JALT2024 Plenary Speaker: Toward Justice-Affirming Language Teaching

In the field of language education, there is an increased recognition that equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice should be established in every aspect of teaching and learning. This trend exists against the backdrop of broader sociopolitical contexts that are becoming more volatile and threatening to human existence, requiring a greater promotion of sustainability of humankind and the non-human world. Under this circumstance, language education, with its aim to foster communicative competence, contributes to honoring human dignity and building solidarity across differences. Central to this vision is justice-affirming language teaching for raising critical consciousness of how oppressive forces affect the lives of individuals who are positioned differently in power hierarchies. Simultaneously, this framework requires praxis: critical reflection for unlearning and a commitment to putting relearned critical perspectives into action (Freire, 1998). In this essay, I will outline a conceptual foundation of justice-affirming language teaching, challenges that need to be overcome, and its applications to the context of Japan.