Putting Critical Language Pedagogy into Practice

Book excerpt: Putting Critical Language Pedagogy into Practice explores the practice of language teaching through the lens of critical pedagogy, reflexivity, and the importance of reflexivity for teacher development. It also shows how these reflexive practices can contribute to more inclusivity and decolonization of the curriculum. A range of experts argue persuasively for epistemological reflexivity in practice and demonstrate how to implement this critical thinking into daily instructional practice. Each chapter is structured around three themes in order to help readers connect challenging theoretical ideas into day to day teaching practice: Reflection – the author’s story and issue of concern; Epistemic Reflexivity – personal epistemologies reflecting on the social conditions influencing the theory underpinning that author’s practices; Resolved action – how the epistemic reflexivity leads to purposeful decision-making enacted in classroom contexts. Original, thoughtful and challenging, this text is fascinating and instructional reading for language education advanced students, researchers and practitioners. The idea for this book emerged during the Fulbright scholarship at Texas Woman’s University out of the mutual research interests of the editors.