Introduction: Critical Pedagogy in Education: A Theory in Search of Praxis

Widely defined and applied, critical pedagogical works in education insist ideologies, systems and institutions engage with critical inquiry to ensure social justice and democratic outcomes. Providing a context for broad political interventions as well as attention to micro happenings within different forms of social and political activism, not surprisingly, critical pedagogy has evolved as a global phenomenon. Historically and in more contemporary times, scholars, researchers and practitioners engage in critical turns in education seeking more emancipatory and liberatory outcomes in student learning and teachers’ work. The different approaches to ‘doing’ emancipatory and liberatory work offer aspiring ways of problematizing critical thinking in education and consider teaching and learning opportunities that acknowledge different contexts and thus offer different outcomes beyond dominant narratives of hegemonies and power relations (Apple et al., 2009; Sanjakdar, 2022).