The purpose of this edited collection is to bring to the forefront attempts to connect critical pedagogies and English Language Teaching (ELT) in different parts of the world. Critical pedagogy originated from the work of several authors in Europe, North America, and South America, in particular the work of Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire (Glass, 2001; Kincheloe, 2005; Kirylo, 2013; Steinberg, 2015; Wink, 2005). Following from Freire (1970) who held critical pedagogy as a non-prescriptive method, for the last three decades critical language educators have appropriated and reinvented critical pedagogy according to their own contexts and have theorized about the connection between critical pedagogy and language learning and teaching (Auerbach, 1986; Canagarajah, 1999; Cummins, 2000, 2001; Morgan, 1997, 1998; Motha, 2014; Norton 1997, 2000; Norton Peirce 1989; Pennycook, 2001). Critical language educators (e.g., Norton & Toohey, 2004), along with researchers working on general education studies (e.g., Porfilio & Ford, 2015), agree that critical pedagogies, in the plural, is a better term so as to acknowledge the multiple approaches and practices of educators and their students who are concerned with how to work against discriminatory practices and alleviate human suffering through pedagogy.
Despite the recognition and theorization about the importance of critical pedagogies as a way to engage students in discussions regarding discriminatory practices, social inequality, identity negotiation, and issues of power (Chun, 2015, 2016; López-Gopar, 2014, 2016), examples of actual classroom practices, both in language classrooms and teacher preparation programs, remain scarce. The few examples that can be found have originated in the so-called inner-circle countries, and these studies largely ignore ELT critical practices conducted by critical teachers and language educators elsewhere, including the so-called periphery countries, where educators have also reinvented their own critical pedagogies in order to respond to their local realities. These local critical pedagogies do have resonance with global contexts, but they have not been disseminated. Consequently, this book attempts to counteract this trend and introduce the readers to critical pedagogies that have been developed in different parts of the world.
The international perspective of this book makes this collection unique in terms of its contextual constraints and possibilities as well as its deconstruction of “ELT” that goes beyond the typical English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) distinction. In this book, ELT is brought closer to bilingual and multilingual arenas, in which ELT juxtaposes with “othered” languages and cultures. Furthermore, the chapters in this collection connect micro-contexts (classrooms) with macro-contexts (e.g., world migration, politics, and social struggles). The authors of these chapters write from the trenches: their own classrooms, preparation programs, and contexts. This gives the chapters a nuanced description and understanding of the everyday struggles that teachers, teacher educators, and researchers face within different contexts. The chapters consequently ground critical pedagogies and show that change occurring in micro-contexts can make a difference in other contexts around the world once they reach their audience who may reinvent their own critical pedagogies , notwithstanding any currently held distinctions such as inner-circle or periphery. The overall purpose of the collection should prove significant, by problematizing ELT in order to move it away from its imperialistic agenda (Phillipson, 1992, 2015) and impel it to work in favor of othered languages and peoples.
In the next section, I provide attempts to define critical pedagogies . As part of this section, I incorporate the conceptualizations of critical pedagogies pertaining to contributors included in this book. After this section, I present the three historical waves of critical pedagogies identified by Porfilio and Ford (2015), concluding that the chapters of the present collection are an intellectual bricolage of the ideas and works of the previous critical pedagogues. In the last section of this introduction, I briefly introduce the three sections of this book: (1) teaching beyond language, (2) dialoguing with teachers, and (3) questioning the critical. In each of the three sections, I provide a succinct description of each of the critical pedagogies “reinvented” in this book.
Defining Critical Pedagogies
Due to the pluralistic nature of critical pedagogy , defining critical pedagogies has been challenging and open to discussion. “The question ‘What is critical pedagogy?’ is one that will elicit various and probably irreconcilable answers” (Porfilio & Ford, 2015, p. xv; quotations in original). From the field of general education, Kirylo (2013) offers an encompassing definition, arguing that critical pedagogies are “an empowering way of thinking and acting, fostering decisive agency that does not take a position of neutrality in its contextual examination of the various forces that impact the human condition” (p. xxi). Also from general education, Porfilio and Ford (2015) argue that critical pedagogies are “concerned with the ways that schools and the educational process sustain and reproduce systems and relations of oppression, [and how education] can also potentially be a site for the disruption of oppression” (p. xvi). In applied linguistics in particular, Norton and Toohey (2004) argue that critical pedagogies in language learning focus on “local situations, problems, and issues, and see responsiveness to the particularities … [and] resist totalizing discourses about critical teaching, subjects, and strategies for progressive action” (p. 2, emphasis in original). All the aforementioned authors emphasize the transformation goal of critical pedagogies as a result of the agency, responsiveness, and resistance of all the actors who experience social injustice and discrimination.
In this collection, all the authors work toward co-creating agency and transformation by redefining critical pedagogies in their own terms and in connections to other constructs, disciplines, and their own context. Chun (Chap. 5) highlights the inherent connection of ELT to colonial heritage and its framing of students and so-called non-native speakers as the perpetual Other who are regarded as inferior and in need of help and assistance by the English language (López-Gopar, 2016). Relying on the work of critical applied linguists such as Suresh Canagarajah, Chun (Chap. 5) also emphasizes the agency of students, and teachers, and their resistance to this Othering, discourses that may be racist, sexist, and/or homophobic, and complex power dynamics. In Chap. 7, Govender also stresses the Othering suffered by marginalized groups in Africa and develops his critical pedagogy to counteract this phenomenon through four educational approaches: (1) education for the Other; (2) education about the Other; (3) education critical of privileging and Othering; and (4) education that changes students and society. Even though Sterzuk and Hengen (Chap. 2) do not follow Govender’s educational approaches per se, they work along the same lines with their students to educate them about how Indigenous peoples of Canada have dealt with this colonial legacy. They have developed their own critical pedagogy as an attempt to disrupt settler disposition toward Indigenous peoples of Canada. In a different continent, but with the same purpose, Swan (Chap. 11) underscores how her critical pedagogy deals with the way students from “other” backgrounds are positioned in Australian universities. Finally, working also at the university level, Barnawi (Chap. 3) argues that his critical pedagogy questions the role of schooling, including his university institution, as a major side for capital reproduction and works with his students to raise questions and subvert Western hegemonies.
The critical pedagogies developed by the authors of this collection take the classroom as the arena where their critical pedagogies come to life, challenging the Othering ideology prevailing in ELT. Parba and Crookes (Chap. 4) focus on how the language classroom can be transformed into a site of inquiry, in which students not only acquire languages but also use them to address issues that need serious attention. In a similar way, Dantas-Whitney (Chap. 8) argues that a needed practice of critical pedagogy is to use issues relevant to students’ lives not only for classroom activities but also for curriculum development. Along with Parba and Crookes (Chap. 4) and Dantas-Whitney (Chap. 8), Clavijo and Sharkey (Chap. 9) stress the importance of teachers viewing their learners as active agents who can negotiate the content of the instruction of the classroom, so that their life experiences, histories, and languages practices are honored, valued, and used as anchor for further reflections. Moreover, León Jiménez, Sughrua, Clemente, Huerta Cordova, and Vásquez Miranda (Chap. 6) ground their critical pedagogy within classroom dynamics that are in direct relation to social, cultural, and political issues. In their view, as well as all the other authors in this collection, learning is neither neutral nor objective within critical pedagogy. It is rath...