Towards a Scale for Developing EFL Materials based on the principles of Critical Pedagogy

Subject Areas : Journal of Studies in Learning and Teaching English

Elham Tabatabaei ¹ , Mohammad Bavali ² , Leila Akbarpour ³

1 - Department of Foreign Languages, Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran
2 - Department of English language teaching and translation, Faculty of humanities, IAU, Shiraz, Iran
3 - Department of English Language, Shiraz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran

Received: 2022-01-31 Accepted : 2023-10-17 Published : 2022-07-01

Keywords: Materials development, EFL Materials, CP-based Materials Development Scale, Critical Pedagogy (CP),

Abstract :

This study aimed at designing a scale for developing EFL materials based on the principles of Critical Pedagogy. In so doing, a qualitative thematic analysis method was used. The participants of this study consisted of 20 (10 males and 10 females) EFL experts with more than 15 years of teaching EFL at the university level with at least one published paper on critical pedagogy and materials development, who were selected through purposive sampling from different states and Azad universities in Iran. To collect the data, a semi-structured interview was implemented. The existing literature on critical pedagogy and different materials development models was reviewed so that through merging the interview and literature review data, the recurrent categories can be identified and converted into the items of the intended scale. To analyze the data, thematic analysis was used. The following main themes were revealed as the main themes for CP-based EFL materials development: Defining CP-based objectives, developing CP-based content, encouraging CP-based teaching methods, encouraging CP-based evaluation procedures, and defining CP-based roles for teachers and students. Based on the extracted themes, a scale was developed into six categories. The developed scale consisted of 50 items in a five-point Likert range from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree. The findings have some implications for EFL teachers, learners, curriculum planners, and researchers.