This article gives an account of an action research project that I used to examine and improve my own teaching practices. In this project, I used insights from critical pedagogy to inform my transition from a transmission to a social reform teaching perspective. When I used the critical pedagogical concept of constructed consciousness and the problem-posing teaching strategy to interact with my students as co-inquirers and to disrupt their prior knowledge, I noticed that many themes emerged, most notably that (a) students do not often question their assumptions, (b) students feel helpless to change the future, and (c) there is dissonance between students' beliefs and their practices. The final section of the article explains what I learned about teaching and learning as I engaged in action research pedagogy.