Critical Pedagogy: a teacher's companion

Critical pedagogy is a transformative approach to education, moving beyond a simple transmission model of teaching where the teacher imparts predetermined knowledge to students. This participatory and empowering pedagogy can ensure classrooms become places of opportunity. Students are encouraged to critique their world and develop the essential attributes needed to become consciously aware, politically knowledgeable and socially responsible.

Critical Pedagogy: a teacher's companion provides a refreshing perspective on English secondary education and discusses why critical pedagogy is more essential than ever for our marginalised and oppressed students. Realistic, pragmatic and sensitive suggestions enable the school leader and classroom teacher to consider critical pedagogy as an ongoing responsive, moral and political endeavour to fight social injustice. This book is a must-read for all those who value education as the practice of freedom and emancipation.

Tait Coles has been teaching science for 20 years. In that time he has had the privilege of learning with, and from, hundreds of young people, many of whom would be classed as having a social or economic disadvantage. Tait is currently a deputy headteacher at a school in Bradford. He has experience of leading on teaching and learning, curriculum and assessment, quality assurance, behaviour and attitudes, as well as initial teacher education.

Tait has been described as 'a classroom maverick and a respected radical of modern teaching' (Ian Gilbert, Independent Thinking, 2014). He works relentlessly to ensure that every student achieves or exceeds their academic potential, but he knows that education is much more than this. Tait has seen first-hand the influence that critical pedagogy has had on his students, enabling them to develop a sustained social awareness and a critical consciousness.