Critical Agency in Educational Practice: A Modern South African Perspective
Critical Agency in Educational Practice: A Modern South African Perspective

Summary/Abstract: It is a serious allegation to suggest that through perpetuating inequality in a society, we violate students’ rights, particularly the inalienable and unassailable right of human dignity. By infringing upon human dignity, we unleash the potential to tolerate poverty and unemployment, we transgress language and religious rights, and we accommodate inequality. In this context, it becomes apparent to ask the question: How could students utilize critical agency to mitigate the effects of capitalist hegemony and ideology, to bring a measure of equality in a South Africa classroom, community and society? This research question serves to highlight the plight of disadvantaged and marginal students in the schooling system as they are the most vulnerable and threatened participants in the schooling experience, whose human rights are brought into question every time they encounter the schooling situation. These students often have to contend with sub par realities in the dimensions of education resourcing and educational achievement which further marginalize them in society. Poverty sets them apart from their more affluent peers in the society as they do not display the level of success envisioned by curriculum planners and administrators. But poverty to the exclusion of capitalist hegemony would be surmountable. Since ruling class hegemony is so pervasive and intrusive in the lives of economically, culturally, and linguistically marginal students, they are measured against the markers of values, beliefs, norms and standards that are alien to their lived realities and experiences. The omnipresence of capitalist or ruling class hegemony makes it almost insurmountable in overcoming poverty and inequality. Through the process of collaborative action research entrenched in a philosophical tradition, the researcher aims to address the central research question. The focus of the project will be to investigate the indicators of critical agency in students and whether students are able to identify the causes and effects of their current realities in order to devise strategies to positively transform certain realities. Further to this, the investigation seeks to reveal whether critical agency is able to expose the character of the students in becoming individuals, critical thinkers who strive for personal freedom and equality, as they are confronted with the stark reality of their lived experiences (specifically the causes, and effects of their lives and the possibility for change).

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