When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share, to confess. Engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students. Any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process.

Teaching to Transgress : Education as the Practice of Freedom

When learning is allowed to be project, problem, and passion driven, then children learn because of their terroir, not disengage in spite of it. When we recognize biodiversity in our schools as healthy, then we increase the likelihood that our ecosystems will thrive.

To be contributors to educating children to live in a world that is increasingly challenging to negotiate, schools must be ​conceptualized as ecological communities, spaces for learning with the potential to embody all of the concepts of the ecosystem – interactivity, biodiversity, connections, adaptability, succession, and balance. 

Timeless Learning: How Imagination, Observation, and Zero-Based Thinking Change Schools

IF WE WANT to talk about schools in a way that matters, we have to talk about the people in schools. In fact, we have to make a habit of seeing things from the perspective of that student sitting right over there. You see her? She’s playing with her hair and wondering why the clock stops moving during math class. Meaningful educational reform requires us to understand her point of view: Can she connect at any level with what she just read?

As any number of studies have found, a child’s “thoughts and emotions while performing an action are more important in determining subsequent engagement than the actual outcome of that action.”

The Schools Our Children Deserve : Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards”

What all the essays in this book have in common is the belief that education is fundamental to democracy and that no democratic society can survive without a formative culture shaped by pedagogical practices capable of creating the conditions for producing citizens who are critical, self-reflective, knowledgeable, and willing to make moral judgments and act in a socially responsible way. I recognized early on in my career that critical pedagogy as a moral and political practice does more than emphasize the importance of critical analysis and moral judgments. It also provides tools to unsettle common-sense assumptions, theorize matters of self and social agency, and engage the ever-changing demands and promises of a democratic polity.

On Critical Pedagogy