diverse literature and identifies their common goals as: “viewing education as a political
act... transforming schools towards pursuing social justice... [and] using education to
engender social change and empower educational actors” (DeLeon 2006, p. 2). These
goals indicate a strong political element which echo Burbules and Berk’s (1999, p. 55)
attempt to pin down the distinction between critical thinking and critical pedagogy:
‘Critical thinking’s claim is, at heart, to teach how to think critically, not how to think
politically; for critical pedagogy, this is a false distinction’.
Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy
The boundaries between critical thinking and critical pedagogy have thus become
blurred, but we can identify from the literature ten elements associated with critical
thinking and critical pedagogy which are shown in Figure 1. Of the ten elements, some,
such as ‘praxis’, are primarily or specifically associated with critical pedagogy and others,
such as an ‘abstract focus’, are specific to critical thinking. Others, such as dialogue, or
argument, would seem to be common to both.
Insert Figure 1 about here
Four elements in Figure 1 are therefore identified as distinguishing critical
pedagogy from the more neutral notion of critical thinking: the ideological/moral; the
collective/social; the subjective/context-driven; and praxis (reflective action). The
relationship between these elements and citizenship education is explored below, firstly in
order to clarify the varied terminology used by many critical pedagogues; secondly to