Introduction
The question of the best method for language teaching had obsessed all language teaching programs before the
initiation of a constructivist approach into education. Teachers, and students
alike, had been required to be after, and appreciate, a set of fixed procedures in
order to handle different aspects of the complicated issues of language
acquisition. No one could argue for the rejection of the "right" answers which
had been cultivated by the proponents of the culture of "monologue". Not only
students, who were, despite their differences, taught by means of the same procedures and tested accordingly, but
teachers, who were appreciated only based on how successful they could follow what the method designers had
prescribed for them in order to use for the students of diverse variables, were dissatisfied with the positivist approach
to language teaching.
When the constructivist outlook entered the arena, it argued for the significance of all people's ideas, hence
the consideration of students and teachers' viewpoints in all aspects of the language learning process. This was
good news for the oppressed who had always been forced to accept the "right" answers provided by
the privileged stakeholders. But unfortunately, the constructivist viewpoints' entrance into the language education era almost
remained as an introduction in many places of the world, and in some contexts the results of their
implementation never lived up to expectations (Chomsky & Robichaud, 2014). Our country, Iran, is just an
example of such places, where after more than three decades since the introduction of the principles of Critical
Pedagogy very little seems to have
happened to the educational system
regarding its advancement even towards
accepting the principles of a critical
education (Aliakbari & Allahmoradi,
2012), let alone their implementation. As
Pishghadam and Mirzaee (2008)
maintain, the educational system of Iran
is still in the modern era (cited in
Pishghadam & Naji Meidani, 2012, p.
466). Every year, the educational system
installs strict rules regarding teaching
and learning practices, and imposes a
standardized curriculum to be used by all
schools (Pishghadam & Naji Meidani,
2012) , regardless of their specific
educational and societal contexts. Our
educational system seems to have not
even accepted the very idea behind the
notion of Critical Pedagogy which is to
respect the differences, and thus regards
all types of learners, on the one hand,
and all kinds of teachers, on the other, to
be treated the same. This is the very
basic reason for developing only a
standardized curriculum for the whole
country. Besides, learners are not given
the right to choose the way in which they
are taught and tested, as well as what
they should be taught, and teachers have
had little opportunity to express their
viewpoints regarding how textbooks
should be written to fit the specific
contexts in which they teach. As
Pishghadam & Naji Meidani (2012)
claim, "Centralization, transmission, and
behaviorism are prevalent from the
primary years of education through the
tertiary level, with students accustomed
to didactic teaching and learning" (p.
466).
Furthermore, despite going through
English language courses for 6 years,
Iranian high school seniors' knowledge
and use of English does not come up to
expectations, and many university
students seem to come up against
difficulty even when passing a simple
General English course. Though such
problems may have diverse sources, one
seems to us to be a lack of awareness of
the very principles of the Critical
Pedagogy on the part of the teachers
(Esmaili & Barjesteh, 2013) and the
learners, or to take its premises for
granted in the rare cases in which these
principles are known.
In order to better portrait the
conditions, an investigation of the
Constitution of Iran may be helpful.
Education and language teaching in the
Constitution: a critical stance
When reviewing the literature on Critical
Pedagogy, we got concerned with
exploring the Constitution for articles
regarding education in general, and
language education, in particular. We
noticed that the 3rd and 30th articles
state that the government has the duty of
directing all its resources to free
education for everyone at all levels;
besides, in article 104, it is declared that
In order to ensure Islamic equity and
cooperation in carrying out the programs
and to bring about the harmonious
progress of all units of production, both
industrial and agricultural, councils
consisting of the representatives of the
workers, peasants, other employees, and
managers, will be formed in educational
and administrative units, units of service
industries, and other units of a like
nature, similar councils will be formed,
composed of representatives of the
members of those units. (Constitution of
Islamic Republic of Iran, Article 104)
The fact, however, is that although
education is given high priority in the
Constitution, there is no indication of a
reference to foreign language education
in the whole text, except for a reference
to Arabic language teaching in the 16th
article. There was no indication of an
article regarding foreign language
education in the ministry of education
documents, either. This is also
articulated by Aghagolzadeh and Davari
(2014):
"Looking at the current changing
situation of Iranian society reveals that
the lack of any applicable and justifiable
language in education policy is totally
visible". (p. 405)
Although this may seem to be a
lack of attention to foreign language
education, it also indicates the likelihood
of existing a second meaning which is
the capability of the Constitution for a
reform in language education, since the
Constitution does not articulate any
prohibition of attending to foreign
language education. This is also
confirmed by the Fundamental Reform
Document of Education (FRDE) (2011)
which is developed by the Ministry of
Education, the Supreme Council of
Cultural Revolution, and the Supreme
Council of Education.
In FRDE, there are references to
foreign language education: "provision
of foreign language education within the
optional (Core-elective) section of the
curriculum framework by observing the
principle of stabilization and
enforcement of the Islamic–Iranian
identity" (FRDE, chapter 7, p. 32).
Moreover, though less than enough,
there seems to exist traces of Critical
Pedagogy principles (though not Critical
Language Pedagogy) in some chapters,
which indicates the possibility for the
application of Critical Pedagogy
principles in the educational system:
"Provision and development of equal
learning opportunities both for male and
female students in various areas of the
country that take into account their
characteristics and differences" (FRDE,
chapter 7, p. 36). What is of note,
however, is that the FRDE does not
seem to be more than a set of general
guidelines whose applicability, at least
regarding the language teaching issue,
has not put into practice yet.
In the present piece of research,
Critical Pedagogy principles (see the
"method" section below) have been
applied to develop an EFL reading
comprehension course in order to
investigate the effect of the course on
learners' reading comprehension ability,
their motivation to read English
materials, changes (if any) in their
attitudes towards how democracy is
treated in their classrooms, and their
attitudes towards the critical reading
comprehension course. In fact, the
present study is a step forward to
examine the outcomes of the beginning
phases of a dissertation which aimed at
developing a tentative model of Critical
Pedagogy for English language teaching
practice in Iran. The rationale behind
choosing reading comprehension was
that this is the skill which is practiced in
all educational contexts in Iran (i.e.,
schools, universities, language
institutes), and is mostly favored by the
ministries of Education and Sciences,
Research, and Technology as the most
important skill to be acquired by the
students.
According to a classification of
different definitions of Critical Pedagogy
and the different contexts in which they
can be used (Akbarpour, forthcoming)
there is no room, at least for the present
situation, for applying a strong version
of Critical Pedagogy in our context and,
thus, to confront the whole educational
system; as a result, a weak version of
Critical Pedagogy (Akbarpour,
forthcoming) was employed in the
present study. In fact, this piece of
research, as Schultz, Mcsurley, and
Salguero (2013) state, "offers students
opportunities to engage in both
democratic processes and experiential
learning while also meeting benchmarks
and standards" (p. 53). Thus, besides
following the very basic principles of the
educational policy, such as teaching
reading comprehension as the most
important skill in all educational
contexts, the researchers have tried to
provide a space for practicing Critical
Pedagogy in EFL classrooms.
Literature Review
What is Critical Pedagogy?
According to Freire (1972) education is
not a neutral activity but a basically
political and power related one, since it
either redresses the imbalances in the
society or makes the biased conditions
worse. This remark elucidates Critical
Pedagogy, which in Conagarajah
(2005)'s terms is "a way of doing
learning and teaching" (Conagarajah,
2005, p. 932), and whose mission is to
find the political and societal inequalities
regarding education, and to initiate a
change in order to help the oppressed to
have a voice. By this means, learners
and teachers' ideas are respected by
virtue of the very fact that in Critical
Theory every individual is regarded as
significant in the society.
As Thomson-Bunn (2014) argues,
"there is a lack of definitional precision
surrounding critical pedagogy and its
core terms". Some critiques of Critical
Pedagogy believe that the reason behind
its falling short of practice is in the way
it is defined (see for example Durst,
2006). However, according to the
literature introducing the concept of
Critical Pedagogy and the different
disciplines related to it, one can identify
the three elements of "hegemony
identification, awareness-raising, and
change" inherent in the concept of
Critical Pedagogy (Akbarpour,
forthcoming). Therefore, considering
these three ingredients, Critical
Pedagogy may be broadly defined as a
framework for learning and teaching
which strives to:
1. Identify the hegemony, the oppressive
cultural and sociopolitical conditions in
education and the related contexts, and
the way the ideology behind the
oppressive powers interact with the
involved people's beliefs, and
2. Encourage educators, including
teachers, and students to be
A. aware of the oppressive cultural
and sociopolitical conditions and the
ideology behind them
B. emancipated by means of critical
awareness
C. able to have a voice and to
initiate a positive change for the better
(Akbarpour, forthcoming).
Studies on Critical Pedagogy in practice
Although the concept of Critical
Pedagogy has been appealing to many
EFL/ESL practitioners since its
introduction, only a few pieces of
research have put its principles into
practice in language classrooms, and
many have only theoretically elaborated
on its benefits regarding language
learning and teaching practices. As Ross
(2007) better explains, "the few authors
or practitioners who offer concrete
examples of critical teaching and
learning practices are contrasted with the
relative many who focus on theorizing a
vision of society and schooling that is
intended to shape the direction of a
critical pedagogy... Few, if any, critical
pedagogues believe that critical teaching
practices can be reduced to recipes" (p.
160). Critical pedagogues, including
Henry Giroux (1997), Ken Osborne
(1990), and Stephen Sweet (1998) argue
that "critical theory needs to move
beyond educational ideology, examining
how it can be meaningfully employed in
classroom practice" (cited in Breuing,
2011, p. 2). This issue is even more
noticeable regarding studies concerning
EFL/ESL practices.
During our literature review, there
were moments of joy when we
encountered a study which had traces of
practicality in its title, but when we read
the whole paper we did not observe but
the same mentioning of theories. Of
course, there were some studies
introducing ways to apply the principles
of CP, for instance through vignettes, but
they were mostly concerning issues not
related to our context in Iran, such as the
hip hop culture or racism, frequently
concerning African-American students
(i.e. Barrett, 2013; Meacham, Anderson,
& Correa, 2013;Simmons, Carpenter,
Ricks, Walker, Parks, Marquin, & Davis,
2013; Williams, 2009). Besides, most
studies seemed to have based their
course- or practice-development on what
we would like to call their principles of
CP, for none reported to have had a
thorough literature review on the history
of Critical Pedagogy and its proposed
principles before their practice, and to
have checked the appropriateness of
such principles for their context. In Iran,
the situation seems to be even worse,
since language education still appears to
suffer from what Pennycook twenty five
years ago called a “divorce from broader
issues in educational theory”
(Pennycook, 1990, p. 1), and thus, even
6 | Pedagogy of Possibility for EFL
fewer pieces of research have
investigated the Critical Pedagogy issue
in practice, and many have confined
their research to investigating Iranian
teachers’ attitudes towards Critical
Pedagogy (i.e. Alliakbari &
Allahmoradi, 2012; Davari, Iranmehr, &
Erfani, 2012; Esmaili & Barjesteh, 2013;
Naderi Anari & Zamanian, 2014;
Pishvaei & Kasaian, 2013; Shabani &
Khorsandi, 2014), or have examined
Critical Pedagogy in general, and not
Critical Language Pedagogy (e.g.
Abdelrahim, 2007). No pieces of
research, to the knowledge of the
researchers, have put the principles of
Critical Pedagogy into practice after
investigating their appropriateness for
the educational context of Iran, and none
have ever made a language teaching
course based on such principles.
Therefore, in order to fill in the gaps in
the literature, the present piece of
research has aimed at answering the
following questions:
What does a critical reading
comprehension course look like?
Does employing Critical Pedagogy
principles have any effects on reading
comprehension ability of EFL learners?
Will a critical reading comprehension
course make EFL learners more
motivated towards learning English and
reading English materials?
Will a critical reading comprehension
course change learners’ democratic
attitudes towards their English
classrooms?
What is the learners’ attitude towards the
critical reading comprehension course?
Method
The present study adopted a mixed-methods design including a pre-test post-test design with a control group, plus
qualitative data analysis techniques, for
scrutinizing the effect of the application
of Critical Pedagogy principles on
reading comprehension competence of
EFL learners, their attitudes towards
English language learning and reading
English material, and their democratic
attitudes towards their English
classrooms. First, score distributions of
89 sophomore students majoring in
English teaching and English translation
on their Reading Comprehension (2)
course were explored in order to choose
homogeneous groups to take part in the
study. Based on the results, 61 of the
students (in two different classes) were
recognized as appropriate to participate,
and their scores were taken as their pre-test scores. One class was randomly
assigned to control (n=31) and the other
made the experimental group (n=30).
The data for this research was collected
during the first semester of the 2014-2015 academic year in the participants'
Reading Comprehension (3) course.
The following four instruments were
employed for fulfilling the purpose of
the current study. The first one was a
reading comprehension test which was
developed especially for the purpose of
the present research based on the
materials covered during the semester,
and aimed at testing different sub-skills
of reading comprehension. This
instrument was utilized as a posttest in
order to test the control and experimental
groups in terms of their reading
comprehension competence.
The second instrument was a
questionnaire on the participants’
attitudes and opinions regarding reading
comprehension before and after the
experiment. This questionnaire consisted
of two questions which required the
participants' to write about their attitudes
towards reading comprehension.
Whenever necessary, the participants
were asked to explain about their
answers in order for the researchers to
know about the nature of their responses
and what they really intended. Results
generated by this instrument were
analyzed both quantitatively and
qualitatively. The quantitative technique
(t-test) was used to explore changes (if
any) in the participants' attitudes towards
reading comprehension during the
treatment, while the qualitative
technique helped the researchers
transcribe the results obtained by means
of the third instrument whenever
necessary.
The third instrument, whose results
were transcribed and analyzed through
qualitative techniques of grounded
theory, was semi-structured interviews
consisting of 5 open-ended items, which
invited the participants to express their
attitudes towards the critical reading
comprehension course at the beginning,
during, and after the experiment. Results
of the interviews were reviewed several
times to find the recurrent patterns for
classifying the data and generating
themes in order to answer the research
questions.
Finally, the fourth instrument was a
democratic attitude questionnaire whose
items were taken from Ekman’ study
(2006) regarding school effects on
democratic attitudes among school
students. By democratic attitudes of the
students, we mean the attitudes of the
students towards how democracy is
treated in their classroom. In fact, the
present paper aimed at investigating
whether the attitudes of the students
towards how democracy is treated in
their classrooms would change after the
treatment or, in other words, whether the
experimental group would feel a more
democratic atmosphere in their
classroom as a result of the treatment.
It may be worth mentioning that we
just attempted at the educational aspect
of democracy as introduced by Dewey
(1916), to whose theory of education the
idea of a democratic classroom is traced
back. Dewey's (1916) theory of
education explores the relationship
between democracy and education, and
advocates a student-centered pedagogy.
The viewpoints of the proponents of
democracy in education are in close
agreement with those of critical
pedagogues, and Dewey even considers
democracy as the central aim of Critical
pedagogy (Breuing, 2011); this
relationship between Critical Pedagogy
and democracy made the grounds on
which we decided to explore the
participants' democratic attitudes as one
of our dependent variables. In a
democratic classroom, teachers are not
considered as dictators of knowledge,
and thus there is shared responsibility for
learning. Students enjoy freedom of
speech, freedom to choose, and freedom
to question the system (Waterman,
2007). "Schools are miniature societies
and should focus on real-life problems
students face in school or will face in the
future" (Moss & Lee, 2010, p. 39).
Kubow and Kinney (2000) developed
eight characteristics for a democratic
classroom as follows: active
participation, avoidance of textbook
dominated instruction, reflective
8 | Pedagogy of Possibility for EFL
thinking, student decision-making and
problem-solving choices, controversial
issues, individual responsibilities,
recognition of human dignity, and
relevance. For the purpose of the present
piece of research we made use of
Ekman’s (2006) democratic attitude
questionnaire, which is regarding
Dewey's (1916) theory of education and
Kubow and Kinney's (2000)
characteristics of democratic classrooms,
and is in line with Critical Pedagogy
principles.
A classical three-stage Delphi
technique (Walker & Selfe, 1996),
which makes use of three postal rounds
and can be administered by email
(Landeta, 2006, cited in Khatib & Fathi,
2014), was employed to examine the
content validity of the questionnaire. The
Delphi technique is defined as a multi-staged survey which attempts at
achieving consensus on an important
issue (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison,
2007; McKenna, 1994). Employing the
Delphi technique, we made use of the
opinions of ten PhD holders in TEFL,
whose experience in teaching English
ranged between 8-20 years, and four of
whom worked in the area of Critical
Pedagogy, in order to validate the
questionnaire items for the context of
Iran. The result of the Delphi technique
reduced the number of questionnaire
items form twelve to seven. The items
which were recognized as appropriate
for the purpose of the present study are
as follows:
1) Students are allowed to disagree with
the teacher or to question what the
teacher is teaching.
2) Teachers respect students’ opinions
and encourage them to express their
opinions during class.
3) Students feel free to express opinions
in class even when their opinions are
different from most of the other students.
4) Students are allowed to bring up
current political events for discussion in
class.
5) Teachers encourage students to work
cooperatively to solve problems.
6) Teachers lecture and students take
notes.
7) Teachers are always right and thus
students must obey them.
These items were on a likert-scale
ranging from “often” to “never”, which
were, therefore, coded from one to four.
The reliability of the new questionnaire
was estimated to be 0.82 on Cronbach
alpha measure. The questionnaire was
administered before and after the
experiment to know about whether the
participants’ attitudes towards how
democracy is treated in their classroom
will change after the critical pedagogical
reading comprehension course.
Both groups received the same
amount of classroom instruction (28
sessions, each lasting for 90 minutes)
and were instructed by the same teacher.
The course materials were also identical
for both. The only difference was in the
method chosen in order to teach reading
comprehension to the participants. While
the control group was instructed by
means of the conventional method of
teaching reading comprehension
practiced in most reading comprehension
classes in Iran, the experimental group
received instruction based on the
assumptions of Critical Pedagogy. More
specifically, while the classroom in the
control group was a typical teacher-fronted one, the experimental group
experienced a rather different approach.
This approach will be explained in detail
in terms of Richards’ (2001) proposal
regarding the following five factors
based on which questions specific to any
educational situation could be
constructed:
(1). Program factors: questions
regarding concerns of the program
(2). Teacher factors: questions
regarding teacher concerns
(3). Learner factors: questions
regarding learner concerns
(4). Content factors: questions
regarding the content and organization
of the material
(5). Pedagogical factors: questions
regarding principles underlying the
materials and the pedagogical design of
the materials, including choice of
activities and exercise types (p. 259).
We further divided the first factor
into “language policy” and “curriculum
development factor”, and thus the
resulting framework consisted of the six
factors of curriculum development,
language policy, teacher, learner,
content, and pedagogical concerns. For
the reasons mentioned before, the
researchers had to adopt "a weak version
of critical pedagogy" (Akbarpour,
forthcoming) for the purpose of the
present research, as a result of which the
research focused only on some of the
mentioned processes. In fact, areas
which were influenced least by the
teacher's critical stance were the
language policy and the general policy
of the curriculum development, and
areas mostly influenced by the teacher
were regarding teacher, learner, content,
and pedagogical factors.
In order to develop a framework for
incorporating the critical pedagogy
principles into the reading
comprehension course for the
experimental group, after reviewing
nearly three hundred papers and book
chapters regarding Critical Pedagogy,
the researchers decided to make use of
Crawford's (1978, pp. 73-112) twenty
principles of Critical Pedagogy (cited in
Abednia, 2010) which focused on
different dimensions of a critical
educational program. In other words, the
concept of "Critical Pedagogy
principles" was operationalized by
means of what Crawford (1978) offered
as principles of Critical Pedagogy for
ELT programs. These principles were
found to present a rather fuller account
of the premises expressing CP as no
other different principles emerged from
the literature reviewed. Since these
principles had originally been developed
to provide a theoretical framework for
ELT programs in general, they needed to
be tailored to the specifics of the focus
of the present piece of research.
Accordingly, our framework’s items
were classified based on the six factors
mentioned above (four of which had
been taken from Richards (2001)), and
thus, the order in which we classified the
items were different from the one
presented by Crawford (1978).
As it was stated earlier, the final
draft of our framework had originally
made use of the six factors of curriculum
development, language policy, teacher,
learner, content, and pedagogical
concerns as the factors used in the
10 | Pedagogy of Possibility for EFL
process of the first factor analysis
(Akbarpour, forthcoming), and thus, the
final emerging principles were the result
of estimating all these six processes.
However, since the present piece of
research aimed at taking only the four
factors of teacher, learner, content, and
pedagogical concerns into account,
another factor analysis was run to
produce critical pedagogy principles
which were especially appropriate for
the present study. Therefore, the original
twenty-five critical pedagogy items
which had been derived from
Crawford’s work (1978), and had been
recognized as appropriate for the context
of Iran, were again put to factor analysis
while the six factors had been reduced to
four. As a result, the instrument was
validated through confirmatory factor
analysis and the number of items was
reduced to twelve. These items were
employed as the general principles to
teach reading comprehension to the
experimental group.
a. Teacher factors:
1. The teacher participates in the
process of knowing as a learner
among learners, since knowing
as a process of transformation is
participation in the human
vocation.
2. The teacher's function is one of
posing problems, since education
is for posing of problems.
According to the first principle,
there seems to be a shift of position for
the critical teacher from that of "expert,
trainer, or supervisor, to that of
collaborator, consultant or facilitator"
(Richards, 1989). The discourse of the
overriding educational practices,
according to critical pedagogists, follows
the “banking” model of education
(Freire, 1972) which considers learners
as passive recipients of pre-packaged
knowledge. While the above-mentioned
principles are in contradiction with the
banking model, they never equalize the
roles assumed for the teacher and the
students. In other words, although
teachers are classroom participants like
their students, and they contribute their
insights to the process, their authority is
preserved due to their sophisticated
knowledge regarding the subject matter,
coupled with their teaching experiences.
This is what resolves the seemingly
contradiction of being a “learner among
learners” and a “problem poser” at the
same time, and would be an answer to
those critiques who believe that Critical
Pedagogy falls short of offering a sort of
control over the teaching process, and
results in a messy classroom condition.
Bickel (2006) exemplifies
“democratizing the classroom” whereby
students decide about such issues as the
subject matter, the amount of reading
assigned per week, the due date for
assignments, and the class attendance
policy. This co-ownership assumed by
the students, however, as Bickel argues,
gives the instructor more respect and,
paradoxically, more authority among the
students. As Friere (1998) suggests, “to
teach is not to transfer knowledge but to
create the possibilities for the production
or construction of knowledge” (cited in
Fobes & Caufman, 2008, p. 28).
In an introduction to Pedagogy of
the Oppressed, Donaldo Macedo (2000)
introduces Freire’s problem-posing
education in the following way:
“Paulo Freire's invigorating critique of
the dominant banking model of
education leads to his democratic
proposals of problem-posing education
where "men and women develop their
power to perceive critically the way they
exist in the world with which and in
which they find themselves; they come
to see the world not as a static reality but
as a reality in the process of
transformation.” (p. 12)
Furthermore, according to Freire
(2000), “Problem-posing education,
responding to the essence of
consciousness—intentionality—rejects
communiques and embodies
communication. It epitomizes the special
characteristic of consciousness: being
conscious of, not only as intent on
objects but as turned in upon itself in a
Jasperian "split"—consciousness as
consciousness of consciousness.” (P. 79)
b. Learner factors:
3. Following a problem-posing
education, the student is one who
acts on objects.
4. The student possesses the right
to and power of decision-making,
since each person is to fulfill
his/her human vocation, and if
each person has the right to
name the world.
These two principles are quite well
explained by the two quotations
mentioned above regarding problem-posing education. As Friere (2000)
argues, “any situation in which some
individuals prevent others from engaging
in the process of inquiry is one of
violence. The means used are not
important; to alienate human beings
from their own decision-making is to
change them into objects.” (p. 85). The
power of decision-making by the
students when collaborating the content
of the course with them was evident in
the joy and excitement from the part of
the students, and this may explain what
Jesús Gómez (Pato) called the
“Pedagogy of the Shine in the Eyes”
(cited in Puigvert, 2008). This was only
an example of the feeling of success and
satisfaction reported by both students
and the teacher while experiencing a
“critical” classroom.
To employ the problem-posing
approach regarding learner factors more
specifically, the researchers made use of
the five steps mentioned by Auerbach
(1992) as follows: 1. describe the
content, 2. define the problem, 3.
personalize the problem, 4. discuss the
problem, and 5. discuss alternatives to
the problem (cited in Izadinia, 2009),
and also Naiditch (2009)’s guidelines
regarding teaching reading for social
action (p. 97).
c. Content factors:
5. The content of curriculum
derives from the life situation of
the learners as expressed in the
themes of their reality, the object
of knowing is the person's
existential situation
6. The learners produce their own
learning materials since s/he is
considered as a creative actor,
and since each person has the
right to name the world for
her/himself.
7. 7. The content of curriculum
aims at teaching conscientization
(which is the ability to acquire
critical perception of the
interaction of phenomena) to
learners.
8. If an aim of conscientization is to
acquire critical perception of the
interaction of phenomena, then
curriculum content is open to
interdisciplinary treatment.
These content-related principles are,
like the other critical pedagogy
principles, in line with the problem-posing education, in which the learner is
the one who acts on objects, and whose
final aim is learners’ conscientization. In
fact, all critical pedagogy principles,
seem to be directly related to, and
affected by, the principle of
“conscientization”, since, by its
definition, it seems to be the final aim of
critical pedagogy. Therefore, strategies
suggested to apply other CP principles,
including problem-posing education, are
suggestions to pave the way for
conscientizing learners.
Each learner brings with him/her a
set of “life situations” or “views
impregnated with anxieties, doubts,
hopes, or hopelessness” which “imply
significant themes on the basis of which
the program content of education can be
built” (Freire, 2000, P. 93). Freire further
explains “life situations” in terms of “the
reality which mediates men” and “the
perception of that reality held by
educators and people” and asserts that
“we must go to them to find the program
content of education” (Italics added) (p.
96). The eighth principle, which is the
result of its preceding principle, implies
using a variety of means in the
curriculum content including
technology, which has been reported to
be useful in education (see for example,
Bishop, 2010; Haugue, 2011; Hussein,
2012).
d. Pedagogical factors:
9. The organization of curriculum
recognizes the class as a social
entity and resource, and thus
makes use of dialog as the
context of the educational
situation.
10. Combined reflection and action
(praxis) constitute the method of
education, since praxis is a
method of knowing.
11. The teacher’s task is first to
organize generative themes
(which are derived from the
learners' existential situation) as
problems and second to organize
subject matter as it relates to
those themes.
12. Life situation and the learners'
perceptions of it inform the
organization of subject matter,
i.e. skills and information
acquisition, within the
curriculum.
In explaining “dialog” as the context
for the educational situation, Freire
(2000) argues:
“The investigation of what I have termed
the people’s "thematic universe"—the
complex of their "generative themes"—
inaugurates the dialogue of education as
the practice of freedom. The
methodology of that investigation must
likewise be dialogical, affording the
opportunity both to discover generative
themes and to stimulate people's
awareness in regard to these themes.” (p.
96)
Guilar (2006) has introduced and
elaborated on four major features for
dialogic instruction which have been
employed in the present experiment
when feasible. These features are:
listening and respect, direction,
character building, and authority. In an
article regarding how to do praxis in
writing classrooms, Rypstat (2002) lists
some suggestions based on students and
teachers’ roles. Although these hints are
suggested for writing classrooms, many
of them seem to work in teaching other
language skills, and thus were employed
in the present research.
Results and Discussion
The first research question, i.e.“What
does a critical reading comprehension
course look like?”, was answered in the
method section, using the twelve critical
pedagogy principles which were
validated and divided into the four
factors of “teacher”, “learners”,
“content”, and “pedagogy” through a
process of factor analysis. In other
words, in the present study, a critical
reading comprehension course was
defined as one which is based on Critical
Pedagogy principles in terms of teacher,
learner, content, and pedagogical factors.
The second research question, i.e.
“Does employing Critical Pedagogy
principles have any effects on reading
comprehension ability of EFL
learners?”, was answered positively
using two independent-samples and one
paired-samples t-test as follows (see the
appendix for the tables). The first
independent-samples t-test, which had
been employed to explore the
homogeneity of the control and
experimental groups, indicated a mean
difference of -.19462 between their pre-test reading comprehension (2) scores
used as the pre-test, which did not prove
significant at 0.05 level. The second
independent-samples t-test, which had
aimed at examining any significant
difference in the post-test scores of the
control and experimental groups in terms
of reading comprehension, showed a
mean difference of 1.34409 which
proved to be significant. The first paired-samples t-test which examined any
significant growth in the reading
comprehension scores of the
experimental group from the pre- to the
post-test indicated a mean difference of
1.1333 which proved significant at 0.01
level.
In order to answer the third question
of the experiment, i.e. “Will a critical
reading comprehension course make
EFL learners more motivated towards
reading English materials?”, two
independent-samples and one paired-samples t-test were employed (see the
appendix for the tables). The first
independent-samples t-test, examining
any significant difference in the pre-test
scores of the control and experimental
groups in terms of their motivation in
reading English materials, illustrated a
mean difference of -.12796 which was
not significant at 0.05 level. The second
independent-samples t-test, showing a
mean difference of -.56022, indicated a
significant difference in the post-test
scores of the control and experimental
groups in terms of motivation, and
finally, the paired-samples t-test, which
aimed at exploring any significant
growth in the scores of the experimental
group from the pre- to the post-test,
showed a mean difference of -.40000
which proved to be significant at 0.05
level. This was also clear from the fact
that the instructor was mostly engaged
with speaking to the learners of the
experimental group who indicated a
greater enthusiasm to speak about their
problems, their likes and dislikes, and
their learning process than those in the
control group, and this may be an
indicative of motivation in the
experimental group. Moreover, personal
interviews of the instructor with the
learners in both the control and the
experimental groups revealed the same
results. Accordingly, the third research
question was answered positively.
In order to answer the fourth
question of the experiment, i.e.“Will a
critical reading comprehension course
change learners’ democratic attitudes
towards their English classrooms”, a
democratic attitude questionnaire was
employed which consisted of seven
items on a likert-scale ranging from
“often” to “never”. The following tables
illustrate the control and experimental
groups’ responses to the questionnaire
before and after the experiment.
The control group’s responses
before and after the experiment, and also
those of the experimental group before
the experiment, indicate that they had
not experienced quite democratic classes
before the experiment. Although the
experimental group’s democratic
attitudes seem to have changed towards
being more positive by the end of the
semester, this change does not seem to
be great. This may be natural, however,
since the critical reading comprehension
course seems to have been the only
critical course they had ever taken. The
results, nevertheless, seem to be
encouraging enough for including more
critical courses in the curriculum.
The main outcome of empowering
students, however, is illustrated more in
the “good feeling” attitude reported by
the students when they experience
freedom of choice, than in the data
quantification and list of tables presented
above. Students' attitudes towards the
critical reading comprehension course
will be discussed in terms of the
following themes emerging from a semi-structured interview with the students in
the experimental group. The themes
were entitled based on Freire’ (1972)
principles as "teachers as transformative
intellectuals", "problem-posing
education", "conscientization", and
"dialogical method". The following
discussion, therefore, would help answer
the fifth research question, i.e. “What is
the learners’ attitude towards the
critical reading comprehension
course?”, while they would also shed
light on the third and fourth questions as
well.
1. Teachers as transformative
intellectuals:
"Transformative intellectual"
(Giroux, 1988) is a new identity
assumed for critical teachers who strive
to combine "reflection" and "action" in
order to empower students to become
thoughtful and active citizens (Giroux,
1988, cited in Izadinia, 2009). Therefore,
the teacher is no longer the only source
of knowledge who tries to transfer to the
students what is supposed to be the right
answer. The effect of having a
"transformative intellectual" in our
critical classroom was twofold: on the
one hand, as the results of the attitude
questionnaire also indicated, this kind of
teacher proved to be successful in
changing the students’ democratic
attitudes towards being positive. On the
other hand, however, some students felt
uncomfortable, especially at the
beginning of the semester, experiencing
a new role for their teacher and also for
themselves. As Fobes and Kaufman
(2008) also maintain, "The main
challenge we face is re-socializing
students to accept" the new "learning
experiences" such as "discovering and/or
recovering their own voices, asking
questions, and tolerating ambiguity and
uncertainty" (p. 27). Of course, this
problem (if it is called a problem) was
observed only at the beginning sessions
of the course, and students adapted to the
new situation and accepted their
teachers' new role quickly. As it was
expected, the teacher's new role not only
did not take the authority of the teacher,
but created more respect for her from the
part of the students.
2&3. Problem-posing education and
Conscientization:
Problem-posing practices and the
emerging conscientization, or the ability
to acquire critical perception of the
interaction of phenomena, which was
mostly achieved through teaching the
critical thinking strategies suggested by
Loewen (1995) (cited in Romanowsky &
Nasser, 2012, p.131) seemed to be
appreciated by the learners in the critical
classroom, as they expressed their
satisfaction by statements such as
"before I took this course, I didn’t know
how to look for the real idea behind a
text", and expressions of gratitude for
"being able to think in a new way" and
"becoming a new person".
4. Dialogical method
The dialogic method seemed strange
to some of the students in the early days,
since, as they reported later, they
preferred the traditional method of being
told everything, obligatory note taking,
reiteration of facts, etc, than engaging in
dialogues with the teacher about
different aspects of teaching, because
this new practice contradicted their
previous classroom experiences. Some
of the students later mentioned that they
constantly compared their new teacher
with the previous ones and concluded
that "this one is less experienced". Some
even reported that sometimes they
couldn’t bear what seemed to them "a
messy classroom climate full of
hesitations about everything"! Some
students, however, found the new
experience of getting involved in
collaborating the course content with the
teacher "exciting" and "bringing about a
sense of difference". Of course, these
comments were mostly related to the
beginning of the course, and as the
students got more familiar with the
approach taken by the teacher and the
rationale behind it, difficulties gave their
place to students' satisfaction and
pleasure.
What is of note, however, is that
although the difficulties were mostly
resolved by the end of the semester, their
very existence warn us about the
survival of an educational system in
which students have not learnt the rules
of independency and democracy. On the
one hand, they are dependent on the
teacher in all aspects of learning, and
thus, some are never able to take
responsibility for their own learning. On
the other hand, they misinterpret
democracy to the point that some try to
take advantage of the "democratic
proceedings" (Thelin, 2005). As Thelin
(2005) also suggests, all these may result
from the fact that students have not been
exposed to critical pedagogy courses,
and thus are not used to critical
pedagogy principles.
Conclusion
In this paper, we attempted at
developing and examining a critical
language teaching course, which was
based on Richards' (2001) proposal and
Crawford's (1978) Critical Pedagogy
principles. More specifically, we found,
by means of statistical and qualitative
data analyses, that despite some problem
issues rising while practicing the
principles of Critical Pedagogy, our
critical reading comprehension course
had a positive effect on EFL learners'
reading comprehension ability,
developing a positive democratic attitude
towards their English classroom and also
their motivation towards reading English
materials. Students' attitude towards the
critical course was also discussed in
terms of the following four themes
which emerged from the qualitative data
analysis process: teachers as
transformative intellectuals, Problem-posing education, conscientization, and
dialogical method.
Besides providing responses to the
five research questions stated above, the
results of the present study suggested the
applicability of the Critical Pedagogy
principles in Iranian classrooms despite
the existence of a “top-down educational
management” (Aliakbari & Allahmoradi,
2012) in Iran, and what Safari and
Pourhashemi (2012) describe as
“fossilized unequal power relationship
between teachers and students”.
Therefore, although a strong version of
Critical Pedagogy which embraces all
aspects of the educational system may
not be applicable in the present context,
a “weaker version” (Akbarpour,
forthcoming) with the framework
proposed in this study can be put into
practice, since the problem seems not to
be as devastating as it appears to some
researchers who have reported the
impracticality of Critical Pedagogy
principles in Iran. Safari and
Pourhashemi (2012), for instance, claim
that,
"It seems to be really unlikely that
Iranian English teachers who have long
been accustomed to possessing the
absolute authority of traditional classes
as the main source of knowledge and
information can modestly quit their
presumed roles at the cost of applying an
anonymous innovative approach." (p.
2552)
Perhaps some of the opponents of
the application of Critical Pedagogy
have based their arguments not on
actually examining the practicality of the
principles, but rather on surveys on
teachers who, as the researchers
themselves argue, have not practiced
critical pedagogy principles yet.
According to Hall (2000), "Critical
approaches are often perceived as
abstract and impractical which, it is
argued, causes a lack of practical focus.
Therefore, they are too removed from
their historical context and “fail to
develop a clear articulation for the needs
of their existence and goals” (Ellsworth,
1989:101). Ellsworth maintains that they
are too ready to criticize, but unable to
offer solutions." (pp. 11-12).
Although Iran, as Pishghadam and
Mirzaee (2008) claim, "has been
dominated by ideas of modernism"
rather than post-modernism, this does
not mean that post-modernism is totally
impractical in this context. The present
piece of research was an attempt to
indicate that Critical Pedagogy, as a
post-modern issue, can be applied in the
present educational context of Iran, since
on the one hand, the outcome of the
critical course indicated a positive effect
on the dependent variables, and on the
other hand, results of the qualitative data
analysis illustrated the positive attitude
of the learners towards the critical
course. Accordingly, the most important
theme of the present paper may be the
applicability of the principles of Critical
Pedagogy in the context of Iran.
A word of caution may need to be
stated here: our students seem not to
have learnt the rules of independency
and democracy, and some misinterpret
democracy to the point that they try to
take advantage of the “democratic
proceedings” (Thelin, 2005). As Thelin
(2005) proposes, this may result from
the fact that students have not been
exposed to critical pedagogy courses,
and thus are not used to critical
pedagogy principles. Therefore, the first
step in the application of Critical
Pedagogy in our educational context
may be to apply its weak versions (see
above) to small communities such as
classrooms where Critical Pedagogy
principles are put into practice by the
teachers, so that the students find the
opportunity to get accustomed to the
principles of independence. In this way,
one can hope that in near future, the
whole educational system can benefit
from the principles of Critical Pedagogy.
The first step, therefore, may concern
teacher educators whose responsibility is
to familiarize the teachers with the basic
principles of Critical Pedagogy and the
ways for their application in teaching.
Although in the present work our
proposed framework was employed in a
reading comprehension course, it does
not mean that it cannot be applied to
other language teaching courses. This
work may be worth replicating in
different educational contexts, with
different participants, and regarding
different language skills. We seek other
researchers' company in this long
journey and struggle for a better
educational system.
