Confronting Racism in Language Teaching: How Understanding Positionality Impacts the Decolonization of the Language Classroom

• In Event: Preparing Antiracist ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Professionals: Creating Racially Just Educational Spaces for Multilingual Learners

Abstract

Language classrooms are sites that offer teachers the opportunity to either (a) perpetuate colonial practices and maintain racist approaches to language teaching and learning in all its possible manifestations as noted by Kendi (2019) (i.e., gender, sexual orientation, religion, language, class, and so forth), or (b) resist and challenge them (Austin, 2019; García, 2019; Macedo, 2019). This session focuses on what can be done to prepare language teachers to address the latter. This work highlights the need to start with creating the space for mindfully coming to terms with one’s own positionality, as defined by England (2014) and Qin (2016). With the goals of understanding and articulating one’s positionality as a central tenant, an argument is made for the purposeful preparation and empowerment of language teachers to courageously adopt an ideological and political stance to resist the dominant hegemony of Western practices in language teaching.

Following the disclosure of her own positionality (minoritized first-generation scholar of diverse background in visible and invisible ways) as well as her potential biases, the author briefly recounts her own personal journey of professional transformation. In doing so, she discusses what auto-decolonization or the decolonization of the mind, what it entails, and why it matters (Lopez, 2020). Using a narrative approach with elements of storytelling in her effort to resist Western epistemological practices, evidence from her own work with English language teacher candidates is shared, accounting for the critically important role that positionality plays in preparing language teachers to courageously confront racism in the language teacher preparation classroom. Details regarding practices employed in this language teacher preparation are offered that motivated pre-service and in-service teachers to embrace and advance an antiracist agenda in their own language classes with a focused and creative plan of action.

An argument is proposed for the need to engage language teachers in the journey of articulating their positionality while coming to terms with their privileges relative to their various communities of practice. Using examples from her own praxis, the presenter shows the importance of adopting a caring and self-reflective approach, built on and supported by the principles of community embraced at her own institution: inclusion, integrity, respect, service, and social justice. By the end of the session, an assertion that supports the need to engage in the articulation of one’s own positionality as the first step to trigger the process of decolonization of the self to then engage in the decolonization of others and that of our communities of practice will be submitted. The talk will conclude with an acknowledgement of the potential limitations that may likely exist in contexts where social oppression and academic freedom prevail.

Author

• Fabiola P. Ehlers-Zavala, Colorado State University