Freire's Critical Pedagogy And English Language Teaching: Rethinking Pedagogy Of The Oppressed Through An Applied Linguistics Perspective In Elt Classroom

Abstract

The present paper critically analyzes Paulo Freire's pedagogical work, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) and this work is looked at from the applied linguistics perspective to examine its theoretical and pedagogical implications for English Language Teaching (ELT). Instead of seeing critical pedagogy as a stand-alone teaching approach, the paper posits that it is an educational philosophy that shifts the perspective of language teaching to issues of power, identity, social justice, and learner agency. Using Freire's ideas of the banking model of education, problem-posing pedagogy, conscientização (critical consciousness) and praxis, the study combines the significant work of the above authors in order to illustrate the contributions of critical pedagogy to the current discourse in applied linguistics and in ELT. The paper reflects on implications of this framework for classroom practice with a particular focus on learner identity, multilingualism, teacher positionality, curriculum, and the ideological aspects of language teaching material. It also covers the limitations imposed on the application of Freirean pedagogies in situations of examination-driven and institutionally-regulated learning. Lastly, feminist and intersectional critiques of the framework, and the difficulties of applying it to a theory for second-language learning in the present-day second-language classroom, are discussed. The study suggests that Freire's critical pedagogy is still relevant as a theoretical framework for ELT as a socially and politically responsive discipline that fosters critical literacy, learner empowerment, and educational equity, and notes the importance of adaptation and empirical study to the contexts.