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BC TEAL is proud to present our 2025 Annual Conference: Disruptive Educational Practices: Strategies for Transformation.

Educators shine in times of change to face unexpected challenges. This is when creativity flourishes by combining proven practices with fresh and innovative ideas. These times call for transformation which can be rooted in tradition or experience, or it can arise through unexplored approaches. The synthesis of old and new ideas drives meaningful progress. Join other insightful and creative educators as we flourish within the power of our community.
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Critical and decolonizing approaches to TEAL: What do we know?
Friday May 2, 2025 8:30am - 9:15am PDT
TBA
In Canada, equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization (EDID) remain a top priority. This is evidenced by various projects and initiatives that have developed in recent years, such as student equity and diversity census initiatives at leading universities (e.g., McGill University, 2024; University of British Columbia, 2023) as well as the federal government’s official EDID action plans (Canadian Research Chairs, 2022). Yet, EDID policies and related initiatives rarely address linguistic diversity among student populations, even though linguistic differences often intersect with EAL speakers’ experiences of racialization in English-speaking contexts (e.g., Flores & Rosa, 2015; Ramjattan, 2022). At the same time, recent scholarship has underscored the tensions between instructors’ asset-based beliefs about multilingualism and pedagogical practices which reinforce monolingualism (e.g., Burner & Carlsen, 2023; Shin & Sterzuk, 2019). Thus, more work is required to attend to linguistic differences as part of the work of EDID in EAL classrooms.


In response to these ongoing tensions between EDID efforts and EAL teaching practices, this presentation addresses the following question: from an EDID perspective, which theories and corresponding pedagogical approaches can inform current teaching practices involving multilingual students studying English as an additional language? To answer this question, this presentation first reviews key theoretical concepts that have shaped current scholarly conversations around critical and decolonizing pedagogies for multilingual students learning additional languages. Following this, a select number of theoretical and empirical texts are discussed to illustrate how critical and decolonial pedagogical approaches may be operationalized in classroom settings. To conclude, potential challenges and limitations of carrying out critical and decolonizing pedagogical approaches will be examined. While this presentation focuses on postsecondary settings, the takeaways of this talk will apply to anyone teaching EAL students.
Speakers
avatar for Alex Ross

Alex Ross

Doctoral student, University of British Columbia
Alex Ross (she/her) is a PhD student in TESL at the University of British Columbia. She has over a decade of experience teaching English as an additional language in South Korea, Mexico and Central and Western Canada.  Her research interests include the teaching and assessment of... Read More →
Friday May 2, 2025 8:30am - 9:15am PDT
TBA
  Equity Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), Equity Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)

Attendees (3)


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