The promise of critical reflection: promises and contradictions, Brookfield, 2009
• It is not thinking hard on a subject But:
1. questioning the power relationships
2. it assumes that small issues between minority struggles of equality exist in the wider world.
3. It takes its focus on challenging set hegemonic practice power dynamics
4. assuming that those forces that may be in our best interest may be working against us.
5. There is I believe a link to the post modern here. The methodology of pragmatist construction varies a point of view between person and context. Each viewer sees through their own constructed lens.
• CT is grounded on three core assumptions that : 1 the world be being democratic is unequal with all the issues and problems that exist in a democracy. 2.The system is perceived as normal and this seen as a self protecting system not to be challenged. 3. That CT is a challenge to that system and a prelude to changing it.
• Bourdieu- 1977, our way of understanding the world, our “habitus” our constructed reality through our own experience and context. The cultural capital we bring especially pertinent in art education.
• Raymond Williams 1977 goes on in the same manner as Bourdieu that we are shaped products of our, social habits, cultural forms, these legitimise political, educational structures. That represents the order of things. Again the main issue when judging success within art students comes down to this in my context.
• A wonderful phrase ‘the subtlety of hegemony is that it becomes deeply embedded part of the cultural air we breathe’. In the fabric.
• The conspiracy of normal.
• The dark side to the sense of vocation, social workers- exploited and manipulated. Vocation becomes hegemonic when workers are given extra responsibility, duties far exceed their energy and capacities, it destroys health and relationships. This is the private school, you must do more, you are judged on your last mistake, how late you go home, how early you arrive the next day, the prestige of the teams you coach, the extra student competitions, the rehearsals, excursions, galley student exhibitions, I’m so tired, I worked so hard on the weekend, my paperwork is huge, ,,,on and on the badge of honour. Not once is there ever a comment on the quality and effectiveness of vocation.

A passage that illustrates the danger of inbred cultures within schools.
Notes on a scandal.
This passage from notes on a scandal by Zoë Heller page 16, illustrates my concern at my arrival at my present school 2005 where old boys were the continuation of a culture of mediocrity and misogyny. The danger of a culture that does nothing but reproduce itself is nothing if not dangerous and against anything this unit tries to explore.

“But the truth is, St George’s alumni make exceptionally poor teachers. Its not that they don’t know anything about anything(which they don’t.) Or even that they are complacent about their ignorance. (I once heard Elaine blithely identifying Boris Yeltsin as ‘the Russian who doesn’t have a thingy on his head’.) The real issue is one of personality. Invariably, pupils who come back to teach at St Georges are emotionally suspect characters-people who have summarised that the world is a frightening place and who have responded by simply staying put. They’ll never have to try going home again because they’re never going to leave. I have a vision sometimes of the pupils of these ex-pupils producing more ex-pupils who return to St Georges as teachers, and so on. It would take only a couple of generations for the school to become entirely populated by dolts.’