Abstract
Critical pedagogy is a teaching approach concerned with challenging learners’ minds and giving them the platform to question, engage and be active recipients of knowledge. This study is concerned with exploring critical pedagogy and the teaching of literature in Grade 11 English Home Language in Pretoria. This study is located in the interpretivist paradigm hence it is concerned with understanding teachers' perceptions of critical pedagogy and literature, learners’ experiences of being taught literature, teachers’ pedagogical practices, challenges of teaching literature and also the impact of implementing critical pedagogy in the teaching of literature in Grade 11 English Home Language.
This study is qualitative in nature and comprises two data collection methods: interviews and questionnaires administered to six teachers and twenty four learners, respectively. Coding was used as a method of data analysis and the data that was gathered was presented in the form of thematic analysis. This study used the purposive sampling technique. The schools, teachers and learners were purposively selected from three sites across the Tshwane South District: Township, Central Business District (CBD) and the Suburb.
The findings of this study revealed that teachers had a general understanding of the concept of critical pedagogy. The findings also revealed that the teachers’ pedagogical practices reflected the fundamentals of critical pedagogy. This was fortified by the learners’ experiences of how they were taught literature in the classroom. Teachers also mentioned that these teaching strategies presented many benefits for learners which include learners being able to engage and understand the literary texts that they were analysing in class. However, the impact of these teaching approaches was reaped through insurmountable challenges that both teachers and learners experienced in the teaching and learning of literature. These challenges include; learners' lack of reading, insufficient resources, time constraints and curriculum limitations.
This study recommended that schools, with the help of the government, should provide adequate resources such as textbooks and libraries to ensure that learners develop the ethos of reading to improve their engagement with literature. Furthermore, this study recommended that because critical pedagogy is essential, the Department of Education should implement workshops to educate teachers about such pedagogical practices and make provision for a curriculum that will allow teachers to enact pedagogical practices that will align with the elements of critical pedagogy.
Keywords: Critical; Pedagogy; Literature; English Home Language; Pretoria.