Call for Papers, Special Issue of TESL Canada Journal

TESL CANADA JOURNAL
Call for Papers, Special Issue of TESL Canada Journal Guest editors:
Jeff Bale & Shakina Rajendram, OISE, University of Toronto

Preparing Teachers to Support Multilingual Learners and Counter Raciolinguistic Ideologies in Teacher Education

Preparing future K-12 teachers to support multilingual learners is gaining greater attention in Canadian teacher education. Many Canadian programs include, and often require, coursework or other curricular experiences about cultural and linguistic diversity. Focused attention on multilingualism in teacher education in Canada is long overdue, but can be understood in part as a response to further growth in linguistic diversity among Canadian school students. In 2022, 4.6 million people were reported to speak a language other than English or French at home, and at least one in four Canadians reported having a first language other than English or French (Major, 2022). These statistics point to the increasing number of students in Canadian schools with diverse home languages and knowledge of multiple languages, and the importance of preparing future teachers who can help students expand proficiency in all their languages while adding English and/or French. However, supporting diverse learners in this way is still a challenge for many current teachers, while many teacher candidates are not provided the opportunities to learn how to teach in language-expansive ways (e.g., Campbell, 2016; Faez, 2012; Kerekes et al., 2021; Webster & Valeo, 2011). Moreover, research on teacher-candidate learning suggests how deeply embedded raciolinguistic ideologies (Rosa & Flores, 2017) are in teacher education institutions and society more broadly (Bale et al., 2023). Yet, conversations on how race and language shape teacher education and teacher candidate learning remain largely absent from the scholarship on supporting multilingual learners in Canadian teacher education.

As such, this special issue has two important goals: (1) to encourage and provide a venue for additional scholarship on centering multilingualism in teacher education; and (2) to challenge siloed ways of thinking about language, race/racism, and teacher education. This special issue is particularly interested in teacher education scholarship informed by the proposition that teacher- candidate learning about multilingualism cannot be studied separately from candidates’ own lived experiences with language and race, and the linguistic and racial diversity of the students they are preparing to work with. We welcome research that addresses the relationship between language, race/racism and teacher education in multiple domains (e.g., preparing future ESL teachers; preparing future mainstream teachers to work with multilingual learners, in both English- and French-medium school; preparing future teachers to support Indigenous multilingualisms) and from Canadian and international perspectives. We invite submissions to this Special Issue on topics such as (but not limited to):

• ●  preparation of future teachers to support multilingual learners

• ●  countering raciolinguistic ideologies in the preparing of teachers to work with

  multilingual learners

• ●  navigating the relationship between race/racism and language when working with multilingual learners

• ●  teacher educators/teacher candidates’ beliefs and practices pertaining to multilingual learner support

• ●  relationship between teacher educators’/teacher candidates’ racial and linguistic identities and their approach to supporting multilingual learners

• ●  pedagogical activities that support teacher candidates in challenging racialized conceptions of multilingual learners

• ●  preparing teacher candidates to support diverse learners through translanguaging and plurilingual pedagogies

  We welcome proposals for inclusion in any of these three categories: “Full-Length Research Articles,” “Perspectives,” and “In the Classroom.” Please indicate the category in your submission. Refer to the TESL Canada Journal author guidelines for more information: https://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/about/submissions

  Interested authors are invited to submit a 400-word abstract (including references) to teslcanadajournal@tesl.ca by January 8th, 2024. Notice of abstract acceptance will be emailed in January. Full manuscripts are due May 3rd, 2024 and will be subject to a double-blind review process. The special issue will be published in Fall 2024. If you have any questions or queries about this special issue, please contact Shakina Rajendram at shakina.rajendram@utoronto.ca.

  References

  Bale, J., Rajendram, S., Brubacher, K., Nii Owoo, M. A., Burton, J., Wong, W., Zhang, Y., Larson, E. J., Gagné, A., & Kerekes, J. (2023). Centering multilingual learners and countering raciolinguistic ideologies in teacher education: Principles, policies and practices. Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781800414150

  Campbell, C., Osmond-Johnson, P., Faubert, B., Zeichner, K., Hobbs-Johnson, A., Brown, S., DaCosta, P., Hales, A., Kuehn, L., Sohn, J., & Steffensen, K. (2016). Executive summary: The state of educators’ professional learning in Canada. Learning Forward. https://learningforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/state-of-educators-professional- learning-in-canada-executive-summary.pdf

  Faez, F. (2012). Diverse teachers for diverse students: Internationally educated and Canadian-born teachers' preparedness to teach English Language Learners. Canadian Journal of Education, 35(3), 64-84. https://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje- rce/article/view/967

  Kerekes, J., Rajendram, S., Adjetey-Nii Owoo, M., Zhang, Y. (2021). Teachers’ takes on supporting multilingual learners in K-12 classrooms in Ontario. TESL Canada, 38(1), 1- 27. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v38i1.1365

Major, D. (2022, August 17). Record number of Canadians reporting first language other than French or English: StatsCan. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/2021-canada- language-census-data-1.6553477

Rosa, J., & Flores, N. (2017). Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society, 46(5), 621-647. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404517000562

Webster, N., & Valeo, A. (2011). Teacher preparedness for a changing demographic of language learners. TESL Canada Journal, 28(2), 105. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v28i2.1075