ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3418-6187

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Education (Ph.D)

Department

Curriculum and Instruction

First Advisor

Elizabeth Chase

Second Advisor

Mary Beth Schaefer

Third Advisor

Sophie R. Bell

Abstract

This feminist, critical research uses a bricolage of case study, principles of phenomenology, and autoethnography to examine teachers’ and researchers’ praxis with engaging in critical pedagogies. Through a case study with principles of phenomenology, this research examines two public school kindergarten teachers’ experiences with using critical pedagogies—namely culturally responsive teaching and social justice education—in their classrooms, and offers portraits of their praxis. Through the autoethnography, this research examines the researcher’s experiences with engaging in a critical feminist research with friends-as-participants, and shares reflections on ways to examine and share examples of teacher praxis with engaging in different approaches to critical pedagogies. This research also provides a review of the most recent literature on critical pedagogies, along with a discussion of how critical pedagogies evolved in education in the United States. It also includes a discussion of the two teachers’ praxis alongside portraits of their beliefs about and experiences with teaching and rich, thick, descriptions of classroom observations, or examples of their teaching practice. It also includes a discussion of the researchers’ positionality and praxis in the context of this research study. Through these explorations of praxis, this study yielded connections between culturally responsive teaching, social justice education, social emotional learning, and expectations for high academic achievement, and the teachers’ beliefs that all of these approaches are interconnected and interdependent. Finally, this research provides frameworks for discussing teacher praxis and critical pedagogies, and offers recommendations for researchers who wish engage in critical, feminist research and provide examples of researcher and teacher praxis.

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