Critical Pedagogy and Language Learning
Mohammad Javad Riasati, Fatemeh Mollaei

Abstract
In contemporary scholarly discussion, the theoretical concept “critical” is the center of attention of many scholars. Scholars have managed to generate significant intuition for the enrichment of theory construction. Critical pedagogy is defined in different names such ascritical work,transformative pedagogy, participatory approach, emancipatory literacy, critical education, pedagogies of resistance,liberatory teaching, radical pedagogy, post-modem pedagogy, border pedagogy, and pedagogies of possibility. Teaching under the CP paradigm is always politically engaging, and not neutral as in critical thinking, because CP aims to lead to social change. Proponents of critical approaches to second language teaching are interested in relationship between language learning and social change. From this standpoint, language is not simply a means to express or communicate; instead, it is a product that is constructed by the ways language learners recognize themselves, their social surroundings, their histories, and their potentialities for the future.In actual fact as Morgan represents, “politically engaged critiques of power in everyday life, communities, and institutions” areexactly what are needed to develop critical pedagogies in language education. This paper aims at introducingcritical pedagogy as a teaching method, the tenets inherent in it, applying critical pedagogy in EFL and ESL environments and the critics received in this respect.

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