A Critical Review of Critical Literacy Research in the Context of English Teaching as a Foreign Language

This paper aims to evaluate Critical Literacy (CL) research both internationally and in Korea. CL research in international and Korean contexts has been published within broader fields of education, including language education. CL has been explored in English Language Teaching (ELT) settings and should be critically reviewed in isolation from other fields. The keyword of CL has been searched in EBSCO host and domestic search engines of DBpia and KISS and CL research in ELT from 2000 to 2021 has been selected for analysis. To summarize the findings, in ELT, most research is done qualitatively and focuses on specific teaching practices and their impacts on students’ learning. Due to the fact that CL research and pedagogies have identified CL’s strong complementary nature with intercultural citizenship education and literacy use as a way to take social action, more efforts need to be made to overcome the limited view of literacy teaching and learning in ELT contexts as proficiency development only. ELT researchers need to re-conceptualize learners’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds as a resource for CL, and to discuss the nature of CL to be captured in a more interdisciplinary research framework. Suggestions for future research and practice are also discussed.