Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

766 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
allowed for the development of critical consciousness without the benefit of student-centered
dialogue.
SOME IMPLICATIONS AND DIRECTIONS
In this study, several aspects of negotiating critical engagement with a large number of students
without prioritizing student-centered dialogue were explored. This exploration suggests several
strategies that can help facilitate critical consciousness development on the part of a large number
of students (and, perhaps, smaller student populations, as well). Wolf’s intentional and risky stimulation
of her students through explicit cultural critiques and controversial media choices, open
and honest self-disclosure, and spontaneous, provocative participation assignments all promoted
critical engagement in diverse and particularized ways in her classroom. Likewise, students’
understanding of, and responses to, her intentions and approach indicates that the performance of
critical rhetoric, on the part of educators, offers an alternative to privileging student dialogue while
maintaining the ability to nurture students’ critical consciousness development. Moreover, this
case study demonstrates that a critical approach to pedagogy can resist mainstream educational
psychology’s assumptions without privileging one model of critical pedagogy. Rather, critical
approaches to pedagogical theory and practice are diverse. Thus, critical educational practices,
variously interpreted, can take the form of a range of schools of thought: post-formal, democratic,
Socratic, feminist, hermeneutical, Marxist, neoliberal, and/or post-structuralist. Critical pedagogical
theory and practice understood from this perspective, then, is far from a homogenous
approach. This case study, in the context of a classroom of over 100 students, provides some
promising results in support of this view.
First, the size of this student population uniquely contributed to communicative dynamics in
some surprisingly effective ways. The distinctive setting with its fixed seating and large number of
students—a setting traditionally considered problematic in terms of critically engaging students—
seemed to actually promote the possibility that Wolf’s risky, dissonant, sometimes confrontation
style would be critically effective. With respect to cultural critique and controversial media, the
large room and number of students may have helped to dissipate uncomfortable feelings that, in
a smaller classroom, would be more problematic. The forceful approach may be more effective
when the environment is not so intimate and the students are allowed to silently explore their
thoughts and feelings around the concepts and issues without being compelled to share, publicly,
those thoughts and feelings.
Second, with respect to self-disclosure, the personal nature of Wolf’s narratives takes on a
public performance character that helps alleviate the potential that students will feel personally
confronted. In this setting, students were able to disassociate themselves from the personal
implications of self-disclosure for Wolf while, at the same time, witnessing a personal narrative
in which they felt safe to engage, evaluate, and on which they could privately reflect. In a smaller
classroom, the personal-academic boundary may be too blurred for comfort if the students feel
too personally confronted by an educator’s personal disclosures. In this context, however, that
boundary remained in place while still offering an affective bridge to critical reflection.
Finally, with respect to participation assignments, when the survey questions were consistently
intended to point out a particular lack of awareness or information on the part of students and that
insisted student reconceive their own cognitive frameworks, the larger classroom provided a sense
of anonymity thereby fostering a sense of safety within an otherwise provoking environment. In
a smaller classroom, this forceful a tactic could prompt students to feel they have an individual
responsibility to come up with the “right” answer/opinion/feeling or face public exposure and
embarrassment if they offer what might perceived as the “wrong” answer. In this context, however,