Examining Critical Pedagogy in Iranian High School English Textbooks (Research Paper)

Critical pedagogy as a constituent of a democratic society is crucial to be raised and an educational system as a part of the society needs to get familiar with such a context for nurturing teachers and students with critical thinking as well as providing materials based on critical pedagogy principles. The present study intended to elicit the underlying themes in critical pedagogy and to examine their frequency in Iranian EFL textbooks. Following an exploratory sequential mixed method design, reviewing the literature critically, a host of underlying themes were extracted using content analysis and then six experts in Applied Linguistics were asked to select the more relevant themes in critical pedagogy according to the context of teaching the English language in Iranian high schools. Accordingly, the materials utilized in the present study were senior high school EFL textbooks entitled Vision Series and Vision Series Workbooks to examine the elicited themes. Furthermore, the frequency of critical pedagogy themes in Vision Series and Vision Series workbooks in terms of the level of the textbooks were examined. The results indicated "critical praxis" and "critical thinking" were the most frequently-used themes in Vision Series and Vision Series workbooks respectively and the frequency of critical pedagogy themes in these textbooks revealed no significant differences except in some themes. The findings of this study might have implications for stakeholders, materials developers, teachers, and students.

کلیدواژه ها:

Critical Pedagogy ، critical thinking ، EFL materials ، themes ، Vision Series