Search results
1 – 10 of 28This paper is a critical reflection on the linguistic conservatism as found within current curriculum policies and assessment regimes in the UK, arguing that they represents a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper is a critical reflection on the linguistic conservatism as found within current curriculum policies and assessment regimes in the UK, arguing that they represents a form of linguicism which serves to entrench linguistic social injustices. This paper aims to trace the “trajectory” of policy across different levels, discourses and settings, with a particular focus on how linguicism is conceptualised, defended and resisted by teachers. The author draws connections between language ideologies within policy discourse, language tests and teacher interviews.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a critical approach to examining educational language policies and assessments. It begins with the assumption that policies and tests are powerful political and ideological tools, which can steer teachers into making certain decisions in the classroom, some of which they may not believe in or agree with. Data are drawn from policy documents, test questions and teacher interviews, with a focus on how teachers talk about language and pedagogies in their classrooms. In total, 22 teachers were interviewed, with this data being transcribed and thematically indexed.
Findings
The findings reveal how linguicism is embedded within UK education policy, and how this comes to be replicated within teachers’ discourse and practice. There are three main findings: that teachers can come to operate under a form of “pedagogical coercion”, whereby language policies and tests have a powerful hold on their practice; that teachers see current policy as championing standard English at the expense of non-standardised varieties, and that teachers often see and talk about language as a proxy for other social factors such as education and employability.
Research limitations/implications
This study provides a critical perspective on language education policies in the UK, arguing for greater awareness about the nature and dangers of linguicism across all levels of policy. Data generated from classroom interaction would be a useful avenue for future work.
Originality/value
This paper offers an original, discursively critical examination of language education policy in the UK, with a particular focus on the current curriculum and using original data generated from teacher interviews and associated policy documents.
Details
Keywords
This study aims to highlight the planning, process and results of drawing on engaged pedagogy to humanize Blackness in world language (WL) teacher education. The activities were…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to highlight the planning, process and results of drawing on engaged pedagogy to humanize Blackness in world language (WL) teacher education. The activities were designed to center lived experiences, augment self-reflection and model instructional differentiation for WL preservice teachers (PSTs).
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative research paper uses a self-study in teacher education practices (S-STEP) method. It explores how tailored resources, peer and self-assessments and a responsive environment can increase awareness of antiBlackness in instruction and curricula among WL PSTs during a semester-long methods course.
Findings
Findings suggest that centering Blackness in WL methods initiates an awareness of antiBlack racism in WL pedagogy through opportunities for self-reflection and accountability through assessment. To varying degrees, participants demonstrated shifts in their understanding and valuing of Blackness in WL instruction as facilitated through a differentiated environment in which PSTs had access both to the instructor and to one another’s critical feedback.
Originality/value
Linguicism through antiBlack linguistic racism, native speakerism, idealized whiteness and other constructs has been demonstrated to decrease Black and minoritized participation in language teaching. What has yet to be addressed is this same pushout from an inclusive Black diasporic approach to WL teacher preparation. This study highlights nationalism, ableism, accentism, racism, anti-immigrant sentiments and racial stereotypes as different entry points to understanding antiBlackness within WL teacher preparation.
Details
Keywords
This comparative study qualitatively explores how linguistic minority immigrants and refugees experienced the 2010–2011 Canterbury and Tohoku disasters, including their coping…
Abstract
This comparative study qualitatively explores how linguistic minority immigrants and refugees experienced the 2010–2011 Canterbury and Tohoku disasters, including their coping mechanisms and their perceived vulnerabilities and resilience. The data used for this qualitative analysis was primarily drawn from 28 in-depth interviews with linguistic minority immigrants and refugees and their supporting organization staff conducted in 2015–2016. Additional material was drawn from two publicly available data sets. Immigrants and refugees are typically thought of as being more vulnerable in disasters. However, findings drawn from this research demonstrate the nonlinearity, complexity, and contextuality of social vulnerabilities in disasters, suggesting that they are not necessarily powerless help-seekers in some cases. Using Bourdieu’s capital theory, this study demonstrates how immigrants and refugees were active social agents in these disasters. Consequently, we need to reconceptualize the social vulnerability approach. Some study participants had experiences of going through wars and everyday disasters, which made them more resilient. This is conceptualized here as earned strength, which can be a significant resource in disasters for the socially vulnerable. This chapter hopes to answer some critical questions regarding the social vulnerability approach: how do we incorporate the structure–agency concept, how do we theoretically deal with the contextuality/nonlinearity of social vulnerability in disasters, and how do we conceptualize a research study that can seek more practical and generalizable findings, instead of event-driven and disaster-specific findings?
Details
Keywords
Haseeb Shabbir, Michael R. Hyman and Alena Kostyk
This special issue explores how marketing thought and practice have contributed to systemic racism but could alleviate racially insensitive and biased practices. An introductory…
Abstract
Purpose
This special issue explores how marketing thought and practice have contributed to systemic racism but could alleviate racially insensitive and biased practices. An introductory historical overview briefly discusses coloniality, capitalism, eugenics, modernism, transhumanism, neo-liberalism, and liquid racism. Then, the special issue articles on colonial-based commodity racism, racial beauty imagery, implicit racial bias, linguistic racism and racial imagery in ads are introduced.
Design/methodology/approach
The historical introduction is grounded in a review of relevant literature.
Findings
Anti-racism efforts must tackle the intersection between neo-liberalism and racial injustice, the “raceless state” myth should be re-addressed, and cultural pedagogy’s role in normalizing racism should be investigated.
Practical implications
To stop perpetuating raced markets, educators should mainstream anti-racism and marketing. Commodity racism provides a historical and contemporary window into university-taught marketing skills.
Social implications
Anti-racism efforts must recognize neo-liberalism’s pervasive role in normalizing raced markets and reject conventional wisdom about a raceless cultural pedagogy, especially with the emergence of platform economies.
Originality/value
Little previous research has tackled the history of commodity racism, white privilege, white ideology, and instituting teaching practices sensitive to minority group experiences.
Details
Keywords
Edward H. Bart IV, Arlinda Boland, Summer Shelton and Teri Del Rosso
The article deals with one of the key causes of Roma children's low academic achievement, notably their presence in segregated special schools originally reserved for mentally…
Abstract
Purpose
The article deals with one of the key causes of Roma children's low academic achievement, notably their presence in segregated special schools originally reserved for mentally disabled children. The purpose of the research was to analyse the assessment process for school‐readiness and special educational needs, and discover the reasons for Roma children's widespread failure on the tests.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a quantitative survey and qualitative focus group interviews, the study analysed the assessment process for school‐readiness and special educational needs.
Findings
The tests in use offer an overly generalized picture of children's abilities. The test results have little influence on the actual decisions about the schools children will be sent to. Roma children tend to do significantly worse on the tests than non‐Roma children, in all examined areas.
Research limitations/implications
The situation of Roma is similar in all countries of the East and Central European region, and resembles the situation of all socially excluded ethnic minority groups. The results can therefore contribute to a better understanding of the educational situation of Roma and other ethnic minority groups in the region. However, the education system as well as the process of determining special educational needs are in several ways unique in each country. The findings therefore have limited validity outside of Hungary.
Originality/value
Although the problems with Roma children's academic performance are well documented, there had been no research in Hungary that focused on the selection process and the problems of using assessment tests in determining Roma children's special educational needs.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to address the intensive spread of the English language in Central and Eastern Europe as an aspect of postsocialist transition.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the intensive spread of the English language in Central and Eastern Europe as an aspect of postsocialist transition.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper analyses the discourses and ideologies related to the spread of English in postsocialist Poland, drawing on insights from critical discourse analysis and language ideology. The empirical material discussed comprises newspaper articles dealing with the topic of language policy in Poland, with a focus on the media campaign, “battle for English”.
Findings
The paper finds that the spread of English is facilitated by powerful discourses propagating the knowledge of English together with the ideology of neo‐liberal economic and social transformation. The exploration of the discourses inherent in the story of the “battle for English” enables the links between the linguistic practices applied by individual actors and the ideologies conveyed by the discourses found in mainstream media to be made explicit.
Research limitations/implications
An awareness of the mechanisms of discourse and ideology allows us to question both the drive behind and the social impact of the spread of English in Central and Eastern Europe.
Originality/value
The paper offers a novel theoretical and empirical contribution to the understanding on postsocialist transition.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the post‐colonial literature by addressing the phenomenon of language spread in relation to the spread of languages other than Polish…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the post‐colonial literature by addressing the phenomenon of language spread in relation to the spread of languages other than Polish within the Polish society since the end of the eighteenth century until the present.
Design/methodology/approach
The subject discussed here is approached from an historical perspective, through reference to literature and secondary data regarding the policies, practices and examples of language spread and linguistic imperialism in Poland throughout the history.
Findings
Through a comparative analysis across different periods in history, discussion of the Polish experience of language spread offers insights into its mechanisms and consequences for the society. It also shows how, since the collapse of socialism, Poland's socio‐economic transition has been accompanied by an increasing importance of the English language in the country, and how at present, the knowledge of English and access to it influences and is influenced by the existing social structures.
Research limitations/implications
An awareness of the processes of language spread and of responses to them can help us better understand the historical mechanisms of transition from one set of social relations to another, and contribute to the understanding of post‐socialist change.
Originality/value
By applying the notions of language spread and linguistic imperialism to a geographical context different from that of the former British Empire, and by including, in addition to English, the historical spread of two other languages, namely German and Russian, within the Polish society, this paper contributes to the body of post‐colonial literature.
Details