Centering Multilingual Learners and Countering Raciolinguistic Ideologies in Teacher Education

This book details a three-year, multi-stranded study of teacher education programs that prepare future teachers to work with multilingual learners. The book examines how racism and linguicism collaborate to shape the conditions under which teacher candidates learn how to teach. The analysis traces dynamic shifts in thinking and practice as participants reflected on their personal, professional and academic experiences in relation to formal curriculum and assessment policies to interpret what it means to work with multilingual learners in the classroom. The book offers guiding principles – above all, learning from multilingual learners, not only about them – and presents a suite of teacher-education practices to disrupt the interplay of language and race that so deeply shapes teacher-candidate learning about multilingual learners.

Jeff Bale is Professor of Language and Literacies Education at OISE, University of Toronto and currently serves as Vice President, University and External Affairs for the University of Toronto Faculty Association. He is lead author of Centering Multilingual Learners and Challenging Raciolinguistic Ideologies in Teacher Education (Multilingual Matters, 2023) and is co-editor, along with Sarah Knopp, of Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation (Haymarket, 2012). In 2021-2022, he was a Humboldt Fellow at the Universität Bremen and currently leads the Language and Race in Contemporary Canadian History project (see larchproject.ca), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Shakina Rajendram is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream and the Coordinator of the Language Teaching Field at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Canada. Shakina has taught at the K-12 and post-secondary levels in Malaysia and Canada for over 12 years. Her current teaching and research focus on second language teaching methodologies, pre-service and in-service teacher education, and supporting multilingual learners and international students through translanguaging and multiliteracies pedagogies.

Mama is Assistant Professor of Second Language Education in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University, specializing in policies and practices around multilingual education, teacher education and comparative international and development education. Her work addresses the complexities and challenges of teaching literacy and language to multilingual learners who speak and write in English and African languages. Her scholarship includes the co-authored book, Centering Multilingual Learners and Countering Raciolinguistic Ideologies in Teacher Education: Principles, Policies and Practices, a chapter in the Handbook of Language and the Global South, and articles in peer-reviewed journals such as TESL Canada, OLBI Journal, and the International Journal of Qualitative Methods. Mama researches across multiple modalities. Her research is also featured in the documentary film, No Vernacular!, which explores African multilingualism and language policy in Ghana.

Julie Kerekes is Associate Professor in Language and Literacies Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include interlanguage pragmatics, language and power in intercultural institutional settings, and workplace communication.