EKIS3780 Teaching Languages for Social Justice (5 cr)

This course provides an accessible introduction to key concepts and theories of social justice education, i.e. education that aims to contribute to social equity and actively resists systems and practices of oppression, such as racism, sexism, classism, and ableism. Building on these foundations, it offers strategies for teaching languages with a social justice orientation. 

After this course, students will be able to:

• identify the tenets, goals, and main concepts of social justice approaches to (language) teaching and education.

• describe common social processes of oppression, especially those linked to race, dis/ability, gender, and class, and explain how they surface in educational contexts.

• name some key strategies of instructional design and implementation for teaching languages for social justice.

• critically read recent research in the area of social justice (language) education

• make connections between the theories and strategies presented in the literature and their own (future) teaching and teacher identities.

This course is organized as a book exam: Students will be provided with reading materials and take a written exam.

Chapters 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8 from the book Social Justice in the Language classroom by Deniz Ortaçtepe Hart and two of the below mentioned articles.

1. Peltola, M., & Phoenix, A. (2022). Doing Whiteness and Masculinities at School: Finnish 12-to 15-Year-Olds’ Narratives on Multiethnicity. In J. Hoegaerts, E. Peterson, T. Liimatainen & L. Hekanaho (eds). Finnishness, Whiteness and Coloniality. This article analyzes the narratives of white Finnish students on multiethnicity and masculinity and illustrates what white supremacy/normativity can mean in Finnish schools.
2. Mustonen, S. (2021). ‘I’ll always have black hair’–challenging raciolinguistic ideologies in Finnish schools. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 7(3), 159-168. This article describes the raciolinguistic ideologies (harmful beliefs about language and race) that two young male students from West Asia encountered in Finnish education and other contexts.
3. Ennser‐Kananen, J. (2020). A lesson in teaching English while White. TESOL Journal, 11(4), e558. This self-study describes the experiences of a white researcher-teacher, who was teaching English to racialized adults with refugee background and found herself perpetuating white supremacy/normativity.
4. Hummelstedt, I., Holm, G., Sahlström, F., & Zilliacus, H. (2021). ‘Refugees here and Finns there’–categorisations of race, nationality, and gender in a Finnish classroom. Intercultural Education, 32(2), 145-159. This article reports on discourses of race, nationality, and gender in a Finnish primary school (6th grade), describing how students interacted with each other and how teachers addressed and evaluated the situations.