Why Social Justice Language Teacher Education?

There is currently an increase in focus, within the field of education worldwide, on globalization and particularly on its inherent movement of people across national and international borders. In response to this movement, educators are grappling with defining 'best practices' for teaching immigrant, migrant and refugee students. Simultaneously, many countries that are home to multiple indigenous language and cultural groups are attempting to broaden and unify the reach and scope of education, resulting in the provision of education in languages other than students' home languages. With increased visibility of language issues come increasing regional and national interests in setting policies and in ensuring accountability in educational outcomes for students who do not speak the dominant language of the communities in which they live. Thus there is a demand for teachers to know how to adequately support students to learn the language of instruction in schools, although there is little agreement in the educational literature on how best to do so. What is clear, however, is that virtually all teachers, regardless of geographic location or area of expertise, must be prepared to teach students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, whereas historically language teacher education was considered the domain of those preparing to be 'language' teachers.

The language teacher education literature primarily falls into two distinct categories: (1) scholars and educators who focus on issues of language, including grammar, function, structure and usage; and (2) those who focus on linguistically and culturally responsive pedagogies.