Destabilizing critical “assumptions” in (English) language teaching: An introduction. (original) (raw)

Criticality and English Language Education: An Autoethnographic Journey

HOW, 2021

This article, relying on a series of epiphanies throughout my journey as a researcher and scholar-activist, shares my relationship with criticality and how it has guided my research and teaching agendas. I share how critical theories have informed my main research areas and the questions and issues I have raised in my own work. The article also discusses my main scholarly influences and how my interactions with varied literature, mentors, and colleagues have shaped my own criticality. I also take a moment to reflect on how this journey has helped the field of language education in Colombia to continue with the evolution toward stronger critical and social justice-oriented frameworks and how I see my changing positionality as mentor and ally of colleagues and the future cadres of scholars moving forward.

Critical research in English language teaching

The Springer Second Handbook of English Language Teaching, 2019

Over the past thirty years, the critical 'turn' in ELT has had notable accomplishments with much work yet to be done. The ambition has been to disrupt conventional practices and habits of thought, utilizing this newfound perspective for its transformative potential both within and beyond the classroom. In this spirit, the authors intend to engage readers through a chapter structured in the form of extended dialogues with the additional aim of prompting further discussions on critical research and practices in ELT. This chapter addresses the research conducted from a variety of critical perspectives in ELT and its impacts on actual classroom practices. The authors first explore what it means to be 'critical' for current times marked by growing economic disparities, environmental degradation, hyper-nationalism and its concomitant hostilities towards racial, ethnic, and religious Others. They then situate criticality in the field of ELT with a review of previous research done on language, identity, discourse and power; they then discuss the emergence of new areas of research, in particular, neoliberal capitalism. The final section concludes by exploring teaching challenges in seeking new critical pedagogies and 21st century literacies needed for both teachers and English language learners facing uncertain times in a post-democratic age.

Critical Language Awareness in the high school English classroom

Classroom practices that simultaneously address cultural identity and academic language have the potential to increase students’ attachment to school while expanding their language repertoires. The set of studies collected here examine the study of language in school as a natural intersection between student identity and academic content. The three studies that make up this dissertation attempt to identify teaching practices that address cultural identity and academic content through teaching about language. All three studies draw on recent research in sociolinguistics to validate the wide range of language varieties that students bring to school. The studies also draw on linguistic anthropology to identify the impact of beliefs about language within the micro- level context of the classroom and the macro-level societal context. In particular, the studies make use of the concept of language ideologies, beliefs about language as used in social contexts. These beliefs can follow dominant patterns supporting the primacy of Standard English, or be more critical of existing power relations that stigmatize or privilege certain language varieties. Educational researchers have combined these concepts from sociolinguistcs and linguistic anthropology to create an emerging body of research on critical language awareness and critical language pedagogy. To date, research on these topics has been largely theoretical. The papers in this dissertation begin to shift the research base from theory into classroom practice. All three papers draw on data collected during a study of five high school English teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area, teaching in culturally and linguistically complex classrooms. The teachers taught at different schools, although three taught within the same school district. The five teachers were selected because they each articulated aspects of a critical language ideology during initial interviews. In addition, they all taught instructional units around the core text Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, a text featuring extensive use of African American English. Because the teachers articulated aspects of a critical language ideology and would be teaching a unit around a text featuring African American English, these classrooms were selected as likely sites to observe teaching and talk about language during literature-based English Language Arts instruction. The first study examines the language ideologies communicated through teaching and talk about language during literature-based instruction. This study demonstrates the struggle of teaching with a critical language ideology in the face of dominant views of Standard English that pervade English classrooms and society at large. Drawing on data from teacher interviews and video recorded classes, this study uses a case study methodology to show how one teacher reflectively and deliberately used linguistic meta- language to consistently communicate the value of all language varieties. Contrasting cases illustrate points during classroom teaching where dominant language ideologies are likely to surface. The second paper examines what teachers need to know to teach about language variation from a critical perspective. Using the framework of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), the study examines the importance of valuing student knowledge as one aspect of pedagogical content knowledge for critical language teaching. The study employs micro-ethnographic discourse analysis of episodes of critical language teaching to show what happens when linguistic content knowledge and knowledge of language pedagogy are employed without attention to student understandings of language variation. The findings suggest that when student knowledge is not valued students may be resistant to linguistic terms and concepts. The third study builds on the second study by exploring what students know and believe about language variation through an analysis of survey and interview data. The study explores students’ language ideologies in relation to a number of student characteristics including race/ethnicity, gender, home language, parental desire for the students to speak Standard English, and students’ awareness of their own use of English language varieties. Analysis of the survey data in conjunction with the interviews reveals that students simultaneously hold both dominant and counter-hegemonic language ideologies. Students possess nuanced understandings of the racialized nature of language varieties, but respond to those understandings in very different ways. The findings suggest that teachers need to explore students’ varied understandings as they attempt to teach about language variation in high school English classes. Taken together these studies help move research on critical language pedagogy from theory to practice. The papers in this dissertation suggest a common theme; Teachers need to work toward understanding and valuing the prior knowledge and beliefs about language that their students bring to the classroom. Knowledge of linguistics and general pedagogy will have limited effectiveness without consideration of how approaches to teaching play out for particular students in particular contexts. Paper one highlights ways that teachers can maintain a critical language ideology even when students articulate dominant language ideologies. Paper two highlights the importance of valuing student knowledge when teaching critical language awareness. Paper three begins to unpack patterns in students’ knowledge and beliefs. As work on critical language pedagogy moves from theory to classroom practice, consideration of students must play a central role.

Critical pedagogies and language learning

2004

Advocates of critical approaches to second language teaching are interested in relationships between language learning and social change. From this perspective, language is not simply a means of expression or communication; rather, it is a practice that constructs, and is constructed by, the ways language learners understand themselves, their social surroundings, their histories, and their possibilities for the future. This collection assembles the work of a variety of scholars interested in critical perspectives on language education in globally diverse sites of practice. All are interested in investigating the ways that social relationships are lived out in language and how issues of power, while often obscured in language research and educational practice (Kubota, this volume), are centrally important in developing critical language education pedagogies. Indeed, as Morgan (this volume) suggests, "politically engaged critiques of power in everyday life, communities, and institutions" are precisely what are needed to develop critical pedagogies in language education. The chapters have varying foci, seeking to better understand the relationships between writers and readers, teachers and students, test makers and test takers, teacher-educators and student teachers, and researchers and researched.

1 Critical pedagogies and language learning : An introduction

2007

Advocates of critical approaches to second language teaching are interested in relationships between language learning and social change. From this perspective, language is not simply a means of expression or communication; rather, it is a practice that constructs, and is constructed by, the ways language learners understand themselves, their social surroundings, their histories, and their possibilities for the future. This collection assembles the work of a variety of scholars interested in critical perspectives on language education in globally diverse sites of practice. All are interested in investigating the ways that social relationships are lived out in language and how issues of power, while often obscured in language research and educational practice (Kubota, this volume), are centrally important in developing critical language education pedagogies. Indeed, as Morgan (this volume) suggests, “politically engaged critiques of power in everyday life, communities, and institutio...

Critical language pedagogy: an introduction to principles and values

ELT Journal, 2021

Critical language pedagogy, teaching languages for social justice, is considered in terms of its history and principles. Several sets of principles, from different periods of the development of this literature, are juxtaposed. A connection is drawn from the possible values held by language teachers to the values espoused by critical language pedagogy. These are specified as democratic values, associated with equality, freedom, and solidarity. Values are identified as a means by which language teachers considering this perspective could approach it.

Idealized Nativeness, Privilege, and Marginalization in English Language Teaching

TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, 2024

The field of English language teaching (ELT) emerged out of global, imperialistic attempts to create colonial subjects and assert control over their minds and resources. ELT thus served as a means both to impose essentialized ways of thinking, speaking, sounding, behaving, and knowing upon local populations, and to devalue and erase localized being, knowing and doing via both epistemic and actualized violence. ELT was predicated upon an idealized nativeness in English affording authority and corresponding privilege to select, white members of colonial societies both domestically and abroad. White, Western "native speakers," whose identities corresponded with notions of idealized nativeness, were imagined as ideal instructors of the "English language." The monolingual principle (Howatt, 1984), or the view that English should be taught exclusively in English, was a further means to marginalize locals as "non-native" learners, users, and teachers. Idealized nativeness has served as an (unachievable) benchmark for "success" in (and beyond) ELT, in diverse, contextualized ways. Whether presented as a theoretical abstraction, or as the foundation for conceptual frameworks detailing "normative" behavior, idealized nativeness continues to influence approaches to theory, research, policy, materials development, teacher education, classroom practice, and hiring in ELT settings around the globe. Colonialism past and present, and the ever-increasing local-global movement of people, information, technology, goods, and finances, have resulted in the emergence of a wide array of contexts, varieties, and functions of "English," and of unique ways of being, becoming, and belonging. Colonialism and movement have also perpetuated the now dominant neoliberal narrative found both within and beyond ELT, that English is "the" global language. Attention both to the history of ELT, and to diversity and complexity, has led to critical problematizations of ELT

Challenges in Critical Language Teaching

TESOL Quarterly , 2012

This article is based on the conception of language teaching as a liberatory practice. Drawing on some principles of critical pedagogy (Ellsworth, 1992; Freire, 2005; hooks, 1994; Norton & Toohey, 2004), critical applied linguistics (Pennycook, 1990, 2001), critical language teaching (Ferreira, 2006; Pennycook, 1999), and critical language teacher education (Hawkins & Norton, 2009), the authors developed a case study in a language center of a federal university in the state of Goia´s, Brazil, in which they analyzed the challenges of teaching English through critical themes based on students’ perception and on collaborative reflections between the teacher and his collaborator. They found that, in general, students were pleased with their development concerning language and critical thinking as a result of engagement in the dialogic process established in class for 4 months. However, the research also implies that language teachers, when adopting critical teaching, should learn how to engage fully with students’ positions and academic voices, choice and length of themes, and the conception of language as a social practice.