Issues in AL

Critical Pedagogy

Lecture 4

S.Umrani
 Contents of the talk
• Where does this issue arise from? Origin of
the concept?
• ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’: Paulo Freire
• Critical Applied Linguistics (CAL): Alastair
Pennycook
• Characteristics of Critical Pedagogy (CP)
• What makes a critical pedagogue?
 ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’
• Emerging from Paulo Freire’s work in poverty-
stricken northeastern Brazil in the 1960s
• progressive impulses in education
• Critical pedagogy gained an international
audience with the 1967 publication of Freire’s
Pedagogy of the Oppressed and its English
translation in 1970. By the mid-1970s several
scholars in education and other disciplines
adapted Freire’s conception of critical pedagogy.
• Over the next decade, critical pedagogy
influenced pedagogical practice, teacher
education, and sociopolitical and educational
scholarship in South and North America
• It basically questions existing educational
practices and their consequences/outcomes
• Issues of justice in marginalised educational
contexts and marginalised students
• Friere’s theory was aimed at economically and
socially oppressed poor people and where he
fiercely criticised the role of educational
‘haves’ who control/curtail education to ‘have
nots’
• This conceptual framing of critical theory led
to Critical Applied Linguistics
 Critical Applied Linguistics
• Critical applied linguistics (CAL) is an
interdisciplinary critical approach to English
applied linguistics.
• ‘No education is neutral’
• Main concern: to expose the political dimensions
and power relations involved in mainstream
applied linguistics, in research domains like, ELT,
language policy and planning, language testing,
and language rights.
 Critical Pedagogy
• Drawing on Freire’s (1970) problem-posing model
of education CP endeavored for:
• empowerment as a goal of language education
• criticizes the traditional language education
which assumes learners as empty agents who
receive knowledge from teachers.
• Fundamental aspect of critical pedagogy then
become overcoming discouraging life situations
by raising awareness of the power relations
embedded in society.
 Shor, 1992
• “Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking
which go beneath surface meaning, first
impressions, dominant myths, official
pronouncements, traditional cliches, received
wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the
deep meaning, root causes, social context,
ideology, and personal consequences of any
action, event, object, process, organization,
experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass
media, or discourse”. (Empowering Education,
129)
 CP as Teaching Approach
• Does it replace traditional education?
• Add critical quality to instruction and instruction
materials
• Critical pedagogy is a teaching approach attempts
to help students question and challenge
domination, and the beliefs and practices that
dominate. This to say that, it is a theory and
practice of helping students achieve critical
consciousness (Riasati & Mollaei, 2012).
• Luke and Gore (1992) point out that critical pedagogy is
not universally applied strategy.
• pedagogies of empowerment and liberation which
should evolve in response to local contexts and needs.
• Needs of individual students
• The critical language educator relates knowledge of
grammar and vocabulary to knowledge of social
problems and how to act to solve these problems. He
encourages active learning in the classroom which
eventually prepares citizens for participation in a
democratic society.
 Three tenets of CP
• a) reflection upon the individual’s culture or
lived experience;
• b) development of voice through a critical look
at one’s world and society, which takes place
in dialogue with others;
• c) transforming the society toward equality for
all citizens through active participation in
democratic imperatives
 Role of the critical pedagogue
• Teachers are the agents who work in complex
social sites and who have the power to help
transform.
• Critical pedagogy encourages teachers to
consider their practices critically and explore
complexities of the educational process
through various viewpoints
 References
• Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York,
Continuum.
• Pennycook, A. (2001). Critical applied linguistics: A
critical introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Riasati, M.J. & Mollaei, F.(2012). Critical Pedagogy and
Language Learning. International Journal of Humanities
and Social Science. 2(21). pp 223-229
• Shor, I. (1992). Empowering Education: Critical
Teaching for Social Change. Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press.