Critical / Neo-Marxist Orientation



Critical Constructivism

"Joe L. Kincheloe has published numerous social and educational books on critical constructivism (2001, 2005, 2008), a version of constructivist epistemology that places emphasis on the exaggerated influence of political and cultural power in the construction of knowledge, consciousness, and views of reality. In the contemporary mediated electronic era, Kincheloe argues, dominant modes of power have never exerted such influence on human affairs. Coming from a critical pedagogical perspective, Kincheloe argues that understanding a critical constructivist epistemology is central to becoming an educated person and to the institution of just social change.

Kincheloe's characteristics of critical constructivism:
  • Knowledge is socially constructed: World and information co-construct one another
  • Consciousness is a social construction
  • Political struggles: Power plays an exaggerated role in the production of knowledge and consciousness
  • The necessity of understanding consciousness—even though it does not lend itself to traditional reductionistic modes of measurability
  • The importance of uniting logic and emotion in the process of knowledge and producing knowledge
  • The inseparability of the knower and the known
  • The centrality of the perspectives of oppressed peoples—the value of the insights of those who have suffered as the result of existing social arrangements
  • The existence of multiple realities: Making sense of a world far more complex that we originally imagined
  • Becoming humble knowledge workers: Understanding our location in the tangled web of reality
  • Standpoint epistemology: Locating ourselves in the web of reality, we are better equipped to produce our own knowledges
  • Constructing practical knowledge for critical social action
  • Complexity: Overcoming reductionism
  • Knowledge is always entrenched in a larger process
  • The centrality of interpretation: Critical hermeneutics
  • The new frontier of classroom knowledge: Personal experiences intersecting with pluriversal information
  • Constructing new ways of being human: Critical ontology..."