01―Critical analysis of policies and education practices.

The critical analysis must be “testify of negativity”, that is, one of its main functions is to shed light on the ways by which the policy and the education practices are connected to relations of exploration and domination―and the fights against those relations―in the society as a whole.

02―Analysis of contradictions

and spaces for possible actions.

While engaging in such critical analysis, the critical analysis itself must point at the contradictions and possible spaces for actions. Thus, its goal is to look critically over the current realities as a conceptual/political model that emphasizes the spaces where counter-hegemonic actions may be possible to perform or performed indeed.

03―Redefinition of the object for analysis.

At this point we refer to actions that challenge the existing relations of unequal power and the so-called “non-reformist reform”. This is precisely the task that was admitted in the thick descriptions of scholar practices critically democratic done in “Democratic schools” ( Apple & Beane, 2007 ).

4―Reinterpretation of knowledge

When Gramsci (1971) urged that one of the tasks of a truly counter-hegemonic education was not to waste the “elite knowledge”, but to rebuild its form and content, in a sense that it serves the genuinely progressive and social needs, it has presented a key to another role that the “organic intellectuals” could perform: to develop practice and intellectual/political competences capable of supporting the communities to get involved in the mutually pedagogic debate, which allows that decisions are made according to the middle-term and long-term interests of the oppressed.

5―Sustenance of the traditions of radical work and critical theories.

In the view of organized attacks to “collective memories” of the differences and social fights, it is absolutely crucial that the traditions are kept alive, renewed, and criticized, when it is necessary, for their conceptual, empirical, historical and political limitations. This also means to keep the dreams, utopic visions and “non-reformist reforms”.

6―Critical articulation of new competences.

The relearning or the development and critical use of new “competences” is crucial in the contemporary setting. One alternative in this case apparently is the necessary critical articulation among journalistic and media, academic and popular competences.

7―Articulations between critical educators and social movements.

Critical educators must also act together with social movements, or together with the movements against conservative approaches and policies. The academic formation from Critical Education or Critical Pedagogy implies becoming an “organic intellectual” in Gramiscian terms.

8―Practice instrumentalization of critical knowledge.

This means to support the movements and fights for policies of resource distribution and for social recognition, with specialized knowledge. It also means to use the privilege that we have as academic/activists, in order to make way at universities and some other fields, for the ones who are not there yet, for those who have no voice in such places and at professional area, to which, for the means of the privilege, we have access.