Network
NW 31 Language and Education
Title
Decolonising Language Education
Abstract
Language education has evolved within systems and structures shaped by historical power relations. In some settings, these arrangements shape the recognition of learners’ diverse linguistic repertoires and ways of being and knowing – including heritage, regional/minoritised, community and migration-related languages, and Signed languages (García & Li, 2014; Canagarajah, 2013). As classrooms across Europe and beyond become more multilingual, it is timely to reconsider how languages are taught, learned, assessed, and valued. Here, decolonising refers to attending to coloniality in contemporary practice – broadening legitimacy, re-working criteria and materials, and sharing epistemic authority, while remaining distinct from political projects of decolonisation (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018).
The Call
We invite contributions that document, theorise, and design approaches oriented toward equitable participation and ambitious learning in language education. We welcome work that considers how we might decolonise teaching, research, and engagement with publics: from learners’ access to languages and tools of expression to the power relations that shape classroom and institutional life; from the histories told about languages and literatures to the authorships, varieties, and styles learners encounter.
We especially welcome papers that:
- trace how standards, curricula, materials, and assessments have taken shape, and how alternatives are being developed;
- attend to pedagogies that make space for plurilingual, multimodal, heritage, regional/minoritised, community, migration-related, and Signed practices as resources for learning;
- document teacher learning, school–community partnerships, and forms of co-authoring that redistribute expertise;
- consider how inherited norms and power relations are navigated in everyday practice and policy enactment;
- reflect on methods and ethics (e.g., participatory, design-based) that foreground reciprocity and accountability;
- explore how digital and AI tools may either reproduce colonial biases in curricula and assessment or expand learners’ repertoires and access.
We recognise the necessary trade-offs involved – for example, between coverage of influential canons and the inclusion of neglected voices; between securing access to dominant registers and legitimising heritage and community languages; between comparability in assessment and recognition of plurilingual achievement; between exposure to difference and the need for resonance so that learners see their lives and languages reflected.
We aim to foster an interdisciplinary conversation that is academically grounded and practically useful within Europe and beyond. Empirical, conceptual, and classroom-based contributions are welcome.
Contact Person(s)
jenni.alisaari(at)uef.fi
jonas.iversen(at)inn.no
nasharilnazrin.ramli(at)manchester.ac.uk
References
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. Routledge.
García, O., & Li, W. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Palgrave.
Mignolo, W. D., & Walsh, C. E. (2018). On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis. Duke University Press.