How Do Teachers Listen to Children’s Voices in Critical Pedagogy?: An Analysis of Mary Cowhey’s Descriptions of Educational Practice

Abstract

This paper attempts to show how critical educators hear “students’ voices” by examining the first-person narrative of Mary Cowhey’s multicultural education. The findings of this study indicate that Cowhey is responsive to the children’s negative reaction and she criticizes her customs and values continuously. Her practice enables her students to make their voices (internally persuasive discourse). In addition to that, students’ voices which are not dependent on her, are expressed independently in her first-person narrative. Moreover, she avoids essentialism by not considering her students’ voices in connection with their identities directly. Finally, there is a dialogue without her intervention between her students in her narrative on educational practice. Such dialogue can be an opportunity to understand children’s feelings of alienation or being suppressed that teachers can’t recognize. Also, the dialogue can show another model of emancipation that is different from the social change model on critical pedagogy.