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pedagogies and language
1 Critical
learning: An introduction
Bonny Norton
Kelleen Toohey
Advocates of critical approaches to second language teaching are interested in relationships between language learning and social change. From
this perspective, language is not simply a means of expression or communication; rather, it is a practice that constructs, and is constructed by,
the ways language learners understand themselves, their social surroundings, their histories, and their possibilities for the future. This collection
assembles the work of a variety of scholars interested in critical perspectives on language education in globally diverse sites of practice. All are
interested in investigating the ways that social relationships are lived out
in language and how issues of power, while often obscured in language
research and educational practice (Kubota, this volume), are centrally
important in developing critical language education pedagogies. Indeed,
as Morgan (this volume) suggests, “politically engaged critiques of power
in everyday life, communities, and institutions” are precisely what are
needed to develop critical pedagogies in language education. The chapters
have varying foci, seeking to better understand the relationships between
writers and readers, teachers and students, test makers and test takers,
teacher–educators and student teachers, and researchers and researched.
The term critical pedagogy is often associated with the work of scholars such as Freire (1968/1970), Giroux (1992), Luke (1988), Luke and
Gore (1992), McLaren (1989), and Simon (1992) in the field of education. Aware of myriad political and economic inequities in contemporary
societies, advocates have explored the “social visions” that pedagogical
practices support (Simon, 1992), and critiques of classroom practices in
terms of their social visions have been common and longstanding in
critical educational literature.1 Feminist critiques have also considered
classroom practice and have identified ways in which the relationships
and activities of classrooms contribute to patriarchal, hierarchical, and
dominating practices in wider societies (e.g., Davies, 1989; Ellsworth,
1989; Gaskell, 1992; Spender, 1982; Walkerdine, 1989). In second language education, critiques of classroom practices in terms of the social
visions such practices support are relatively recent but are increasingly
being published in major venues.2
1
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All the chapters in this volume share this aim – that is, to consider
how, in diverse sites of language education, practices might be modified, changed, developed, or abandoned in efforts to support learners,
learning, and social change. At the same time, most of the authors here
remind us that critical pedagogy cannot be a unitary set of texts, beliefs,
convictions, or assumptions. Like Pavlenko (this volume), these authors
describe local situations, problems, and issues and see responsiveness to
the particularities of the local as important in the equitable and democratic approaches they are trying to develop. In seeking to resist totalizing
discourses about critical teaching, subjects, and strategies for progressive
action, we have used the term critical pedagogies in the title of our book.
While each of the authors represented here uses critical lenses to reflect
on the teaching and research practices in her or his community, there are
important differences of focus across the chapters. We have therefore
decided to divide the book into four sections, each with a slightly different emphasis. In doing so, however, we recognize that the distinctions
between sections are not clear-cut and that many overlapping themes
emerge. Such themes are discussed in greater detail later in this introduction.
Organization of the book and chapter summaries
Reconceptualizing second language education
The first section of the book brings perspectives from four scholars in diverse contexts who consider the critical in language learning and teaching
with foci on race, gender, pedagogy, and assessment. The first chapter, by
Allan Luke, considers what can be meant by the term critical in language
education. Reminding us of its roots in liberation movements and the politically engaged scholarship of the Frankfurt School, Luke argues that
critical pedagogical approaches “call up for scrutiny, whether through
embodied action or discursive practice, the rules of exchange within a social field.” These entail (as described by Freire in 1970) externalization,
naming, and questioning the world, to accompany action that resists the
psychological and physical violence and material disempowerment that
many language students have experienced. Noting “there can be no more
overtly normative challenges to educational systems, educators, and the
state other than how they manage their cultural and linguistic Others,”
Luke sees critical pedagogies as necessary to engage with the experiences
of these marginalized learners.
The issue of cultural and linguistic disempowerment also engages
Ryuko Kubota in a chapter that invites us to rethink notions of multiculturalism. Drawing on her experience in the North American context,
she makes the argument that while most teachers in the field of language
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Critical pedagogies and language learning: An introduction
3
learning are sensitive to cultural and linguistic diversity among their students, many have not adequately recognized the extent to which power
operates to reinforce inequalities in both classrooms and communities.
She contrasts notions of liberal multiculturalism, which she maintains is
a color-blind, relatively superficial conception of multiculturalism, with
critical multiculturalism, which addresses in greater depth such issues as
race, gender, and class. Critical multiculturalism, she argues, has an “intellectual alliance” with critical pedagogy in that it aims to raise student
consciousness about unjust social practices and helps them to become
active agents for social change. Further, because of the inclusive and
antiracist orientation of critical multiculturalism, she examines issues
of whiteness in educational debates. While arguing that discussions of
whiteness should avoid essentialism, Kubota makes the case that white
privilege is not normally viewed as a racial identity for whites just as male
privilege is generally not recognized by males as part of male identity. She
concludes that multicultural education needs to go beyond color-blind
arguments of equality and inclusion to include a focus on social justice
and transformation.
While Kubota’s chapter addresses issues of race in language learning
and teaching, Aneta Pavlenko turns her attention to questions of gender with a focus on both second and foreign language education. Her
conception of gender, which extends beyond female–male divides, is understood to be a system of social relationships and discursive practices
that may lead to systemic inequality among particular groups of learners, including women, minorities, elderly, and disabled. She argues, in
essence, that to treat gender as an essentialized variable is to obscure
other forms of oppression. We need to understand, for example, why
it is that women who do not have access to educational resources are
often immigrant women and that boys and girls who are silenced in
the classroom are often working class. In developing this conception of
gender, she draws on feminist poststructuralism and critical theory to
understand the relationship between power and knowledge and to theorize the role of language in the production and reproduction of power.
A central focus of the chapter is a discussion of gendered inequalities in
regard to access to material and symbolic resources, the gendered nature
of linguistic interaction, and discourses of gender and sexuality across
cultures. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the way issues of
gender and sexuality can be incorporated in classroom practice.
Providing another take on the critical, Elana Shohamy offers a comprehensive analysis of the way in which democratic principles can be applied
to assessment practices in multicultural societies. In many multicultural
societies, Shohamy suggests, minority groups struggle for recognition
and respect from majority groups. While dominant groups may pay lip
service to principles of equality, the de facto situation, in many societies,
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is that minority groups are expected to assimilate into the majority society. Evidence to this effect is frequently demonstrated in the forms of
assessments that are used in education, where competing conceptions of
knowledge vie for prominence. Drawing largely on assessment practices
in Israel, Shohamy makes the case that tests (language tests in particular)
can serve as tools to maintain and perpetuate the dominant knowledge
of majority groups. In the interests of democratic assessment, Shohamy
outlines five principles for more inclusive language testing. She makes the
case that language testers need to (a) include the knowledge of diverse
groups on language tests, (b) construct tests in collaboration with those
tested, (c) recognize that tests are instruments of power that potentially
discriminate against minority groups, (d) protect the rights of test takers,
and (e) be accountable for the consequences of tests.
Challenging identities
The second section of the book focuses on the language learner and considers ways in which the learning of language engages the identities of
language learners in diverse and complex ways. Pippa Stein’s chapter on
representation, rights, and resources, which invites us into a language
and literacy classroom in postapartheid South Africa, draws on the innovative and increasingly influential work on multiliteracies associated
with a variety of scholars, including those in the New London Group
(2000). With reference to multiliteracies research as well as feminist theories of the body, Stein reflects on her classroom teaching with English
language learners and develops a comprehensive blueprint for what she
calls multimodal pedagogies. Such a blueprint, she argues, arises from
the need to acknowledge the tensions between local forms of communication and the literacy demands of schooling as well as the recognition
that representation occurs through a variety of modes, including visual,
gestural, speech, writing, and sound. In outlining six assumptions that
are central to her conception of multimodal pedagogies, Stein focuses
on a conception of pedagogy as semiotic activity best understood in the
context of identity, culture, and power. She draws on stories of learners
to make the case that meaning making is bodily, that it is transformative,
and that it involves “interested action.” Because there are texts that exist
predominantly in nonlinguistic modes, such as the visual and gestural,
Stein argues that multimodal pedagogies recognize that language, as a
linguistic system, cannot fully express the arc of human experience.
In exploring what he calls the subversive identities of language learners, Suresh Canagarajah addresses the intriguing question of how language learners can maintain membership in their vernacular communities and cultures while still learning a second language or dialect. He
draws on his research with two very different groups – one in the United
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States and the other in Sri Lanka – to argue that language learners are
sometimes ambivalent about the learning of a second language or dialect and that they may resort to clandestine literacy practices to create
what he calls pedagogical safe houses in the language classroom. His
research in the United States draws on insights from African American
students learning academic writing in English as a second dialect, while
his research in Sri Lanka draws on insights from Tamil students learning
English for general academic purposes. In both contexts, the clandestine
literacy activities of the students are seen to be forms of resistance to unfavorable identities imposed on the learners. At the same time, however,
these safe houses serve as sites of identity construction that allow students
to negotiate the often contradictory tensions they encounter as members
of diverse communities. Canagarajah makes the case that in adopting
conformist identities for on-task activity while relegating critical learning to safe houses, students are developing multivocal literacies, which
enable learners to cross discourse and community boundaries without
getting penalized by the academy. A better understanding of such practices, Canagarajah concludes, will provide teachers with an enhanced
estimation of the critical thinking and learning potential of students.
Sue Starfield, like Canagarajah, seeks innovative and empowering pedagogies that can expand the range of identities available to language
learners. Her focus, however, is far from traditional as she draws on
her experience with concordancing in academic writing at an Australian
university. By way of introduction, she describes how computer technology has made possible the collection of huge electronic databases – or
corpora – of spoken and written language. Concordancing programs
can search through millions of words of text to find examples of a particular word in its immediate textual context. As a result, teachers have
not only better grammars and dictionaries of actual language use, but
a more rigorous basis for selecting which lexical items and grammatical structures to include in a language learning curriculum. Drawing
on her teaching experience in an academic writing workshop, Starfield
describes how she and her students used concordancing to examine the
structure of academic writing and the ways in which authors use language to establish credibility and authority. One particularly successful
exercise was designed with the specific purpose of better understanding
how published authors report on the work of other researchers in their
community. Over time, Starfield noted a marked improvement in the
academic writing of her students. Her chapter thus provides a window
into the possibilities that technology holds for helping students develop
identities not only as accomplished writers, but as contributors to the
larger academic community.
In a very different language learning–teaching context, Brian Morgan
speaks as a teacher of adult newcomers in Toronto, Canada. He draws
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on the unlikely topic of a grammar lesson to explore questions of identity and critical pedagogy in a community-based program with predominantly Chinese language learners. The context is the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty, which was taking place at the same time at which
the learners’ place of origin, Hong Kong, was undergoing momentous
political change. Morgan’s lesson seeks to achieve the goal of providing a
practically oriented grammar lesson while simultaneously locating it in a
broader sociocultural context. He achieves this by introducing a subset of
grammar (i.e., modality) through which feelings of ambivalence, apprehension, and possibility regarding the future are expressed. As Morgan
notes, the interweaving of the two historic events in the lives of these
language learners encouraged students to explore the meaning potential
available through the lexicogrammatical system. He also demonstrates
how traditional language learning activities such as a grammar lesson
can be organized in such a way as to explore larger questions of identity
and possibility. In this regard, a grammar lesson can serve not only as a
site of identity representation, but as a site of identity creation. Morgan
concludes that the metalanguage associated with language learning provides exciting opportunities for linking the microstructures of text with
the macrostructures of society.
Researching critical practices
In the third section of the book, focus shifts from questions of identity to
a consideration of the ways in which innovative approaches to language
education research can help to inform critical pedagogical practices in
the language classroom. The four chapters included in this section offer
different perspectives on second language research but are all centrally
concerned with the ways in which classrooms and communities structure language learning possibilities for students of diverse histories and
investments.
The first chapter, by Inês Brito, Ambrizeth Lima, and Elsa Auerbach,
describes an innovative course in the Cape Verdean language, culture,
and history, taught in a Boston, Massachusetts, high school. The collaboration, in which Brito was the teacher, was not framed as a formal research project but as action research and reflective inquiry in which goals
and procedures emerged over time and analysis was formative rather
than summative. The chapter provides a classic example of the way in
which pedagogy can be enhanced through the collaboration of teachersas-researchers and researchers-as-teachers. It also highlights the experiences of a little-researched community in the United States – that of Cape
Verdean Creole (CVC) speakers – whose homeland off the west coast
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of Africa was colonized by the Portuguese. Bilingual programs in the
United States that cater to this community frequently provide instruction
in Portuguese rather than CVC, which, according to the authors, does
little to enhance bilingual language development for these learners. It
was for this reason that the authors developed a language course that
focused not only on CVC, but on the goals of participatory democracy.
While they consider the project a work in progress, the authors note
that the learning that took place in the course, in which students became
active and engaged participants, cannot be measured with traditional assessment instruments alone. At the same time, however, they highlight
the challenges associated with the teaching of a language that has little
legitimacy in the larger society.
Questions of legitimacy are central to the research of Bonny Norton
and Karen Vanderheyden, who make the case that some of the literacy practices of language learners that may not be validated by language
teachers may nevertheless have positive consequences for language learning. Norton and Vanderheyden, drawing on research with second language learners in a Vancouver, Canada, elementary school, investigate
the multiple ways in which language learners engage with Archie comics
in both classrooms and communities. They found that while teachers
showed ambivalence toward Archie comics by dismissing the pictures
and dialogue as “not real reading,” second language learners found the
pictures and comic book format helpful in meaning making. Also significant was the finding that many of the language learners read comics
in their mother tongue. Perhaps most important, their data suggest that
Archie comic readers constitute informal and loosely connected reading
communities that cross ethnic and linguistic boundaries. Canagarajah
(this volume) might call these communities, in which Archie readers are
critically engaged in discussion and debate, safe houses. Nevertheless,
the second language learners in their study had accepted the dominant
view that comic book reading is not real reading and has little educational value. Norton and Vanderheyden, drawing on the multiliteracies
research that Stein finds inspiring, suggest that both teachers and parents
may need to rethink notions of literacy in a changing technological and
social world.
With Jane Sunderland’s chapter, we move from a North American context to foreign language education in the United Kingdom with a focus, in
particular, on gender dynamics in classroom interaction: who talks most,
to whom, and who says what. Sunderland reports on a study in a German
as a foreign language secondary school classroom in which she observed
and analyzed teacher-to-student talk and student-to-teacher talk. What
she found was that male dominance does not necessarily surface in the
language classroom, and to the extent that it does, the implications for
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language learning are not evident. Specifically, she found that although
males dominated the classroom in terms of the amount of some types of
teacher attention they received, girls dominated in terms of the academic
nature of their specific contributions. The significance of this study, Sunderland argues, is that it identifies important subtleties in classroom interaction, helps researchers qualify their claims, and “rescues girls from
a representational victimhood.” At the same time, however, she notes
that although boys’ talk might be seen as disruptive and not necessarily equated with academic success, they may be developing confidence to
speak publicly, seize the floor, and control topics of conversation. Studies
of classroom interaction, Sunderland suggests, should be complemented
by studies of a more ethnographic nature, which might help to identify
the way gendered practices are structured both inside and outside the
classroom.
The very complexity of ethnographic research, as advocated by Sunderland, is the topic of the chapter by Constant Leung, Roxy Harris,
and Ben Rampton. Drawing on their research on task-based language
learning in urban settings in the United Kingdom, they examine the inelegance of qualitative research and argue that the “epistemic turbulence”
in second language acquisition qualitative research centers on the question of what constitutes or represents reality. In their study, naturally
occurring data were collected with the use of video and audio recordings
and were supplemented by field notes. An ongoing challenge was how to
represent and account for data that did not fit neatly into the theoretical
construct of task-based language use. In short, they found that student
engagement and involvement with the tasks varied considerably and that
there appeared a continuum of “on-taskness” – a situation that created a
lack of fit between reality, theory, and data. To address this dilemma, the
authors suggest that researchers interested in task-based learning need to
seek a conceptual framework that acknowledges, rather than obscures,
the messiness of data; further, these researchers might explore in greater
depth – perhaps through innovative technology – the nontask-related interactions they observe in their research. Like Sunderland, they conclude
that interaction is a multifaceted phenomenon in which institutional authority, friendship, social power, personal interest, and language all have
a role to play.
Educating teachers for change
The final section of the book addresses the diverse means through which
different educators working in Hong Kong, Canada, and Australia, respectively, seek to introduce innovation and social change in their teacher
education practices. Their work is a reminder that innovations in teacher
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education practices that are centrally concerned with social change require sober reflection, thoughtful analysis, and creative action.
Angel Lin, as a teacher-educator, provides a comprehensive and rigorous account of her attempts to introduce a critical pedagogical curriculum
in the Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language
(MATESL) program at the City University of Hong Kong. The challenges
she experienced include student teacher frustration with the academic
language of critical pedagogical texts as well as feelings of pessimism
and powerlessness. She makes the argument, as Toohey and Waterstone
(this volume) do, that schoolteachers, unlike academics, are situated in
contexts in which cultural capital is determined not by mastery over
academic language, but by the ability to make learning meaningful for
students. In this context, the inaccessibility of some critical texts serves
simply to alienate the very teachers who seek insight from these texts.
Such frustration is exacerbated by pessimism arising from a teaching
context that is largely undemocratic and in which labor relations are
unfavorable to teachers. Lin sought to address these challenges, in part,
by developing course assignments that were designed for a wider educational audience. This opportunity was well received by the student
teachers, and their assignments, which incorporated an array of critical
work, were published in a local professional newsletter. Lin concludes
the chapter with a candid discussion of tensions arising from the unequal
relations of power between teacher-educators and student teachers noting, in particular, the challenges faced by education workers in Hong
Kong who are both junior and female.
An assessment of diverse sites of expertise in the educational community is also central to arguments made by Kelleen Toohey and Bonnie Waterstone in their chapter, “Negotiating Expertise in an Action Research
Community.” Toohey and Waterstone describe a research collaboration
between teachers and researchers in Vancouver, Canada, with the mutual goal of investigating what practices in classrooms would make a
difference to the learning opportunities of minority-language children.
While teachers were comfortable discussing and critiquing their educational practices, they expressed ambivalence about translating their practice into publishable academic papers. Like the student teachers in Lin’s
study, the teachers in the research group felt little ownership over the
academic language characteristic of many published journals. “It doesn’t
come from my heart,” said Donna, one of the teachers, while another
teacher, Marcy, raised the concern that a paper that is “too journalized
up” would no longer be appealing to teachers. Toohey and Waterstone
draw on this experience to suggest that writing that respects both teachers’ and researchers’ ways of knowing might artfully blend narrative
with analysis and tell dramatic stories of classroom incidents enriched
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by a consideration of theoretical insights. The crucial question in collaborative research, Toohey and Waterstone conclude, is not, “Is power
equitably shared among participants?” but “What should participants
do with the diverse sources of power they have?” The acknowledgment
of different sites of expertise renders collaborative research a powerful
tool in teacher education.
Another powerful tool in teacher education, according to Tara Goldstein, is what she calls performed ethnography. In seeking to prepare
student teachers to work across linguistic, cultural, and racial differences
in multilingual schools, she has found that ethnographic playwriting and
performed ethnography offer a unique set of possibilities for addressing
learning and teaching challenges. To this end, Goldstein has written a
play called “Hong Kong, Canada,” which addresses some of the tensions
that arise in multilingual–multicultural school contexts. Material for the
play was drawn from a four-year (1996–2000) critical ethnographic case
study of an English-speaking Canadian high school that had recently enrolled a large number of immigrant students from Hong Kong. Goldstein
draws on this play to help student teachers explore issues associated with
identity politics prior to confronting such issues in schools. The play also
addresses the complex interplay between speech and silence in multilingual schools and offers the opportunity for student teachers to consider
alternative endings to the play. Goldstein cautions that teacher-educators
need to work actively and critically with student teacher responses to
performed ethnography and draw attention to the linguistic privileges of
target-language speakers. She concludes that ethnographic playwriting
and performed ethnography will help student teachers engage in conflict
resolution and antidiscriminatory education which will, in turn, help to
create safe and equitable learning environments for language learners in
multilingual schools.
The final chapter in the collection, by Alastair Pennycook, is a narrative account of his reflections as a teacher-educator observing a Teaching
English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) practicum in Sydney,
Australia. He reminds us that a great deal of language teaching does not
take place in well-funded institutes of education, but in community programs, places of worship, and immigrant centers where funds are limited
and time is at a premium. Of central interest in his chapter is a consideration of the way in which teacher-educators can intervene in the process
of practicum observation to bring about educational and social change.
Pennycook’s quest is for critical moments in the practicum – “a point
of significance, an instant when things change.” After the class is over,
Pennycook and the student teacher, Kath, discuss three such moments
that arise from (a) the actions of a disruptive male student, (b) the use
of practice dialogues for calling technicians, and (c) the recognition of
nonstandard English in the classroom. Each of these critical moments,
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