Critical pedagogy in ELT classroom: exploring contributions of critical literacy to learners' critical consciousness

This study is a report on the learning processes and outcomes of a reading course with a critical literacy orientation. Twenty-seven BA freshman English literature students (four males and 23 females) at the age range between 18 and 21 participated in a Reading Comprehension 1' course at Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran. Throughout the course, they were encouraged to deal with the passages they brought to the class in a problem-posing manner. To this end, they were motivated to critically analyze the passages through group discussions and writing reflective journals. The thematic analysis of the collected 126 journals shed light on the development of the students' critical consciousness which emerged in five themes. A detailed discussion of the findings and suggestions for further research are presented.