Abstract
Although Brazilian governmental documents have conceived language teaching from a critical perspective, the recent scenario points to a backlash towards critical perspectives on teaching, which have been socially perceived as indoctrination. Since we understand critical pedagogy in additional language classrooms as a necessary emancipatory perspective, this article aims at discussing possibilities for promoting critical language development. More specifically, it draws on two doctoral studies in which teacher-researchers implemented critical task cycles that aimed at promoting critical language development by fostering elementary and high school students’ reflections on gender issues. In both studies, tasks were developed to promote learners’ communicative and critical development following task-based principles. The comparison of the results, derived from the analysis of learners’ interactions during implementation, responses to questionnaires and interviews, and of the teacher-researchers’ self-report diaries, revealed not only the feasibility of teaching critically through tasks, but also the positive role of: (1) A critical needs-analysis in designing and implementing critical tasks; (2) the use of critical dialogue for fostering knowledge co-construction; (3) the development of final projects to challenge common-sense discourses. These findings indicate, thus, relevant principles for teaching critically through tasks, emphasizing possibilities and challenges for promoting social transformation.
Highlights
In order to understand any educational context from a critical perspective, it is necessary to go beyond what happens in the actual classroom
If action comes without hope, “the fight becomes weak and hesitant” [7]. In this sense, being critical teachers who believe in critical language teaching as a possibility for transformation, we ground our choices on the fact that critical pedagogy in additional language classrooms of Brazilian schools can be perceived as an emancipatory tool that encourages social change by resisting against the status quo and by promoting critical consciousness development
Both studies were conducted in Brazilian public schools: one in elementary education and the other in the context of a technical and technological high school. Both teacher-researchers developed their teaching materials following task-based principles [8,9,10,11] as well as critical language teaching principles [12]. Considering information from these two studies, our article is divided into two parts: (1) First, we focus on describing and discussing the two task cycles used in the studies under scrutiny to understand what makes these units critical task cycles, and ; (2) by making reference to data from the two studies, we focus on specific aspects from both critical task-cycles that seem to contribute to learners’ critical consciousness [13] and critical language [14] development
Summary
In order to understand any educational context from a critical perspective, it is necessary to go beyond what happens in the actual classroom. If action comes without hope, “the fight becomes weak and hesitant” [7] (our translation) In this sense, being critical teachers who believe in critical language teaching as a possibility for transformation, we ground our choices on the fact that critical pedagogy in additional language classrooms of Brazilian schools can be perceived as an emancipatory tool that encourages social change by resisting against the status quo and by promoting critical consciousness development. We draw on two studies in which teacher-researchers implemented critical task cycles that attempted to promote critical language development by fostering learners’ reflections (and actions) on gender issues Both studies were conducted in Brazilian public schools: one in elementary education and the other in the context of a technical and technological high school. Considering information from these two studies, our article is divided into two parts: (1) First, we focus on describing and discussing the two task cycles used in the studies under scrutiny to understand what makes these units critical task cycles, and ; (2) by making reference to data from the two studies, we focus on specific aspects from both critical task-cycles that seem to contribute to learners’ critical consciousness [13] and critical language [14] development
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