Description
This presentation is a critical reflection on the potential applicability of agential models of language teaching to emergent conditions of academic work in Australia. Languages and cultures educators are often called upon to defend our pedagogical programs in terms of neoliberal and instrumentalist demands. Simultaneously, we recognise that some established patterns of language education in this country further entrench inequality and reinforce perceptions of foreign language learning as elitist. While becoming strategic negotiators of these forces, it is important to articulate our teacher agency beyond reactive adaptation, to reemphasise the power of education to advance social justice. Indeed, as Pantić’s model for justice-oriented teacher agency outlines, the development of skills in justification and adaptation in relation to constraint contributes to the capacity to locate opportunities and spaces of transformation of and resistance to structures that contribute to disadvantage and further entrenchment of existing inequalities. Thus, the intersection between critical pedagogy and institutional/contextual constraint becomes a nexus for university educators to exercise their dexterity and sustain critical reflection on language ideologies and the multiple contingent contexts of student experience. This can help support our sense of efficacy and investment in our profession, while creating more inclusive educational practices. This brings together the greatest challenges and greatest rewards of university teaching: navigating our personal, institutional, and wider social constraints in ways that actively facilitate students’ development of their own agency in their educational and life projects and their understanding of education as a space with the potential for transformative change.| Period | 28 Nov 2022 |
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| Event title | Languages and Cultures Network for Australian Universities Seventh Biennial Colloquium: Looking Back, Moving Forward |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Melbourne, Australia, VictoriaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |