While the field (and the world) has changed since Pennycook's (1990, 2001) call for critical applied linguistics, what remains is the "uneven world" (Pennycook, 2022) in which we live, learn, and teach. Issues of domination, discrimination, and inequalities around social differences continue to afflict non-dominant groups, and persistent deficit views of multilingualism continue to operate in educational settings around the globe.
Critical applied linguists seek to bring more balance into this uneven world by explicitly addressing unequal social relations and the social and political issues existing in their local as well as global contexts. Critical language pedagogy is one way to actualize this goal. Based on Freire's critical pedagogy, the goal of critical language pedagogy is to develop students' critical consciousness-that is, the ability to "perceive social, political, and economic contradictions" and take action "against the oppressive elements of reality" (Freire, 1970/2014, p. 35). For language teachers to support their students in becoming aware of contradictions and taking action to change such contradictions, language teachers must also have developed critical consciousness.
This paper explores the circumstances, factors, and experiences critical language teachers attribute to their development of critical consciousness, an issue that is little known in the area of language teacher education for critical pedagogy. Drawing on narratives-in-interview data with 29 in-service, critical language teachers from 15 countries of origin and residence, this study investigates the meaning-making process of their experiences in "perceiv[ing] social, political, and economic contradictions" (Freire, 1970/2014, p. 35) both prior to and during their years in language teacher preparation programs.
Considering the life span of these narratives, data were divided into narratives of becoming a critical language teacher and narratives of being a critical language teacher. Narratives of becoming a critical language teacher were further categorized into narratives of childhood and adulthood. The latter consisted of narratives related specifically to their experiences in teacher preparation programs settings of noticing contradictions, untangling emotions (e.g., discomfort), and the effects thereof (e.g., reflection).
Critical language teachers' narratives of meaning-making during their years in language teacher education suggest that language teacher preparation programs can actively support the development of pre-service language teachers' critical consciousness. This paper offers insights into the opportunities for language teacher education programs to do so.
References
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Pennycook, A. (1990). Towards a Critical Applied Linguistics for the 1990s. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 8-28. https://doi.org/10.5070/L411004991
Pennycook, A. (2001). Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410600790
Pennycook, A. (2022). Critical applied linguistics in the 2020s. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 19(1), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/15427587.2022.2030232
