HEIS Newsletter - December 2014 (Plain Text Version)
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BOOK REVIEWS CRITICAL THEORY IN PRACTICE FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
Crookes, G. V. (2013). Critical ELT in action: Foundations, promises, praxis. New York, NY: Routledge. Critical pedagogy is a process of thinking about and negotiating relationships between teaching, knowledge, and the interaction of these within the classroom in terms of empowering the disenfranchised, understanding the inequities of power, and thus, leading to a shift of the status quo and initiating social change. The topic of critical pedagogy has long been part of sociocultural foundations courses in teacher training programs. Though much of the coursework is devoted to understanding critical pedagogy as it pertains to the education of marginalized peoples and societies, Crookes helps to build a bridge by guiding readers through the process of exploring how these theories are related specifically to practices within language teaching and learning for social justice. In his book, comprising nine chapters, Crookes provides the theoretical foundations of the landscape of critical pedagogy through multiple lenses, the particular ways in which critical pedagogy intersects with language teaching and learning, and how notions of critical pedagogy manifest in the classroom from the larger institutional contexts to the localized classroom contexts. In Chapter 1, Crookes begins with a series of questions that have been asked by language teachers and with the experiences of language teachers as they relate to critical pedagogy. Through imaginary dialogues, he presents the queries of the teachers and ways in which this textbook can support their needs. Chapters 2 and 3 introduce how critical pedagogy is integrated into the material, content, and practice of language teachers in classroom contexts, and provide a hands-on approach to understanding key elements of critical pedagogy in practice. Chapter 4 situates critical pedagogy in the long-standing historical tradition of radical pedagogy. Crookes believes that teachers should understand this tradition to know that they are not alone in the critical pedagogy process, and he describes how predecessors have engaged in this important work. Chapter 5 surveys traditional theories of critical language pedagogy with other intellectual traditions that relate to the theories of language teaching and learning. Chapter 6 delineates other domains of critical pedagogy (e.g., feminist, antiracist, sexual identity). In the second part of this chapter, peace and environmental education are covered, as they share values with critical pedagogy. Lastly, the chapter focuses on the context of teaching English as a foreign language and discusses the distinctive features of critical pedagogy from the perspective of global education. Chapter 7 zooms out of the classroom to the institutional and programmatic contexts that influence the ways in which critical pedagogy can be undertaken in the classroom. Crookes presents the reality of the larger institutional contexts that influence critical pedagogy in the classroom and encourages teachers to look out beyond their classrooms to how critical pedagogy might be enacted within their institution’s administration. This chapter also provides some concrete advice on ways in which to take action through advocacy and leadership. Chapter 8 considers the challenges of implementing critical pedagogy in the classroom by considering questions of imposing views onto students and their personal values for institutional mandates, such as in standardized testing. It concludes by encouraging teachers to take an active role in social movements to support their critical pedagogy work in the classroom. Chapter 9 reviews some of the movements that use critical pedagogy as a lens and encourages the use of imagination in conceptualizing a critical educational institution and the values and notions it might espouse. Critical ELT in Action is a must-read for preservice teachers in TESOL engaging in observations and practicum teaching assignments to explore the role that critical pedagogy plays in the classroom. It is also a beneficial text for veteran language teaching professionals to refresh their knowledge on the developments in critical pedagogy research and to consider the role that critical pedagogy plays in their own context and teaching practice. There is a lot of work around the idea of critical pedagogy, as Crookes points out, and it may be difficult to truly understand all of its facets. However, this book empowers teachers to identify one or more relevant facets that they can implement within their own teaching context. Sarina Chugani Molina is a faculty member at the University of San Diego and teaches in the MEd in TESOL, Literacy, & Culture Program. Her research interests include TESOL teacher professional development and teaching English as an international language. She has 20 years experience working with English language learners both within the United States and abroad in multiple contexts. |
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