UCL Talk Nov 2024

How do teachers promote advocacy through social justice English language education?"

Dario Luis Banegas

This talk

1. Genesis

2. Context

3. Key concepts

4. The study

5. Main take aways

"How can I do social justice in my teaching?" "I want to make my teaching a political act, but how can I sustain it?"

Context

Key concepts

- Social justice: inclusion, relevance, & democracy (Tikly & Barrett, 2011)- Advocacy: perception shifting, awareness (McKeever et al., 2023) - Teacher agency: do/not do (Priestley et al., 2015)

The study

Collaborative action research

2022 & 2023

Meetings, surveys, evidence of learning, classroom observations, teaching artifacts, lesson plans

Participants as co-creators of their teaching and learning experiences

Engagement with reflection to shift personal views

"I had to re-evaluate and recognise my own stereotypes and what I think the social reality is like around me. As I was searching for materials, I learnt a lot as a person. That got me thinking about me as a social actor, a social agent who, as a teacher, can have a more active role in society to attend to equity."(Oriana)

Change in teaching approaches

"This experience has been a before-after moment for me. I was used to grammar-based teaching, only focusing on written texts. But in order to respond to social justice, I changed the approach. I started giving the students tasks that would enable them to discuss local issues such as discrimination. And so, my approach became more communicative, but not about talking about the weather. It was primarily critical. It was about issues the students have been through, things we could all do in our daily lives to bring about change." (Marilina)

+ Info

Development of advocacy-oriented projects

- Different forms of discrimination.- Gender/sexuality discrimination. - Bullying at our school. - Ageism & grandparents. - Local heroes, local NGOs, local initiatives

"The students enjoyed it because they started to know more about their grandparents. It also made them appreciate and value them more. So, in a way, the task became an excuse for them to spend more time with them." (Mary Joe)

Teachers as advocates for social justice through situated pedagogical practices

Personal & professional interpellation (tension between relevance & democracy)

Teacher agency as a driving force and an organising device

3. Projective domain.4. Synergy & engagement.

1. Material & mental processes.
2. Iterational dimension of teacher agency.

Thanks

McKeever, B. W., McKeever, R., Choi, M., & Huang, S. (2023). From advocacy to activism: A multi-dimensional scale of communicative, collective, and combative behaviors. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 100(3), 569-594. https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990231161035 Medina, J. (2013). The epistemology of resistance: Gender and racial oppression, epistemic injustice, and the social imagination. Oxford University Press. Priestly, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: An ecological approach. Bloomsbury. Tikly, L., & Barrett, A. (2011). Social justice, capabilities and the quality of education in low income countries. International Journal of Educational Development, 31(1), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2010.06.001

References

• 5 state secondary schools
• 7 in-service teachers
• 5 pre-service teachers
• 220 secondary school students
• EFL: 2 hours a week, CLT-driven, translanguaging