Smyth, J. (2011) Critical Pedagogy for Social Justice. [Online]London: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional. Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/reader.action?docID=797502&ppg=5 [Accessed 26 July 2022].

in order to get people to consider changing something, you have to get them to think about it. In order to get them to think about it, you have to make it visible to them (p. 80). In other words, the notion of the soft revolution is predicated on ‘mak[ing] the ordinary visible’ (p. 80). (Smyth, 2011, p.56)

 Failure is characterized by the frustrated will to know. Failure results from a mismatch between what the learner wants to do and is able to do. The reasons for failure may be personal, social, or cultural, but whatever they are, the results of failure are most often a loss of self-confidence accompanied by a sense of inferiority and inadequacy. Not-learning [on the other hand] produces thoroughly different effects. It tends to strengthen the will, clarify one’s definition of self, reinforce self-discipline, and provide inner satisfaction. Not-learning can also get one into trouble if it results in defiance or refusal to become socialized in ways that are sanctioned by the dominant authority. (p. 6) (Kohl in Smyth, 2011, pp.56-57)

• Who succeeds at school? 
• Why does schooling work for these groups?
• Whose interests are being served by the institution of schooling?
• Who gets excluded, marginalized or ‘failed’ by the way schools are organized and enacted?
• How did things come to be this way, and what conditions support and sustain this situation?
• How can we go beyond individualizing the problem and pathologizing some groups, by labelling and targeting them as ‘at risk’?
• How can we collectively confront power inequalities?
• How can we locate and use existing reservoirs of talent and ability in this school and its community?
• How can we do something for equity today, and with whom?
• Who are the people I turn to for ideas? (there are no gurus –only people like us!)
• How can we have less talk and more action? (Smyth, 2008) (Smyth, 2011, pp.57-58)

that learning takes place best  not  when it is conceived as a preparation for life, but when it occurs in the context of real daily life, (2) that each learner, ultimately, must organize [her] own learning in [her] own way, (3) that ‘problems’ and personal interests are a more realistic structure than are ‘subjects’ for organizing learning experiences, (4) that students are capable of directly and authentically participating in the intellectual and social life of their community, and (5) that the community badly needs them to do this. (Postman and Weingartner, 1971, p. 9) (Smyth, 2011, p.59)

As Pratt (1991) puts it, a contact zone refers to ‘social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power’ (p. 1) (Smyth, 2011, p.60)

it is essential that the teacher and students establish and maintain trust in each other at the edge of risk . . . To learn is to entertain risk, since learning involves moving past the level of competence, which is already mastered, to the nearest region of incompetence, what has not yet been mastered. (p. 344) (Smyth, 2011, p.63)

The teacher tends to use clinical labels and to attribute internal traits to students (eg. ‘unmotivated’) rather than seeing what is happening in terms of invisible cultural differences. Nor does the teacher see student behavior as interactionally generated – a dialectical relation in which the teacher is inadvertently coproducing with students the very behavior that he or she is taking as evidence of an individual characteristic of the student. Given the power difference between teacher and student, what could be seen as an interactional phenomenon to which teacher and student both contribute ends up institutionalized as an official diagnosis of student deficiency. (Erickson, 1987, pp. 337–8) (Smyth, 2011, p.64)

many young people are living multiple consciousnesses – living in one reality at home, in another reality with peers and then negotiating another reality at school. Many young people negotiate their lives through consciously taking on different identities in these different contexts (Gilroy, 1993). (Smyth, 2011, p.65)

If we are to accept that schools are principally relational organizations that are in the business of making available the social and institutional resources to enable young people to ‘make’ their identities, then the pressing question hinges around how schools are to do this. (Smyth, 2011, p.68)

Relational power, in the sense in which Warren (2005) uses it, refers to the building of trust within and across a range of groups in schools in ways that enable the development and pursuit of a common vision about how schooling can work for all, including those most marginalized and excluded. It is about using the capacity that inheres in relationships to begin to address and redress social and structural inequality in terms of who succeeds and who fails. Relational power is a ‘set of resources’ in that it draws upon ‘trust and cooperation between and among people’ (Warren, 2005, p. 136) and acknowledges that learning involves ‘the power to get things done collectively’ (p. 138) by confronting, rather than denying, power inequalities. (Smyth, 2011, p.68)

The alternative is to start out from the position, as a teacher delightfully put it to me recently, of working to make students ‘powerful people’ – by which she meant relating to students in ways that conveyed to them a genuine sense that they really ‘can do it’ and working with them to cooperatively achieve this end. This means going beyond stigmatizing students from the most dis-advantaged backgrounds as ‘bundles of pathologies’ (Saegert et al., 2001, cited in Warren, 2005, pp. 134–5) to be ‘fixed up’ and regarding them instead as having valuable resources and backgrounds. (Smyth, 2011, p.69)

Smaller schools? Multiyear assignment of teachers and students? Class and school meetings to establish rules and discuss problems? Dedication to teaching the whole child in every class? Serious attention to the integration of subject matter? Gentle but persistent invitations to all students to participate? More opportunities to engage in the arts and in social projects? More encouragement to speak out with the assurance of being heard? More opportunities to work together? Less competition? Warmer hospitality for parents? More public forums on school issues? Reduction of test-induced stress? More opportunities for informal conversation? Expanding, not reducing, course offerings? Promoting the idea of fun and humor in learning? Educating teachers more broadly? All of the above? (Noddings, 2005, p. 12) (Smyth, 2011, p.70)

are centrally concerned with fostering confidence, trust and respect (Willie, 2000) and that have a commitment to dignity, humanity, belongingness and connectedness, while acknowledging the importance of rigour, relevance and relatedness (Smyth and McInerney, 2007a). (Smyth, 2011, p.76)

Comer (2004) argues that such an emphasis need not deny the importance of high standards, high expectations and accountability, but rather that it involves a shift in emphasis on the means for getting there. (Smyth, 2011, p.76)

The starting point was one of optimism, hope and possibility, rather than despair, deficits and punishment. (Smyth, 2011, p.87)

‘respect’, reflected in people regarding one another as worthwhile individuals, their backgrounds, aspirations, ‘where they are coming from’ (Teacher #11) and where they are heading. (Smyth, 2011, p.87)

Providing opportunities for students to get to know their teachers and ‘to see the human side of their teachers’ (Assistant Principal), seemed to be paramount. As one teacher put it, you need to get to ‘know the kids and their homes . . . get to know them socially’ (Teacher #3), and as another said, ‘get to know the kids and their parents’ (Teacher #4). Another emphasized ‘understanding the cultural issues they bring with them’ (Teacher #7). (Smyth, 2011, p.88)

‘making rules explicit so students have choices’ [and of] ‘getting students to see and explain [and work through] the consequences of their actions’ (Teacher #7). There was a school-wide emphasis on ‘ continually modelling good performance ’ (Principal) in all kinds of ways, an ‘ emphasis on courtesy and respect ’ (Assistant Principal), on ‘ setting boundaries ’ for behaviour, being ‘ fi rm but fair ’ (Teacher #11), ‘ following up little things before they get big ’ (Assistant Principal), and ‘ not letting things go ’ (Teacher #8), with lots of ‘ follow through ’ (Teacher #4). Equally, not having an authoritarian approach to discipline seemed to go hand-in-hand with ‘using humour’ (Teacher #5) and a ‘belief in the need to have fun’ (Assistant Principal). (Smyth, 2011, pp.89-90)

Relational power, while generally used to refer to the way in which collaboration and trust is created across and among constituent groups in schools and their communities, also has considerable currency when used to refer to resources or capacities for redressing inequalities in schooling, most notably in terms of who is provided with the resources necessary to succeed at school. In other words, relational power refers to the ‘set of resources that inhere in relationships of trust and cooperation between and among people’ (Warren, 2005, p. 136). (Smyth, 2011, p.92)

‘Relational power [emphasizes] the “power to” get things done collectively’ (p. 138) and it is based on ‘the need to confront power inequalities’ (p. 138). (Smyth, 2011, p.92)