ONLINE STE PAPER

Critical thinking and Reflective practices

Programme: B.Ed. 1.5 years
Course code: 8611
Semester 2nd: Autumn 2020
University: AIOU
Name: Zubaidah Durani
Roll No: CA 632283

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Q1: Explain how Foucault, Bourdieu and Friere provided grounds of critical theory?
Answer:
Various theorists especially in twentieth century were named as “critical theorists” as their
theories fall into the classification of critical theory under the Transformatory Emancipatory
Paradigm of social sciences.
Their major critique draws upon social structures based on wealth, class and power distribution
which results in developing inequalities
Analysing the class difference around the world; based upon economic and socio-cultural
aspects; these theorists challenged and paved way for re-thinking education to change the
reality of this world.
Provided ground of critical theory of above theorists are as:
1. Power and Education:
Freire (1982) who is considered to be the best well known advocate of the relevance of
education was critical of how decisions were made regarding the experiences which children
encountered.
● Freire critiqued more on how the decision in education is made by certain power centric
pressure groups
● Power for Foucault (a French philosopher) is what makes us what we are, operating on a
quite different level.
●Foucault challenges the idea that power is wielded by people or groups by way of 8‘episodic’
or ‘sovereign’ acts of domination or imposition, seeing it instead as dispersed and pervasive.
●‘Power is everywhere’ and ‘comes from everywhere’ so in this sense is neither an agency nor
a structure (Foucault 1998).
2. Educational Planning and Implementation:
●Decision making within the education system is in large part a political process, involving
number of key players.
●To begin with there are legislators in decision-making regarding curriculum, a number of
powerful sponsors adept at persuading local school boards, state legislatures, state
departments of education, and accrediting agencies are central in institutionalizing reforms.
● Education-related decisions by officials at all levels of government may be influenced by
varied concerns.
3. Social reproduction
● Bourdieu’s social reproduction thesis focused research on the relation between education,
family, and social classes.
●Bourdieu argued that education plays an important role in aiding and abetting the
reproduction of social inequality and social exclusion.
● “Cultural capital” holds central importance in the process of social reproduction because
inequalities in cultural capital reflect inequalities in social class.
●Success in the education system is supported by the possession of ‘cultural capital’ and of
upper class habits. Lower class students do not in general have these traits, so the failure of the
majority of these students is unavoidable.
Bourdieu states that Cultural Capital consists of familiarity with the dominant culture in a
society, and especially the ability to understand and use 'educated' language.
●It is evident that the possession of cultural capital varies with social class. This makes it very
difficult for lower class pupils to succeed in the educational system.
●Bourdieu claims that social inequalities are legitimated by the educational credentials held by
those in dominant positions.
●This means that the education system has a key role in maintaining the status quo.

References:
1. Fierier, Paulo, 2005, pedagogy of oppressed. The communication publishing group, Inc.
2. The politics of education, culture, power and liberation. Green wood publishing group.
Q2: Which are various models of cooperative teaching and what the role of teacher is in
cooperative teaching?
Answer: Cooperative teaching and learning is a popular area in educational fields for more than
a decade and this are gained strength the emergence of two great schools of thought. The one
is constructivism and other is connectivism. The pace of social change continues to increase.
The universe is becoming a connected whole more than ever before. Our mass media showers
down on us with its so called “expert” discourse.
We are surrounded by weak arguments promoted with considerably wider range of resources
such as social media.
Students need to learn how to manipulate and process information more than just check to
see how full their knowledge bank is.  Cooperative teaching and learning gained its strength
with the emergence of two major schools of thought one is “Constructivism” and the other is
“Connectivism”.
Cooperative teaching and learning is an approach to group work that minimizes the occurrence
of unpleasant experiences and maximizes the learning with a sense of achievement and
satisfaction that result from working with a high-performance team.
To accomplish their group’s task, students must exchange ideas, make plans, and propose
solutions. Thinking through an idea and presenting it collectively can be very helpful and
understood by others in a better way.
Such interaction promotes intellectual growth. The exchange different ideas and viewpoints
can enhance the growth and inspire broader thinking.

Models are as given below.

a) The Jigsaw Model. In this model students become member of both learning
group and research team. After determining goals members join research
team for learning.
Research team learning about a particular learning puzzle. Teacher prepare
expert sheet that outline reading and questions.

b) Group investigation model: in this model students discuss each other what
they have learned and outline possible topics for next examination after
teacher presents an introduction to unit. List is prepare by students of topics,
each learning group and determine subtopic for every group. Every group is
 responsible for reaching. Then group designs a presentation and share with
whole class. Class evaluation give feedback to group.
c) Number heads together: in this reviewing of information is done about
previously presented direct instruction or text. Numerous simple models
enhance questioning, discussion and class pretention by structuring activity
in cooperative format.
d) Think pair share: student’s pair with partner to share responses to theire
question and share with the whole class. The various ways are stand up and
share anyone that he or she sit down. Judge that which student respond fast.

Role of teacher:
 Specify academic objectives
 Collaborative skills
 Decide on group size
 Arrange student groups
 Arrange room
 Plan material
 Assign roles to students
 Give and explain task to students
 Test students each one
 Promote inner group cooperation
 Monitor students how they behaviour
 Praise good use of skills
 Provide assistance
 Reflect to improve cooperative learning and teaching techniques

References:
1. Cottles, Philips and Mills, Barbara J 1998, cooperative learning for
education faculty, Phoenix Arizona: Oryx press.
2. Salvin R.E 1990 cooperative learning, theory, research, and practices.
 Q.3Why action research is found useful for classroom teachers? How can it help them in
solving problems?

Answer: It is an iterative way of collecting information used to explore topic of teaching,

curriculum development and student behavior in the classroom.
There are many types of methods of teaching in classroom but action research is useful because
the cycle offers ways of continued reflection. In all professional fields, the goal of action
research to improve processes. The action research free of theoretical responses.

(a)Now Why Action Research Useful for teacher?

 Professionalize teaching.
 Enhance the motivation and efficacy of a teacher.
 Meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student body.
 Achieve success with “standards-based” reforms.

 Professionalizing Teaching
When the teachers in a classroom begin conducting action research, their workplace begins to
take on more of the flavour of the workplaces of other professionals. The wisdom that informs
practice starts coming from those doing the work, not from supervisors who oftentimes are less
in touch with and less sensitive to the issues of teaching and learning than the teachers doing
the work. Furthermore, when teachers begin engaging their colleagues in discussions of
classroom issues, the multiple perspectives that emerge and thus frame the dialogue tend to
produce wiser professional decisions.

 Enhancing Teacher Motivation and Efficacy

Regardless of all the negative pressures on teachers, the sheer nobility of the work keeps many
dedicated educators on the job, but only so long as they can get credible answers to the
“efficacy” question. However, without credible evidence that the work of teaching is making a
difference, it is hard to imagine the best and brightest sticking with such a difficult and poorly
compensated line of work. Fortunately, evidence has shown that teachers who elect to
integrate the use of data into their work start exhibiting the compulsive behaviour of fitness
enthusiasts who regularly weigh themselves, check their heart rate, and graph data on their
improving physical development. For teachers continuous presence of compelling data that
their hard work is paying off becomes, in itself, a vitally energizing force.

 Meeting the Needs of a Diverse Student Body

In a homogeneous society in which all students come to school looking alike, it might be wise to
seek the one right answer to questions of pedagogy. But, as anyone who has recently visited an
American classroom can attest, it is rare to find any two children for whom the same
intervention could ever be “right on target.” The days are gone when it was possible to believe
that all a teacher had to do was master and deliver the grade-level curriculum. It is now
imperative that classroom teachers have strong content background in each of the subjects
they teach, be familiar with the range of student differences in their classrooms, and be capable
of diagnosing and prescribing appropriate instructional modifications based upon a knowledge
of each child's uniqueness.
Crafting solutions to these dynamic and ever changing classroom issues can be an exciting
undertaking, especially when one acknowledges that newer and better answers are evolving all
the time. Nevertheless, great personal satisfaction comes from playing a role in creating
successful solutions to continually changing puzzles.

 Achieving Success in a Standards-Based System

In most jurisdictions standards-driven accountability systems have become the norm. Although
they differ somewhat from state to state and province to province, fundamentally these
standards-based systems have certain things in common. Specifically, most education
departments and ministries have declared that they expect the standards to be rigorous and
meaningful, and that they expect all students to meet the standards at the mastery level.
The stakes in the standards movement are high. Students face consequences regarding
promotion and graduation. Teachers and schools face ridicule and loss of funding if they fail to
meet community expectations. Of course, none of that would be problematic if we as a society
knew with certainty how to achieve universal student success. However, the reality is that no
large system anywhere in the world has ever been successful in getting every student to master
a set of meaningful objectives. If we accept the truth of that statement, then we need to
acknowledge the fact that achieving the goal of universal student mastery will not be easy. That
said, most people will agree it is a most noble endeavour in which to invest energy and a
worthy goal for any classroom to pursue.
(b) Action research help problem solving of teacher.
I. It identifies a problem to help the teacher in solving problem
II. In action research teacher Collect data on the problem and make easy of solving
problem.
III. It can help in implementing action research to solve teacher problems

References;
1. Action research 2015 retrieved from www.businessdictionary.com
2. Mills g 2011. Action research. A guide for teacher researchers. Boston: Pearson.

The End