand critical pedagogy. The same author explains that the following assumptions refer both to the theoretical underpinning of critical didactics and to the educational activities that are generated from them.

1. Promoting social participation

Following the community education modelcritical didactics promotes social participation, beyond the school context. It includes the strengthening of democratic thinking that allows to recognize problems and alternative solutions together.

2. Horizontal communication

It is about promoting equality of conditions between the will of the different subjects involved in the teaching-learning process. This dissolves the hierarchical relationship and a process of "unlearning", "learning" and "relearning" is established, which also influences the subsequent "reflection" and "evaluation".

One of the examples of didactic strategies in particular, and within the context of the classroom, are the debates and consensus that are applied both in thinking about specific social problems and in the structuring of curricula.

3. Historical reconstruction

Historical reconstruction is a practice that allows us to understand the process by which pedagogy has been established as such, and to consider its scope and limitations. and the limitations of the educational process itself, in relation to political and communicative changes.in relation to political and communicative changes.

4. Humanizing educational processes

It refers to the stimulation of intellectual abilities, but at the same time it refers to sharpening the sensory apparatus. It is about creating the necessary conditions to generate self-governance and collective actions; as well as a critical awareness of the institutions or structures that generate oppression.

It recognizes the need to place the subject in the framework of social circumstances, where education is not only a synonym of "instruction", but a powerful mechanism of analysis, reflection and discernment, both of one's own attitudes and behaviors, as well as of politics, ideology and society.

5. Contextualizing the educational process

It is based on the principle of educating for life in community, looking for signs of collective identity that cultural crises and values based on segregation and exclusion. and exclusion. In this way, the school is recognized as a scenario of criticism and questioning of hegemonic models.

6. Transforming social reality

All of the above has consequences at the micro-political level, not only within the classroom. The school is understood as a space and a dynamic that gathers social problems, which makes it possible to propose concrete ways to find solutions.

Bibliographical references:

• Rojas, A. (2009). The critical didactics, criticizes the critical banking education. Integra Educativa, 4(2): 93-108.
• Ramírez, R. (2008). Critical pedagogy. An ethical way to generate educational processes. Folios (28): 108-119.
• Cuesta, R., Mainer, J., Mateos, J. et al. (2005) Critical Didactics. Allí donde se encuentran la necesidad y el deseo. Con-ciencia Social. 17-54.