Community-Based Approaches to Foreign Language Education

Abstract

Learning how to recognise and make student and community assets the subject of curriculum is at the core of teachers’ designs and enactments of critical and inclusive pedagogies. However, this era of globalisation and standardisation, where education is increasingly seen as a commodity that underscores economic competitiveness, has made space for local knowledge production, hard to find. Knowing how to incorporate community problems in school-based student-led inquiries, whilst meeting authorised learning outcomes, is also challenging. At the same time there are particular pressures on language teachers where states extol the benefits of English, or another foreign language literacy for global competitiveness. Yet, educational researchers and teacher educators know the potential power of working with students’ assets and motivations to enhance language and literacy learning in classrooms. Community based approaches to language education in various places in Latin America are explored in this issue with contributions from teacher-researchers, collaborative teams, teacher educators and university-based researchers.

The Language of Pushkin, the Language of Putin: Teaching Russian in the United States

“…The provision of a more accurate and complete picture of Russian history and culture in other subject areas (especially history and social studies, English and language arts, STEM disciplines, and the fine arts, among others), perhaps through integrated and multidisciplinary units of study, would be helpful in this regard (see Almazova et al, 2021;Osborn & Bratkovich, in press).  The development of meaningful and positive ties to local Russian-speaking communitiesalready called for as "Standard 5: Communities" in the National Standards for Foreign Language Education (see National Standards Collaborative Board, 2015) --might also be advantageous in encouraging students to undertake the study of Russian (see Comber, 2018;Overfield, 1997;Sharkey et al, 2016), as well as providing students already studying Russian with opportunities to use the language in real-world settings.  Within the Russian curriculum itself there are also a number of possible changes that might encourage students to continue their study of the language.…”

Language and Literacy Practices in Teacher Education: Contributions from a Local Agenda

“…The central aspects for language teacher education and research that we have learned through doing community-based pedagogies are related to (1) the practice-oriented focus of the field assignments for reflection, teaching, and research; (2) the generation of local knowledge for decision-making in curriculum and teaching; (3) the transformative nature of critical and inclusive pedagogies like CBP that teaches teachers to recognize and make student and community assets the subject of curriculum (Comber, 2018); (4) and finally, the agentive role that teachers and learners take using CBP to connect school and community.…”

Feasibility of Using Community-Based Learning in Thai EFL instruction

“…Jarvis and Atsilarat (2005) perceive the negligence of students' national and local knowledge and culture as causing an unsuccessful implementation of the paradigm shift in SLA. The issue on students' lived worlds or 'funds of knowledge' (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) then becomes a concern to several authorities (e.g., Baker, 2003;Comber, 2018;Sinlarat, 2005). Students' funds of knowledge can be understood as their prior knowledge mentioned in the SLA literature.…”