ABSTRACT
This book seeks to address the social context of language, language teaching and language learning in the United States. Its emphasis is on what pre- and in-service teachers of world languages in this country ought to know and understand about language, language attitudes, language practices, language rights, language policy, and so on. We are committed to advocating not simply for the teaching and learning of foreign languages in our society, but also for critical perspectives and approaches in the teaching of such languages. We hope that World Language Education as Critical Pedagogy: The Promise of Social Justice will encourage world language educators to broaden their conception of our discipline, and to do so in ways that will make language study both more relevant for students and more critical with respect to its value in the development of the “educated person” in a democratic society. At its heart, this book is about assisting educators to develop critical perspectives on the teaching and learning of languages – critical perspectives that will, in turn, impact both the ways in which they teach world languages and the content that they use in doing so. Even more, though, it is intended to present pre- and in-service world language educators with a set of arguments about what it is, fundamentally, that we are and should be attempting to accomplish in the world language classroom. Our classrooms are certainly places in which students should begin the process of learning the target language and gaining some degree of familiarity with the cultures of the people who speak that language, but as is true with all subjects and content matter, we seek to achieve far more than this. We want our students to become critical and reflective learners, both about the specific subject matter that they are studying (in our case, the target language) and more generally. World Language Education as Critical Pedagogy: The Promise of Social Justice is divided into three units, each organized around a central theme: knowing language, learning language, and teaching language.
