Transforming World Language Teaching And Teacher Education For Equity And Justice

This edited book expands the current scholarship on teaching world languages for social justice and equity in K-12 and postsecondary contexts in the US. Over the past decade, demand has been growing for a more critical approach to teaching languages and cultures: in response, this volume brings together a group of scholars whose work bridges the fields of world language education and critical approaches to education. Within the current US context, the chapters address the following key questions: (1) How are pre-service or in-service world language teachers/professors embedding issues, understandings, or content related to social justice, human rights, access, critical pedagogy and equity into their teaching and curriculum? (2) How are teacher educators preparing language teachers to teach for social justice, human rights, access and equity?

Social justice language teacher education is a response to the acknowledgement that there are social/societal inequities that shape access to learning and educational achievement. In social justice language teacher education, social justice is the driving force and primary organizational device for the teacher education agenda. What does “social justice” mean in diverse global locations? What role does English play in promoting or denying equity? How can teachers come to see themselves as advocates for equal educational access and opportunity? This volume begins by articulating a view of social justice teacher education, followed by language teacher educators from 7 countries offering theorized accounts of their situated practices. Authors discuss powerful components of practice, and the challenges and tensions of doing this work within situated societal and institutional power structures.

People are on the move all across the globe and the student population is becoming increasingly more diverse. This has brought about new opportunities and challenges for educators, and teachers. In this series teacher educators a) deconstruct and problematize what it means to educate new teachers for increasingly diverse schools and classroom contexts, and b) highlight experiences of teacher educators as they attempt to bridge the theory to practice divide often encountered in teacher education. In these challenging times when public education is under attack, culturally responsive, antiracist, critical multicultural, social justice and all forms of teaching that are inclusive and equitable must be supported and encouraged. As schools continue to be spaces where ideas and values that promote equity and justice in society are contested, teachers must be proactive in engaging in pedagogies that respond to the needs of a diverse student population. Transformative Pedagogies bring together the work of teachers, scholars, and activists from different countries and contexts who are seeking to transform teacher education. This book will be useful to all educators seeking alternative and innovative approaches to education and meeting the needs of students. Teacher educators examine what it means to be transformative and drawing on experiences from different contexts.

This is the second book in the series Transformative Pedagogies for Teacher Education. Like the first book in the series it is geared towards practitioners in the field of teacher education. This second book focuses on action, agency and dialogue. It features chapters by a collection of teacher educators, researchers, teacher advocates and practitioners drawing on their research and experiences with teacher candidates to explore critical issues in teacher education. The book will be useful to teacher educators working with teacher candidates in different contexts, particularly diverse contexts. Given demographic shifts and the need for educators to respond to growing diversity in schools, educators will find valuable strategies in Transformative Pedagogies in Teacher Education: Critical Action, Agency and Dialogue in Teaching and Learning Contexts they can implement in their own practice. In addition to valuable strategies, authors explore different approaches and perspectives in teacher education in the preparation of teacher candidates for a changing world. Critical notions of education are posited from different perspectives and locations. This book will be useful for schools, school boards and districts engaging in ongoing professional development of teachers. It will also be of value to school leaders and aspiring leaders in principal preparation programs as working with new teachers and teacher educators is an integral part of their role.

A practical and innovative guide to emphasizing literacies development when teaching world languages Literacies in Language Education introduces multiliteracies pedagogy, which focuses on critical engagement with texts, intercultural understanding, and language proficiency development. Kate Paesani and Mandy Menke, seasoned workshop leaders and multiliteracies scholars, define what the approach is, its benefits, and how to create curricula grounded in it. In addition, they explain how to use the approach at all levels of language education and offer ideas for teacher professional development—each key components of pedagogical change. Melding text- and language-oriented learning goals, the authors embrace an expanded understanding of literacy to capture the dynamism of language and its contexts of use; the importance of preparing students to interact with the range of texts they will encounter in their academic, workplace, and personal lives; and the multicultural and multilingual landscape of secondary and postsecondary language classrooms. Literacies in Language Education presents teachers with a tested approach for increasing learners’ proficiency and cultural awareness, along with practical implementation methods. This book provides teachers and program administrators with immediate steps to take toward designing and implementing a literacies approach in any language class and curriculum. Published in partnership with CARLA.

In the context of Black Lives Matter, decolonizing initiatives, #MeToo, climate emergency protests and other movements for social and environmental justice, this volume posits a simple question: how can modern languages be taught so that they challenge rather than reinforce social inequalities? Informed by interdisciplinary theories, Critical Pedagogies for Modern Language Education focuses on practical discussions of case studies in areas directly relevant to the classroom contexts of modern languages educators. The volume transforms modern language educators and the modern language profession by putting the politics of language teaching at the centre of its analysis. With case studies covering 11 languages (Modern Standard Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Levantine, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Tamazight) across 13 countries and regions (Austria, Brazil, China, France, Italy, the Levant, Morocco, the Netherlands, Palestine, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the USA), the contributors cover a wide range of theories, including critical discourse analysis, activist pedagogies, culturally sustaining pedagogy, linguistic justice and translanguaging. With student-teacher collaboration at its heart, critical modern languages pedagogy unmasks the ideologies and hegemonies that lie behind mainstream language use and affirms the value of minority linguistic and cultural practices. The volume thus provides transformative approaches to modern languages teaching and learning that respond to the key social concerns of the 21st century.

How We Take Action brings together practical examples of social justice in language education from a wide range of contexts. Many language teachers have a desire to teach in justice-oriented ways, but perhaps also feel frustration at how hard it is to teach in ways that we did not experience ourselves as learners and have not observed as colleagues. As a profession, we need more ideas, more examples, and wider networks of allies in this work. This book includes the work of 59 different authors including teachers and researchers at every level from Pre-K to postsecondary, representing different backgrounds, languages, and approaches to classroom practice. Organized into three sections, some of the chapters in this collection report on classroom research while others focus on key practices and experiences. Section I is entitled Inclusive and Empowering Classrooms. In this section authors take a critical approach to classroom practices by breaking with the status quo or creating spaces where students experience safety, access, and empowerment in language learning experiences. Section II, Integration of Critical Topics, addresses a variety of ways teachers can incorporate justice-oriented pedagogies in day-to-day instructional experiences. Social justice does not happen haphazardly; it requires careful, critical examination of instructional practices and intentional planning as instructors hope to enact change. Section III, Activism and Community Engagement, explores how teachers can empower students to become agents for positive change through the study of activism and constructive community engagement programs at local and global levels. ENDORSEMENTS: "This volume brings an important diversity of voices, contexts, and collaborations to the ongoing conversations about social justice in language education. University experts in social justice in language education and nationally celebrated K-12 language teachers are included along with experienced practitioners whose voices are often not prioritized in scholarship. The volume serves as an invitation to the reader to engage, reflect, consider, and examine different approaches to teaching for social justice. Chapters bring in feminist pedagogies, critical pedagogies, LGBTQ affirming pedagogies, anti-bias and anti-racist approaches, decolonial lenses, critical media literacies, and more Everyone who picks up this volume will find at least one piece that immediately resonates with them, and then will be inevitably drawn in to the other engaging and thoughtful chapters." — Pamela M. Wesely, The University of Iowa "This book is a must-read for those interested in social justice in language education. The range of authors, topics, languages, institutional contexts, and pedagogies is staggeringly impressive and will provide any reader with ideas and inspiration for taking action in and out of the language classroom." — Kate Paesani, University of Minnesota "This excellent volume, replete with thoroughly researched strategies for promoting social justice in PK-16 world language instruction, could not have come at a more critical time in the United States when anti-democratic forces are mobilizing against equity and justice-oriented education. We in the field of language education are very fortunate to have this collection of work from more than 50 language learning scholars and practitioners, who remind us that making our classrooms more equitable, inclusive, and grounded in justice is part of doing our jobs more effectively. What’s more, the volume clearly demonstrates its prioritization for inclusivity by providing robust support for those who teach young learners at the pre-kindergarten through grade 3 levels—a population woefully underrepresented in language teaching literature—and for topics that have been unjustly ignored in language education, such as racism, sexism, and the needs of LGBTQIA learners. This is a clear demonstration of the volume’s uniqueness in its vast breadth of scope and attention, which is the book’s most valuable feature and why it will serve our field wonderfully for many years to come." — Uju Anya, Carnegie Mellon University

This book explores the framework of Intercultural Citizenship within a variety of US teaching and learning contexts. The chapters, which comprise both conceptual pieces and empirical research studies, represent a wide variety of languages at levels ranging from beginner to advanced, from early elementary through higher education contexts. They urge us to look carefully at how Intercultural Citizenship enhances and expands the work of world language educators by bringing in additional focus on social justice and critical cultural awareness. The book addresses curricular issues, professional development models, language immersion, study abroad, virtual exchanges and teacher education in relation to Intercultural Citizenship. Through its focus on how Intercultural Citizenship is being enacted in a wide variety of learning contexts in the United States, and its theoretical and conceptual investigations of social justice and Intercultural Citizenship, the book will be an invaluable resource for teachers, teacher educators and researchers working on Intercultural Citizenship.