Day 1 – First Nations Longhouse, 1985 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
Day 2 – Cecil Green Park House, 6251 Cecil Green Park Rd, Vancouver, BC V6T 1X8
This event is open and free to all UBC Faculty of Education students, faculty, in-service and pre-service teachers, school administrators, and interested community members.
Registration is closed.
Supporting Teachers to Work With Culturally, Linguistically, and Racially Diverse Students, Families, and Communities: A Two-Day International Symposium at UBC
This international symposium will address the pressing imperatives in teacher learning by bringing together leading researchers and teacher educators with expertise in working with culturally, linguistically, and racially diverse students and families in Canada and the U.S. The two-day event will consist of an opening address by Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook and a closing keynote by Dr. Hetty Roessingh, as well as four interactive thematic sessions that aim to engage multiple perspectives including teacher educators, teacher candidates, in-service teachers, and community partners. The four interactive sessions will address four priority areas of knowledge and competencies that in- and pre-service teachers urgently need to meet the needs of the changing demographics of K-12 learners in Canada:
1) supporting refugee students’ education,
2) building school, home, and community relations,
3) infusing Indigenous knowledge in teacher education, and
4) integrating strategies and skills in teaching culturally, linguistically and racially diverse students.
For more information, please contact Dr. Guofang Li.
SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE
Day 1 – May 30, 2019 (First Nation Longhouse) | |
8:30-9:00 | Registration and Coffee |
9:00-10:30
|
Welcome and Opening Keynote (Chair: Guofang Li ) Remarks Dean, Faculty of Education, UBC; Head, LLED; Associate Dean, Indigenous Education, UBC Keynote Talk: |
10:30-10:45 | Nutrition break |
10:45-12:00
|
Interactive Session 1: Emerging Priorities and Knowledge Gaps in Refugee Education and Teacher Learning (Thought Leader: Guofang Li; Discussant: Jim Anderson)
Panel Presentations: Maureen Kendrick & Margaret Early: Language and Literacy Learning among Youth Refugees in Canadian Secondary School Classrooms: Pedagogical Considerations Antoinette Gagné: Teaching about Meeting the Needs of Immigrants and Refugees: Developing Culturally Responsive Educators in Contexts of Politicized Transnationalism Laurie Ford: Supporting the Mental Health Needs of Refugee Students and Their Families in Canadian Schools: Applications of Trauma Informed Practice |
12:00-12:45 | Breakout Roundtable Discussions facilitated by Kwesi Yaro |
12:45-1:45 | Lunch Break |
1:45 – 3:15
|
Interactive Session 2: Race, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Teacher Education (Thought Leader: Jan Hare; Discussant: Marianne McTavish)
Panel Presentations: Jan Hare: Decolonizing Practices for Teacher Education Through Required Course Instruction Lisa Taylor: Unsettling and Decolonizing notions of inclusion, diversity, community, and the historical present: Reframing the task of education with diverse settler preservice students Susan Dion: “We Made our Own Little Spot in the Corner of the Library”: Teaching and Learning from the Voices of Indigenous Students Surviving, Resisting and Transforming Schools Jeremy Garcia: Critical Indigenous Teacher Identities and Education in the US |
3:15-3:30 | Nutrition Break |
3:30-4:15 | Breakout Roundtable Discussions facilitated by Lilach Marom |
4:15-5:00 | Break |
5:00-6:30 | Reception Dinner (St. John’s College) |
Day 2 – May 31, 2019 (Cecil Green Park House, Main Floor) | |
8:30-9:00 | Coffee and Welcome |
9:00-10:30
|
Interactive Session # 3 Superdiversity, School, Home, and Community Relations, and Teacher Practice (Thought Leader: Jim Anderson; Discussant: Jan Hare)
Panel Presentations: Jim Anderson: Some Lessons Learned from Working with Diverse Children, Families and Communities: Looking Back, Looking Forward Guofang Li: Voice of Transnational Astronaut Families and Youths: Implications for Mainstream Teachers Danièle Moore: Connecting educators, families and communities through PASTEL (Plurilingualism, Art, Science, Technology and Literacies) approaches in and around French immersion Patricia Edwards: Teachers Partnering with Diverse Families for Student Success: An American Perspective |
10:30-10:45 | Nutrition Break |
10:45-12:00 | Breakout Roundtable Discussions facilitated by Caroline Locher-Lo |
12:00-12:45 | Lunch Break |
12:45-2:15 |
Interactive Session 4: Superdiversity and Emergent Approaches to Teacher Education (Thought Leader: Marianne McTavish; Discussant: Jim Anderson)
Panel Presentations: Andrea Sterzuk: Pre-service Teachers’ Critical Dispositions Towards Language: Transforming Taken-for-Granted Assumptions about Culturally, Linguistically, and Racially Diverse Learners through Teacher Education Ryuko Kubota: We are Not Racist, But Racism Persists: Race and Teacher Education Manka Varghese: Race, language, and neoliberalism in dual language teacher preparation Ester de Jong: Preparing Mainstream Teachers for ELLs through Infusion: Does it Work? |
2:15-2:30 | Nutrition Break |
2:30–3:15 | Breakout Roundtable Discussions facilitated by Monica Shank Lauwo |
3:15-4:30
|
Closing Plenary Talk (Chair: Guofang Li ) Hetty Roessingh: Teaching in the Age of Accountability: Instructional Decision Making of/for and as Learning for Diverse Learners |
4:30 | Departure |
SPEAKERS
Dr. Ester de Jong
Preparing mainstream teachers for ELLS through infusion: Does it work?
Given the current trends to place English language learners (ELLs) in mainstream classrooms and the reported lack of preparation of mainstream teachers to teach this student population, teacher education programs are experiencing urgency to develop their capacity to prepare all teachers, not just specialists, to successfully teach ELLs. Research on such preparation is still primarily conceptual in nature. In this paper, we address general and disciplinary (English as a second language) faculty experiences with infusing ELL related knowledge and skills in elementary preservice teacher education programs. Through a survey and individual interviews, the paper reports on a study which examined how teacher educators conceptualized infusion, the barriers and facilitators of such infusion, and the limitations of infusion.
Prof. Ester de Jong is the President of the TESOL International Association, a Professor in ESOL/Bilingual Education, and the Director of the School of Teaching and Learning. She teaches courses in bilingual and bicultural education and in curriculum, methods, and assessment for English speakers of other languages. Prior to academia, she worked for the K to 12 public schools in Massachusetts as the Assistant Director for Bilingual Education and ESL programs. Her research focuses on two way bilingual education, language in education policy, and mainstream teacher preparation for bilingual students. She recently published her book Foundations for Multilingualism in Education: From Principles to Practice (Caslon Publishing, 2011) and is currently co PI for a Center of Excellence in Elementary Teacher Preparation grant.
Dr. Patricia Edwards
Partnering with Families for Student Success: An American Perspective
While American public education has changed over the years, one factor, family engagement, remains critical to student achievement. Ongoing research shows family engagement in schools improves student achievement, reduces absenteeism, and restores parents’ confidence in the education of their children. Students with involved parents or other caregivers earn higher grades and test scores, have better social skills, and show improved behavior. Few would argue that educators have difficult jobs that are all too often thankless, but parent involvement helps ease their burden to some degree. When parents get involved, they join forces with teachers to make a formidable educational team characterized by mutual respect. In her presentation Partnering with Families for Student Success: An American Perspective, she discusses how teachers can gain confidence and build sensitivity when interacting with caregivers and families who speak different languages and may come from different cultural, racial, and social backgrounds.
Prof. Edwards is a member of the Reading Hall Fame and a Professor of Language and Literacy at Michigan State University. A nationally and internationally recognized expert in parent involvement, home, school, community partnerships, multicultural literacy, early literacy, and family/intergenerational literacy, especially among poor and minority children. She served as the first African American President of the Literacy Research Association in 2006 to 2007, and as the 2010 to 2011 President of the International Reading Association. She was named as the 2017 to 2018 Jeanne S. Chall Visiting Researcher at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Dr. Antoinette Gagné
Teaching about Meeting the Needs of Immigrants and Refugees: Developing Culturally Responsive Educators
in Contexts of Politicized Transnationalism
The who, what, where, when, why, and how of preparing teachers to meet the needs of immigrants and refugee students in elementary and secondary schools will be addressed in this presentation. Using narratives generated within a multiple case study of teacher educators, we will compare and contrast experiences working with different cohorts of teacher candidates to promote resiliency and language learning among immigrant and refugee children and youth in Canadian schools. The potential for transfer of learning from the university classroom to elementary and secondary school classrooms as well as novice teachers’ ability to respond to the complex needs of immigrant and refugee learners across the curriculum will be considered in relation to the preparation they receive during their initial teacher education.
Dr. Antoinette Gagné’s research has focused on teacher education for diversity and inclusion in various contexts. She has explored the experiences of young English language learners and their families as well as internationally educated teachers in Canadian schools and universities. Antoinette is the convenor of the Network of Critical Action Researchers in Education (NCARE) which brings together university educators from a dozen countries. More recently, she has been investigating the educational integration of Syrian refugee children and youth in Canadian schools and how best to support pre-service and in-service teachers to meet the diverse needs of this population. In addition, Antoinette is part of a research team along with Jeff Bale and Julie Kerekes at OISE, working to identify how teacher candidates, teacher educators, practicing teachers.
Dr. Jeremy Garcia
Critical Indigenous Teacher Identities and Education in the US
The presentation will centralize on the intersection of critical Indigenous theoretical orientations as a pathway to recenter and reclaim current teacher education practices and to reimagine and transform teaching and teacher education for Indigenous communities within the US. Given the unique social, historical, and political realities within Indigenous communities, Indigenous languages, values, and knowledge systems are central to the process of indigenizing teaching and teacher education. In particular, critical Indigenous theoretical orientations have contributed to the ways in which we can both reconstruct and reimagine curriculum and pedagogy that is decolonizing, sustainable, justice oriented, and transformative. It is anticipated that such transformative possibilities will contribute to nation-building within Indigenous communities in the US. This presentation speaks to the possibilities of generating notions of critical and culturally sustaining Indigenous teacher identities who embody a critical Indigenous consciousness.
Jeremy Garcia is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Education at the University of Arizona. He is a member of the Hopi/Tewa Tribes of Arizona. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor in the School of Education and an Endowed Professor of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. His research focuses on critical Indigenous curriculum and pedagogy, Indigenous teacher education, and critical and culturally sustaining family and community engagement within Indigenous education. He is co-editor of the developing book, Indigenizing Education: Transformative Theories and Possibilities in Indigenous Communities. He also serves on editorial boards of the Mellon Tribal College Research Journal and the American Educational Research Journal.
Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook
Emerging Issues and Knowledge Gaps in Refugees, Linguistic Diversity, and Teacher Learning
In a post-truth populist era of poll-I-ticking, liking, loving, emoji-ing, tweeting, we are failing to witness what Solnit (2013) calls elsewhere, the stories of lives faraway, nearby. Asylum seekers displaced by foreign incursions, civil wars, religious conflicts, have sought refuge across the borders of other countries. Refugees seeking refuge continue to travel the perilous seas by boat, taking a momentary pause to then hike across mountains, over land, seeking hospice and the promises of a more hopeful future in nation-states like Germany, Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. And yet, how are we (or not) welcoming such diverse communities to, and within, our curricular conceptions of teacher education. During this presentation, Dr. Ng-A-Fook will lean on the concepts of superdiversity, hyph-E-nations, and equity to discuss how we might move toward negotiating a right to certain kinds of teacher education in response to the looming presence of populist times.
Dr. Ng-A-Fook, a Full Professor, is Director of the Teacher Education Program at the University of Ottawa. He is the President of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, the largest professional educational research association in Canada. In these administrative, educational, and research capacities, he is committed toward addressing the 94 Calls to Action put forth by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in partnership with the local Indigenous and school board communities. He is collaborating with colleagues to create a state of the art teacher education program that promises to prepare teacher candidates for the social, economic, and cultural demands of the 21st century.
Dr. Jean Paul Restoule
Traversing through Trespasses: Teachers Report What Inspires Them to Take up Indigenous Education in their
Classroom Practice
This paper is from a larger study that aims to understand the strategies current and former teachers and teacher candidates used to engage in meaningful teaching about Indigenous perspectives and treaty relationships. For this particular paper, I will focus on the things that settler teachers named as inspirations for engaging in Indigenous education in their teaching practice, with the larger goal of supporting Indigenous students in the classroom and contributing to making anti-racist citizens supporting Indigenous communities more broadly. This research project has been developed as an action research project, and follows a narrative inquiry methodological approach, which allows for an understanding of the importance of relationships between the participants and researchers and the productive nature of sharing stories.
Jean Paul Restoule is Anishinaabe and a member of the Dokis First Nation. He is a Professor of Indigenous Education at the University of Victoria where he serves as Chair of the Department of Indigenous Education. His research is concerned with Indigenizing and decolonizing teacher education; supporting Indigenous student success; Indigenous pedagogy in online learning environments, and Indigenous research methodologies and ethics. The paper that Dr. Restoule is proposing to this symposium is directly relevant to the to the theme of Race, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Teacher Education.
Dr. Hetty Roessingh
Teaching in the Age of Accountability: Instructional Decision Making of/for and as Learning for Diverse
Learners?
Teaching and testing/assessment go hand in hand in the classroom. Every day classroom tasks can be considered through an assessment lens if teachers have the tools and insights to consider these artefacts as data/evidence of/for and as learning over time. This provides important information to teachers in their instructional decision making, to parents who are our partners in their children education, to school jurisdictions who are increasingly held to account for learning outcomes, as well as to students themselves who need to be in on setting their own goals for their ongoing learning. This session will include examples of student work over time, rubrics and informal benchmarks that can help determine the quality of learning outcomes, and practical ideas for classroom teachers.
Dr. Roessingh is a long time ESL practitioner in the Calgary Board of Education, working at the high school level. She transitioned to the University of Calgary in 2000 to pursue research interests and to use research findings to inform her work in teacher preparation both at the undergrad and graduate levels. Her program of research reflects a pragmatic approach to understanding early language and literacy, and academic literacy learning over time. This is especially reflected in students vocabulary growth. Her participation will contribute significantly to the knowledge production of this symposium.
Dr. Andrea Sterzuk
Preservice Teachers Critical Dispositions Towards Language: Transforming Taken for Granted Assumptions
about Culturally, Linguistically, and Racially
Understanding how to prepare educators for multicultural and multilingual classrooms is the focus of this paper. While schools are sites of pluralism, student multicultural and multilingualism can be viewed by predominantly white, English monolingual teachers as something that gets in the way of acquiring literacy skills and mastering subject material, In order to prepare preservice teachers for the classrooms in which they will teach, moving preservice teachers towards critical multilingual language awareness is necessary. This paper is informed by a three year mixed methods study exploring 24 preservice educators dispositions towards racially, culturally and linguistically diverse learners. Findings suggest that teacher identity, enrollment in critical language education courses, field placements in racially, culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, and the mentor teacher relationship all shape preservice teacher criticality.
Andrea Sterzuk is an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Regina. She is currently the president of the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics. Andrea teaches and researches in the area of critical applied linguistics. Her research examines issues of power, identity and language in schools and highereducation as they relate to settler colonialism. Her previous research projects have explored language variation in elementary schools; English only ideology in higher education; language planning and policy in higher education, and the development of language beliefs in preservice teachers.
Dr. Jim Anderson
Some Lessons Learned from Working with Diverse Children, Families and Communities: Looking Back,
Looking Forward
In this paper, I critically reflect on three decades of working in family literacy programs in diverse contexts: 1) in socially disadvantaged communities; 2) with First Nations Communities; and 3) with Immigrant and Refugee communities. I first attend to the research and scholarship that informed the development and implementation of these programs including: cultural models of learning, culturally responsive education, funds of knowledge, bilingualism and home language maintenance, and Indigenous ways of knowing. Next, I briefly describe the various initiatives in which I was involved and some of the salient outcomes. Then, I share some of the challenges that we encountered, as well as some of the positive lessons that learned from families. I conclude by proposing some principles for those working with diverse children, families and communities.
Prof. Anderson is a co-applicant and will present a practice-oriented concurrent session on lessons learned from working with diverse communities on May 18, 2018. His research focuses on young children’s literacy and numeracy development and working with children and families from culturally, linguistically, racially and socially diverse communities. In his role as a member of the Literacy Research Panel of the International Literacy Association, with colleagues Drs. Marianne McTavish and Ji Eun Kim, he wrote the Thought Leadership Brief titled, Early literacy learning for immigrant and refugee children: Parents critical roles and a longer theoretical and research background paper titled, Lessons from parents, and with parents in early literacy learning for migrant and refugee students, for which the bibliographic information follows.
Dr. Margaret Early
Emerging Issues and Knowledge Gaps in Refugees, Linguistic Diversity, and Teacher Learning
In a post-truth populist era of poll-I-ticking, liking, loving, emoji-ing, tweeting, we are failing to witness what Solnit (2013) calls elsewhere, the stories of lives faraway, nearby. Asylum seekers displaced by foreign incursions, civil wars, religious conflicts, have sought refuge across the borders of other countries. Refugees seeking refuge continue to travel the perilous seas by boat, taking a momentary pause to then hike across mountains, over land, seeking hospice and the promises of a more hopeful future in nation-states like Germany, Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. And yet, how are we (or not) welcoming such diverse communities to, and within, our curricular conceptions of teacher education. During this presentation, Dr. Ng-A-Fook will lean on the concepts of superdiversity, hyph-E-nations, and equity to discuss how we might move toward negotiating a right to certain kinds of teacher education in response to the looming presence of populist times.
Margaret Early is an Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at UBC. Her research focuses on multilingual and multimodal pedagogies in mainstream classrooms (K-12). She was Principal Investigator on several SSHRC funded university-school collaborative research projects, in K-12 classrooms and is currently a member of a collaborative research team investigating: Language and Literacy Learning Among Youth Refugees in Canadian Secondary School Classrooms. She has authored and co-authored numerous journal articles resulting from these partnership projects, and is the author (with Jim Cummins) of Identity Texts: The Collaborative Creation of Power in Multilingual Schools (Trentham Books, 2011) and Big Ideas for Expanding Minds: Teaching English Language Learners across the Curriculum (Rubicon/Pearson, 2015).
Dr. Laurie Ford
Supporting the Mental Health Needs of Refugee Students and Their Families in Canadian Schools:
Applications of Trauma Informed Practice
While the diversity of students in Canadian classrooms can be a strength of Canadian schools, it also presents unique challenges for educators as they work to create a welcoming climate for all students in their classrooms and provide the best academic, social, and emotional support. Given the circumstances of their relocation to Canada, family history with schooling, and/or life experiences in their own communities we are learning that many students in Canadian schools have experienced traumatic life events that can impact their academic success. Trauma-exposed students can pose a variety of different levels of challenges to schools and educators yet there has been limited access to preparation for schools and educators on how to meet the needs of students with histories of trauma in the school. Trauma informed practice holds strong promise as an approach to helping address the needs of students from diverse backgrounds with life histories involving trauma.
Laurie Ford is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education at UBC. An area of research focus is on family- professional communication including strengthening the relationships between families and schools. As a psychologist her research and clinical work as has a strong focus on how educators and families can work together to support the learning and mental health needs of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. In more recent years this has shifted to focus on children and youth who are immigrants and refugees and their families. She has been involved in a number of federally funded projects in these areas throughout her career and writes and presents in this area.
Dr. Jan Hare
Decolonizing Practices for Teacher Education Through Required Course Instruction
Teacher education programs in Canada are experiencing a dramatic shift in the preparation of preservice teachers as these programs teach education students how to introduce Indigenous content, perspectives, and pedagogies in to classrooms and schools. National policies are now calling for compulsory instruction in Indigenous education for preservice teachers. Driving recent programmatic, policy, and curriculum reform in teacher education are the urgent calls to actions expressed in the final report by Canada Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015). Drawing on data from preservice teachers reflecting on their experiences at the conclusion of their teacher education program, this presentation considers the curricular conditions that need to exist in teacher education coursework that facilitate skills, knowledge, and relations among preservice teachers that advance Indigenous education priorities. Particular attention is paid to the complexities, limitations, and opportunities that course work dedicated to Indigenous education holds for reconciliation as an educative framework.
Prof. Hare is an Anishinaabe scholar and educator from the MChigeeng First Nation, located in northern Ontario. She is the Associate Dean for Indigenous Education in the Faculty of Education at UBC and Director of the Native Indigenous Teacher Education Program (NITEP), and Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy and holds the Professorship of Indigenous Education in Teacher Education. As an Indigenous scholar and educator, she has sought to transform education in ways that are more inclusive of Indigenous epistemologies and languages. Her research is concerned with improving educational outcomes for Aboriginal/Indigenous learners and centering Indigenous knowledge systems within educational reform from early childhood education to post secondary, recognizing the holistic and multidisciplinary nature of Indigenous education. She has developed the MOOC, Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education.
Dr. Maureen Kendrick
Emerging Issues and Knowledge Gaps in Refugees, Linguistic Diversity, and Teacher Learning
Our project investigates the language and literacy education of youth refugees in Canadian secondary schools, a student population displaced from their country of origin, who face daunting challenges of social and educational integration. In this presentation, we report on a study situated in a diverse school district in British Columbia. Our project builds on complementary theoretical perspectives of literacy, which we view as foundational to language and literacy education for youth refugees; namely, literacy ecology, funds of knowledge, and multimodal and multilingual literacies. Drawing on survey and interview data, we address: the promising practices for how in-service teachers might engage in the construction of safe learning spaces and transformative language and literacies pedagogies that harness youth refugees’ linguistic, cultural and social capital in order to enhance their range of possibilities in their lifeworlds.
Maureen Kendrick is a Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. Her research examines literacy and multimodality as integrated communicative practices, and addresses a range of social and cultural issues in diverse contexts. She has a particular interest in visual communication. Dr. Kendrick has authored and co authored numerous journal articles and book chapters on communicative practices in various geographic locations, including a focus on marginalized populations in East Africa and Canada. She has also authored books on literacy, multimodality and play, and has co-edited volumes on youth literacies, and family and community literacies.
Dr. Ryuko Kubota
We are Not Racist, But Racism Persists: Race and Teacher Education
We typically understand racism as interpersonal bigotry and indignity. However, racism is not only about individual disgrace; it involves structural and conceptual inequalities and intersects with other social categories. This presentation will examine racism at three interrelated levels: individual, institutional, and epistemological. Acts of individual racism are not only overt but also manifested as unintentional microaggressions. At the institutional level, the number of teachers, administrators, and teacher educators of color is much smaller compared to the minority student population in schools. This inequality perpetuates the structural dominance of whiteness. It also reinforces epistemological racism, which privileges whiteness in our knowledge system. We need to question whose perspectives and traditions (e.g., white, indigenous, Asian, black) are presented in school textbooks and instructions. Racism also intersects with language, gender, class, sexuality, and so on, making our perceptions and experiences complex and contextual. Antiracist educators should also decolonize the privilege of all settlers.
Ryuko Kubota is a Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education in the Faculty of Education at University of British Columbia, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on applied linguistics and teacher education in English as an additional language and modern languages. Her research draws on critical approaches to applied linguistics and second language education, focusing on race, culture, and language ideology. She is a coeditor of Race, culture, and identities in second language education: Exploring critically engaged practice (Routledge 2009) and Demystifying career paths after graduate school: A guide for second language professionals in higher education (Information Age Publishing 2012).
Dr. Guofang Li
Voice of Transnational Astronaut Families and Youths: Implications for Mainstream Teachers
Canada has witnessed in recent years drastic increases in astronaut families among Chinese newcomers with one parent (mostly fathers) being absent from working outside Canada, and the other residing in Canada to care for their children and ensure their school success. This transnational arrangement has resulted in intensification of parenting at home and different communication and negotiating patterns with mainstream schools. Based on 30 interviews with 15 pairs of Chinese parents and their adolescent children who are such transnational families, this presentation describes the parents and youths intense outside of school strategies (such as tutoring and extracurricular activities) as well as strategic negotiation with schools around language learning support. The presentation will conclude with important implications for teaching and working this unique group of parents and students in the context of transnationalism.
Dr. Guofang Li is a Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Transnational/Global Perspectives of Language and Literacy Education of Children and Youth in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, Canada. Her program of research aims to improve the life success of immigrant and minority students by addressing the cultural, linguistic, instructional, and structural barriers in their literacy learning and academic achievement both in school and at home.
Dr. Danièle Moore
Connecting educators, families and communities through PASTEL (Plurilingualism, Art, Science, Technology and Literacies) approaches in and around French immersion
This contribution explores how plurilingual pedagogies, and more specifically PASTEL approaches (Plurilingualism, Art, Science, Technology and Literacies) can foster connections between educators, families and communities, and benefit children’s learning in our increasingly complex classrooms (Moore, 2018). Plurilingual pedagogies encourage to “soften the boundaries between languages” (Gorter & Cenoz, 2017, p. 238), and promote an asset-oriented perspective in terms of the plurality of the experiences, skills, and competencies that learners possess. They focus on the linkages across languages and cultural experiences and support the idea that learners’ multiple linguistic resources and knowledge should be used to nurture learning. Using examples from case studies with young learners and practitioners engaged in reflective inquiries and research action in various educative environments, I will highlight how educators engage with rich linguistic resources present in and beyond multicultural and multilingual classrooms, children’s imagination, and “funds of knowledge in the home” (Nteliogliou et al., 2014, np), as vital resources for learning, notably in and around French immersion (Moore, Hoskyn & Mayo, 2018; Moore & Sabatier, 2014). The contribution should trigger a discussion on the importance of Plurilingual Education in pre- and in-service teacher training to foster learning bridges across languages, literacies, and the disciplines, and facilitate families’ engagement to create new and transformative learning spaces for all learners (Castellotti & Moore, 2010; Piccardo & Puozzo Capron, 2015).
Danièle Moore is a University Professor in Educational Sociolinguistics at the Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and a Research Director at the Sorbonne University, France. Her research interests include issues related to language policies, plurilingualism and Plurilingual education, and teacher training in multicultural contexts. She is a past co-Editor of the bilingual journal The Canadian Modern Language Review, and has co-authored several Reference Studies for the Council of Europe on plurilingualism and Plurilingual and intercutural education. She is currently a TaC (Training and Consultant) for FREPA/CARAP (Framework of Reference for Pluralistic Approaches to Languages and Cultures), Council of Europe/CELV.
Dr. Manka Varghese
Race, language, and neoliberalism in dual language teacher preparation
In this presentation, I describe the evolution and goals of a new program to prepare dual language educators at University of Washington’s College of Education entitled Project BECa (Bilingual Educator Capacity), which is part of the regular Elementary Teacher Education program and how it has been implemented programmatically and from the perspectives of faculty and teachers.
BECa in many ways reflects two competing raciolinguistic deologies related to dual language education (and education more generally) which have been at play in Washington and nationally in the United States and have been well-documented in the literature: one that is centered in white settler colonialism with a focus on the neoliberal idea that DL is a benefit to all students (including White, middle class students) and erases the race radical vision of bilingual education, and another that equates DL programs with advancing the rights of immigrant communities and students of color.
These competing ideologies are present in how it was collaboratively initially designed by an institute of higher education (IHE) with its local school district leadership and an immigrant rights organization as well as how it has played out for faculty and teachers in the program. The transformative affordances include how the different dimensions of BECa – including its mainly Latinx teacher candidates and its focus on multilingualism – have shaped not only these candidates’ beliefs and classroom practices but also the other teacher candidates in the regular program. The challenges include the limits in the program and their field placements on criticality, multilingualism and hybrid linguistic practices.
Manka Varghese is an associate professor at the University of Washington’s College of Education. She teaches and conducts research on the interaction between identity formation and multilingual learning and teaching and draws on critical perspectives, especially around the intersections of race and language. In doing so, she puts forward an understanding of the historical and current terrain of multilingual youth as complex and rooted in racial, linguistic and other forms of inequity but with an eye to the possibilities of transformation. She has most recently co-edited a volume and a special issue on Language Teacher Agency and co-authored articles in various journals on teacher identity, race, and language teaching.
Lisa K. Taylor
Unsettling and Decolonizing notions of inclusion, diversity, community, and the historical present: Reframing the task of education with diverse settler preservice students
Fifty years after the 1969 White Paper, and 4 years after the TRC final report and Calls to Action, we as teacher educators in Canada are engaged in the profound work of decolonizing a series of notions and frameworks underpinning our work, our institutional cultures and student expectations. In this paper, I trace the discursive, epistemic, and ontological distinctions between diversity, super-diversity (Vertovec, 2007), and the coloniality of power (Quijano, 1997), and extrapolate the implications for educational agendas of inclusion, transformation, and critically reflexive “inheriting” (the latter referring to teachers’ self-situation as members of trans-generational communities within the colonial historical present). This involves mobilizing educational traditions of social justice, historical memory, and settler colonial studies (Dei & Kempf, 2006; DiAngelo, 2011; Simon, 2013; Battell Lowman & Barker, 2015; Regan, 2010) in conversation with Indigenous knowledge (Dion, 2009; Donald, 2009; Tuck & Yang, 2012; Younging et.al., 2010). I extrapolate the implications of these reframings for teacher education with examples of pedagogies of difficult knowledge (Britzman, 1998, 2013) and colonial biography (Freeman, 2018; Haig-Brown, 2012), and speculate on the ways these can transform the lived relationships and work of new teachers entering a changing field of practice.
Lisa K. Taylor is full professor in the School of Education, Bishop’s University, Quebec. Her teaching explores pedagogical models of social justice education addressing conditions emerging from colonization, globalization and transnational flows, including multiliteracies, postcolonial TESOL, and transnational feminist literary criticism. Grounded in psychoanalytic and post-reconceptualization curriculum theorizing, her research explores the ethical, psychic and pedagogical dynamics of pedagogies of historical memory (Roger I. Simon) that mobilize affective and aesthetic engagement in building an activated public sphere. Current projects include decolonizing teacher education through pedagogies of witnessing in dialogue with Indigenous educational frameworks of story and relationality. She is co-editor with Jasmin Zine of Muslim Women, Transnational Feminism and the Ethics of Pedagogy (2014, Routledge).
Susan Dion
“We Made our Own Little Spot in the Corner of the Library”: Teaching and Learning from the Voices of Indigenous Students Surviving, Resisting and Transforming Schools
While the alienation and marginalization of Indigenous students from institutions of formal schooling is well documented there is a growing body of literature that describes how alternative programs designed specifically for Indigenous youth are achieving success. In this paper, I focus on learning from the voices of Indigenous youth who attend publicly funded schools. These youth eloquently articulate their understanding of what they need and want from teachers and school systems. I argue that those of us interested in decolonizing and Indigenizing systems of education ought to be paying much closer attention to students who are not only surviving secondary school but also working from the inside to create change.
Susan Dion is a Potawatomi Lenapé scholar who has been working in the field of education for more than thirty years. She is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University and Director of the Master of Education Urban Indigenous Cohort. Her research focuses on Indigenizing, Decolonizing and Realizing Indigenous Education, Urban Indigenous Education, and methods of developing respectful relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Her participation will generate significant implications for the practices of teachers working with indigenous students. Her presentation will also raise potential directions for researching the traditionally marginalized and disempowered student groups. Therefore, her work will make an important contribution to the theme on Race, Reconciliation, and Indigenous Teacher Education.