The Critical Language Classroom: Euphoria, Despair and Relief

Dr. Isabel Moreno-LopezAssociate Professor of Spanish

Goucher College

Critical Pedagogy

• The educational system has often been defined as a system in which specific cultural values are reproduced through the transmission of habitus, which often functions to legitimize the interests of the dominant classes (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1998).

• Critical pedagogy encourages the questioning of this habitus to empower students and teachers to question conventional ways of perceiving the world in order to enhance their learning.

• One of the goals of critical pedagogy is to create engaged, active, critically thinking citizens, that is to say, political subjects who can participate as decision-makers in the organization of their socio-cultural realities (Freire, 1970, Giroux, 1992). Voice (Giroux, 1992, hooks, 1994).

Critical Ethnography

• Critical theory and practice guides this project because it can frame the language classroom as a progressive space for learning about foreign cultures.

• Data for this research project were collected through participant observation and the review of primary documents.

• Data analysis incorporates both the participants and the teacher/researcher’s interpretations of the phenomena under investigation, that is the emic and etic interpretations (Cresswell, 1998, p. 60).

Teacher/Researcher

• In this study, I was a complete-member-observer (full participant) because, as the teacher, I was a member of the classroom community. I observed one Intermediate-Advanced Spanish course that I taught (a total of forty-five hours), and maintained daily fieldnotes in which I described with as much detail as possible not only what went on in the classroom, but also my ideas, feelings, and hunches. Other primary data sources were the teacher/researcher’s daily journal, students journals, anonymous course evaluations, six hours of videotaped sessions and copies of all students’ written assignments which also assisted in the triangulation of the data.

Participants

• The course under study was composed of 17 female students, 12 male students and the teacher/researcher, but only 24 students completed the course at the end of the semester.

• Thirteen students were under the age of 20, 14 between the ages of 20 and 25, and 2 were 31 years old.

• The teacher was Hispanic, a native of Spain, and identified Spanish as her first language. Nineteen students reported to be White-American, five African-American, one Persian-American, one Colombian-American, one Italian-Hispanic, one Asian-Irish-American, and one Haitian.

• Eleven students reported that they were unemployed, two stated that they only worked during school holidays; twelve held part-time jobs, two of which were on-campus; and six students indicated that they were employed full-time. Finally, all the students shared English as their first language.

Course ComponentsCourse Components Location Language Used

Contract Method and grading Process In class English

Out-of-Class Requirement Out of class English/Spanish

Reaction Papers Out of class Spanish

Cross-cultural activities Graded assignment Spanish

Textbook Analysis Graded assignment Spanish

Mass Media Analysis Graded assignment Spanish

Mini-Ethnographic Projects Graded assignment Spanish

Diarios Graded assignments Spanish

Video-taped activities In class Spanish

Journals In class English

Journal Discussion In class English

Results

• Euphoric Phase: Excitement participants experience when they engage in the creation of a new project. Participants cooperate to overcome obstacles encountered; thus, facilitating the process of implementing a new approach in the classroom.

• Despair Phase: By mid-semester, all the participants were experiencing the challenges of the new procedures. Frustration and anger emerged and students started questioning and blaming the teacher.

• Relief Phase: By the end of the semester, participants started experiencing a sense of accomplishment and of pride in work well done.

Euphoric Phase

• No exams and re-writing;

• Working in groups, learning from each other, learning as a process and not as an end, and the negotiation process;

• Out-of-class requirement: easy victory for students.

Despair Phase

• blaming the teacher for their low grades.

• questioning her feedback.

• questioning her knowledge: “En general pienso que sea una portada muy buena” (“In general, I believe it is a good cover [for the textbook]”). WEIRDO

• abusing class procedures;

• questioning the class procedures:

Rafael: Email Message

• Hopefully this is the last paper you will get from me. I do have one question for you. What would hurt me more, having a B+ on one paper when going for an A, or having one late assignment? I just looked at the contract and realized that for the A we cannot have any late assignments. I just am curious because you had me rewrite the 'Analisis de libros' to get it from a B+ to an A, but that caused me to have a late assignment. I just feel like that caused more damage. Thanks for everything this semester.

Despair Phase

Relief Phase

Martha: Journal Entry

• I had an extremely difficult time in this class. I think it’s a good idea – but the ‘idea’ is better than the reality. The out-of-class work way exceeds the traditional 12 hours of conversation class. The writing is helpful but for every assignment – even 1-page Spanish journals – I’d spent at least 2 ½ - 3 hours working on it … Surprisingly though, I liked the debates. They made me want to be able to articulate my thoughts in Spanish. Also, the cultural focus made the class more interesting. The ethnographic [project] was very difficult but I felt that was an important and useful way to integrate language and culture. Overall it was a very challenging class that demanded a lot more than I expected.

Implications and Reflections

• The negotiation process needs a fair amount of time.

• It is not necessary to apply all of the components, teacher/researchers may apply different components in different semesters.

• It would be advisable to establish a limit to the number of re-writes, I don't allow more than two.

• The out-of-class requirement can be translated to community-base learning components and on-line components.

• The teacher/researcher should accept the emotional ups and downs as part of the procedure and not interpret them as failure of the process.