Contemporary Foundations for Teaching English as an Additional Language

Pedagogical Approaches and Classroom Applications

Polina Vinogradova, Joan Kang Shin, Polina Vinogradova, Joan Kang Shin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000209396
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

This engaging volume on English as an Additional Language (EAL), argues persuasively for the importance of critical participatory pedagogies that embrace multilingualism and multimodality in the field of TESOL. It highlights the role of the TESOL profession in teaching for social justice and advocacy and explores how critical participatory pedagogies translate into English language teaching and teacher education around the world.

Bringing together diverse scholars in the field and practicing English language teachers, editors Polina Vinogradova and Joan Kang Shin present 10 thematically organized units that demonstrate that language teaching pedagogy must be embedded in the larger sociocultural contexts of teaching and learning to be successful. Each unit covers one pedagogical approach and includes three case studies to illustrate how English language teachers across the world implement these approaches in their classrooms. The chapters are supplemented by discussion questions and a range of practical sources for further exploration. Addressing established and emerging areas of TESOL, topics covered include:

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• Critical and postmethod pedagogies

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• Translingualism

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• Digital literacy and multiliteracies

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• Culturally responsive pedagogy

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• Advocacy

Featuring educators implementing innovative approaches in primary, secondary, and tertiary contexts across borders, Contemporary Foundations for Teaching English as an Additional Language is an ideal text for methods and foundational courses in TESOL and will appeal to in-service and preservice English language teachers as well as students and teacher educators in TESOL and applied linguistics.

UNIT 1
Introduction

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

Teaching English as an Additional Language in the 21st Century

Joan Kang Shin

FRAMING THE ISSUE

Here is what we know about communication in the 21st century. We live in a multilingual world. We live in a multimodal world. In this multilingual and multimodal landscape, English has emerged as the world’s lingua franca. English is a global language. It is linked closely to areas such as diplomacy, business, air traffic control, and tourism. The use of English in diverse contexts requires the ability to communicate and collaborate across borders. It is the language of science and technology, and it is the most widely used language on the World Wide Web. Using English requires the ability to interpret information critically from multimodal sources as well as produce and distribute messages utilizing an array of media and genres. With so much information and media being consumed and produced globally through English, the world’s lingua franca of the 21st century is inextricably tied to digital, information, and new media literacies.

Considering this global and multimodal use of English, we have had to change our mindset from the 20th-century representation of so-called “native speakers” of English coming from Kachru’s (1992) “inner circle” countries, like the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. This 20th-century construct may have been a necessary developmental turn. It helped many English language educators understand that English was being learned and used by millions of people around the world and why. Kachru constructed the “outer circle” with countries like India, Kenya, and Singapore, where English is an official second language, as well as the “expanding circle” with countries like Brazil, China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, where English is not commonly spoken but is being learned as a foreign language (Kachru, 1992). In this century, we can see how these distinctions of circles of English speakers are becoming less defined and perhaps less important for educators. The British Council (2013) predicted that there would be over 2 billion people using or learning English in classrooms around the world by 2020, and Crystal (2019) has estimated that the total number of English speakers in the world is just over 2.3 billion. With Crystal’s (2019) estimation of approximately 388 million native speakers of English—that is, from Kachru’s inner circle countries—it is widely accepted that there are many more learners and speakers of English as a second, third, or as we want to emphasize in this volume, an additional language. Therefore, to learn or use English does not necessarily require conforming to cultural or even linguistic norms of the inner circle countries, which have historically been presented through English language teaching materials as US or British. In the 21st century, speakers of English are not from a particular country or culture; instead, speakers of English represent many countries and cultures.

Understanding this new world of global English speakers is the first step toward a multilayered understanding of how challenging it is to be an English language teacher in the 21st century. First, if most speakers of English are learning it as an additional language, we must recognize that English learners are bi/multilingual and bring to the classroom diverse linguistic and cultural identities and varying perspectives on education and ways of knowing. Additionally, the contexts mentioned here, such as diplomacy, business, tourism, science, and technology, typically use English as the international language among people with diverse ways of communication. Now factor in our new ways of 21st-century multimodal communication that integrate digital, social, and collaborative technologies. Here is where we should consider more broadly how the field of education as a whole is trying to keep up with and meet the challenges of our complex world in the 21st century.

CONCEPTS AND THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

In the broader field of education, there has been a focus on building so-called 21st century skills since the turn of the century. Although these skills were not necessarily discovered in the 21st century or new to the field of education, the world in this century demands the mastery of these skills more urgently. According to Richard Riley, former U.S. Secretary of Education, “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist…using technologies that haven’t yet been invented…in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” (Trilling & Fadel, 2009, p. 3). Because of our rapidly changing world and the uncertainty of our future, we know that beyond learning new technological skills our next generation needs skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity to meet the demands of our ever-changing world.

Frameworks for 21st-Century Skills

One of the most widely recognized and used frameworks for understanding 21st-century skills comes from the Partnership for 21st-Century Learning (P21), which was previously referred to as Partnership for 21st-Century Skills. P21 has developed a “Framework for 21st-Century Learning,” described as “[a] unified vision for learning to ensure student success in a world where change is constant and learning never stops” (Battelle for Kids, 2019, p. 1). It recognizes that “all learners need educational experiences in school and beyond, from cradle to career, to build knowledge and skills for success in a globally and digitally interconnected world” (p. 2). Currently P21 is considered part of Battelle for Kids (www.battelleforkids.org), which is a national not-for-profit organization that creates networks of all schools systems and communities focused on bringing 21st-century learning to all students. Figure 1.1 shows P21’s framework for 21st-century learning.

Figure 1.1 P21 framework for 21st-century learning

Source: © Battelle for Kids. All Rights Reserved. www.battelleforkids.org

This framework shows the combination of knowledge and skills that educators should integrate into curriculum and instruction as well as standards and assessments. It includes mastery of key subjects, such as language arts, world languages, arts, mathematics, economics, science, geography, history, government, and civics, which are typical in K-12 curricula worldwide. Additionally, the P21 framework supports integration of interdisciplinary 21st-century themes that cut across all subject areas, such as global awareness; financial, economic, business, and entrepreneurial literacy; civic literacy; health literacy; and environmental literacy (Battelle for Kids, 2019).

These interdisciplinary 21st-century themes intersect with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs (www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment). These are 17 goals to transform our world. As educators, the SDGs are a useful framework for integrating the cross-cutting 21st-century themes. As the UN website states: “The Sustainable Development Goals are a call for action by all countries…to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. They recognize that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and address a range of social needs including education, health, social protection, and job opportunities, while tackling climate change and environmental protection.” Figure 1.2 shows the UN’s SDGs.

Figure 1.2 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Source: United Nations

The United Nations also established a holistic and transformational educational approach called Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). This approach integrates the SDGs into the curriculum while promoting “an action-oriented, transformative pedagogy, which supports self-directed learning, participation and collaboration, problem-orientation, inter- and transdisciplinarity and the linking of formal and informal learning” (UNESCO, 2017, p. 7). The intended goal for ESD is empowering learners to “take informed decisions and responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability and a just society for present and future generations” (p. 7).

Similarly, Trilling and Fadel (2009) emphasize that

[e]ducation’s big goal, preparing students to contribute to the world of work and civic life, has become one of our century’s biggest challenges. In fact, all the other great problems of our times—solving global warming, curing diseases, ending poverty, and the rest—don’t stand a chance without education preparing each citizen to play a part in helping to solve our collective problems.

(p. 40)

Students today need to be prepared for life and work in our dynamic, multimodal world that is rapidly changing and ever more complex day by day. According to the P21 framework, we should develop the following types of skills to meet the challenges of our complex 21st-century world:

Learning and Innovation Skills

• Creativity and Innovation
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Communication
• Collaboration

Information, Media, and Technology Skills

• Information Literacy
• Media Literacy
• ICT (Information, Communications, and Technology) Literacy

Life and Career Skills

• Flexibility and Adaptability
• Initiative and Self-Direction
• Social and Cross-Cultural Skills
• Productivity and Accountability
• Leadership and Responsibility

(Battelle for Kids, 2019, p. 2)

For some educators, technology is at the forefront of their goals for preparing students for their future. Therefore, many educators use another framework for 21stcentury skills focused on technology which comes from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). As ISTE (2020) describes: “Today’s students must be prepared to thrive in a constantly evolving technological landscape. The ISTE Standards for Students are designed to empower student voice and ensure that learning is a student-driven process.” The focus is on transformative learning with technology, and the standards are presented from the student perspective. Next are the components of the framework for the ISTE standards developed in 2016:

• Empowered Learner: Students leverage technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving and demonstrating competency in their learning goals, informed by the learning sciences.
• Digital Citizen: Students recognize the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of living, learning and working in an interconnected digital world, and they act and model in ways that are safe, legal and ethical.
• Knowledge Constructor: Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others.
• Innovative Designer: Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions.
• Computational Thinker: Students develop and employ strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions.
• Creative Communicator: Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Unit 1 Introduction
• Unit 2 Critical Pedagogies and TESOL
• Unit 3 Postmethod Pedagogy in ELT
• Unit 4 Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in ELT
• Unit 5 Translingualism in TESOL
• Unit 6 Multiliteracies in TESOL
• Unit 7 Collaborative Technologies and TESOL
• Unit 8 Digital Literacy and TESOL
• Unit 9 Advocacy and TESOL
• Unit 10 TESOL Teacher Education
• Index