Education in hope: On the practice of critical pedagogy in Iranian postgraduate and undergraduate EFL classrooms

Abstract

1 IntroductionIn threshold of new millennium and with regard to significant moments that mankind experienced during last century of previous millennium, we can find trace of peripheral outcomes of modernized world in everyday life. The emergence of globalization and dominance of political and economic agents over world lead to appearance of new concepts and terminologies like sexism, feminism, imperialism and neoliberalism. Among these terms notion of criticality has been put on pedestal by pedagogues and intellectuals including Freire (1970b), Giroux (1983, 1988a), McLaren (1995). A big question mark on top of these scholars' heads has been how to bring about revolutionary changes in order to achieve consensus and harmony in world through education. The obsession of intellectuals with this notion and their desire to bring about social justice lead to emergence of critical pedagogy (CP).Critical pedagogy, like critical theories, begins with premise that human beings live in world full of contradictions and unequal and unjust distribution of power and privilege (McLaren, 2003). It aims to bring about social transformation by questioning that exist in society. Borrowing Barnett's (1997) idea that higher education should be about enhancement of critical being, significance of criticality in university classrooms becomes more evident. As Freire (1970b) stated knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through restless impatient continuing, hopeful inquiry [we] pursue in world, with world, and with each other (p.72).Meanwhile, with emergence of English as the global (Nunan, 2003), lens of criticality has turned to language pedagogy revealing that language has become means to gain power and is considered to be intrinsically political (Peirce, 1989). Peirce (1989) argues that language encodes and propagates ideology and constitutes site in which interests of different social groups strive to gain dominance. Such issues are main concerns of well-known field of study named as critical applied linguistics (CALx) which is regarded as a potentially committed approach to applied linguistics claiming to combat injustice and inequalities (Cook, 2003:126). This discipline fashions perceiving language as political instrument which indoctrinates ideology of dominant classes to produce structural in society. It scrutinizes role of language in relations of power, control, and equality (Pennycook, 1999, 2001).1.2 Statement of ProblemEnglish language learning makes provision for life chances, opportunities for economic success, and status for learners, thus, it has become prevalent obsession in almost all countries. This mania has become so widespread that English is taught in almost all educational levels and individuals belonging to different ethnic groups with wide range of age strive to gain adequate language proficiency. Alternatively, studies on present situation of Iranian university education atmosphere reveal numerous deficiencies in need of remedial. In this vein, Qanbari (2011) points to dearth of critical thinking in our EFL education setting and foreshadows detrimental effect of uncritical view toward society in general and education system in particular. Taking into account that criticality is pedestal of new attitude toward education; i.e., CP, this study scrutinized application of CP, which though false to be considered as panacea, foregrounds growth of criticality.1.3 Objectives of StudyThis study seeks to portray current situation of TEFL undergraduate and postgraduate classrooms with regard to application of critical pedagogy and to examine extent to which principles of CP are operationalised in educational levels of universities. The researchers attempted to illustrate dominant pattern of language pedagogy in universities and find possible traces of CP residing in heart of such instructions to have clear picture of state of CP principles in Iranian education system. …