Language education and global citizenship: Decolonial and posthuman perspectives through pedagogies of discomfort

MELINA PORTO; MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

Routledge Handbook of Language and Intercultural Communication. Second edition

Routledge

Año: 2020; p. 312 - 326

While the educational role of language teaching has been discussed widely in the past decade,here we extend current thinking about how language education can further contribute tomoving beyond its purely instrumental role of teaching language competences. We endorsethe view that (foreign) language education can and should develop learners? democratic values,competences, and practices through civic or social engagement (Byram et al. 2017 ); but suggestthat it can and should also explicitly aim to sensitise students about issues of human suff eringand cultivate empathy and solidarity (Zembylas 2019 ). Our argument is that when this happens,language education off ers transformative possibilities that challenge naturalised assumptionsabout citizenship, identity, human rights, and colonialism. In this way, language education canbecome a strategic site of ethical and political transformation by placing social injustice at theforefront.