Critical ELT in Action

Foundations, Promises, Praxis

Graham V. Crookes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415883481
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136918827
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Uniquely bridging theory and practice, this text introduces and overviews the various domains associated with the term critical pedagogy in the field of TESOL/ELT. Critical pedagogy addresses concepts, values, curriculum, instructional and associated practices involved in language teaching for social justice. Bringing critical pedagogy to classroom practitioners in a practical and comprehensible way, the text is designed to help teachers get started on critically grounded work in their own teaching.
Features
• Textbook extracts offer direct and quick illustration of what this perspective might look like in practice
• Coverage of feminist and anti-racist pedagogies; sexual identity, oppression and pedagogy; peace and environmental education; and critical English as a foreign language—and their implications for second-language teaching
• Historical background
• Theoretical background on language and learning
• Consideration of applicability of critical/radical educational concepts and traditions to non-Western cultural contexts
• A focus on issues of compromise and resistance

This original, timely, and informative text is ideal for any course on methods and approaches in TESOL.

1

INTRODUCTION

Teachers have been doing something called “critical pedagogy” for fifty years (using that term), and for hundreds of years, or perhaps always, under a range of related terms. In a general sense, a pedagogy which can use the term “critical” is a perspective on teaching, learning, and curriculum that doesn’t take for granted the status quo, but subjects it to critique, creates alternative forms of practice, and does so on the basis of radical theories of language, the individual, and society that take seriously our hopes for improvement in the direction of goals such as liberty, equality, and justice for all. In this book, I hope to address the practical questions that any language teacher starting out to engage with this viewpoint might ask. My primary group of language teachers are teachers of English as an additional language, but teachers of other languages, indeed any language of power, or any language associated with an oppressed group or culture as well, might benefit.

Variants of this tradition were in place during my time as a high school student and implicit in the widespread counter-culture taken for granted by many young people in those days. But it was not part of my education as a teacher, and though some elements of it were visible on the margins of my upbringing as a language specialist, it took a long time for it to come in to applied linguistics and language teaching generally. Thus even for those of us who (like me) have the time and conditions to reflect in writing on this topic, many beginner and beginning questions concerning critical pedagogy and its practices have still to be worked out. Many language teachers have an apprenticeship of observation that spans decades even before they come to take on the role of teacher; but almost none of us has a period of apprenticeship in which to observe critical language pedagogy. Thus many of us have to tackle the question of “how to begin” without any models, external or internal, to guide us. My goal in this book is to start to fill this gap.

And my goal in the next lighthearted section is to begin in as rapid a way as I can. I wrote the book to answer questions that I asked myself, that I asked specialists, and that I was myself asked. So I think I can still hear some of those questions, and I imagine some potential readers asking me them now. Should they really have to wade through the whole book—could I give them a quick preliminary answer now? I would like to do so in a way that suggests that the people involved in critical language pedagogy are real, talk, and engage in dialogue, and are in a hurry to get on with things, important things (like critical language pedagogy itself, a form of action above all else). So here follows a little imaginary exercise in something that’s almost the opposite of academic prose, for once!

Voices

Voice 1	I came to critical pedagogy because I didn’t have the means to back up what I wanted to do. I wanted the chairs in a circle, the principal said I couldn’t, I didn’t have an argument to give him. But just a few days earlier, someone had given me a copy of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I went home, I stayed up the whole night, and I was hooked. (Henry Giroux, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvCs6XkT3-o.)
Voice 2	What happens, then, when a young teacher meets for the first time the hypothesis of changing his or her behavior in the classroom? What happens when the young teacher meets the possibility of changing her or his teaching practice? Maybe she or he read some text and thinks for the first time to become a critical educator, a new way of simultaneously reading the word and reading the world. What happens? He or she comes to the classroom with a new conviction, but this new teacher was already shaped into the dichotomy between text and context. Then, it is hard to overcome the old dichotomy and integrate words and world. The teacher has a hard time giving witness in overcoming the rupture of intellectual study from the experience of the world. Dialectically connecting the two which have been separated so far and for so long is opposite to the teacher’s official training. (Paulo Freire in Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 136)
Voice 3	[A] quote on my wall reminds me every day why I teach. I want to think and learn along with my students, so that they can feel the excitement of lifelong learning. I appreciate their insights, their abilities to synthesize and question, to struggle for truth and reason. I want my students to pursue questions that don’t have easy answers … “1 The purpose of education in an unjust society is to bring about equality and justice. 2 Students must play an active part in the learning process. 3 Teachers and students are both simultaneously learners and producers of knowledge. —Paulo Freire” (Mary Cowhey, 2006, p. 124)
Voice 4	I have to admit this course was the most direct and enlightening teaching experience that I have had, although it had some contradictory effects on me. First of all, I felt isolated, destitute, and high and dry; since my colleagues were quite reluctant to even share their ideas (the course was radical and dealt with taboos and forbidden topics). Ignorance is not a blessing, but critical reflection made me dissatisfied and skeptical about everything. Every text seemed to be biased and served a particular group interest. I saw power, dominance and social inequality more clearly than before, and I felt futile and incompetent to change the world around me. But there was something else: I changed myself a lot and when a person changes, there is a chance for the world to change too! (Sima Sadeghi, EFL teacher, Iran; see Sadeghi, 2009, p. 359)
Voice 5	I started teaching in the mid-seventies when … negotiating the curriculum [was an] element of a familiar educational discourse in my home state of South Australia … Being “radical”, as we understood it at that time, was almost the norm amongst my cohort of newly appointed English teachers. (Barbara Comber, in Cooper & White, 2006, p. 51)

Three imaginary dialogues

[The first speaker could be you, or one of you, the readers of this book. The second speaker is me; I’ll introduce myself after the dialogues. The dialogues are here to give you a quick sense of what this book offers you, some of you, depending on who you are …]

Dialogue 1

— I’m a young English language teacher—people say I’m enthusiastic, energetic, and eager. I want to try out critical language pedagogy. How do I start?

— OK, you are currently teaching a class, right?

— Yes.

— Adults, high school kids or elementary?

— Can we talk about all of them?

— Sure, and there are plenty of finer divisions that are relevant. I think I’d deal with elementary separately. In fact, why don’t we talk about them first. OK, it seems to me that there’s a lot of focus on literacy (not to mention basic math skills) within the core of the elementary curriculum. And besides basals and phonics, lots of teachers read to their kids. Rug time read-alouds are absolutely standard practice. So what kind of books should be read? Those that simply reestablish mainstream dominant culture positions, or those that might lead to some questioning?

— The second kind, of course.

— So without disrupting the rest ofyour lessons, your scope and sequence, or any of your other activities, one thing you could do—if you could just put your hands on some different, critical literacy content—you could use them in your read-aloud time, then carefully engage the kids in some discussion afterwards. If you try this, I believe you would be on your way. There’s lots more that could gradually be moved towards.

— But I’m in an EFL situation.

— OK, the EFL context is more difficult. There is a lot more elementary EFL than there used to be, and in developed countries it has picked up a lot of the general elementary curricular practices, which means activities-based, games, songs, and so on. So simple picture-book read-alouds aren’t out of the question; the question is, at what level? And here I think you might have to make your own materials, adapting some of the stuff I’ve already mentioned.

— OK, what about adults?

— Much depends on the nature of the course. But one option is, without disrupting the rest of your lesson or the week’s activities, ask for some oral—or better, written—feedback on their interests and the reasons they’re taking the course, even if you think you already know. Basically I think a relatively simple, not too disruptive line is to move towards participatory curriculum development.

— What’s that?

— It’s students having substantial input into the content of the course.

— Sounds difficult. What if they just want to talk about rock stars, hobbies, boring stuff like that.

— You have to go at it a bit at a time. But you’re entitled to state your views and if you can develop the language you and they need, then you can have a discussion. But ethically, you also have to know why your students are there.

— Usually it’s because they have to be.

— What could be done about that?

— Not much, not all at once.

— Exactly. Getting this to work often involves very small steps. But even if they have to be there, wouldn’t they be better off if they had a say in what was going on in the class?

— Yes, that makes sense. And high school kids?

— Equally, I think we should be moving towards a critical needs analysis (huh?)—finding out what they really need or want. But it could also be that you could identify what bugs them most about their class. If it’s exams, for example, there’s lots to be said and done about “democratic assessment.”

— What’s that?

— Well, answering questions like that is why you picked up this book …

— Yeah. But I think I’ve got the main points now. I’ll get started and read the rest of this later.

— No, no! You can’t go off half-cocked. Lots of people have tried critical pedagogy with only half an idea about what it is, had a bad experience, and then said that it doesn’t work. Do me the favor of reading the whole book first before you try anything at all! Or another one. There’s plenty on the shelf next to this one. Look, lots of people have been working on this for fifty years or more and you may as well take advantage. Let me say a bit more before you drop this back on the shelf: This perspective is not for the faint-hearted; it’s not even for the absolute novice in language teaching. It needs a language teacher with energy, experience, and a vision of social change. And she still n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• BRIEF CONTENTS
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Getting started: Materials and curriculum content
• 3 Components of critical language pedagogy
• 4 Radical or critical pedagogy: Beginnings and elements
• 5 Relevant understandings of language and learning
• 6 Developing domains of radical language pedagogy
• 7 Administration and related matters
• 8 Concerns and outcomes: What is to be done?
• 9 Imagination and targets
• Appendix
• References
• Index