‘Diving deeper’: affordances and constraints for infusing critical inquiry into language education

As world language education navigates a critical turn, understanding how teachers design and enact critical inquiry activities is essential. Previous research shows that engaging language students in such activities is constrained by the time required to develop them, educational ideologies, and teacher discomfort. To deepen this understanding, we examine what facilitates and constrains the design and implementation of critical inquiry in the world language classroom. This longitudinal qualitative study examined the experiences of 4 postsecondary language instructors as they developed curricular units grounded in multiliteracies and social justice pedagogies. Data collected throughout unit development from multiple sources were analyzed through the lens of Sociocultural Theory to identify affordances and constraints for designing and implementing critical inquiry activities. Findings show that affordances and constraints change throughout the design and implementation process and that dialogic mediation can mitigate constraints; instructors struggled to transition from developing students’ understanding of context and content to critical inquiry, but consultation with pedagogical experts and peers helped instructors overcome this hurdle. The findings underscore the importance of supporting teachers with critical inquiry activities and point to specific areas of necessary professional development.