Title: Introduction to Critical Pedagogy
Speaker: Yasemin Tezgiden-Cakcak, Ph.D. (Middle East Technical University)
Date: Oct 23, 2026
Time: 16:30-17:30
Location: G-160
Abstract:
Critical pedagogy is both an educational philosophy and a social movement that questions how schooling systems operate and seeks to transform schools and society into free, equitable, and democratic spaces. This talk introduces its main concepts, including banking and problem-posing education, dialogue, conscientization, praxis, and the hidden curriculum, and shows how they relate to English language teaching, from materials and language ideologies to teacher identity. It then presents possible research topics and methodologies, such as participatory action research, and photovoice, for graduate students interested in conducting critical language (teacher) education studies.
Bio:
Yasemin Tezgiden-Cakcak, Ph.D., works at Middle East Technical University’s Department of Foreign Language Education. After working as an English language teacher in diverse settings for eight years, she became a language teacher educator at her current institution in 2010. She has taught language skills, pedagogy, practicum, and critical pedagogy courses. Her research interests focus on critical pedagogy, teacher roles and identity, and critical language teacher education. Her publications problematize teacher roles, and transformative educational action. Critiquing technicist language teacher education in Türkiye, she theorized her critical teacher education practices in her book Moving Beyond Technicism in English Language Teacher Education (Lexington, 2019). She is one of the co-editors of The Journal of Critical Education (https://elestirelpedagoji.org/) and the founder of www.criticaleltmaterials.org
Curriculum & Instruction
Educational Sciences
Graduate School of Education