Critical Approaches to Teaching Spanish as a Local/Foreign Language

In recent years, scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences have increasingly taken what is often referred to as a ‘critical’ approach to scholarship and education. There are a multitude of understandings of the term critical, but in general, critical theorists and educators coincide in their call for analyzing any given phenomenon (including language and education) within the sociohistorical context in which it is situated, questioning ‘taken for granted’ understandings, and recognizing and engaging the interrelatedness of social and political structures, theory, and discourse, as well as education. This trend, together with a greater recognition of the centrality of language in social and political life has led to growing interest in critical approaches to language teaching.