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?

This volume looks at the preparation of future critical language teachers in the face of an increasingly multilingual and transcultural contemporary world. This is seen through the lens of the collapse of Nation-State borders that crumble in the face of migration and the intense flow of languages that comes with it. It brings together international research that problematizes, theorizes, re-positions and re-conceptualizes myriad structural, systemic, ideological, political and pedagogical issues that intersect with the possibilities and impossibilities of the development of language teachers' agency. The volume examines the needs of linguistically diverse student populations and considers the socio-cultural and socio-political barriers that interfere with the exercise of teacher agency for social justice in language classrooms. It offers a theoretical and empirical overview of how language teacher education has addressed multilingualism and transculturalism in critical approaches in many complex countries in their diversity and/or postcolonial history, including Brazil, Qazaqstan, Scotland, and Thailand.

This book fosters an awareness of multilingualism as lived or as subjectively experienced from the perspective of those involved in language education and teacher education. Responding to multilingual and visual turns, it widens the repertoire of methodologies dominating the field of language teacher education, from linguistic or verbal to visual. The chapters, written by practising language teachers and teacher educators, explore aspects of multilingualism accessed through visual means in a wide range of contexts. Using social justice as a transformative framework, they highlight the biases, inequalities and linguistic hierarchies within schools and teacher education, and promote respect for linguistic plurality and cultural diversity in these settings. They illustrate how visual methods can be used to reconstruct histories of individual multilingualism, identify present language ideologies and support teachers’ professional development by means of envisioning the future self in action. This book will be of interest to those involved in language education and language teacher education, including researchers, practising language teachers, student or trainee teachers and teacher educators. This book is Open Access under a CC BY NC ND license.

Building on the pioneering 2009 volume, Race, Culture, and Identities in Second Language Education, this book reflects the significant expansion in the research since its publication and offers a wider breadth of perspectives on the complex theoretical terrain of race, racism, and antiracism in language education. Contributors to this book apply a range of conceptual and methodological lenses to teaching diverse world languages. Underscoring the interconnectedness of race and colonialism, world language education, and intersectional ideologies, this book offers a forum for engaged dialogues among teachers, teacher educators, teacher candidates, graduate and advanced undergraduate students, curriculum developers, policymakers, and educational researchers in a wide range of disciplines, including language education. In covering important theoretical frames and constructs—including raciolinguistic and anti-oppressive pedagogies, decoloniality, neoliberalism, and reverse linguistic stereotyping—this book breaks from the Global North norms in applied linguistics and language instruction. An essential text in TESOL and world language education, this volume weaves meaningful connections among language education, language-in-education policy, and research.

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.

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.

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

The perception of a permanent enrollment crisis in US postsecondary foreign language education has shaped our profession’s image for an entire generation of educators. Over the past 30 years, this crisis rarely invited self-examination or inspired creativity. Instead, it was routinely attributed to external factors: shrinking budgets, unsympathetic administrators, disengaged students. This volume is refreshingly optimistic: After providing a nuanced picture of the complex enrollment situation and focusing on perceptions of language education among undergraduate students, the volume features an inspiring panorama of successful models that revitalized language programs at a wide range of institutions. The diversity of approaches to post-secondary language education in the United States featured in this volume highlights that there are no simple “one size fits all” solutions. To be transformational, initiatives need to be intimately calibrated to the evolving needs and desires of our institutions’ most important stakeholder: the student. Per Urlaub, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA, USA

Our evolving understanding of the role of English as a lingua franca and our growing sensitivity to the unique needs of students and teachers who communicate across languages and cultures has led to significant changes in language teaching, pedagogy, and curriculum design. The Handbook of Plurilingual and Intercultural Language Learning is a field-defining book, which examines the various ways learners learn and acquire language in a truly global context. Featuring contributions from a diverse range of scholars reflecting different cultural, linguistic, regional, and ideological perspectives, this innovative volume presents the most recent developments in the field while revealing the nuances and complexities of teaching and learning foreign languages. This Handbook explains the conceptual basis of intercultural and plurilingual learning, describes core pedagogical concepts, discusses different learning and teaching approaches, and provides the historical background for various methods and theories. The authors discuss how policy and pedagogy can adapt to the shifting demographics of local student populations, address new trends and evolving themes, and explore contemporary topics such as translanguaging, intercomprehension, technology-enhanced learning, language policy, and more. The Handbook of Plurilingual and Intercultural Language Learning is essential reading for students, educators, and researchers in applied linguistics, language teaching and learning, plurilingualism/multilingualism, TESOL, cognitive linguistics, language policy, language acquisition, and intercultural communication.