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20230719T150020230719T1800Europe/Amsterdam[SYMP33] Ethics and Politics of Language Teacher Education in an Uneven WorldHybrid Session (onsite/online)AILA 2023 - 20th Anniversary Congress Lyon Editioncellule.congres@ens-lyon.fr
Teaching to be critical ?! Examining the potentials and paradoxes of learning to be critical in teaching practice
Oral Presentation[SYMP33] Ethics and Politics of Language Teacher Education in an Uneven World03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
Bartosch, Roman; Derichsweiler, Sina & Heidt, Irene (2022): Against ‚Values'? Komplexe Konflikte, symbolic power und die Aushandlung von Widerstreit. In: König, Lotta; Schädlich, Birgit & Surkamp (ed.): unterricht_kultur_theorie. Kulturelles Lernen im Fremdsprachenunterricht gemeinsam anders denken. Stuttgart u.a.: Metzler, 73-89. Butler, Judith (2014). Epilogue. In: Kleiner, Bettina & Rose, Nadine (Hrsg.): (Re-)Produktion von Ungleichheiten im Schulalltag. Judith Butlers Konzept der Subjektivation in der erziehungswissenschaftlichen Forschung. Upladen u.a.: Budrich, 175-180. Louloudi, Eleni; König, Lotta & Schildhauer, Peter (2021). Developing Critical Cultural and Digital Literacy. From Primary School to Teacher Education and Back. PFLB – PraxisForschungLehrer*innenBildung. 3 (3), 23–38. Luke, A. (2019). Regrounding critical literacy: Representation, facts and reality. In: D. Alvermann, N. Unrau, M. Sailors, & R. Ruddell (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of literacy (pp. 349-361). Routledge. Yoon, B. (2015). Critical literacies: Global and multicultural perspectives. Springer.
Debating debating: What’s in it for a critical foreign language teacher education?
Oral Presentation[SYMP33] Ethics and Politics of Language Teacher Education in an Uneven World03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
Among the various current threats to social cohesion and democracy, the increasingly polarised and distorted culture of public discourse – characterised, e.g., by populism, fake news or conspiracy narratives – can be regarded as major issue for an ethically and politically engaged foreign language teacher education. Among the many methods established within CLT, 'debating' seems an obvious and very appropriate response to this issue, as its complex format offers opportunities not only for the practice of oral/rhetorical skills, but for an integrative advancement of communicative – and in particular: argumentative – competences. In addition, the method seems apt to pursue cross-curricular educational aims such as critical literacy education or education for democratic citizenship.
In this talk, we are going to reflect on the potential and possible pitfalls of debating as a teaching method in the foreign language classroom and raise questions regarding the integration of debating in an ethically and politically engaged foreign language teacher education. In line with critical pedagogy, we believe that one way to achieve this kind of teacher education is to allow students to go through processes of transformative Bildung (cf. Koller 2017), processes that are likely to be initiated by experiences of ambiguity and crisis.
Starting from initial experiences and preliminary results of the first cycle of a Berlin-based school development and teacher training project on debating (http://join-the-debate.info), we will discuss debating as an opportunity for transformative Bildung from our two individual viewpoints, shaped by our professional interests and research trajectories:
Katrin Schultze, whose research interests stretch from narrative identity to argumentation theory, speaks as co-coordinator of the debating project and as teacher educator in the Master of Education programme at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Anne Mihan speaks as a researcher and teacher educator dedicated to issues of race and gender in teacher education at Humboldt-Universität and in the EFL classroom, also bringing in her methodological expertise in critical community autoethnography.
Working with an example from Katrin's seminar, in which future English teachers analyse data from the debating school project, we will engage in a dialogue about assets and limitations of the debating method as an environment that requires students to rephrase, i.e. transform their own way of relating to the world and the self. We will suggest options for practising debating as a method characterised by a high degree of critical reflexivity, as part of a project of teaching and learning for social justice.
Reference: Koller, Hans-Christoph (2017): Bildung as a Transformative Process. In: Laros, Anna, Fuhr, Thomas & Edward W. Taylor (eds.). Transformative Learning Meets Bildung: An International Exchange. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. 33-42.
Bi-directional Decoloniality in Applied Linguistics: A Lao-German cooperation project
Oral Presentation[SYMP33] Ethics and Politics of Language Teacher Education in an Uneven World03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
Theory: In the wake of #BlackLivesMatter and toppled statues of emblematic colonists, teacher education and research in Applied Linguistics in Germany has been paying more attention to the political goals of social justice by addressing inclusion and diversity in revised syllabi and EFL teaching materials, as the latest new conference strands, publications, online lectures and symposia show. However, the underlying Western binary episteme and its all-permeating neo-colonial consequences ("epistemologies of ignorance", Sriprakash et al. 2020) have long been questioned by scholars in the Global South, and its tap-root-system of exclusivity and privilege based on Western philosophy has been replaced by postcolonial theories and postmethod alternatives. In a transmodern world, the questioning and decolonisation of Western "TE [me] SOL [other]" teachers' self-perceptions, global roles and responsibilities for future-building may now trigger the Global North's journey to decoloniality. Opportunities for bi-directional decoloniality lie in cooperations between partners from the Global North and Global South, with one side "learning to learn from below" (Spivak 2004) and the other "louding [their] voices" and defining local methods, materials and goals. Collaborative teaching and research engagement projects foster unlearning, de-linking, listening, and the readiness to reach out.
"We shall not cease from exploration/ And at the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/ And know the place for the first time." (from T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, 1943) Practice The teaching and learning project between a German University of Education and seven institutions of education in Lao P.D.R. was jumpstarted in 2015 in a high-risk experiment between two maximally distant countries. To date, 77 German-Lao teacher-tandems have worked and taught together for 2-6 months in this transnational PLC (Professional Learning Community), resulting in augmented teacher identities with Global Commitment. Living and tandem-working in a Communist-Buddhist country with LDC- and HIPC-status, which had only opened its borders to the world in the 1990s, was the most potent foil possible for perceptions and experiences to throw back some starkly magnified self-images and to "unlearn" epistemes and worldviews. Research In this liminal space, many participants engaged in guided self-reflexive research in the post-phase to clarify the perceived discrepancies. The academic output includes B.A. and M.A. theses, doctoral dissertations (in-progress), conference papers and conferences, a project blog (363 articles, 85 pages, 2 million hits, 400,000 users), and two new seminars ("Global English(es), Global TEFL and Global Citizenship Education" in the B.A. and "Decolonise Your Mind: Postcolonial Theories and Literatures" in the M.A. degree). The second Erasmus+ Mobility project is in operation, and affiliated partners in the Asia-Pacific (Hongkong, Melbourne, Wuhan) are mapping out new ways of cooperation. Following the first exploratory years in the field (Spiral Participatory Action Research), the extensive collection of data is reviewed in a mixed-method and decolonial research design. Postmethod pedagogy, retrospective interviews, collaborative autoethnography and critical content analysis serve as instruments for alternative ways of knowledge(s)-production. They scaffold processes of inquiry and epistemological de-linking and point to blind spots and lexical gaps in the academic discourse of the Global North, for starters. "The only way to decolonise is to do it. […] It needs people who are able to embark on such a journey and return with tales to tell of what happens when decolonising is attempted in foreign languages learning." (Alison Phipps, "A Short Manifesto for Decolonising Language Education", 2019, p. 5)
Bibliography Alvarado, A. & Lozada, G. (2016): Decolonizing Language Teachers' Teaching Practices through a Postmethod Pedagogy. Enletawa Journal 9 (1), 69-85. Andreotti, Vanessa (2016): The educational challenges of imagining the world differently. Canadian Journal of Development Studies/ Revue Canadienne d'études Du Développement, 37: 1, 101-112. Hsu, Funie (2017): Resisting the coloniality of English. A research review of strategies. CATESOL Journal 29: 1, 111–132. Kirshner, Jean & Kamberelis, George (eds.) (2021): Decolonizing Transcultural Teacher Education through Participatory Action Research. New York: Routledge. Kumaravadivelu, Balasubramanian (2003): A Postmethod Perspective on English Language Teaching. World Englishes 22: 4, 539-550. Mignolo, Walter D. (2018): What Does It Mean to Decolonize? In: Mignolo, Walter D. & Walsh, Catherine E. (eds.): On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Durham: Duke University Press, 105-134.
‘Local’ and ‘global’ diversity in language teacher education: Tracing decolonial efforts in multilingual Mexico
Oral Presentation[SYMP33] Ethics and Politics of Language Teacher Education in an Uneven World03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
Language teachers make educational choices and develop identities surrounded by complex ideological and socioeconomic influences. These influences vary around the world; in southern Mexico, current influences include ideological and economic trends associated with globalization and neoliberalism, such as the privatization of education services and reconceptualization of language as an individual skill for mobile employment (Flores, 2013). There is also an increased valorization of Indigenous languages, sometimes in connection with tourism and individual mobility, sometimes in connection with community identification and decoloniality (De Korne, 2017). Taking a social justice perspective on teacher education (Cochran-Smith, 2010) in this context is thus complex, as multiple pressures and opportunities shape the aims and priorities of program participants. Teachers must make moral choices (Kubanyiova & Crookes, 2016) against a background shaped by colonialism, yet where decolonial efforts are gaining ground (López-Gopar, Morales, & Jiménez, 2014) In this paper I trace the trajectory of a language teacher education program in a region of Mexico characterized by multiple Indigenous languages and an increasing presence and pressure from Spanish and English. Based on participant observation and interviews conducted between 2013 and 2023 as part of a larger ethnographic study, I highlight both socioeconomic influences and personal choices which play a role in whether and how the program has included 'local' as well as 'global' languages. Program coordinators have aimed to provide new language teachers with the capacity to work effectively in their local context, while also aiming to change some of the colonialist power dynamics in that context. The public university environment has generally promoted multilingualism and local Indigenous language knowledge more than the surrounding social context, while the employment market which new language teachers enter is marked by a network of public-private education organizations, the dominance of English, and opportunities linked to mobility. I discuss the decolonial efforts of the program coordinators and young language teachers, arguing that the ideological and socioeconomic pressures they experience influence, but do not define their trajectories. Cochran-Smith, M. (2010). Toward a Theory of Teacher Education for Social Justice. In: Hargreaves, A., Lieberman, A., Fullan, M., Hopkins, D. (eds) Second International Handbook of Educational Change. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 23. Springer. De Korne, H. (2017). "A treasure" and "a legacy": Individual and communal (re)valuing of Isthmus Zapotec in Multilingual Mexico. In M.-C. Flubacher & A. Del Percio (Eds.), Language, Education and Neoliberalism: Critical Studies in Sociolinguistics (pp. 37–61). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Flores, N. (2013). The unexamined relationship between neoliberalism and plurilingualism: A cautionary tale. TESOL Quarterly, 47(3), 500–520. Kubanyiova, M., & Crookes, G. (2016). Re-envisioning the roles, tasks, and contributions of language teachers in the multilingual era of language education research and practice. The Modern Language Journal, 100(s1), 117-132 López-Gopar, M. E., Morales, N. J., & Jiménez, A. D. (2014). Critical Classroom Practices: Using "English" to Foster Minoritized Languages and Cultures in Oaxaca, Mexico. In D. Gorter, V. Zenotz, & J. Cenoz (Eds.), Minority Languages and Multilingual Education (pp. 177–199). Springer.
Presenters Haley De Korne Associate Professor, University Of Oslo
Unsettling the traditional narratives of language teacher education one teacher-learner at a time
Oral Presentation[SYMP33] Ethics and Politics of Language Teacher Education in an Uneven World03:00 PM - 06:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 16:00:00 UTC
The past few decades have been marked by an exponential growth in the interdisciplinary field of applied linguistics, which has noticeably advanced our collective understandings of how languages are learned and taught, as well as of how language policies have direct and indirect implications for language education and language teacher education (LTE) in particular. However, most of this burgeoning literature, theoretical orientations, and practices emanate from the global north. This situation has prompted scholars to call for a critical applied linguistics orientation (CAL, henceforth, Pennycook, 2022) to engage in more ethical and responsive alternative models of LTE. A CAL turn demands that as teacher educators we unsettle the common one-size-fits-all approach to teacher education based on highly Eurocentric and formulaic foundations, often having a de facto homogenizing effect on LTE programs across the globe. Among these, we must contest the persisting classist, monolingual, neocolonial, neoliberal, neo-national, gendered, and raciolinguistic narratives that are still highly pervasive in LTE (Kumaravadivelu, 2012; Pennycook, 2022, Wei & Garcia, 2022). In this presentation, three Canadian-based teacher educators discuss and showcase their various attempts to unpack and unsettle these multiple narratives in their respective LTE programs building on Kumaravadivelu's (2012) three operating principles of particularity, practicality, and possibility. In the first contribution, Sreemali, shares her experiences using artistic generativity to help teacher candidates unpack their multiple identities and understand how these inform an evolving sense of their teaching selves at the University of Manitoba. These artistic renditions of themselves provide opportunities for self-reflection and dialogue with their peers resulting in holistic pedagogical interpretations of what is locally and personally relevant, which is at the core of Kumaravadivelu's principle of particularity in LTE. Next, Marlon introduces an LTE practicum course he developed. In this course, student-teachers from York University in Toronto observed and collaborated with experienced professors and teacher candidates in Colombia via Zoom. This opportunity afforded teacher candidates a counter-hegemonic alternative to the native speaker narrative as non-native Colombian teachers hosted and mentored Canadian students. Teacher candidates followed the principle of practicality, and visual ethnography to observe and intervene in international language classrooms. Last, Antoinette, introduces 'Me mapping' as a pedagogical tool that allows diverse learners and student teachers to showcase their plurilingual repertoires and important milestones in their lives, while sharing their dreams and hopes for the future. Me maps allowed student teachers to imagine and unleash their unbound futures, which lines up with the operating principle of possibility. The presenters will engage in a multiethnographic dialogue to discuss parallels between their three contexts and experiences, allowing them to make a strong case to continue to shake the foundations of LTE. References Kumaravadivelu, B. (2012). Language teacher education for a global society: A modular model for knowing, analyzing, recognizing, doing, and seeing. Routledge. Pennycook, A. (2022). Critical applied linguistics in the 2020s. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 1-21. Wei, L., & García, O. (2022). Not a First Language but one Repertoire: Translanguaging as a Decolonizing Project. RELC Journal.
Presenters Marlon Valencia Assistant Professor, Marlon Valencia
Haley De Korne
Marlon Valencia
Sreemali Herath
