Co‐constructing a critical ELT curriculum: A case study in an Indonesian‐based English language teacher education program

Abstract

The current case study investigated how teacher‐learners (TLs) in an Indonesia‐based undergraduate English language teacher education program learned to apply critical pedagogy (CP) when co‐constructing a critical English language teaching (ELT) curriculum with English language learners (ELLs). CP insights into ELT and second language teacher education are synthesized as a theoretical framework to shed light on how the TLs co‐constructed the critical curriculum. This qualitative research study triangulated data collected from (1) audio‐recorded dialogues between three TLs and their teacher educator (TE) in multiweek classes, (2) video‐recorded teaching sessions when TLs taught ELLs from Papua, and (3) curricular documents and the TLs' reflections submitted on a learning management system. The findings suggest that TLs could raise their critical awareness of (un)fairness or inequalities experienced by ELLs while co‐constructing components of a critical ELT curriculum (i.e., needs analysis, learning objectives, syllabus design, materials development, and lesson planning). TLs' critical consciousness emerged when practicing dialogues with ELLs. Ultimately, reflexivity allowed TLs and their TE to envision improvements of the critical ELT curriculum.