Session Information
November 21, 2024
7:00 p.m. - 8:15 p.m. EST
Bilingual
CASLT Event Description
Culture is an essential element of language teaching, however, how teachers understand culture in FSL education is often unquestioned. This discussion-based presentation shares the findings related to culture from a 2023 survey completed with FSL teachers in FSL Disrupt. We will share how teachers defined culture, how they viewed the link between language and culture, and the role of student cultures in FSL classrooms. We will participate in interactive discussions about culture and develop our own definitions and conceptualizations of its connection with language. Given the need for students to develop intercultural competence, this presentation will offer critical reflection points for teachers to explore their own understanding of culture and present ways to move toward more critical conceptualizations of it. The presenters will offer an antiracist, anti-bias framework for intercultural competence in FSL.
Location
Zoom
Presenters
Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia
Marika Kunnas
Marika Kunnas (she/her/elle) is an Assistant Professor in the department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. She is a former secondary school French teacher in Ontario. Through her research and as a teacher, Marika seeks to disrupt the status quo and make education more inclusive, equitable, antiracist, and anticolonial. Her research aims to explore the realities of being a racialized minority in French immersion, to give voice to POC students, and to engage in antiracist pedagogy with FSL teachers. Broadly, Marika’s research interests lie within French, second/additional language acquisition, race, culture, decolonization, and equity.
Assistant Professor, Université de Sherbrooke
Mimi Masson
As a plurilingual speaker of English, French, Japanese, Spanish, and rudimentary Anishinaabe, Mimi Masson has translated her passion for learning about languages and cultures into an 18-year teaching career in English and French as an Additional Language. She has worked in both the public and private sectors as a teacher, trainer, and curriculum developer, in Japan and Canada, across K–12, higher education, and professional contexts. Mimi is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education at the Université de Sherbrooke. Her research focuses on language teacher identity development via anti-oppressive and anti-racist education. She specializes in using critical discourse analysis and arts-based research methodologies.