anniversary article

Critical language pedagogy: an

introduction to principles and values
Graham V. Crookes

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Critical language pedagogy, teaching languages for social justice, is considered in
terms of its history and principles. Several sets of principles, from different periods
of the development of this literature, are juxtaposed. A connection is drawn from
the possible values held by language teachers to the values espoused by critical
language pedagogy. These are specified as democratic values, associated with
equality, freedom, and solidarity. Values are identified as a means by which
language teachers considering this perspective could approach it.
Introduction Critical language pedagogy (CLP) is a perspective on teaching second,
additional, heritage, or other languages that is based in values of social
justice. It is associated with a theory of education in which the work of
Freire (e.g. Freire 1967) is seen as central. Possibly all perspectives on
language education have values, implicit in central concepts or goals, but
CLP is explicit about its intentions, and has come to use the term ‘social
justice’ to indicate them. This term has become popular but may not be
too transparent (or may have become overused); its use implies the values
associated with democracy (e.g. liberty, equality, and solidarity). These,
then, are also fostered and furthered by CLP.
This article briefly sketches the CLP perspective as applied to the teaching
of English and presents it in the context of the ELT Journal (ELTJ) as it
celebrates its seventy-fifth year. CLP, the application of critical pedagogy ideas
to language teaching, is a minority viewpoint in the field of ELT, and although
both its antecedent curricular area of critical pedagogy and its applications
to L2 teaching have been around for more than fifty years, Akbari (2008)
is the only substantial entry in ELTJ on this topic. In the body of the article,
I consider its history and principles. I then consider what the values of a
teacher who might be interested in this perspective might include, as a way to
assist them to consider the relevance of it to their professional work.
Early history and A simple account of this area typically begins with the figure of Paulo
principles of CLP Freire, who started his career in Brazil as an L1 literacy specialist, and
had been developing literacy campaigns with a social justice orientation
(and associated materials, curriculum development practices, teacher
training, and so on) for some years before beginning to publish (initially

ELT Journal Volume 75/3 July 2021; doi:10.1093/elt/ccab020 247

© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
 in Portuguese). Exiled from his home country, he developed his ideas and
published further from Chile, and then Switzerland (after some visits to
North America). Directly reflecting Freire’s ideas, CLP, as an L2 practice,
began to develop in the United States within a few years of his writings
appearing in English. In the early 1970s, Wallerstein (e.g. Wallerstein
1983) started to use Freire’s ideas in an ESL course for immigrants in San
Jose, California and Crawford (1978: 1) analysed Freire’s work in terms of
‘second language curriculum design’. In 1983 the term ‘critical pedagogy’
was first used in print (by Giroux 1983: 43) to describe the Freirean
tradition, although it had earlier been in use by Canadian specialists
such as Roger Simon since 1979. As a North American and ESL-oriented

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line of professional practice, it was not visible in ELTJ for a long time.
However, in the 1990s, as critical matters in applied linguistics more
generally became visible, it appeared in ELTJ’s book review sections: for
example, Canagarajah (1996), or even more so, Holborow (1996), which
has a substantial final section disputing Pennycook’s view of critical
pedagogy. However, despite the time elapsed, the concepts and practices
through which it was implemented by early specialists are not inconsistent
with those set out for ELTJ by Akbari thirty years later, and they remain
accurate today.
Akbari’s presentation notes that CLP sees language education ‘as an
intrinsically political, power-related activity’; it relates to the inclusion
of marginalized groups; it connects the classroom to action (for social
justice) outside the classroom; it critiques language, in this case English,
also in terms of power and justice. Not only does it critique, however;
it also provides a ‘discourse of hope’. It ‘legitimizes the voices of
practitioners and learners, and gives them scope to exercise power in their
local context’ (Akbari 2008: 277).
Some cross-checking of Akbari’s points can be obtained by considering
other short overviews which exist (besides long ones: Crookes 2013).
Prominent critical applied linguist Pennycook (1994: 298–9) digested two
sets of principles or main features (Giroux 1991 and Kramsch 1993, cited
in Pennycook 1994). I condense his summations as follows. CLP
(1) should produce political subjects—that is, it should help students
contribute to society through ‘different social, cultural and political
ways’;
(2) it must concern good and bad—critical pedagogy engages the ethical;
(3) it needs to relate to ‘difference’ (class, race, gender, etc.);
(4) its classrooms should be places where ‘knowledge can be challenged’;
(5) it should create ‘alternative forms of culture and knowledge’;
(6) it develops partial and ‘particular’ (i.e. local) forms of knowledge (and
reason);
(7) it must have ‘a vision of a better world for which it is worth struggling’;
(8) its ‘teachers need to see themselves … as “transformative
intellectuals”’;
(9) it values student voice and the role of student as active subject (all
quotes from Pennycook 1994: 298–9).
Pennycook also summarizes Kramsch’s ‘main features of a critical
language pedagogy’ (1993: 244, cited in Pennycook 1994). They add to the

248 Graham V. Crookes

above the following features: (a) awareness of global context, (b) valuing of
local knowledge of students, and (c) the importance of listening.
These brief summaries say quite a lot about what CLP should do, in
support of its overall goal of fostering social justice (through L2 teaching,
and through the critical analyses of L2 teaching and its contexts) but it is
natural to ask how that might be done. (There is also the obvious follow-on
question of feasibility.) Staying with established sets of principles, some
sort of answer can be provided by reviewing Crawford’s principles
(Crawford 1978: 73–109), and considering how they might be brought
into practice, to whatever extent possible, in one’s own circumstances.
They are challenging (to use a neologism, some of them are ‘aspirational’).

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However, the CLP literature, briefly noted after these, does provide reports
which indicate how some teachers and their students have approached
numerous of them (if not all of them at once).
(1) The purpose of education is to develop critical thinking by presenting
the people’s situation to them as a problem so that they can perceive,
reflect, and act on it.
(2) The primary intended outcome of an educational experience is
creative action on the part of the learners.
(3) The acquisition of information and skills is a secondary objective of
education, and the content of such acquisition is subject to creative
action.
(4) The content of curriculum derives from the life situation of the
learners as expressed in the themes of their reality.
(5) The life situation of the learners and the learners’ perceptions of it
inform the organization of subject matter, i.e. skills and information
acquisition, within the curriculum.
(6) Curriculum content is open to interdisciplinary treatment.
(7) Praxis ... combined reflection and action, constitutes the method of
education.
(8) Dialogue forms the context of the educational situation.
(9) The organization of curriculum recognizes the class as a social entity
and resource.
(10) The content of curriculum is posed as a problem.
(11) The curriculum contains a mechanism by which the learners distance
themselves from and objectify the reality to be known.
(12) The learners produce their own learning materials.
(13) The task of planning is first to organize generative themes as problems
and second to organize subject matter as it relates to those themes.
(14) The teacher participates in that process as a learner among learners.
(15) The teacher also contributes his/her ideas, experiences, opinions, and
perceptions to the dialogical process.
(16) The teacher becomes one with the students [in the senses of (14) and
(15) above].
(17) The teacher’s function is one of posing problems.
(18) The student is one who acts on objects.
(19) The student possesses the right to and power of decision making.
(20) Evaluation focuses on the ability of the educational programme to
develop critical thinking and foster transforming action in a particular
time and place.

Critical language pedagogy: an introduction to principles and values 249

 Consistent with the above, Akbari (2008) turns, practically, to ‘some
suggestions as to how teachers can transform their classes into more
critical settings’ (Akbari 2008: 278). These are:
(1) base your teaching on students’ local culture;
(2) regard learners’ L1 as a resource to be utilized;
(3) include more of students’ real-life concerns; and
(4) make your learners aware of issues faced by marginalized groups.
Practical examples of how this can be done, and materials with which
to do it, had been published in the earlier literature of CLP, but almost
exclusively in ESL contexts, which Akbari did not reference. It is important

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to be able to point to any positive attempts on aspects of the many
principles that have been outlined so far. Among quite early examples, the
work of Wallerstein and of Auerbach (e.g. Auerbach and Wallerstein 1987)
remains very important. The practical US EAP case studies of Benesch
or the Canadian work of Morgan (summarized in Crookes 2013) are
valuable bases, and they are explained in quite straightforward case study
descriptions. In addition, by the early years of the present century, some
small EFL explorations began to be reported (summarized in Crookes
2013, see also Crookes and Abednia, 2021) across countries including
Korea, Singapore, and Iran, where it might be thought completely
impossible.
Approaching CLP CLP proponents have followed Freire who stated that there was no one
through values critical pedagogy and it would have to be invented differently for different
circumstances. Accordingly, leaving behind the citations above of many
practical case studies, I continue to focus on principles, but turn from
those focused on practice and curriculum, to those that could be related
to one’s own professional values. In brief, if a (language) teacher has
values that favour social justice, it will be for the teacher to consider how
to implement them, and to what extent, to what degree, and through what
means, perhaps through some form of a CLP that could be implemented
in a given situation.
CLP is a perspective that is explicitly value-laden and addresses a teacher
as a professional, which is to say as someone with values (cf. Crookes
2009) that generally go beyond mere instrumentality. By emphasizing
the values of CLP we can defer to the teacher’s sense of what is and is not
practicable in any particular situation.
The idea that there are values in our field has not always been explicit,
and in the 1980s (say), this was not a normal position. In the 1990s,
in an unusual, pathbreaking piece independent of critical applied
linguistics, Edge (1996) made the claim that ‘we have developed a culture
of TESOL … through which our values are expressed’ (Edge (1996: 11).
He identified ‘diversity’, ‘inquiry’, ‘cooperation’, and ‘respect’ as the
values of TESOL; he tied them to our behaviour or attitudes in and with
regard to the classroom, to teaching practices viewed culturally, to the
scientific or evidence bases of our work, and to professional development.
(And he located them in a sociopolitical context.) A few years later,
Johnston identified a number of values as appearing in the practices of,
or articulated by, language teachers he had worked with or interviewed;

250 Graham V. Crookes

these, he suggested, were embodied in ‘our field’: ‘commitment to our
students, commitment to ourselves, equity, caring, and dialogue …
fundamental values underlying our pedagogical beliefs’ (Johnston 2003:
147). Johnston also identified the rise of CLP as the thing which had
brought the field to a more conscious recognition of its values; indeed,
he calls it the ‘introduction of a language of values to the field’ (Johnston
2003: 42).
Edge returned to this theme more recently (Edge 2013). In this discussion,
he presented selected values as ones he intended to transmit as part
of ‘ESOL’ teacher education. He selected three for discussion: ‘liberty,
equality, and community’ (Edge 2013: 186).

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Edge interprets these values in terms of aspects of our profession.
‘Liberty’, in particular, is given a very individualist, professional
development focus: it means it is for us to take up the freedom to be ‘the
best we can be for our students’. ‘Equality’ means ‘respect for the various
traditions that feed into educational cultures’ (e.g. respect memorization
as part of, say, Chinese language classroom practices rather than
dismissing it). It is also interpreted in terms of equitable participation
in the language classroom. ‘Community’ is broadest, and humanistic,
as meaning cooperation—in turn a fundamental, defining human
characteristic. This value should then be found, sought, and promoted, in
professional associations in our field (advises Edge).
Edge’s (2013) chosen values seem familiar. Liberty, equality, community
are close to liberté, egalité, fraternité—indeed, they are central values
of democracy. That is to say, they are the key values of the French
Revolution, which spurred the growth of democracy throughout Europe
and beyond. Now, when critical pedagogy theorists write about what it is
that they actually want in regard to social change or the means through
which social justice is to be fostered, they tend to present it in very
general terms which have elsewhere been characterized as merely ‘more
democracy’ (nothing more explicitly political than that: Crookes 2013:
208). So as an alternative to stating principles concerning CLP practice we
can proceed from the position that the field (whether ELT or TESOL) has
values; if they are democratic values, then perhaps for some teachers they
are not far from the values of CLP. The values of CLP certainly are those
of democracy, and include strong (indeed, radical) interpretations of those
three democratic values. Some of the CLP principles presented earlier can
be seen as values positions.
A remark I have heard made on many occasions is, if we want democracy
in society, it does not make sense to exclude it from schools. If the
practices of democracy are to feel natural and automatic, and thus to be
generally called for as such, then we as teachers should be supporting
them, requiring them, and using them in our own classrooms. They are
so important that they cannot be left to the civics class, or corralled into
the social studies course only, or excluded from the private language
school. Then, if a teacher values democracy and recognizes that a broad
understanding of democracy (as opposed perhaps to representative
democracy that constrains it to an act at a ballot box once every few years)
implies the democratization of the institutions in which we spend most

Critical language pedagogy: an introduction to principles and values 251

 of our lives, the question is whether any aspect of this can be done in
the specific classroom for which they are responsible (and of course,
over which there are others, especially administrators or in some cases
parents who might not see things the same way as the teacher does). As
a principle, this is stated most bluntly by Crawford in her number (19):
‘the student possesses the right to and power of decision making’. Akbari
puts the same thing much more gently in his number (3): ‘Include more
of students’ real-life concerns.’ It is not as if we have never heard such
suggestions before in ELT … the concept of the autonomous learner (or
humanistic language teaching) is not entirely distant from CLP. More
to the point, practically speaking, the newcomer to CLP may be at a loss

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concerning how actually this is to be done. At its simplest, this might
simply include supplementing course content with material that reflects
more diverse views. Feminist language pedagogy specialists, for example,
have suggested this sort of change, putting content or texts which are
positive about women in where existing material may either favour men
or ignore the relevance of gender. A simple move on supplementary
content (which may then be discussed, or perhaps only read and
responded to in writing) does not require altering other aspects of the
class. A more challenging step, unless also done in a very minimal way, is
to move towards negotiating the syllabus, for which time and preparation
are of course needed. It is crucial to take very small steps and prepare
the ground fully for such initiatives to be successful and pave the way
towards some of the more challenging ideas mentioned in, for example,
Crawford’s principles.
Or, one may consider how ‘equality’ is to be worked towards. Supposing
an ELT teacher reflects on their values, identifies them as broadly
democratic, and takes one more analytic step (as Edge has done) to see,
for example, equality as one of the set of values implied by the word
‘democratic’, how is that to be manifested in the (language) classroom?
(It does not mean that the teacher abandons their role and expertise.)
Among Crawford’s principles, number (8) is relevant: ‘dialogue forms the
context of the educational situation’; also number (9), ‘the organization
of curriculum recognizes the class as a social entity and resource’. If
we stay with these (early) principles, part of the point here is the central
claim CLP makes concerning the value and importance of dialogue.
Rightly or wrongly there is the belief that talking about issues, concerns,
and problems is important (for a democracy, one could add, again) and
(bringing this on into the ELT classroom), this can be done, to some
extent, in the second language. (Particularly, Akbari might add, if greater
but judicious use be made of the L1.) Continuing on equality, ‘the class as
a … resource’ is recognized. That is, the students are recognized as having
something useful and relevant to say, that their views count, and (going
on) perhaps what they want to do, now or in the future, is important, just
as what the teacher has to say is important. On that, refer to Crawford’s
point that ‘the teacher also contributes his/her ideas, experiences,
opinions, and perceptions to the dialogical process’.
If the question then (naturally) arises, ‘But how?’, we must respect the
professional asking the question as a person who has a reflective and
exploratory approach to their own professional practice and is an expert

252 Graham V. Crookes

 in their own institutional sociocultural situation. If you are a language
teacher committed to democratic values, and committed to the idea that
professionals have values, have a role in society, and naturally implement
(to the perhaps limited extent possible) their values in their professional
practice, then it may not be the right thing for the CLP teacher educator
to make prescriptions. The existing literature of CLP, and the much larger
literature of critical pedagogy, does provide suggestions, always located in
particular cases of time and space.
For completeness, let us take Edge’s (or democracy’s) last of three
values: solidarity (which derives from the earlier fraternité). Little in
the area of social change for social justice can be achieved by people

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acting alone, individually. Perhaps teachers, because of the conventional
institutional nature of teaching, will not see this immediately. As
teachers, some of us grew up in an era of professionalism in which we
could close the door and teach the way we thought best. But in many
cases, this era was accompanied (still is accompanied) by the fostering
of competition among students and other hierarchical relations which
while not necessarily positive also legitimated professionals’ autonomy.
Individualism, not solidarity, then, has been a prominent if implicit value
underlying classroom and school practices. If, outside the classroom,
we hope for a society in which people will join together to make change,
our values suggest that something like this should be fostered, when
and where possible, to the extent possible, inside the classroom. What
would that look like? Actually of course there are so many examples
over the years, at least since the rise of communicative and task-based
perspectives, that this should not be difficult at one level to consider. But
of course, realistically speaking, such initiatives have not made much
headway against the entrenched social structures that constrain the
teaching of English in so many countries. Nor, for that matter, have the
proponents of tasks necessarily thought, with a democratic orientation, as
to what should be the content of those tasks. In fact, under the pressures
of commercialism, much of what is socially important has been excluded
from published materials. Perhaps that is a justification for Crawford
(and CLP’s) long-standing interest in student-made materials (hard
though it may be to imagine how this plays out in the classroom, though
in so many times and places, students have in fact turned out project
after project).
Caveats and In this paper, I have emphasized CLP, rather than critical pedagogy,
limitations and I have focused on the forms that were made out of Freire’s initial
ideas, in particular in practical manifestations and principles, by those
in the Global North who were able to put a local version of his ideas into
place in a particular time period and cultural context. What was meant
then by social justice is not necessarily what is meant now; there is no
single critical pedagogy, no unitary CLP, and I have left even the central
term ‘social justice’ undefined as it can be, itself, a (Freirean) code onto
which different readers will project different interpretations, and which
will surface different goals and aspirations; and especially, values, or the
bringing to consciousness of one’s values. The particular authors I have
cited as implementing practical developments were White; women were
prominent in the initial (partial) set of sources, but the lack of diversity

Critical language pedagogy: an introduction to principles and values 253

 can be noted, despite the prominence I have given to Akbari, a scholar
of colour, of what was once called (by the West), the ‘Middle East’, as
the primary voice of CLP in ELTJ so far; add in here the important
contribution of Canagarajah (cited earlier), another scholar of colour from
the Global South. A lack of concern with gender was a critique made early,
of critical pedagogy, by feminists; a similar criticism concerning race came
much later. Freire’s ideas themselves changed considerably over time
(and he acknowledged this as being the result of dialogue and critiques
directed at him as well as the field as a whole). He was initially a Catholic
progressive, then became more radical in exile in Chile, and through his
subsequent encounters with revolutionary liberation movements in what

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was then called ‘the third world’. Upon returning to Brazil he took up a
political position that was consistent with his support of the Partido dos
Trabalhadores, so he addressed himself pragmatically to problems of
educational administration, while he continued to develop his thought.
Separately, CLP in due course came to be somewhat encompassed by
the wider field of critical applied linguistics, which has taken on board
Foucauldian ideas of discourse, and a heightened concern with reflexivity
and the way the manifestations of power themselves appear in the
discourses, such as this one, which attempt to explain an emancipatory
discourse such as CLP through, inevitably, the use of power and position
(i.e. through a medium such as ELTJ itself). Positively, while remaining
visible (though under attack) in its putative original location (Brazil) it
is being taken up by non-Western scholars from West Asia to East Asia
while being maintained (under the associated heading of critical language
awareness) in southern Africa (see partial summaries in Crookes 2013).
Any attempt, such as the present one, to freeze-frame a fractal, fifty-year
project should reflexively acknowledge its own limitations while also
recognizing that it is itself a (selective) exercise of power.
Conclusion Returning to the matter of values, and going forward: what is particularly
needed, for a project like CLP, is opportunities for teachers to reflect on
their values, and support for such reflection. This is in no way a new
idea or suggestion. Critical reflection has especially been called for and
expounded in our literature. The word ‘critical’ here is not optional, if
democratic values are to be explored. Careful reflection—indeed, critical
thinking, and critique—about values is needed concerning several levels,
from the abstract value itself, through its conceptual implications, to
the critical analyses of the educational institutions in which English is
taught, what that critique means for the language of instruction, English,
itself, and so on into the possibilities and constraints of any particular
English teaching situations, is needed. Principles and summaries are
produced which cannot, by their very nature, also deliver the details of
practice, which in any case vary vastly by circumstance. They appear,
perhaps, to take no account of the constraints a teacher may be under or
the resistance they may face. By their nature, they cannot. They carry the
implied rider ‘to whatever extent possible’. My version of that is Falstaff’s:
discretion is the better part of valour. Do not do this if you will get fired.
But if you have the relevant values, think how you will manifest them. If
a professional cannot manifest their values, they are probably not being
allowed to operate as a professional. If one’s teaching circumstances are

254 Graham V. Crookes

 unprofessional (and that is so often the case), one is living an alienated
life. Sometimes that is all the life this world offers us, but most of us,
given the opportunity, will strive for something better. For those with
strong democratic values, CLP offers that alternative.
Final version received February 2021

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