Mehtap Acar's Abstracts
Mehtap Acar
Second Language Acquisition and Teaching
Ph.D. Student
Conference Summary
The International Society for Language Studies Conference 2017
Honolulu, Hawaii
Abstract
Title: Critical Peace Consciousness through Critically Contextualized Foreign Language Education
Abstract: “Power and politics, sexuality, spiritual and religious faith, the impact of media and the content of popular culture, war and violence, race and cultural difference are only some of the salient topics to the direction and quality of young people's lives, yet the sterility of the learning space today seems to exclude most of these things” (Shapiro, 2015, p.13). As such, the hidden curricula based on the dominancy of socially, politically and economically privileged elites' ideologies or doctrines invigorated through education cause students to remain as objects, i.e. the passive mediators and users of the dominant discourse. Critical pedagogy for peace education aims to enable students to become aware of the multiple frameworks that shape their world, and through the process of learning about the world, they begin to exercise the agency with which they can attempt to change the world (Munroe, 2012). At this point, Bajaj (2008), influenced by Freire, mention s a transformative practice by stating that “[f]or critical peace educators, locally relevant curricula around human rights and justice issues must be developed with the aim of simultaneously cultivating participants' analyses of structural inequalities and a sense of agency in acting to address these issues” (p.141). When these ideas are applied to foreign language education (FLE), which is a site full of opportunities for learners to enact agency and construct their own voice through the contextualized target language, critical pedagogy for peace education should find its way into this field to raise learners' awareness of human rights and justice issues so as to help them become agents of peace. However, the current FLE literature seems to remain weak regarding this strong perspective, despite an increasing number of foreign language learners in every corner of the world. In this presentation, the speaker will elaborate on how to merge critical pedagogy and peace education in FLE at collegiate level. The first half of the presentation will be allocated to discussion of the theoretical framework, which is based on the principles of Freirean transformative praxis -‐ “the encounter between human beings mediated by the world, in order to name the world” (Freire, 1972, p.61), and the Bakhtinian dialogic approach, one aspect of which is one's interaction with his/her environment in many different forms such as a person, a text, or an imagined audience (Pavlenko, 2007). The second half of the talk will be on the possible pedagogical implications of this framework at collegiate level foreign language classrooms that can serve to increase critical peace consciousness through transformation and dialogue formation. The pedagogical practices that will be brought forward in FLE context would also empower foreign language learners to become historically , socially, politically, and culturally present in the language they learn and thus enacting agency in promoting peace.
Summary: The focus of this presentation is on how to merge critical pedagogy and peace education in foreign language education (FLE) at collegiate level. Based on Freirean transformative praxis and Bakhtinian dialogic approach, pedagogical implications in FLE context that can increase students' critical peace consciousness will be shared with the participants.
Lay Abstract
ISLS Conference 2017
Lay Abstract:
“Power and politics, sexuality, spiritual and religious faith, the impact of media and the content of popular culture, war and violence, race and cultural difference are only some of the salient topics to the direction and quality of young people's lives, yet the sterility of the learning space today seems to exclude most of these things” (Shapiro, 2015, p.13). As such, any curriculum based on the dominancy of socially, politically and economically privileged elites' ideologies or doctrines explicitly or implicitly causes students to remain as objects, i.e. the passive mediators and users of these dominant powers. Critical pedagogy for peace education aims to enable students to become aware of this dominancy that shapes their world, and through the process of learning about the world, they begin to exercise the agency with which they can attempt to change the world (Munroe, 2012). At this point, Bajaj (2008), influenced by Freire, mentions a transformative practice by stating that “[f]or critical peace educators, locally relevant curricula around human rights and justice issues must be developed with the aim of simultaneously cultivating participants' analyses of structural inequalities and a sense of agency in acting to address these issues” (p.141). Foreign language education (FLE) is a site full of opportunities for learners to enact agency and construct their own voice through the language they learn. Therefore, critical pedagogy for peace education and FLE intersects. Such an intersection can help raise language learners' awareness of human rights and justice issues. As a result, they can become agents of peace. However, the current FLE literature seems to remain weak regarding this strong perspective, despite an increasing number of foreign language learners in every corner of the world. In this presentation, the speaker will elaborate on how to merge critical pedagogy for peace education and FLE at collegiate level. While the first half of the presentation will be allocated to discussion of the theoretical framework, which is based on the principles of Freirean transformative praxis - “the encounter between human beings mediated by the world, in order to name the world” (Freire, 1972, p.61), the second half of the talk will be on the possible pedagogical implications of this framework at collegiate level foreign language classrooms that can serve to increase critical peace consciousness through transformation and dialogue formation. The pedagogical practices that will be brought forward in FLE context would also empower foreign language learners to become historically, socially, politically, and culturally present in the language they learn and thus enacting agency in promoting peace.