Shifting Realities
Engaging with Critical Teacher Learning in a Canadian Context: Social Class, Systems of Oppression, and English Language Education
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Karla Ferreira Da Costa
Teachers, as co-designers of learning experiences, are always making decisions in educational contexts that require ongoing inquiry, reflection and learning. In a society that is becoming increasingly segregated by socioeconomic factors, research has shown there is a need for a critical lens in teaching and research to better understand the inequities created by social class and its interseccionalities. This project created a space for professional teacher learning and collaborative critical inquiry into notions of social class, privilege, power and agency in language and literacy classrooms in the diverse Manitoba urban context. During a series of three online meetings, participants explored, through readings, discussion, and critical inquiry, what impeded or enabled educational efforts to address inequities in language and literacy education in the K-12 Manitoba school system. This work is informed by theories that highlight power and inequalities in language and literacy education and research, drawing upon critical literacies, decolonial theories and Bourdieu's perspectives. Considering that English language teachers are implicated in systems of authority and knowledge informed by colonial understandings, this study advocates for continuous professional learning that critically explores positionalities, identities, places, and literacies that perform and are performed in dynamic relations of power.
The Impact of Neoliberalism, COVID-19 and the Shift to the Technological Epoch on the Decolonisation of the University Curriculum View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Oscar Koopman
South Africa's capitalist neoliberal agenda for higher education, where the focus is on the shift from a knowledge economy to a digital economy, will choke the life of indigenous knowledge out of the university curriculum. The paper first discusses the impact of the core neoliberal ideals on the university curriculum. Second, drawing on the work of Martin Heidegger and his anticipation of the spirit of the time in the technological epoch, the paper shows how humans in this era will be viewed as a heap of fungible raw materials, resources, or standing reserve awaiting optimisation. The focus in this epoch is on minimising expense and maximising profit. To do so requires greater control over people to create a disciplined society to optimise them as resources. Furthermore, in the technological age, knowledge is subject to the claims of the market, where the focus is exclusively on the knowledge that has a legitimate value in and impact on the technological epoch. From this perspective, the paper argues that Western knowledge takes centre stage, and in the process, little room is left for the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in the university curricula. The paper conclude by showing how the medical responses from government during the COVID-19 pandemic dismissed and disregarded the voices and efforts of indigenous healers in the fight against the pandemic. All these developments illustrate the government's power to impose its neoliberal agenda on the university that are ultimately to the detriment of indigenous knowledge.
Agency, Diversity and (Trans)Formative Practices in Initial Teacher Education: Insights from an Online Learning Experience
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jailine Farias
This work explores a mini-course experience that culminated in the development of digital learning modules, online artifacts designed collaboratively using the e-learning platform Scholar. Drawing on data generated during our doctoral research (FARIAS, 2022), this case study aims to discuss the importance of creating production-centered professional learning opportunities for pre-service and in-service language teachers to engage with the affordances of the digital (MONTE MÓR, 2019; COPE; KALANTZIS, 2017; KNOBEL; KALMAN, 2016; ERSTAD, 2016) as active and critical meaning makers. Thus, after briefly reporting the stages of the course and development of the artifacts designed by a group of Brazilian pre-service language teachers, we bring their reflections about the experience, focusing on aspects such as agency, diversity, and their professional development process. The work concludes with a reflection on the contributions of the experience for their formative process and the affordances of the digital for fostering agency in language teacher education programs.
