Critical Pedagogy for Global Citizenship Education in EFL Classroom

Sihem Salem
PhD student in the Department of Education, York University, UK

Education plays a vital role in creating active global citizens. Higher education institutions are important sphere where students can be encouraged to take an active role in their global community and transform the actual reality. This can merely be attained through the implementation of participatory methods in English as a Foreign Language classrooms namely critical pedagogy. However, some English as a Foreign Language Classrooms are dominated by the use of the banking model of education which may result in creating passive conformist citizens who are less likely to engage in overcoming the existing global issues and attaining a more just and sustainable world. Accordingly, this research is being conducted primarily to explore how students in English as a Foreign Language Higher Education Institutions in the Algerian context are prepared for active global citizenship and to examine whether critical pedagogy is used by teachers to raise their students’ critical consciousness and support them to challenge the status quo. This research is also an attempt to investigate teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards the importance of employing critical pedagogy for global citizenship in English as a Foreign Language Classrooms. Besides, this research is undertaken to identify the challenges encountered by teachers when trying to incorporate this educational approach in the teaching and learning process. To achieve these aims, a mixed-methods approach will be adopted through classroom observation, administering a questionnaire to students and conducting a semi-structured interview with teachers. The results of this study will mainly be addressed to the ministry of Higher education in Algeria to integrate global citizenship education in the curriculum.

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