Dialogic Pedagogy

Eugene Matusov and Samanta Lopez, University of Delaware

Based on reading literature, watching videos of CRP practices, and discussions of CRP with our students and colleagues, so far we have come across the following diverse understanding and conceptualization of CRP:

1. Exploitative CRP: Teaching prescribed school curricula by exploiting the students’ cultural backgrounds and ontological issues (e.g., see the beginning of the movie “Freedom Writers”);

Exploitative CRP in “Freedom Writers” movie

	Prescribed, preset curricula: Conventional grammar, cultural cannon of classic Greek tragedy “Odyssey” by Homer Students’ culture is imagined and exploited by the teacher (stereotypes of community, cultural tokens): Ebonics, race, “bad neiborghoods”, “lousy enviornment”, “police on the streets”.

2. Missionary CRP: Using the students’ cultural background and ontology to make them arrive at a preset social justice vision (e.g., Paulo Freire, Vivian Paley, Pedagogy of Oppressed);
3. Epistemological CRP: Focusing and having genuine interest in the students’ cultural background and ontology to help them examine life and world without necessarily engaging them in action
4. Therapeutic authorial CRP: Focusing and having genuine interest in the students’ cultural background and ontology to help them deal and sooth their issues and pains through their actions (e.g., an extreme case of shown in the German movie “The wave”);

5. Critical authorial CRP: Focusing and having genuine interest in the students’ cultural background and ontology to help them critically examine life and world in a critical dialogue and form necessarily actions (e.g., the second part of the movie “Freedom Writers”, movie “Teachers”);

6. Others?