Probing the EFL Teachers’ Perception toward Critical literacy: A Grounded Theory Study

In any democratic society, preparing individuals as informed citizens is the main tenet of government policy in general and teacher education in particular. However, this can be achieved only when teachers themselves lay great emphasis on critical literacy (CL) perspective in their classes. Moreover, critical literacy due to lacking clear instructional methodologies has received only lip service by teachers. On this account, this study attempted to explore a grounded theory of how EFL teachers perceive critical literacy and whether they are equipped with specific methodology to enact critical literacy practices in their classes. After conducting the three-pass data coding, the two general categories of critical consciousness and teachers’ adaptivity and dynamicity emerged. The latter includes the subcategories of critical language awareness and cultural capital awareness and the former encompasses acceptance of diversity and adaptivity to the new demands. With respect to the critical literacy practices applied by language teachers, the study revealed the integration of writing skill and posing challenging questions as appropriate strategies to enact critical literacy.