Critical pedagogy: A key factor for improvement of Iranian EFL learners’ self-regulation and writing ability

Abstract

As Keesing-Style (2003) puts out, although the concept of critical pedagogy (CP) has been proposed for three decades, it has not been employed in the educational settings. This study investigated the effect of employing critical pedagogy on the improvement of Iranian EFL learners’ self-regulation and writing skill. To achieve this goal, a group of 60 female EFL students (aged between 14 to 25 years old) participated in the free paragraph writing course based on their scores on a Writing Placement Test and a Self-Regulation Questionnaire. Participants were divided into two control (N=30) and experimental (N=30) groups. The learners in experimental group were taught paragraph writing via CP. In contrast, the learners in control group were taught paragraph writing through traditional pedagogy. In both control and experimental groups, two tests including a Writing Placement Test and a Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ) were administered before and after the treatment to check the participants’ progress or regress. After a five-month study, twenty sessions of treatment, it was revealed that applying CP can significantly affect (sig = .000) Iranian upperintermediate female EFL learners’ writing skill. Meanwhile, implementation of CP greatly reinforced (sig = .003) the learners’ self-regulation skill.