Box 2.1 Lead-in

Joe Kincheloe (2008a), one of the leading scholars in critical pedagogy, has stated that “[E]very dimension of schooling and every form of educational practice are politically contested spaces” (p. 2, emphasis added).

To what extent do you agree that education is a political act?

Introduction

Considered the most prominent theorist of critical pedagogy, Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire was influenced by his teaching of impoverished peasants and slum dwellers in Brazil in the 1950s. Critical pedagogy, articulated in his seminal book, Pedagogy of the oppressed, was influenced by Marxist criticism of capitalism as the driving source of domination and oppression in the world. While his vision of transformative education shaped language, literacy, peace, and health education, his influence extended beyond the field of education to literary theory, cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, and political science.

Critical pedagogy calls for educational institutions, curriculum, and processes that go beyond serving the needs of those with power and privilege, and, instead, are grounded in social justice (Crookes, 2013; Giroux, 2011; Kincheloe, 2008a, 2008b; Malott, 2011; Wink, 2011). The role of critical pedagogy to fight against the many forms of oppressions embedded in educational systems and the society at large has been underlined by many educational scholars (hooks, 1994; Giroux, 2011; Grant and Agosto, 2008; Kincheloe, 2008a; Nieto, 2000; McLaren and Fischman, 1998; McLaren, 2020; Shor, 1996). Language education scholars have also highlighted the importance of critical pedagogy for curriculum design, teaching methodologies, and assessment (Bartolomé, 2010; Crookes, 2009, 2013; Daniel, 2016; Pennycook, 2001, 2017; Reagan, 2016; Reagan and Osborn, 2002, 2020; Sung and Pederson, 2012). Critical language pedagogy has connected critical pedagogy to applied linguistics and language education to address issues such as race, gender, sexuality, and their intersections in language policy, language use, and language teaching practices (Crookes, 2021b; Godley and Reaser, 2018; Pennycook, 2017). The main consensus within this vast amount of literature has been the need to examine schools at the intersection of historical, cultural, economic, social, and political power relations in the world.

The broad aim of this chapter is to lay the conceptual framework this book draws on for social justice language education.