Transforming and/or Reproducing? Church-Based ESL Pedagogy, Spirituality, Language, and Power

• In Event: 54.077 - Educating Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners: New Approaches to Achieving Educational Justice

Abstract

Grounded in critical pedagogy and the poststructuralist approach to language and literacy, this four-year ethnography examines the role of spirituality in church-based ESL pedagogy in a Southern U.S. city. The findings indicate that spirituality conceptualizes the position of learners and Christian instructors and the positioning affects and constructs ESL pedagogy that is unique, humanized, practical, and liberating. This paper discusses that spirituality is a form of power associated with other social categories such as language, race, and class. The ESL teaching in religious voluntary agencies is dynamic, complicated, and problematic. This study calls for critical awareness of social wrongs that could be essentialized, normalized, and reproduced in ELT.

Author

• Xia Chao, Duquesne University