Critical Pedagogy in EFL Classrooms: an Interactional Study of Student Voice and Agency in Aceh

Abstrak

This study investigates how critical pedagogy is enacted through classroom interaction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms and how such enactment enables student voice and agency in a Global South context. While critical pedagogy has been extensively theorized in applied linguistics, empirical evidence demonstrating how it operates in everyday EFL classroom practices remains limited. Addressing this gap, the present study examines naturally occurring classroom interaction in Indonesian secondary EFL classrooms in Aceh, a sociocultural context characterized by strong local, religious, and educational norms. Employing a qualitative empirical design, the study draws on multiple data sources, including classroom observations, audio-recorded and transcribed teacher–student interactions, student reflective journals, and semi-structured interviews with both teachers and learners. Interactional discourse analysis was used to examine how pedagogical moves—such as open-ended questioning, delayed teacher evaluation, and the uptake of student contributions—functioned to redistribute epistemic authority and expand opportunities for learner participation. These findings were triangulated with thematic analysis of interview and reflective data to capture participants’ perceptions of voice, agency, and classroom power relations. The findings indicate that student voice emerged not merely as increased participation but as epistemic agency, wherein learners were positioned as legitimate contributors to classroom knowledge. Critical pedagogy was realized through interactional practices that validated students’ local experiences and enabled them to articulate culturally grounded perspectives through English. Importantly, such pedagogical practices did not require radical curricular change but were embedded in teachers’ moment-to-moment interactional decisions. This study contributes empirical, interactionally grounded evidence to applied linguistics scholarship and advances a practice-oriented understanding of critical pedagogy in EFL. It offers pedagogical insights for fostering student voice in contexts where sociocultural expectations and institutional constraints may limit overt critical engagement, aligning closely with System’s focus on classroom-based pedagogical research.