ABSTRACT
At this first level, reflection entails only the appropriate selection and use of instructional strategies and the like in the classroom. The second level involves reflection about the assumptions underlying specific classroom practices, as well as about the consequences of particular strategies, curricula, and so on … Finally, the third level of reflectivity (sometimes called critical reflection) entails the questioning of moral,
ethical, and other types of normative criteria related directly and indirectly to the classroom. (p. 22)
Critical reflection, as discussed in chapter 2, thus becomes prerequisite to the critical pedagogy that we are advocating here. Teachers who cannot reflect critically possess little hope of providing their students meaningful opportunities to reflect on the issues of language diversity and critical language awareness. In short, criticisms that critical pedagogy is not applicable to the real world of the classroom teacher, go far beyond a simple lack of understanding about critical pedagogy. Those who doubt the practicality of using critical pedagogy in teaching are also extremely likely to have an overly constrained understanding of the profession of teaching. Simply put, teaching is much more than the conveyance of material to be memorized and regurgitated. It is, as well, an art and science of engaging students intellectually and emotionally in their understanding of the world. Superficial conceptualizations of teaching (and, indeed, of learning) in fact place at risk many of the promising trends in contemporary educational practice in the United States:
For we are beginning to recognize again that teaching is a fundamentally moral enterprise. How we treat children who are different, how we deal with antisocial behavior, and how we decide what is to be taught are all essentially moral decisions. As moral agents, teachers must have enough control of their teaching to ensure that they cannot be forced to act against the interests of their students. (Irwin, 1996, p. 114)
Most experienced teachers will relate that in fact they cannot be forced to act against what they consider to be the best interests of themselves, the community, or the students, as their own priorities would dictate. Teachers typically refer to the adage that “when that classroom door closes,” and proclaim their own veto power over any mandate, curricular, legal, administrative, or otherwise.1 Only challenges of moral or professional impropriety wield power to dissuade a teacher from exercising her or his own form of academic freedom. We contend that this power, when practiced, represents curricular nullification, and an awareness of its principles and practices can become part and parcel of any teacher education program desiring to move teachers from those who simply understand what is transpiring in relation to the sociological nature of schooling, to those who have the power to change it. As Wink (1997) argued in regard to transformative models of lesson design:
The fundamental belief that drives these classroom behaviors is that we must act; we must relate our teaching and learning to real life; we must connect our teaching and learning with our communities; we always try to learn and teach so that we grow and so that students’lives are improved, or for self and social transformation … This new approach to teaching and learning challenges teachers to have complex pedagogical skills. (p. 118)
Language teaching is a political act. There is no escaping the veracity of this maxim, even if we shroud curriculum in the illusion of neutrality or attempt to convince teachers that they are engineers of instruction following the architecture of such curricula. Teaching by its very nature is a form of social activism. Curricular nullification can be a tool of empowerment with immense socially transformative potential.
