Knowledge, Competence, and Communication: Chomsky, Freire, Searle, and Communicative Language Teaching

In Knowledge, Competence, and Communication, author William H. Walcott debates the meaning of creating equitable and critical instructional practices by exploring diverse representations of knowledge. He covers both historically important topics and current issues: such as colonialism, multiculturalism, gender and language learning, and popular culture. He then presents a systematic and painstaking assessment of Noam Chomsky’s and Paulo Freire’s theories of knowledge and their educational relevance.

In the end, Walcott makes his case for the Freireian approach—conscientizacao; it is the Freireian, with its sociological connection (necessitated by the global context of inequality), which, he believes, needs take precedence as a pedagogical practice.