LITERATURE REVIEW
2.3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Paulo Freire on critical consciousness
As a Professor at the University of Recife in the early 1960's, Freire worked with peasants in the Brazilian Northeast during the country's national literacy campaign (McLaren & Leonard, 1993). At this time, he evolved a theory based on the conviction that every human being is capable of critically engaging the world in a dialogical encounter with others. According to Aronowitz (1993: 15) "any learning that is aimed at helping learners engage in a dialogue seems crucially directed to breaking the cycle of psychological oppression as it helps learners to confront their own lives". In a Freirean classroom, the main purpose would be to enable learners to articulate their own feelings. It is against this background that Freire (1993) encourages educators to always tie their narratives of liberation to people's stories.
Freire's analysis indicates that teaching and learning are human experiences with profound social consequences. "Education is not reducible to a mechanical method of instruction" (Shor, 1993: 25). Instead of transferring facts and skills from educator to learners, a Freirean class invites learners to think critically about subject matter, the learning process itself, and their society. Freire's social pedagogy defines education as one place where the individual and society are constructed, a social action which can either empower or domesticate students. In a 'liberating classroom', Freire's educators pose problems derived from a learner's life and social context, in a mutually created dialogue. Shor (1993) argues, therefore, that in Freirean critical environments, educators reject the methods that make learners passive and anti- intellectual. Instead, the Freirean critical education invites students to question the system they live in and the knowledge being offered to them, to discuss what kind of future they want.
In situations where dialogue is absent, Freire (1970: 58 cited in Shor, 1993: 26) maintains that, "a banking education" is promoted whereby the learners are treated like "empty vessels" in which information could be deposited. Daines & Graham (1988) note that banking education is against the principles of adult education. Adult education principles are based on an assumption that adult learners bring their own experience into the learning situation, and that this provides a foundation for them to build upon. In a dialogue with learners, educators are able to facilitate learning,
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which has personal meaning and relevance. Boud, Cohen & Walker (1993) support these views by maintaining that adult learners will learn new knowledge, attitudes or skills best in relation to life experience. Daines & Graham (1988) further argue that such significant learning is likely to be more readily acquired than that which has little use or importance to individuals or to their lives.
When education is seen in this way, the kind of education that Freire advocates helps learners to recognize the larger societal structures that oppress them, and how they could overcome these barriers. According to Baumgartner (2001), "through consciousness-raising, or conscientization, learners come to see the world and their place in it differently". Having being empowered in their new perspective, the ultimate aim for this kind of education is for the learners to transform society.
Having said all this, I fully recognize the limitations and the criticisms leveled at Paulo Freire's theory. One criticism being that Freire tended to address only the oppression that was based on class but omitted oppression based on gender, race, ethnicity, and language (Archer & Cottingham: 1995). Nevertheless, I still find his theory relevant for the purposes of my study, particularly in analyzing whether the teaching approaches used help learners to become critical thinkers, or are the approaches geared towards domesticating the learners to obey and respond to the needs of the government officials, policy makers, and researchers while overlooking their own needs.
Feminist perspectives
I need to mention from the outset that it is not the intention and focus of this study to engage in the debates that exist between the feminists and the womanists. This particular study aims to discuss broadly the issues that affect women from all walks of life. I therefore will pay no particular attention to the women of colour's critique of white feminist theory that it does not represent the experiences and perspectives of members of society who are marginalized by race or class. The following discussion looks at the feminist perspectives under three broad categories deemed relevant for the purposes of this study: The personal is political, feminists' views on the production of knowledge, and women as collective agents of structural change.
The personal is political
According to Hooyman & Gonyea (1995), what happens within the home is not exempt from the political forces that affect the rest of society. The notion that the personal is political identifies and rejects the public versus private dichotomy by which women are excluded from public participation (Hurtado, 1996). The ideology of separate spheres, or the romantic solution, created the duality of a loving home and the impersonal public domain. In the context of caregiving, Abel (1986 cited in Hooyman & Gonyea, 1995) notes that as is reflected in instances of caregiver neglect or abuse, caregiving can reflect fear and obligation as well as concern and affection.
Williams (1997) argues that although caring involves an intensely personal relationship between individuals, it cannot be examined apart from the public policies surrounding it. The personal is political: women's experiences as carergivers are shaped by their interactions with the public social service, health, long-term care systems and policies. She further argues that within a feminist framework, the goal is to break down the dichotomies of public versus private and impersonal workplace versus loving home and to challenge the gendered division of labour in all its forms.
Feminists' views on the production of knowledge
Part of the reason I chose the feminist framework for this study is that feminists' views on the production of knowledge are concerned with individual women developing their own voices (Hurtado, 1996). Similarly, among the objectives of the study, one is concerned with ascertaining how the CHBC training assists women voluntary caregivers to explore their own feelings.
In her work with women-based community organisations, Belenky (1996) is drawn to the notion of communal construction of knowledge as it relates to how community organizations working with women transform their members and the way they define truth and authority. She further describes those communities, which according to her are dialogue-rich, on how they act as a breeding ground for political commitments and activism among their members. Such community-based organizations are likely to raise all the contradictions in society, which according to Hurtado (1996) would include the politics on the production of knowledge. He asserts that not all social groups are valued equally and not all groups are allocated the same amount of
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material resources, like education, jobs, and choices for determining one's life. He concludes, therefore, that the difference in value attached to significant group memberships to a large extent determines what access individuals have to knowledge, what is considered knowledge, and ultimately how it is that one comes to perceive oneself as knowledgeable in spite of one's group membership. This basic information is critical for chapter 5, as it will later show whether voluntary caregivers have access to resources and knowledge or not.
Women as collective agents of structural change
Hooyman & Gonyea (1995) maintain that giving voice to collective concerns is a first step toward changing gender inequities in care responsibilities. For individual experiences of stress to be transformed into publicly expressed claims for change, it is necessary that people talk about and share their difficulties and develop a sense of collective consciousness and identity (Baines et al, 1991 cited in Hooyman & Gonyea, 1995). As long as women continue to accept caregiving as their individual responsibility and see the existing gender inequalities in caring as natural, their privately experienced strains are not moved into the public realm and given public voice and visibility. As long as caring remains isolated and viewed as a private responsibility, most women will continue to bear the burden in silence and not see the political aspects of their situation.
Both Tallis & Cavanagh (2004) recognize that a feminist perspective is oriented toward structural change that will challenge a status quo that systematically disadvantages women and will accord greater recognition to the work of caregiving.
Therefore, they maintain that transforming society should be the goal. In their analysis, transformation includes radical and fundamental change at the personal, relationship, community and societal levels as well as addressing the systems, mechanisms, policies, and practices that needed to support such genuine change. In this view of women as agents of change rather than passive victims of circumstances, Hooyman & Gonyea (1995) recognize that women cannot just be objects of public policy. Strategies for organizing for structural change must recognize the interaction between personal and political change.