This dissertation researches how education can help maintain democracy by enhancing civil society. Civil society is a network of autonomous organizations that prevent state domination of society. Civil society requires the participation of critically-minded individuals in civic activities. This study suggests that critical pedagogy is a teaching practice that supports the development of a vibrant civil society because it emphasizes social critique, community, resistance, and civic engagement. Furthermore, social justice schools have the capacity to be civil society organizations that temper state power even though they are not autonomous from the government; schools can be the civil society of education by preventing state domination of this institution.; Using ethnographic field methods of participant observation and interview, this study analyzes three diverse secondary schools in California as they struggle to implement social justice pedagogics like critical pedagogy and social justice praxis. As defined in this study, social justice teaching praxis fosters critical consciousness, social responsibility, identity formation, and the questioning of power in society. Social justice praxis is the culmination of three dimensions of framing social justice issues in classroom interactions. When praxis is successful, power dynamics between the teacher and the student are transcended in favor of constructing intersubjective knowledge about social justice. Such knowledge production positions students in the power structure based on their relationship to power and oppression. Framing social justice is really about positioning and repositioning students and teachers in the power structure while identifying their particular responsibilities to social justice action.; Data suggests that social justice praxis is necessary but not sufficient to engage in critical pedagogy. Students and teachers at all three schools attempt to create comprehensive social justice programs. Some of these programs facilitate critical pedagogy while others are confined to successes and failures in social justice praxis because students and/or teachers do not thoroughly question their positions in the power structure. Additional barriers to practicing critical pedagogy in classrooms include tensions between education as a mechanism for assimilation vs. transformation, school structure, pressures for standardization, the homogeneity vs. heterogeneity of the student population, teacher experience, and resistance by teachers and students.
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