Critical Pedagoy in ELT: Images of Brazilian Teachers of English

The main point of the article by Pagliarini and De Assis is that the overwhelming majority  of the Brazilian English teachers they interviewed in their study were not familiar with critical pedagogy in ELT. The authors used basically two data collection methods: interviews and       commentary on passage analysis. Form this data, the researchers were able to determine that all but two of the forty teachers they interviewed did not know much about critical pedagogy in ELT and, consequently, that this approach was not being enacted in their classrooms.

This, the authors believe, is particularly problematic since in 1997 the Brazilian government introduced the National Curriculum Parameter, which is based on critical pedagogical assumptions. However, it needs to be said that the article was published in 1999, which implies that very likely the study was carried out sometime around 1998 or even before. Clearly, the researchers ignored this fact, and didn’t include any information on how the new curriculum was being socialized within the educational community. Also, information on the character of the teacher degree programs at universities in Brazil could have enlightened the study in terms of the causes of this absence of critical perspective on teacher’s pedagogies.

Additionally, the teachers are troubled by the fact that the origin of critical pedagogy can be traced back to Paulo Freire, a Brazilian himself. They call attention to the fact that critical pedagogies in ELT are arriving to Brazil, via the literature of experts in the ‘inner countries’. That is to say, critical pedagogy, a contribution of a Brazilian to pedagogy around the world, has become an imported theory of learning for Brazilians. It is not very hard to see the irony in that.

Instead of conducting studies where the teachers lack of expertise and outdated methods become evident, one would like to see studies on the ways universitites are educating pre-service teachers. University professors clearly enjoy a more ready access to the latest trends in theories in the world, but above that, are more capable of transforming theories, such as the critical pedagogy put forward by Paulo Freire, into to transformational practices aimed at social transformation. Beyond the question of how is it possible that these teachers were ignorant about critical pedagogy, one would like to see how experts and universities in Brazil failed at developing a critical pedagogy for the teaching of languages based on the postulates of Freire.