Embracing the Tension: English Educators Thinking Together About Language in Learning Communities

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Educators’ Language Ideologies, Beliefs, and Critical Language Awareness

Abstract

This paper demonstrates two researchers’ efforts to “move from justice as theory to justice as praxis” (Ladson-Billings, 2015) through the design of two studies that invited English educators at both the secondary and post-secondary levels to think together about language in an effort to further develop their own critical language awareness, increasing their understandings of the relationship between language, power, and ideology (Fairclough, 2001). It was our hope that the participating teachers’ ideologies might be challenged and broadened as a result of exploring linguistic theory and research and engaging in conversations with other teachers about language, ultimately impacting the ways that these educators responded to their students and initiated conversations about language and language use in their own English classes.

Authors

• Michelle Fowler-Amato, Old Dominion University

• Megan Weaver, Old Dominion University