Freirean critical pedagogy has been critiqued by scholars from across disciplines including Composition and Rhetoric, Education and Critical Race Studies. Critics of critical pedagogy suggest that student's race, class and sex complicate the effectiveness of teaching within a critical pedagogy framework. What is not captured in these critiques is how teachers implement and attempt to resolve issues within the implementation of critical pedagogy. By applying teacher-research methods to her first-year writing (FYW) classroom, Novotny self-examines the process teachers undergo in order to implement critical pedagogy in the composition classroom. The study focuses on such questions: How do writing instructors implement a critical pedagogy in a FYW classroom? How does the teacher engage with students when discussing concepts/materials/assignments rooted in a critical pedagogy? How does a teacher encourage a "critical consciousness" in first-year student writing? Researching her FYW course, Novotny composes a reflective narrative methodology to articulate the multiple identities of consciousness that appeared. Doing so, implications are drawn not only for the implementation of critical pedagogy in FYW classrooms but the use of teacher-research as a tool for facilitating Freirean praxis. Through multiple narratives Novotny reveals not only her own critical consciousness development as a teacher but an analysis of students development of "naive" versus "transitive" consciousness (Freire, 1974).
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