Several challenges face teachers who wish to change their practices to move away from the top-down approach. These challenges are more associated with cultural factors than individual factors, including the school environment and the educational systems in place. To understand how these cultural elements influence the choice of teaching practices and the willingness of teachers to do things differently, the framework of cultural-historical activity theory is interesting. However, it is possible to improve it with regard to the political aspects of education using certain concepts of the critical pedagogy philosophy. This article discusses possible contributions of critical pedagogy to the framework of cultural-historical activity theory in addressing the challenges associated with teaching innovation. While many elements of teaching practice can be studied from the perspective of these two streams, a literature rewiew on their complementarities and similarities has identified two interrelated themes: the effect of political forces on the choice of teaching approaches and the importance of questioning in changing mindsets. At the end of the analysis, we were able to map out the stages of individual consciousness-raising using important concepts from the third generation of cultural-historical activity theory.