Critical Pedagogy: EFL Teachers’ Views, Experience and Academic Degrees

Although critical pedagogy has brought about positive changes in the field of education by shifting from traditional pedagogy to emancipatory pedagogy, not much attention has been paid to the factors affecting teachers’ beliefs of critical pedagogy and only few studies have been conducted to design reliable and valid instruments to study EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers’ beliefs about different aspects of teaching in the field of critical pedagogy. Consequently, there is a gap in our knowledge of critical pedagogy in terms of Iranian EFL teachers’ beliefs about critical pedagogy and their tendency to implement it in teaching EFL. This study was conducted to help fill this gap, through developing a questionnaire and focusing on the relationship between teachers’ teaching experience and educational background, and their beliefs about critical pedagogy. To this end, a critical language pedagogy questionnaire was developed and validated, using factor analysis. The questionnaire was administered to 403 respondents. Pearson Correlation Coefficient and MANOVA were used to analyze the data. The result indicated that there were significant differences among the BA, MA and PhD participants’ awareness of critical pedagogy, with the PhD holders found to be the most aware of principles and practices of critical language pedagogy. Furthermore, teachers’ teaching experience had a significant relationship with their awareness of critical pedagogy with more experienced teachers scoring higher on the four factors in the questionnaire.


Introduction
Education has changed dramatically from rough thought of the previous traditional understanding of teaching and learning towards ideological education which has made a wide range of changes in the field of education. In traditional pedagogy teachers are considered the sole authority in the classroom (Kumaravadivelu, 2003) whose main responsibility is to transfer content knowledge from their mind to students' mind (Freire, 1972). In traditional pedagogy, there is a socially failed connection between the teacher and the students in the classroom and learners are passive recipients of knowledge. This traditional perspective was called by Freire (1972) as banking method. Freire was against the banking concept in educational institutes and introduced the problem-posing model of education which seeks to learners' empowerment by raising their consciousness to critique and challenge oppressive social conditions (Freire, 1972).
Drawing on the critiques and theories proposed by Freire (1972), Gramshi (1988), Apple (1979), Giroux (1992), Maclaren (2003), and Shor (1992) the theory of critical pedagogy was developed as an alternative way of thinking of education (Kincheloe, 2004). Critical pedagogy was developed to account for the implicit power structures that dominated the classroom in particular and the educational system in general.
Critical pedagogy "seeks to understand and critique the historical and sociopolitical context of schooling and to develop pedagogical practices that aim not only to change the nature of schooling, but also the wider society" (Pennycook, 1999, p. 33). Critical pedagogy attempts to move away from teacher-and-text-centered curricula by focusing on students' interests and their situated identities to instill in students a critical mind-set to become agents of change. Critical pedagogy asserts that the way a student thinks about the world can be changed by the right teaching method (Freire, 1972;Hook, 1994;McLaren, 1998).
The main purpose of critical pedagogy is to use education as a means to bring about a more socially just society (Kanpol, 1999;Kessing-Styles, 2003;Kincheloe, 2004). According to Kincheloe (2008), the main assumptions of critical pedagogy are: recognition the sources of power, the political nature of education, justice and equality in education; the exclusion of economic determinism; the reducing of human suffering; positive changes in relationship between student and teacher; and the promotion of emancipation.
In the light of critical pedagogy, ELT (English Language Teaching) has found a new area. According to critical pedagogues, in ELT both language learning and language teaching are political processes. There are social and political relationships between teaching of English as a second/foreign language and the ideological, political and economic hegemony of the powerful English-speaking centers-a phenomenon Philipson (1992) referred to as linguistic imperialism. With the similar idea, Norton and Toohey (2004), believed that critical pedagogy considers language as a social practice that paves the way for learners to understand themselves, their social surroundings, and their histories when they learn English.
In the area of ELT, some studies have been conducted on critical pedagogy with different facets such as "comparative studies", "applicability studies", "construction study", (Crawford, 1978) and "Teachers' beliefs studies". However, given the specific foci of this study, there is a need to briefly report on a few relevant studies done on teachers' beliefs about critical pedagogy.
Regarding teachers' awareness of critical pedagogy, there is a study by Abdelrahim (2006) aimed at investigating the relationship between teachers' gender and experience and their awareness of critical pedagogy. The study employed a mix method approach to data collection with the inductive part being qualitative. The main source for collecting data for the qualitative part was semi-structure interviews with twenty ELT teachers (ten males and ten females) which resulted in no significant difference in teachers' awareness of critical pedagogy in terms of their gender and experience. A 34-item questionnaire arose out of the analysis of the qualitative section which was administered to 240 ELT teachers (60 males, 60 females, 60 experienced and 60 novices) in Tehran. The findings of the quantitative section corroborated that of the qualitative one. These findings show a need for exploring other venues for teachers' awareness of critical pedagogy.
In a similar study, Azimi (2008) developed and validated a "Critical Pedagogy Attitude Inventory", to explore the likely effect of Iranian ELT students' and instructors' gender, position, and teaching experience on the way they are disposed toward critical pedagogy. Participants included B.A M.A and PhD students of English majors mostly in state universities and English instructors, in Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Tabriz, and Rasht made a pool of 318. To collect their attitude towards critical pedagogy indirectly "Critical Pedagogy Attitude Inventory" was utilized. He concluded that gender, position, and teaching experience do not have significant effects on respondents' inclination to critical pedagogy.
In Iranian context, Aliakbari and Allahmoradi (2012) conducted another study to investigate school teachers' perceptions of principles of critical pedagogy. Adapting the instrument "the Principles of Critical Pedagogy Scale" developed by Yilmaz (2009), differences in teachers' views on critical pedagogy by age, gender, and the level they teach were investigated. The results indicated no significant difference between teachers' views concerning the given variables except for gender.
In this area, another study was conducted by Davari, Iranmehr, and Erfani (2012). They developed a questionnaire to study Iranian ELT community's attitudes to some practical implications of critical pedagogy in ELT. To this end, a mixed-method approach was conducted. In the first phase, an interview survey was conducted with 8 applied linguists. Enjoying the content analysis of the data as well as the available literature on the topic, a 10 item likert-scale was prepared which was not validated. This newly developed questionnaire was administered to 86 participants. The findings obtained from the questionnaires revealed that in three categories, namely Basing teaching on learners' local culture, including real-life local and global concerns as teaching topics, and Developing materials in Periphery, the ELT community clearly tended to critical pedagogy. Studying the findings of other two categories Using First Language as a Source and Valuing Non-native English Speaking Teacher showed that in the former the mainstream pedagogy in ELT is dominant, but in the latter with respect to this statement "Native speaker of English is the best teacher of English" critical pedagogy is dominant, but regarding this statement "American or British pronunciations should not be the only standards in pronunciation "the common practice in ELT professional literature is significant. These findings revealed that critical pedagogy is going to find a position in Iranian ELT community. developed a critical pedagogy attitudes questionnaire. The newly developed questionnaire was validated by administering it among 100 English university and institute teachers. This study investigated the internal consistency and the constructed validity of the newly developed instrument which both showed acceptable result. As for the internal consistency, Cronbach's Alpha indicated a reliability of 0.93 which is acceptable and strong in educational research. The Critical Pedagogy Attitude Questionnaire showed good indices of construct validity as measured by Principal Component Analysis and five themes emerged namely "Disbelieving the neutrality of the native-speaker-run ELT", "Countering ELT hidden agendas by favoring Local materials", "Legitimizing sensitivity to the ideology of ELT materials", "Countering Pre-EIL Misconceptions", "Prioritizing EIL principles".
Researchers (Norton & Toohey, 2004;Pennycook, 1999Pennycook, , 2001 proposed that critical pedagogy is essential to ELT. Moreover, the main principles of critical pedagogy can to a great extent affect the process and outcomes of learning and teaching English, but despite the great help of critical pedagogy in education and the emphasis which is laid on the importance of developing a critical pedagogy, not much attention has been paid to the factors affecting teachers' beliefs of critical pedagogy and few attempts have been made to design reliable, valid and comprehensive instruments to study ELT teachers' beliefs about different aspects of teaching in the field of critical pedagogy. Besides, the existing questionnaires in the field of critical pedagogy were not suitable to use in this study because some of their items were ambiguous, very general or very specific, and some others were double-barreled or very technical. Furthermore, some of these questionnaires did not produce meaningful factor structures and they had vague or very complicated wordings that teachers may not understand. Because of the above mentioned problems in these studies, the findings might not truly reflect teachers' ideas of critical pedagogy. Consequently, there is a gap in our knowledge of critical pedagogy in terms of teachers' beliefs about it and the existence of the tendency towards it among Iranian EFL teachers. This study tried to fill this gap in Iranian educational settings.
As a result, an effort was made to develop a critical language pedagogy instrument to investigate teachers' beliefs of critical pedagogy considering how these beliefs might be related to their experience and educational level as two noteworthy factors in education.
To this end, the following research questions were raised: 1) Is there any significant difference in Iranian EFL teachers' awareness of critical pedagogy across different educational levels?
2) Is there any relationship between teaching experience and EFL teachers' awareness of critical pedagogy?

Participants
This study comprised two phases, piloting and validation. Each of these phases had its own participants with their distinct characteristics. In the first phase, piloting, there were 47 English language teachers (23 females and 24 males) mainly teaching in Sanandaj English language centers holding BA, MA, and PhD in different majors, i.e. English Literature, Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), Translation, and General Linguistics. The years of their teaching ranged from one to 21 years. The participants' age ranged from 23 to 42. In the validation part, the second phase, 435 other English language teachers participated in the study. The respondents in this phase were from different English language centers, state and Azad universities and schools in Sanandaj and some other cities. They held BA, MA, and PhD in different majors. Out of the 495 distributed questionnaires, 435were completed by the respondents and returned to the researcher (a return rate of 87%). Upon inspection, 32 of the completed questionnaires were excluded since they were either incomplete or carelessly completed. This left the researchers with 403 questionnaires for validation. From the final 403 respondents, 203 were male (50.4%), and 200 were female (49.6%). It should be mentioned that the type of sampling adopted for this study was convenience sampling.

Data Collection
The researchers sent the questionnaire to more than 200 English language teachers and also asked them to send it to their colleagues. Some respondents were asked to fill out the questionnaire in English centers. It is worth mentioning that the researchers distributed the questionnaire mainly in Sanandaj and some other cities in Iran.

Instrumentation
In this study a Critical Language Pedagogy questionnaire was developed. To this end, the researchers reviewed all the available resources on critical pedagogy, including 89 articles and books chapters. They went through this www.ccsenet.org/elt English Language Teaching Vol. 8, No. 6;2015 process to establish a theoretical framework for the instrument. Apart from this, specific attention was paid to a few prominent figures' works of the field namely Freire (1972Freire ( , 1985Freire ( , 1994Freire ( , 1998Freire ( , 2005, Shor (1992Shor ( , 1996Shor ( , 1999, McLaren (1998McLaren ( , 2003, Giroux (1992), and Crawford (1978). Furthermore, the existing instruments in the literature were reviewed, namely: Abdulrahim (2007), Azimi (2008), Izadinia (2008), Yilmaz (2009), Davari, Iranmehr, and Erfani (2012), and Pishvaei and Kassaian (2013). As mentioned before, these questionnaires were not suitable for the purpose of this study. As a result, an effort was made to modify some of those items into clearer and understandable ones. Based on the reviewed literature and the already developed questionnaires, the items of the present questionnaire were developed.
A great deal of effort went into generating simple, short items without any ambiguous words. In addition, the researchers tried not to write double-barreled, double negative, loaded, abstract, and technical items. Then the items were put into a standard questionnaire format and a six-point Likert scale was added to the questionnaire based on Rensis Likert that is the most commonly used scale over the past 70 years (Dornyei, 2010). The final version, containing 47 items, became ready for the next step. To pilot the questionnaire, it was administered to 47 EFL teachers mainly in Sanandaj.
In order to analyze the data gathered in the pilot study, two kinds of item analysis were conducted, i.e. Extreme Group Method and Corrected Item-Total Correlation. Based on these two statistical analyses, eight items were omitted and eight items reworded. In this stage the number of items reduced to 39. After the second administration of the questionnaire (for construct validating) the data were item analyzed again. Again nine items with low discrimination ability and low correlation were omitted. The resultant questionnaire with 30 items was ready for the next part: validation. Cronbach's Alpha measure also demonstrated that the results of the present questionnaire enjoy a reliability of .825.

Validation
The construct validity was checked through Factor Analysis using Principal Components Analysis (PCA). For the rotation procedure, orthogonal rotation and among orthogonal rotation procedures Varimax which is the most commonly used one was chosen. KMO (Kaisor-Mayor-Olkin) Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Bartlett Test of Sphericity showed no violation of factorability hypotheses. To find the right number of factors to extract, the Kaiser criterion and the Scree test were employed which did not prove useful as the Kaiser criterion overestimated and the Scree test underestimated the number of factors. Subsequently, different factor solutions were attempted to find the most meaningful and interpretable factor patterns. During the analysis of different factor solutions, the researcher found that 13 items were problematic and not interpretable. As a result, they were omitted. The remaining 17 items in the form of a 4-factor solution proved to be the most interpretable factor structure. The factor loading of the items ranged from .317 to .699. The eigenvalues of the first, second, third, and fourth factors are 12.512, 11.145, 8.625, and 7.519 respectively. The four factors altogether account for 39.802% of the total variance. The validated questionnaire is presented in Appendix A. The table below shows the components and their corresponding items.

Research Question 1
Is there any significant difference in Iranian EFL teachers' awareness of critical pedagogy across different educational levels?
A multivariate ANOVA (MANOVA) was run to compare the BA, MA and PhD participants' awareness of the four factors emerging from the validation of the questionnaire. Based on the results displayed in Table 2 (F (8, 796) = 2.20, P < .05, Partial η 2 = .022 representing a weak effect size), it can be concluded that there were significant differences between the means of the BA, MA and PhD participants' awareness of the four factors. Thus the first null-hypothesis was rejected. Based on the results displayed in Table 3 (F (2, 400) = 3.71, P < .05, Partial η 2 = .016 representing a weak effect size), it can be concluded that there were significant differences between the BA, MA and PhD teachers' awareness of the first factor of critical pedagogy. As displayed in Table 4, which presents the relevant descriptive results, the PhD teachers (M = 5.05) showed the highest awareness towards the first factor. This was followed by the BA (M = 4.71) and MA (M = 4.69) teachers, whose levels of awareness were only slightly different.
Finally, as displayed in Table 5, the results of the post-hoc Scheffe's tests indicated that; The PhD teachers (M = 5.05) significantly held a higher awareness of the first factor than the MA teachers (M = 4.69) (MD = .36, P < .05). Based on the results displayed in table 3 (F (2, 400) = 3.99, P < .05, Partial η 2 = .020 representing a weak effect size), it can be concluded that there were significant differences between the BA, MA and PhD teachers' awareness of the second factor of critical pedagogy. Similar to Factor 1, as displayed in Table 4 Vol. 8, No. 6;2015 awareness of the second factor than the MA teachers (M = 4.83) (MD = .37, P < .05). And the BA teachers (M = 4.79) (MD = .41, P < .05). There was not any significant difference between BA and MA teachers with regard to this factor. Based on the results displayed in table 3 (F (2, 400) = 1.40, P > .05, Partial η 2 = .007 representing a weak effect size), it can be concluded that there were not any significant differences between the BA, MA and PhD teachers' awareness of the third factor of critical pedagogy. As displayed in Table 4, similar to the first two factors, the PhD teachers (M = 4.92) showed the highest awareness towards the third factor. This was followed by the BA (M = 4.72) and MA (M = 4.68) teachers who were only slightly different from each other.  Vol. 8, No. 6;2015 Factor 4: Decision Making through Negotiation Based on the results displayed in table 3 (F (2, 400) = 4.31, P < .05, Partial η 2 = .021 representing a weak effect size), it can be concluded that there were significant differences between the BA, MA and PhD teachers' awareness of the fourth factor of critical pedagogy. As displayed in Table 4, again the PhD teachers (M = 5.13) showed the highest awareness towards the fourth factor. This was followed by the MA (M = 4.84) and BA (M = 4.70) teachers.
The results of the post-hoc Scheffe's tests indicated that; the PhD teachers (M = 5.13) significantly held a higher awareness of the fourth factor than the BA teachers (M = 4.70) (MD = .42, P < .05).
However, there were not any significant differences between PhD and MA and BA and MA teachers. Figure 1 below schematically represents the means of the respondents' awareness of critical pedagogy according to their academic degrees.

Research Question 2
Is there any significant relationship between teaching experience and EFL teachers' awareness of critical pedagogy?
The Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to probe any significant relationship between the respondents' teaching experience and their awareness of critical pedagogy on the four factors. Based on the results displayed in Table 6 below it can be concluded that; teachers' experience had a significant but almost moderate relationship with Incorporation of Dialogue and Learners' Real Life into Second Language Instruction (r (401) = .26, P < .05, representing an almost moderate effect size), a significant and almost large relationship with Liberatory Autonomy (r (401) = .45, P < .05, representing an almost large effect size), and a significant but weak moderate relationship with Critical Approach to EFL Classroom Content (r (401) = .20, P < .05, representing a weak to moderate effect size). Based on these results it can be concluded that the second null-hypothesis was rejected, so it means there was a significant relationship between teaching experience and critical pedagogy. Although the results should be interpreted cautiously due to moderate effect size values of the Pearson correlations.

Discussion
The results of the analyses of the first research question showed that there were significant differences among the BA, MA and PhD subjects' awareness of critical pedagogy. The teachers who had PhDs were found to have the highest awareness of the importance of critical pedagogy in ELT. A reason behind this result could be that the participants might have taken part in graduate programs of teacher education which encourage and contribute to critical thinking on the part of student teachers like the one reported in Abednia (2012).
Based on statistical analyses conducted to address the second research question, it can be concluded that there was a significant relationship between the respondents' teaching experience and their awareness of critical pedagogy. Fuller (1970) and Conway and Clark (2003) believe that generally teachers go through three stages in their professional development, each having a major focus. At stage 1, teachers are mainly concerned with their 'self' and make attempts to present themselves as best as possible so that their students will like them. At the next stage, their emphasis shifts toward classroom management and strategies which can help them in this regard. It is at stage 3 where teachers become self-confident enough to concentrate on formulating their views of what teaching and learning involve. Therefore, novice teachers cannot be expected to follow critical views of education, and the more experienced in teaching they become, the more likely they are to take on critical and transformative responsibilities like those reflected in the items of the questionnaire used in the present study. This leads the present researchers to conclude that the significant positive correlation between teaching experience and teachers' awareness of and positive attitude toward practicing critical pedagogy in their teaching makes sense in light of the available literature on teaching and teacher education.

Conclusion
Based on the results of this study and through reflecting on other studies about the status of critical pedagogy in Iran, it can be argued that many Iranian EFL teachers are more or less aware of how to practice critical pedagogy in ELT but the dominance of the banking concept of education as a norm in Iran does not allow them to apply the principles of critical pedagogy in their classrooms as freely and effectively as they want to.
The findings of this study are not necessarily in line with common understanding of dominant approach to education in Iran and the findings of some other studies. To be more specific, some believe that the banking concept of education is still the norm in Iran and teachers have to follow pre-defined syllabi (Abednia, 2012;www.ccsenet.org/elt English Language Teaching Vol. 8, No. 6;2015 Abednia & Izadinia, 2013;Farhady & Hedayati, 2009).
Also, as shown in other studies, for example Abdelrahim (2006) and Azimi (2008), Iranian EFL teachers did not appear to be aware of principles of critical pedagogy and how they can be practiced in EFL instruction. Regarding the difference between the results of the present study and the picture of the educational system portrayed by Abednia, (2012), Abednia and Izadinia, (2013), Farhady and Hedayati (2009), the present researchers can argue that these studies mainly focused on what system of education teachers are faced with rather than what perspective they actually adopt toward education and their roles and responsibilities as educators. Therefore, the present study showed that despite the banking, lecture-oriented and uncritical view of education promoted in the context of EFL education in Iran, teachers seem to take a more active role in developing their own attitude to education and what their role as teachers involves. This can be the reason why the participants surveyed in the present study appeared to have an awareness of the roles EFL teachers can have from a critical perspective.
An explanation as to why the results of this study were different from the results of the studies conducted by Abdelrahim (2006) and Azimi (2008) is that the data were collected from different participants who tend to have different ways of thinking. Also, there has been an increase in the number of studies conducted on critical pedagogy in Iran which might have contributed to teachers' awareness of critical pedagogy. EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers' main role is to teach students not only to learn more independently but also to think and act in a more independent way. 2 A major role of EFL teachers is to help students develop their own understanding of whom they are and their place in the world. 3 EFL teachers should decide on their teaching strategies and techniques based on learners' specific features (e.g., age, gender, needs, and interests). 4 EFL teachers must share their authority and responsibilities with students in the classroom. 5 Ideal ELT instruction books are those which are designed locally and in the light of learners' real life. 6 EFL teacher should participate in class dialogues and discussions as a learner among learners. 7 Teachers are not the only source of knowledge in EFL classroom. 8 EFL teachers should encourage and help learners to create learning opportunities for themselves. 9 EFL teachers should use dialogue and open communication as one of the main activities in EFL classroom for sharing ideas. 10 The content of EFL classroom and books which are commonly taught in Iran is often unrelated to learners' real life concerns and problems. 11 Genuine and real-life dialogue should form the context of teaching and learning in EFL classroom. 12 EFL teachers should have a critical approach to cultural and sociopolitical aspects of the content of ELT course books. 13 A major role of EFL teachers is to improve learners' critical thinking skills. 14 Environmental, social, and political issues are suitable topics to focus on in EFL classroom. 15 One of the main goals of second language education is to help students to understand the dominant social norms and beliefs in society and educational system. 16 One of the EFL teachers' main roles is to make students aware of inequalities in society. 17 Learners should be involved in the process of selecting topics that are focused on in EFL classroom, for example in speaking, writing and reading activities. Thank you

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