English Plenary
Ann Lopez
University of Toronto
Transformative Pedagogies and Critical Praxis:
Exploring New Approaches to Multilingual Diversity in Canadian Schools
Canada is one of the most diverse countries in the world with an increasing immigrant population and language diversity which is reflected in schools. The Toronto District School Board, Canada’s largest school board notes that there are over 120 languages spoken by students and their families. Budget cuts and shrinking resources to public education has resulted in inadequate support for students in schools who speak languages other than French or English. Transformative pedagogies focus on the needs of students, seek justice for them and their communities, especially those who are underserved in and by the education system. Drawing on research conducted with teacher candidates in Southern Ontario that revealed enough was not being done to prepare them to enter linguistically diverse classrooms, this presentation explores ways classroom teachers, teacher educators and teacher candidates can be supported to engage in critical praxis that supports the learning of linguistically diverse students. Alim (2007a) argues that youth cultural and linguistic practices are of value in their own right and should be creatively foregrounded rather than merely viewed as resources to take students from where they are to some presumably “better” place, or ignored altogether. As critical educators address issues of equity and diversity through various approaches such as culturally responsive education and culturally sustaining pedagogies which are being adopted in many school boards across Canada there are some questions we must remain mindful of; Such as: How is teacher identity implicated in the development of critical praxis towards multilingual diversity? How is space created for the disruption of hegemonic language stance while advancing meaningful teaching and learning experiences for students? These questions and others will be explored in this presentation.
Professor Ann E. Lopez is a faculty member in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, Educational Leadership
and Policy program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Dr. Lopez has wide experience in public education in Canada as a former secondary school teacher and administrator in the Peel District School Board. She is the Director of the Center for Leadership and Diversity, Provostial Advisor on Access Programs University of Toronto, and President of the National Association for Multicultural Education. Dr. Lopez earned her Doctoral degree in curriculum studies from the University of Toronto, that focussed on implementing integrative anti-racist and inclusive curriculum. She held various faculty appointments, including Academic Director of Initial Teacher Education. Her teaching and research focusses on issues of equity and diversity in education, school leadership and decolonizing educational leadership. She has written and co-edited 3 books, published peer-reviewed articles in leading journals and presented her research at conferences locally and globally. She serves on various editorial boards and advising committees, nationally and internationally. She is currently co-Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of School Leadership. Dr. Lopez is the 2020 OISE/UT recipient of the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Teaching. Born and raised in Jamaica, Dr. Lopez says her inspiration comes from her grandmother, who instilled in her a passion for education and justice. She dedicates her teaching and scholarship to creating more just and equitable schools, particularly for those who are underserved.
French Plenary
Daphnée Simard
Université du Québec à Montréal
Caractérisations de productions orales en langues secondes :
regard croisé sur des variables linguistiques, cognitives et affectives
(Presented in French) No one disputes the challenge that oral production in the second language (L2) can present. Indeed, expressing oneself in real time using a linguistic system that is not necessarily fully mastered is a complex and cognitively demanding task (Segalowitz, 2010). As if that were not enough, this tour de force involves a range of emotions (e.g., Dewaele, 2007; Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014). In my presentation, I propose to explore this tension between linguistic knowledge, cognitive resources, and emotional state in L2 oral production. This intersecting outlook allows a characterization of oral production in a second language that has not yet been explored to any great extent. To do so, I will first address oral production according to Levelt’s model (1983, 1989, 1999) and will deal more specifically with the self-monitoring mechanism he postulates. Such a self-monitoring has the advantage of providing direct information about the cognitive mechanisms and linguistic processes involved in oral production (Kormos, 1999). Using language data, I will then explore how the cognitive and linguistic aspects revealed in self-monitoring interact within the context of non-native speakers’ emotional states during their L2 oral production. I will attempt to explain these interactions using a theoretical perspective, including Fredrickson’s expansion-construction theory (e.g., 2001, 2013), by predicting distinct effects of positive and negative emotions on the deployment of cognitive resources needed to perform tasks such as oral production. I will conclude by presenting possible implications of the relationships between these variables in L2 oral production.
Daphnée Simard (Ph.D., ULaval, 2001) is a Full Professor of Second Language Acquisition in the Department of Linguistics at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Her research interests are twofold. First, she investigates the role played by individual cognitive variables such as attention and memory spans in second language acquisition. She also works on the relationship between linguistic awareness, whether it be metalinguistic reflection or skills, and language acquisition in different populations (heritage language children, adults learning an L2). She is currently working with her colleague Michael Zuniga (UQAM) on L2 oral production, speakers’ individual cognitive characteristics and their emotional states. Her research is funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC; Insight programme), among other sources. Her work has been published in journals such as Bilingualism, Language and Cognition and Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. She was the director of the Institute of Cognitive Science at UQAM from 2014 to 2017. Additionally, after serving on the board of directors of the Canadian Modern Language Review from 2002 to 2008, she is now its co-editor-in-chief alongside Donna Patrick (UOttawa). Finally, she was also a member of the Executive Council of the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics from 2005 to 2011.