Promoting socio-spatial and cognitive justice through critical pedagogies

Abstract

Thousands of people are currently being excluded from the right to the city, which makes urgent a reflection on how to articulate innovative and critical learning actions to promote socio-spatial and cognitive justice in the emerging context. An analytical framework inspired in Giddens' and Fraser’s theories, is proposed for a systematic analysis of the literature on critical pedagogies, and for studying an articulated sequence of learning-action experiences happened over fifteen years. The analysis is supported by qualitative information harvested from the experience of the Polytechnic University of Madrid with the communities in Ginaw Rails Nord (Dakar, Senegal) and Las Sabinas (Madrid, Spain).The results critically question the hegemonic construction of knowledge and the predominant ways of categorisation, crossing the abyssal lines between the Global North and the Global South, showing that (1) transforming structures involves challenging power relations within and outside the educational structure, and engaging in plural and equitable learning-action communities from which dominant policies, practices, and discourses may be challenged; (2) practices and policies may be transformed through collective experimentation processes that contribute to the co-production of both the city and knowledge, and (3) transforming the discourses of dominant power requires questioning acquired knowledge and the way it is produced, assuming the commitment and responsibility for constructing and disseminating an emancipatory pedagogy through the ecologies of knowledge.