On the implementation of critical pedagogy in english language institutes in Iran

This research aimed to investigate the status quo of critical pedagogy in Iran. It focused on examining language teachers’ stances on implementing the principles of critical pedagogy in their classrooms. Also, of particular interest was the study of gender difference in practicing critical pedagogy in language institutes in Iran. At first, the Critical Pedagogy Implementation Inventory, developed by Mozaffari (2011), was administered to 116 instructors teaching at language institutes to collect the required quantitative data. In the second phase of the study, forty-six of the participants were interviewed to gather some complementary qualitative data. The researchers utilized descriptive statistics, factor analysis, Cronbach’s Alpha, chi-square, and independent samples T-test for the quantitative phase of the study, and techniques based on grounded theory in the qualitative phase. Data analysis revealed that the majority of language teachers were in favor of practicing critical pedagogy in their classrooms. However, it was found that critical pedagogy is not efficiently practiced in Iranian educational contexts and even the teachers who advocated the principles of critical pedagogy had an almost average score on the Critical Pedagogy Implementation Inventory. In fact, the teachers claimed that there were some barriers to practicing critical pedagogy in Iran. The top-down educational system, prescriptive approaches to supervision, class size, learners’ expectations, conventional teacher-student relationships, and their traditionally-defined roles were among the main hurdles that impeded an appropriate implementation of critical pedagogy in classrooms. Further investigation also revealed that there was a significant difference between male and female teachers’ stances on practicing critical pedagogy. It was revealed that female instructors tended to be more positively immersed in such implementation.   Keywords: critical pedagogy (CP), educational contexts, foreign language teachers, prescriptive supervision