The ethical foundation of critical pedagogy in contemporary academia: (self)‐reflection and complicity in the process of teaching

In this paper an ethical approach to educational methodology is discussed in relation to the philosophies of Emanuel Levinas and Robert Cox. Cox’s anti‐essentialist understanding of historical materialism and Levinas’ metaphysical idealism are applied to an analysis of the (self)‐reflective methods required today in Higher Education in the UK, such as Problem‐Based Learning (PBL) and Personal Development Planning (PDP). The paper identifies a post‐Kantian paradigm of the subject–object dichotomy as a cause of the ontological constraints which pervade critical pedagogy, and instead it proposes a pre‐ontological ethics of the relationship with the other which questions self‐centred strategies of reflection.