Addressing diversity through learner agency in technology-enhanced language learning environments

Activity: Talk or presentationConference PresentationsResearch

Joannis Kaliampos - Speaker

In this presentation, I adopt a broad definition of inclusion that aims at facilitating access to education and socioeconomic opportunity for all, regardless of social, economic, ethnic, or other categories of diversity (Ainscow 2015). Specifically, I investigate diversity in secondary school contexts from the perspective of sociocultural participation in task-based learning environments involving digital media use. Firstly, I consider the recent critique on mainstream task-based language learning research for conceptualizing language students exclusively in their role as learners rather than social and cultural agents, and which therefore reduces the instructional context to affordances and constraints of the foreign language classroom regarding curricular learning objectives (Hallet 2006, Hallet & Legutke 2013). Secondly, I draw on research on the digital divide, specifically how capital (Park 2017) can lead to unequal participation in different social, political, and economic areas (van Dijk 2012). These rationales are applied in the analysis of the blended-learning project “Going Green – Education for Sustainability” (Kaliampos 2016), which has been implemented in German and U.S. (foreign language) classrooms and has attracted over 2,000 participants since 2014. The students enrolled in a shared learning management system (Moodle) and completed a several weeks long curriculum on sustainable development in the U.S. context. Through an analysis of exemplary task cycles from the project curriculum and the community-based sustainability projects carried out by participating learners, I will show how such an approach can facilitate participation in terms of authentic foreign-language discourses (Hallet & Legutke 2013), technologically mediated discourses of the web 2.0 (cf. Schmidt 2009) and citizen action in the learners’ communities (Furco 1996). As the selected examples show, these types of learner participation facilitate the development of learner agency (van Lier 2008), which both reflects and enables broad, inclusive participation in the aforementioned areas. References: Ainscow, M. 2005. ‘Developing Inclusive Education Systems: What are the Levers for Change?’ Journal of Educational Change 6/2: 109–124. Furco, A. (1996). Service-Learning: A Balanced Approach to Experiential Education In Taylor, B. and Corporation for National Service (Eds.), Expanding Boundaries: Serving and Learning (pp. 2-6). Washington, DC: Corporation for National Service. Hallet, W. 2006. ‘Tasks in kulturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive: Kulturelle Partizipation und die Modellierung kultureller Diskurse durch tasks’ in Bausch, K.-R. (ed.). Aufgabenorientierung als Aufgabe: Arbeitspapiere der 26. Frühjahrskonferenz zur Erforschung des Fremdsprachenunterrichts: 72–83: Narr. Hallet, W. and M. K. Legutke. 2013. ‘Task-Approaches Revisited: New Orientations, New Perspectives.’ The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL 2/2: 139–158. Kaliampos, J. (2016). ‘Green your community, click by click. Lokale Nachhaltigkeitsprojekte auf einer Blended-Learning-Plattform erstellen.‘ Der Fremdsprachliche Unterricht Englisch 143. Park, S. 2017. Digital Capital. Palgrave Macmillan UK. Schmidt, T. 2009. ‘Mündliche Lernertexte auf der 2.0-Bühne: Mediale Inszenierungen im Englischunterricht am Beispiel eines Schulpodcast-Projekts.’ Forum Sprache 1/1: 24–42. van Dijk, Jan A. G. M. 2012. ‘The Evolution of the Digital Divide: The Digital Divide Turns to Inequality of Skills and Usage.’ Digital Enlightenment Yearbook 2012: 57–75. van Lier, L. (2008). Agency in the Classroom. In: J. P. Lantolf & M. E. Poehner (eds.). Sociocultural Theory and the Teaching of Second Languages (pp. 163-186). London: Equinox.
09.2018

Event

Tagung und Lehrkräftefortbildung: Inklusiver Englischunterricht - Gemeinsam Lehren und Lernen (IEGLL)

20.09.1821.09.18

Lüneburg

Event: Conference