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Social Justice in English Language Teaching
This inspiring and diverse collection of voices from the field in ESL and EFL contexts personalizes the issues TESOL educators face and serves as a resource for those wanting to address social injustices in their individual TESOL contexts. This book will help educators identify the needs of other students and the areas of privilege represented in the ELT world, where more advocacy work is needed.
315 pages, Paperback
Published March 18, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 23, 2021
This is a good reference book for ESL teachers and educators who work with immigrants, refugees and international students. It contains 22 articles written by K-12, higher ed, and adult ed professionals on topics that include anti-racist teaching, peace education, environmental justice, social justice as relates to gender and sexuality, indigenous language rights, language empiricism and teaching the undocumented.
The authors introduce themselves explaining how they became language teachers and why they chose to focus on a specific area of social justice. Each article contains a description of the student population with whom the author works, a discussion of how the topic/s are taught, including samples of materials and methods and challenges faced. The articles contain academic references and interestingly, many of the authors cite the work of Paulo Freire (one of my key influences). Other giants in the field cited include critical theorists, bell hooks, Sonia Nieto, Donaldo Macedo (my academic advisor in grad school). Also, notable references include James Gee, James Cummins, Lisa Delpit, Gloria Anzaldua, and DH Brown among others.
If I had one criticism, it would be that the works are now slightly dated as the collection was published in 2016. While the topics are still relevant in 2021, because so much has happened in the world since, not to diminish the important contributions of the authors, my hope is that the editors will compile an updated collection in the coming months.
The authors introduce themselves explaining how they became language teachers and why they chose to focus on a specific area of social justice. Each article contains a description of the student population with whom the author works, a discussion of how the topic/s are taught, including samples of materials and methods and challenges faced. The articles contain academic references and interestingly, many of the authors cite the work of Paulo Freire (one of my key influences). Other giants in the field cited include critical theorists, bell hooks, Sonia Nieto, Donaldo Macedo (my academic advisor in grad school). Also, notable references include James Gee, James Cummins, Lisa Delpit, Gloria Anzaldua, and DH Brown among others.
If I had one criticism, it would be that the works are now slightly dated as the collection was published in 2016. While the topics are still relevant in 2021, because so much has happened in the world since, not to diminish the important contributions of the authors, my hope is that the editors will compile an updated collection in the coming months.
August 27, 2016
The topic of this book is important and I'm glad it exists, but as often happens with edited collections, the quality of the chapters is pretty uneven. My favorite chapters were on the more theoretical side (particularly Shelley Wong and Rachel Grant's chapter on double consciousness and Suhanthie Motha on provincializing English), but there were also some that focused on practical implementation (including drama and environmental education), and a few (mostly less effective) chapters that basically just described projects in a way that wasn't really theoretical or useful to teachers working in other contexts (the best of which was Kip Cate's description of his Japan/Korea exchange program). It's worth reading if you teach English and care about social justice, but it's more of a basic overview of the topic with introductions to things like why social justice matters, the NNEST movement and critical pedagogy, than something truly original. But the fact the TESOL published this and that it's been popular matter, and it's useful to have those accessible more introductory books out there.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews