A Pedagogy for Critical Citizenship

Abstract

This paper will respond to the concerns, and challenges as to how “liberal learning” and the “humanities” can be mobilised in management and business studies. It will draw its central thesis from the transformative pedagogy of Paulo Freire to place it within the context of the economic, cultural, social, political, ecological, and ethical issues and crisis that confronts higher educators and students in today’s higher education institutions. It will first address the need for a critical pedagogy for a critical citizenship curriculum, before turning its attentions of doing critical citizenship where scenarios taken from classroom are offered as a means of challenging the conventional wisdom that students hold within their bounded curriculums, and the pedagogical practices of higher education teachers. Central to this learning approach is the concept of conscientization, the bringing into being of critical consciousness, as teachers and students work tougher in their heightened awareness of their situated reality, and in the co-creating of knowledge, this being essential to understanding the territory and essence of critical citizenship management education. It will conclude by arguing that the beginnings of the critical turn for a critical citizenship education is rooted in a critical pedagogy, founded upon the dialogical process, and the reflexive turn, these being central to the pursuit of individual liberty and freedom in the education process.