{"title":"Decolonial and antiracist teacher education practice: Challenges and alternatives","authors":"Ryuko Kubota, Suhanthie Motha","doi":"10.1111/modl.13015","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Decolonial and antiracist perspectives offer critical and humanizing approaches to supporting justice‐affirming language teacher education. In this commentary, we provide a conceptual grounding for decolonial and antiracist pedagogies as constitutive of justice‐affirming language education. These pedagogical approaches encourage students, teachers, and teacher educators to question normalized assumptions that reinforce inequality among groups of people from diverse backgrounds, perpetuate colonial oppression of Indigenous peoples, and undermine our relationality and respect for land and environment. While decolonial and antiracist approaches envision the construction of more just societies and human relations, some caveats need to be addressed and overcome. These include the tendency to conflate decoloniality with social justice, which leads to neglecting the ongoing colonial oppression experienced by Indigenous people; scholars’ complicity with the neoliberal pressure and competition that exacerbate the theory–practice gap; the misconception that North American justice discourse is universal; and injudicious participation in cancel culture as an exclusive approach to promoting a social justice agenda. We advocate for more open, contextual, and restorative practice by centering the intertwined synergy of teacher identity and critical reflexivity in teacher education and, simultaneously, demanding that our institutions take equal responsibility for transformation.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.13015","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Decolonial and antiracist perspectives offer critical and humanizing approaches to supporting justice‐affirming language teacher education. In this commentary, we provide a conceptual grounding for decolonial and antiracist pedagogies as constitutive of justice‐affirming language education. These pedagogical approaches encourage students, teachers, and teacher educators to question normalized assumptions that reinforce inequality among groups of people from diverse backgrounds, perpetuate colonial oppression of Indigenous peoples, and undermine our relationality and respect for land and environment. While decolonial and antiracist approaches envision the construction of more just societies and human relations, some caveats need to be addressed and overcome. These include the tendency to conflate decoloniality with social justice, which leads to neglecting the ongoing colonial oppression experienced by Indigenous people; scholars’ complicity with the neoliberal pressure and competition that exacerbate the theory–practice gap; the misconception that North American justice discourse is universal; and injudicious participation in cancel culture as an exclusive approach to promoting a social justice agenda. We advocate for more open, contextual, and restorative practice by centering the intertwined synergy of teacher identity and critical reflexivity in teacher education and, simultaneously, demanding that our institutions take equal responsibility for transformation.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association publishes articles on literature, literary theory, pedagogy, and the state of the profession written by M/MLA members. One issue each year is devoted to the informal theme of the recent convention and is guest-edited by the year"s M/MLA president. This issue presents a cluster of essays on a topic of broad interest to scholars of modern literatures and languages. The other issue invites the contributions of members on topics of their choosing and demonstrates the wide range of interests represented in the association. Each issue also includes book reviews written by members on recent scholarship.