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Critical Literacies in Iran: A Tour D’horizon

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Abstract

In this chapter, we present a brief overview of the sociopolitical and educational context of Iran, followed by a review of the critical scholarship in the field of teaching English as a foreign language. We briefly highlight the lack of a critical literacy approach in Farsi education where critical practice mainly manifests itself in a rather exclusive focus on critical thinking as a cognitive skill. We argue that a combination of Persian cultural tradition and Islamic perspectives can shape the foundations of an alternative local approach to criticality in EFL and Farsi education and enable us to problematize current, Western, conceptualizations of critical literacy. Such foundations, we contend, serve as a prerequisite for moving towards transnational critical literacy work.
... A primary argument of Critical EMI is that if education is to avoid becoming just another part of the machinery of neocolonial forces, EMI stakeholders should gain awareness of and sensitivity to the cultural, social, historical, political, and economic aspects of English (Gabriels & Wilkinson, 2024;Gray et al., 2018;Price, 2014;Shin & Park, 2016). This is a fundamental and open idea of criticality as sociopolitical sensitivity and awareness that can be defined in diverse ways (Abednia et al., 2022;Luckett & Bhatt, 2024;Selvi et al., 2022). On this basis, rather than attempting to further theorize and define criticality, we present a sketch of five aspects (ideology, policy, identity, justice, English) that we think would constitute the essence of criticality in a Critical EMI. ...
... This line of inquiry should be expanded as a significant aspect of criticality in Critical EMI that brings the other aspects (ideology, policy, identity, and justice) together, along with insights offered by pertinent perspectives of history and economy. As a final note in this section, we find it important to mention that among people who advocate critical attitudes, disagreements with respect to the specific critical perceptions and practices -that is, clashing criticalities -are always imaginable and should be discussed as possible 'local criticalities' (Abednia et al., 2022). Therefore, while devising a fixed set of universal critical premises is not possible, criticality in the sense of sensitivity to the main facets that we identified does shape a broad path of praxis in all domains of social life including education. ...
... Critical teacher education can be based on locally defined criticalities (Abednia, Mirhosseini, & Nazari, 2022) and can facilitate language teachers' role as agents of policy making beyond their classroom settings (Crandall & Bailey, 2018;Nero, 2014). From this perspective, despite the relatively considerable trend of research on critical language and literacy education in Iran (Abednia et al., 2022;Crookes, 2022), English language teacher education in Iran (arguably like elsewhere) has not been widely examined as a critical undertaking. ...
... Critical teacher education can be based on locally defined criticalities (Abednia, Mirhosseini, & Nazari, 2022) and can facilitate language teachers' role as agents of policy making beyond their classroom settings (Crandall & Bailey, 2018;Nero, 2014). From this perspective, despite the relatively considerable trend of research on critical language and literacy education in Iran (Abednia et al., 2022;Crookes, 2022), English language teacher education in Iran (arguably like elsewhere) has not been widely examined as a critical undertaking. Abednia's (2012) attempt at developing a course of critical English language teacher education and examining teachers' transformed identity conceptions is perhaps the most notable work in this area. ...
Article
Although critical views of language education have redefined teacher roles, teachers' understanding of their own position within the ideological contestations surrounding language teaching is not widely investigated. This narrative study explores the perspectives of three Iranian English language teachers on the sociocultural roles and responsibilities that they may assume for themselves and examines how such perspectives are shaped. In extensive multi‐session narrative interviews, the participants shared their stories of becoming a teacher, starting from their retrospection on teacher roles during their language learning. Our narrative analysis depicts their different trajectories of shaping conceptions of language teachers' sociocultural roles in three stages: as a language learner, as a student teacher, and as a beginner teacher. On this basis, their narrative accounts of becoming English teachers appear to indicate that critical sociocultural views still play a marginal role in actual teacher preparation processes and the field needs to further embrace critical approaches to language teacher education aimed at raising English language teachers' awareness of their sociocultural responsibility. Moreover, our participants' narratives illustrate that understanding the genesis of language teachers' teaching philosophies requires a wide perspective of their long‐term background of learning (to teach) the language.
... Therefore, criticality in Critical EMI may be understood as foregrounding such foci, which entails necessarily stepping beyond technical instructional considerations and an obsession with the use of English as a mere instrument of content teaching; rather, a critical approach may be viewed as a sociohistorical and sociopolitical site of cultural and material dominance (Dafouz & Smit, 2023;Mirhosseini & Babu, 2020;Pennycook, 2007;Phillipson, 1992;Toh, 2016). This idea of criticality as sociopolitical awareness thus invites contextual interpretations and realizations in diverse ways -even diverging positions and clashing criticalities -that pursue the common thread of sociopolitical sensitivity (Abednia et al., 2022;Crookes, 2021;Selvi et al., 2022). In the next section we highlight three aspects of such awareness and sensitivity: namely, ideology and policy, identity and justice, and the sociopolitics of English. ...
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English Medium Instruction (EMI) is a burgeoning field of interest for researchers and practitioners; however, to date its sociocultural and political implications have not been widely considered. This book addresses that concern by situating EMI within wider sociopolitical contexts of knowledge and language. It foregrounds the notion of 'Critical EMI,' bringing together applied linguists to revisit EMI in higher education from critical sociocultural perspectives. The notion of criticality is conceptualized as an attempt at addressing issues of ideology, policy, identity, social justice, and the politics of English. The chapters explore Critical EMI concerns in diverse settings across five continents, and present insights for the theory, research, policy, and practice of EMI. The book also problematizes the neocolonial spread and dominance of English through EMI. Calling for an explicit and inclusive EMI praxis, it is essential reading for researchers of applied linguistics and English language education, as well as teacher practitioners.
... Estos se organizan alrededor de tres valores: justicia, innovación y solidaridad (Ministerio de Educación del Ecuador, 2019). En dichos objetivos encontramos tres aspectos relacionados con el desarrollo de la lectura, escritura y la criticidad de los estudiantes, estos concuerdan con (por lo menos) dos teorías, la Pedagogía Crítica (Ramírez-Bravo, 2008;Giroux, 2020) y la Literacidad Crítica (Cassany & Castellá, 2010;Pandya, et al., 2021): ...
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El currículo ecuatoriano de educación básica, desde 2016, contiene el desarrollo de la criticidad y de la competencia comunicativa en sus objetivos generales de formación (el perfil de salida del bachillerato ecuatoriano). Específicamente, adoptó el enfoque comunicativo para la enseñanza de lengua; sin embargo, en el contexto de la Formación Inicial Docente y de investigaciones en aulas de educación básica, hemos encontrado que no se lleva cabalmente a la práctica. El presente ensayo presenta una síntesis y reflexión sobre algunos hallazgos relacionados con la enseñanza comunicativa y crítica de la lengua en aulas de Educación General Básica. En diálogo con referentes teóricos especializados como la teoría psicogenética, el interaccionismo sociodiscursivo y la literacidad crítica, el trabajo expone cuatro claves para fortalecer la enseñanza de lengua siguiendo el enfoque comunicativo e integrando el objetivo del desarrollo de la criticidad de los estudiantes.
Chapter
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Chapter
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Book
Henry A. Giroux is one of the most respected and well-known critical education scholars, social critics, and astute observers of popular culture in the modern world. For those who follow his considerably influential work in critical pedagogy and social criticism, this first-ever collection of his classic writings, augmented by a new essay, is a must-have volume that reveals his evolution as a scholar. In it, he takes on three major considerations central to pedagogy and schooling.The first section offers Girouxs most widely read theoretical critiques on the culture of positivism and technocratic rationality. He contends that by emphasizing the logic of science and rationality rather than taking a holistic worldview, these approaches fail to take account of connections among social, political, and historical forces or to consider the importance of such connections for the process of schooling. In the second section, Giroux expands the theoretical framework for conceptualizing and implementing his version of critical pedagogy. His theory of border pedagogy advocates a democratic public philosophy that embraces the notion of difference as part of a common struggle to extend the quality of public life. For Giroux, a student must function as a border-crosser, as a person moving in and out of physical, cultural, and social borders. He uses the popular medium of Hollywood film to show students how they might understand their own position as partly constructed within a dominant Eurocentric tradition and how power and authority relate to the wider society as well as to the classroom.In the last section, Giroux explores a number of contemporary traditions and issues, including modernism, postmodernism, and feminism, and discusses the matter of cultural difference in the classroom. Finally, in an essay written especially for this volume, Giroux analyzes the assault on education and teachers as public intellectuals that began in the Reagan-Bush era and continues today. Henry A. Giroux is one of the most respected and well-known critical education scholars, social critics, and astute observers of popular culture in the modern world. For those who follow his considerably influential work in critical pedagogy and social criticism, this first-ever collection of his classic writings, augmented by a new essay, is a must-have volume that reveals his evolution as a scholar. In it, he takes on three major considerations central to pedagogy and schooling.The first section offers Girouxs most widely read theoretical critiques on the culture of positivism and technocratic rationality. He contends that by emphasizing the logic of science and rationality rather than taking a holistic worldview, these approaches fail to take account of connections among social, political, and historical forces or to consider the importance of such connections for the process of schooling. In the second section, Giroux expands the theoretical framework for conceptualizing and implementing his version of critical pedagogy. His theory of border pedagogy advocates a democratic public philosophy that embraces the notion of difference as part of a common struggle to extend the quality of public life. For Giroux, a student must function as a border-crosser, as a person moving in and out of physical, cultural, and social borders. He uses the popular medium of Hollywood film to show students how they might understand their own position as partly constructed within a dominant Eurocentric tradition and how power and authority relate to the wider society as well as to the classroom.In the last section, Giroux explores a number of contemporary traditions and issues, including modernism, postmodernism, and feminism, and discusses the matter of cultural difference in the classroom. Finally, in an essay written especially for this volume, Giroux analyzes the assault on education and teachers as public intellectuals that began in the Reagan-Bush era and continues today.