When achieved, critical consciousness encourages individuals to effect change in their world through social critique and political action in order to self-actualize.
The theory is influenced by Karl Marx who believed that inequality is a result of socioeconomic differences and that all people need to work toward a socialized economy.
His initial focus targeted adult literacy projects in Brazil and later was adapted to deal with a wide range of social and educational issues.
Freire's pedagogy revolved around an anti-authoritarian and interactive approach aimed to examine issues of relational power for students and workers.
[12] Realizing one's consciousness ("conscientization", "conscientização") is then a needed first step of "praxis", which is defined as the power and know-how to take action against oppression while stressing the importance of liberating education.
"[12] Critical pedagogue Ira Shor, who was mentored by and worked closely with Freire from 1980 until Freire's death in 1997,[13] defines critical pedagogy as: Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse.
Among its other leading figures in no particular order are bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins), Joe L. Kincheloe, Patti Lather, Myles Horton, Antonia Darder, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Peter McLaren, Khen Lampert, Howard Zinn, Donaldo Macedo, Dermeval Saviani, Sandy Grande, Michael Apple, and Stephanie Ledesma.
[17] Postmodern, anti-racist, feminist, postcolonial, queer, and environmental [18] theories all play a role in further expanding and enriching Freire's original ideas about a critical pedagogy, shifting its main focus on social class to include issues pertaining to religion, military identification, race, gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, and age.
Much of the work also draws on anarchism, György Lukács, Wilhelm Reich, postcolonialism, and the discourse theories of Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci, Gilles Deleuze (rhizomatic learning) and Michel Foucault.
Many contemporary critical pedagogues have embraced Postmodern, anti-essentialist perspectives of the individual, of language, and of power, "while at the same time retaining the Freirean emphasis on critique, disrupting oppressive regimes of power/knowledge, and social change".
[19][20] Curry Malott and Derek R. Ford's first collaborative book, Marx, Capital, and Education built on McLaren's revolutionary pedagogy by connecting it to the global class struggle and the history of the actually-existing workers' movements.
[25] Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg have created the Paulo and Nita Freire Project for International Critical Pedagogy at McGill University.
In this second phase, critical pedagogy seeks to become a worldwide, decolonizing movement dedicated to listening to and learning from diverse discourses of people from around the planet.
In agreement with this perspective, Four Arrows, aka Don Trent Jacobs, challenges the anthropocentrism of critical pedagogy and writes that to achieve its transformative goals there are other differences between Western and Indigenous worldview that must be considered.
He states that students have previously been lulled into a sense of complacency by the circumstances of everyday life and that through the processes of the classroom, they can begin to envision and strive for something different for themselves.
In the later years of his life, Freire grew increasingly concerned with what he felt was a major misinterpretation of his work and insisted that teachers cannot deny their position of authority.
Student objections may be due to ideological reasons, religious or moral convictions, fear of criticism, or discomfort with controversial issues.
Kristen Seas argues: "Resistance in this context thus occurs when students are asked to shift not only their perspectives, but also their subjectivities as they accept or reject assumptions that contribute to the pedagogical arguments being constructed.
"[32] Karen Kopelson concludes "that many if not most students come to the university in order to gain access to and eventual enfranchisement in 'the establishment,' not to critique and reject its privileges.
In order to respond to these changes, advocates of critical pedagogy call into question the focus on practical skills of teacher credential programs.
"[T]his practical focus far too often occurs without examining teachers' own assumptions, values, and beliefs and how this ideological posture informs, often unconsciously, their perceptions and actions when working with linguistic-minority and other politically, socially, and economically subordinated students.
In History and Education: Engaging the Global Class War, he writes about his "long journey of self-reflection and de-indoctrination" that culminated in the break.
Malott writes that "the term critical pedagogy was created by Henry Giroux (1981) as an attempt to dismiss socialism and the legacy of Karl Marx.
"[42] While Ford is not concerned with "proficiency" like O'Dair, he agrees that the focus on critique at the expense of imagination and actual political engagement serves to produce the critical pedagogue as "the enlightened and isolated researcher that reveals the truth behind the curtain.