ABSTRACT
Based on the Freirean Critical Pedagogy about guiding learners not only to read the word but also the world, there have been different attempts to turn that ideology into reality. In the Colombian context, but more specifically in Boyacá department, there has been a great interest from different teacher-researchers who have moved their classes into more critical exercises with the intention of developing the literacy skills their students need to go beyond the walls that have enclosed education. The current contexts, transformations, and movements regarding a more equitable education require to enhance different critical skills to achieve readers and writers more aware of the power structures and patterns of inequality or injustice that can lie behind them, and therefore, citizens more able to state questions around the same issues to look for possible answers or solutions where they also assume their responsibility as potential transformers of the unequal societies where they live in. This chapter tries to account for some of the experiences these teacher-researchers have created and how they were able to identify those possibilities to reduce authoritarianism, invite more inquiry and problem-posing learning opportunities, and develop critical literacy even in scenarios where it is believed not to be possible. The intention is to move forward and to establish the possible standard connections their studies have, and from there, to identify and propose a road that enlightens Freire’s idea of considering critical literacy as an emancipatory and political project that is created in the second language classroom and transcends entire communities.
