Theoretical-Functional Conceptions of Pedagogical Practices Related to Critical Reading in Secondary Education: A Hermeneutical Theorization from the DBAs of Language

Abstract

This article aims to construct a hermeneutic theorization of the theoretical-functional conceptions of pedagogical practices related to critical reading in upper secondary education, based on documentary analysis of the Basic Learning Rights for Language in tenth and eleventh grades and the Curricular Guidelines for Spanish Language. Methodologically, a qualitative hermeneutic approach was adopted, articulated with grounded theory procedures proposed by Strauss and Corbin: open, axial, and selective coding, constant comparison, categorical integration, and theoretical saturation. The analysis identified five central categories: critical reading as sociopolitical positioning toward discourse; argumentation as the organizing rationality of criticality; multimodality as the semiotic expansion of reading; critical orality as intersubjective construction of meaning; and assessment as an ambivalent device between metacognition and institutional regulation. The findings suggest that critical reading in upper secondary education cannot be reduced to an instrumental competence or a textual comprehension skill; rather, it should be understood as a situated hermeneutic-discursive praxis aimed at forming subjects capable of interpreting, questioning, and producing meanings in relation to social, cultural, media, political, and ideological discourses. It is concluded that pedagogical practices related to critical reading demand an epistemological reconfiguration of the teacher’s role, didactic mediation, and assessment, since criticality acquires formative density only when articulated with argumentation, problematization, multimodal production, and sociopolitical reading of language.