Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change

Ira Shor is a pioneer in the field of critical education who for over twenty years has been experimenting with learning methods. His work creatively adapts the ideas of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire for North American classrooms. In Empowering Education Shor offers a comprehensive theory and practice for critical pedagogy.

For Shor, empowering education is a student-centered, critical and democratic pedagogy for studying any subject matter and for self and social change. It takes shape as a dialogue in which teachers and students mutually investigate everyday themes, social issues, and academic knowledge. Through dialogue and problem-posing, students become active agents of their learning. This book shows how students can develop as critical thinkers, inspired learners, skilled workers, and involved citizens.

Shor carefully analyzes obstacles to and resources for empowering education, suggesting ways for teachers to transform traditional approaches into critical and democratic ones. He offers many examples and applications for the elementary grades through college and adult education.

• Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (Harvest in Translation)
• Students on the Margins: Education, Stories, Dignity (SUNY series, Urban Voices, Urban Visions)
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th Anniversary Edition
• Teaching Toward Freedom: Moral Commitment and Ethical Action in the Classroom
• The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools
• To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey
• Decolonizing Educational Research: From Ownership to Answerability (Series in Critical Narrative)
• Educating for Redemptive Community: Essays in Honor of Jack Seymour and Margaret Ann Crain
• Deschooling Society (Open Forum S)
• Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education (Multicultural Education Series)