Identity , Language Learning , and Critical Pedagogies

Educators interested in identity, language learning, and critical pedagogies are interested in language as a social practice. In other words, they are interested in the way language constructs and is constructed by a wide variety of social relationships. These relationships might be as varied as those between writer and reader; teacher and student; test maker and test taker; school and state. What makes the educators “critical” is the shared assumption that social relationships are seldom constituted on equal terms, but may reflect and constitute inequitable relations of power in the wider society, on terms that may be defined, among others, by gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Further, as Norton and Toohey (2004) note, the plural use of “pedagogies” suggests that there are many ways in which pedagogy can be critical; the challenge for critical language educators is to determine how best to pursue a project of possibility for language learners, in a variety of places, at different points in time. Such educators have examined the social, historical, and cultural contexts in which language learning takes place and how learners negotiate and sometimes resist the diverse positions those contexts offer them. It is argued that the extent to which a language learner speaks or is silent, and writes, reads, or resists has much to do with the extent to which the learner is valued in any given institution or community. Language is thus theorized not only as a linguistic system, but also as a social practice in which experiences are organized and identities negotiated.