Papers by Suhanthie Motha
Race, empire, and English language teaching: creating responsible and ethical anti-racist practice
Choice Reviews Online, Oct 23, 2014
This timely book takes a critical look at the teaching of English, showing how language is used t... more This timely book takes a critical look at the teaching of English, showing how language is used to create hierarchies of cultural privilege in public schools across the country. Motha closely examines the work of four ESL teachers who developed anti-racist pedagogical practices during their first year of teaching. Their experiences, and those of their students, provide a compelling account of how new teachers might gain agency for culturally responsive teaching in spite of school cultures that often discourage such approaches. The author combines current research with her original analyses to shed light on real classroom situations faced by teachers of linguistically diverse populations. This book will help pre- and in-service teachers to think about such challenges as differential achievement between language learners and "native-speakers;" about hierarchies of languages and language varieties; about the difference between an accent identity and an incorrect pronunciation; and about the use of students' first languages in English classes. This resource offers implications for classroom teaching, educational policy, school leadership, and teacher preparation, including reflection questions at the end of each chapter.
Promoting racial literacy in schools: differences that make a difference
Choice Reviews Online, 2014
Pressed for Time: Strategies for Writing for Publication
TESOL professionals have many insights from teaching and research to share with domestic and inte... more TESOL professionals have many insights from teaching and research to share with domestic and international audiences but little time to write and publish. In this panel and subsequent audience discussion, presenters offer practical tips and strategies for integrating writing for publication into demanding schedules
Afterword: Towards a Nation-Conscious Applied Linguistics Practice
Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching in the Neo-Nationalist Era, 2020
The concluding chapter to the volume considers the various stories the earlier chapters tell abou... more The concluding chapter to the volume considers the various stories the earlier chapters tell about how understandings of nation actualize themselves through language and about the consequences of language practices and policies for ideas about nation. The author concludes that promising possibilities exist for language professionals to be agentive in affecting change, but that this change will necessitate explicit critical pedagogical engagement with nationalism and the concept of nation, an engagement she refers to as nation-conscious applied linguistics practice. She examines how nation-conscious applied linguistics practice can support language specialists in countering racism, resisting homogeneity and xenophobia, and critically analyzing their contexts. As she explores implications for teacher education, language policy, and different models of education, she points to a need for applied linguistics to explicitly take on the linkages between nation and race, empire, monolingual...
Christopher Jenks: Race and Ethnicity in English Language Teaching: Korea in Focus
Applied Linguistics, 2018
Writing Groups and Collaborations: Strategies for Writing for Publication
TESOL professionals have many insights from their teaching and research to share with domestic an... more TESOL professionals have many insights from their teaching and research to share with domestic and international audiences, but little time to write and publish. In this session, the presenters offer ways to incorporate collaborative writing for publication into demanding schedules to benefit themselves, the field, and future TESOL scholars
Envisioning feminist solidarity in TESOL and the academy
Content Area: Social Responsibility/Sociopolitical Concerns (SR)Conference Theme: Crossing Border... more Content Area: Social Responsibility/Sociopolitical Concerns (SR)Conference Theme: Crossing Borders, Buiding BridgesSix TESOL scholars critically reexamine and expand on particularities of their place-based struggles, arguing that race and gender are historical and contextual, embedded in the academy and TESOL. Drawing from critical theories including feminist pedagogy, Black womanist theory, and identity studies, panelists share their narratives and research in these areas
Implications for Engaging Empire
In this article we draw on our family histories of language loss to stimulate public discussion o... more In this article we draw on our family histories of language loss to stimulate public discussion of the consequences of linguistic attrition for public school students in the United States. Our concerns for multilingualism, antiracism, and peace—and the salient connections among these three—are rooted in our lived experiences. Through an exploration of our family histories, we examine the ways in which empire and language identity can interact to shape decisions made by individual speakers of minority languages. We argue that multilingualism is a valuable resource for countering xenophobia, and that the teaching of foreign and world languages adds an important dimension to engaging empire, promoting peace and solidarity, and ultimately redefining what is legitimately “American.” We call attention to the potential power of well-designed educational policies to support heritage language maintenance, to promote language rights, and to respond to dangers posed by the disproportionate pow...
Theorizing experiences of Asian women faculty in second-and foreign-language teacher education
Strangers������of the academy: Asian women scholars in higher education, 2006
This collective writing project originated from the participation of a number of us in the colloq... more This collective writing project originated from the participation of a number of us in the colloquium on Gender in TESOL at the 2003 TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) con-ference. While we have witnessed a recent growing interest in researching gender issues in second-and foreign-language education (eg, Pavlenko, Blackledge, & Teutsch-Dwyer, 2001; Sunderland, Cowley, Rahim, Leontzakou, & Shattuck, 2002), there has been little research on the systematic mar-ginalization of Asian women ...
Epistemological entanglements: Decolonizing understandings of identity and knowledge in English language teaching
International Journal of Educational Research
In This Issue [of TESOL Quarterly , on Language Teacher Identity]
Incorporating Diverse English Cultures in ELT
The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, 2018
2 Critical Transnational Agency: Enacting through Intersectionality and Transracialization
Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching
Language Teaching
In this review article on race and language teaching, we highlight an urgent need for the interna... more In this review article on race and language teaching, we highlight an urgent need for the international educational community to continue to develop a complex understanding of how language teaching and learners’ lives are shaped by our global history of racist practices of colonial expansion, including settler colonialism and transatlantic slavery. We outline the genesis of research on race and language teaching and review literature that reflects a recent increase in scope and range of studies that problematize the workings of race and racism in language teaching and point to hopeful solutions for addressing effects of racial inequities. We conceptualize two key terms, ‘race’ and ‘language,’ then overview theories that appeared most significant in the research literature. We explore five interconnected themes that featured prominently throughout the existing literature on race and language teaching: standard language ideology and racial hegemony, the idealized and racialized native...
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics
This article argues for an uncovering of the multitude of ways in which applied linguistics has f... more This article argues for an uncovering of the multitude of ways in which applied linguistics has functioned as an important and effective vehicle for White supremacy and empire, with its disciplinary roots embedded in assumptions about racial inequalities and racial hierarchies and, equally importantly, the concealment of these forms of racial discrimination which often manifest as innocuous language practices. In particular, the notion of objectivity has played a guiding role in reinscribing Whiteness in much applied linguistics theorizing and research within a global context of inequitable racial power and forms of knowledge production and transmission that are steeped in colonial reasoning. In this piece, the author considers what antiracism and decolonization mean within applied linguistics and asks: Is the discipline of applied linguistics irretrievably rooted in an ontology of race and empire? Or is an antiracist and decolonizing applied linguistics possible?
Exploring TESOL teacher educators as learners and reflective scholars: A shared narrative inquiry
TESOL Journal
Rewriting dominant narratives of the academy: women faculty of color and identity management
Race Ethnicity and Education, 2016
Abstract Drawing on Delgado and Yosso’s counterstory, Yosso’s community cultural wealth, and Alsu... more Abstract Drawing on Delgado and Yosso’s counterstory, Yosso’s community cultural wealth, and Alsup’s borderland discourses, the authors, who are women of color academics, use narratives from their lives to discuss the ways in which they draw on resources in managing and reconfiguring their multiple identities within the academy. These include identities of scholars, mentors, teachers, community members, mothers, and partners. They suggest that rather than merely being socialized into cultural reproduction, as much of the literature oriented toward women of color advises them to do in order to become successful, they seek to actually engage in transforming their roles and that of the academy by consciously and repeatedly making present and visible facets of identity that have previously been more-or-less absent in higher education. By presenting these counter-narratives the authors attempt to engage with ways of self-positioning that are, especially for women of color in academia, not frequently discussed or presented.
Race and Empire in English Language Teaching
This timely and critical look at the teaching of English shows how language is used to create hie... more This timely and critical look at the teaching of English shows how language is used to create hierarchies of cultural privilege in public schools across the country. Drawing on the work of four ESL teachers who developed antiracist pedagogical practices during their first year of teaching, the author provides a compelling account of how new teachers might gain agency for culturally responsive teaching in spite of school cultures that often discourage such approaches. She combines current research and original analyses to shed light on real classroom situations faced by teachers of linguistically diverse populations. This book will help pre- and inservice teachers to think about such challenges as differential achievement between language learners and ''native-speakers;'' hierarchies of languages and language varieties; the difference between an accent identity and an incorrect pronunciation; and the use of students' first languages in English classes. An importan...
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Papers by Suhanthie Motha