Critical pedagogy’s transformative potential has been extensively theorized but unevenly documented empirically in postcolonial, examination-driven Global South systems. This qualitative multiple-case study examines how six English language teachers in Chattogram, Bangladesh conceptualizes and enact critical pedagogy under structural constraint, guided by four research questions addressing conceptualizations of critical pedagogy, activist teacher identity construction, pedagogical strategies and barriers, and the mediating role of institutional type. Teachers from secondary schools, colleges, and universities were recruited through purposive sampling and interviewed using semi-structured protocols, analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) and theorized through Freirean critical pedagogy, Vygotskian social constructivism, and de Certeau’s (1984) strategies/tactics distinction. Five themes emerged: conceptualizations of critical pedagogy as questioning and social empowerment; activist identities along a soft-to-explicit continuum; dialogic and reflective strategies operating as de Certeau’s “tactics” within exam-driven constraints; multilayered institutional, collegial, parental, and socio-political barriers; and institutional type as a variable mediating pedagogical autonomy and teacher-perceived student engagement. These teachers enact transformative practice primarily through “soft activism”–dialogic instruction, critical text selection, and strategic occupation of curricular space. The study theorizes soft activism through de Certeau’s (1984) framework as a structurally coherent mode of transformative practice, provides empirical evidence from an underrepresented Global South context, and identifies institutional type as a key mediating variable with implications for teacher education and policy reform, while findings–drawn from a small, geographically bounded sample and teacher self-report–are offered as analytically transferable rather than representative of Bangladesh as a whole.