Troubled thoughts on critical pedagogy for PETE

Recently, a colleague in the PETE field claimed that I was part of a 'backlash against' and 'flight from' critical pedagogy. Moreover, he claimed that I had recanted the enthusiasm for critical pedagogy that I advocated in the 1980s and 1990s. Although he later admitted that he had 'misread' my work and that I was not part of a backlash I have been left wondering if, indeed, I have recanted some of my early enthusiasm for critical pedagogy. That question was the prompt for me to revisit my intellectual journey in critical pedagogy. In essence what follows is my attempt to account for how my thinking towards critical pedagogy for PETE has changed over the years, the things that influenced such changes, and the nature of my current thinking. In particular, I discuss the worrying trends related to the backlash against Enlightenment thinking manifest in the privileging of intuition, emotion and 'gut feeling' over reason and rationality, and the implications of these trends for critical pedagogy in teacher education.