"Education As A Tool For Social Change: Examining The Role Of Critical Pedagogy In Addressing Inequality"

The present paper aims to outline how critical pedagogy, relying on the principles of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire, can help existing educational paradigms overcome social inequalities. Critical pedagogy confronting hierarchical power relations and the goals of fostering students’ critical awareness about oppression and justice. It does this through dialogic learning, problem-posing education, and conscientization.  The paper evaluates the relationship of education with socio-economic status, race, gender, and disability either as a means for social mobility or additional enforcement of negative social status for disadvantaged students. Critical pedagogy provides an answer by integrating the concept of social justice into the curriculum, while at the same time, constructing cultural meaning. However, critical pedagogy in action has a set of practices that encounter institutional realities that demand strategies to address. In the end of the paper, the author emphasizes the need to support critical pedagogical practices in policy as well as training for future teachers. This enables students and instructors with the capabilities to tackle social injustice. It also examines how the critical theory of pedagogy grows in response to the current challenges introduced by the use of digital technology and the Sustainable Development Goals and how it remains relevant in driving fair societies.