Open-ended and unresolved: Criticality as a practice and a process

Abstract

How to understand educational critique and how to best promote it in educational contexts is subject to continued debate. In a seminal article, Burbules and Berk describe how the disputes between proponents of ‘critical thinking’, ‘critical pedagogy’, and various later notions of ‘critique’ often focus on highlighting the foundational inadequacies of other approaches. This may suggest that different critical traditions are mutually exclusive to the point that productive interaction is precluded. To avoid this, we take cue from and elaborate on Burbules and Berk’s sketch of criticality as a practice, rather than a mere intellectual and theoretical task. We propose that understanding criticality as an ongoing practice and as an experienced process helps bring together some of the key components of the different traditions. To incorporate practitioners of different traditions also in making our argument, we connect the ideas of Gilles Deleuze from French poststructuralism and John Dewey from the pragmatist tradition. We argue that there is a common set of problems in the practice of criticality that touches all traditions, but which they have sought to address with different emphases.