英语论文网

eneral, critical pedagogy4 has been described as an approach to teaching that, through a focus on students' interests and identities, attempts to move away from teacher- and text-centered curricula. By drawing subject matter from students' own lives, language, and cultures, a critical reading of dominant sociopolitical constructs is included and situated within students' experiences to provide a sociohistorical context from which to envision and enact social change (Friere, 1970; Giroux, 1992; hooks, 1994; McLaren, 1997; 1998; Shor, 1997). In short, critical pedagogy aims at developing students' critical consciousness. Even though the specific means engaged to do so vary among pedagogues in this area, affording a privileged status to student-centered dialogue is a familiar theme. The advantages of critical dialogue in the classroom have been a focal point in recent Educational theory and research and much has been written explicating the transformative potential of including a student-centered dialogic aspect in critical approaches to teaching (Arnett, 1993; Boler, 1997; Conle, 1997; Friere, 1987, 1997; hooks 1994; McHenry, 1997; Popkewitz, 1997; Schutz, 1998). These scholars point to the constitutive aspects of dialogue as the primary means for helping students develop an awareness of their agency in affecting change in oppressive circumstances. Performing as critically thinking and speaking subjects in the classroom provides, for students, the basis for performing as citizen-critics outside it, as well (Giroux, 1992). Scholars have addressed how dialogue can offer students an opportunity to rehearse social criticism (Andrews, 1989; Foss, 1989; Fry, 1986), how sociocultural and identity issues can be treated during dialogic processes (Braithwaite, 1997; Kidd, 1989; Strine, 1993), and how issues related to gender and sexual orientation can be critically engaged when dialogue is student-centered (Campbell, 1991; Jenefsky, 1996; Wood & Lenze, 1991; Yep, 1998). It seems clear from these accounts that students benefit when they are offered opportunities to engage in critical dialogue with peers. While acknowledging the value of a student-centered approach to dialogic pedagogy, an equal acknowledgement of the contingencies of institutional, sociopolitical, and ideological constraints must be considered alongside the aims of a critical approach to teaching (Boyd, 1999; Burbules, 2000; Gur-ze'ev, 1998; Lather, 1998)5 . One of those institutional limitations is class size, an aspect of classroom organization that is rarely, if ever, a part of the scholarly discussion of student-centered dialogue. It should go without saying that each classroom context is unique and each intrinsically possesses its own promise and potential; on the other hand, each also presents distinctive contextual challenges (Glenn, 1999b). This recognition of context contingency--specifically as it relates to the number of students in a particular class--is nonexistent in scholarship advocating a critical approach to teaching that utilizes learner-centered dialogue as the means to attain critical consciousness. Facilitating critical dialogue is not an easy task, even with a relatively small number of students; it is a complicated process--usually among one facilitator-teacher and many students—that requires constant communicative (re)negotiation (Glenn, 1999a). For those critical pedagogues who find themselves in the context of a large classroom, that communication process