From Cultural Capital to Culture as Praxis in World Language Education

When:  Apr 28, 2026 from 19:00 to 20:00 (ET)

From Cultural Capital to Culture as Praxis in World Language Education

This webinar focuses on the need to denaturalize various 'capitals' which frame an economic approach to world language teaching. The webinar is based on the article by Dr. Tasha Austin titled Limited capital: A genealogy of culturelessness in (language) teacher education. The abstract for the article is included: Black youth as ‘struggling students’ is a persistent narrative in the contemporary U.S. psyche, both preceded by and markedly displayed through the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, which reflected coded language encouraging a return to the pre-Civil Rights United States. This framing positioned Black students as culprits for the ills of U.S. schooling – a continuation of a history of educational policy that discursively enforces the need to defend society against ‘subhuman’ populations. Placing the 1983 policy report in conversation with Zwiers’ Building Academic Language: Meeting Common Core Standards Across Disciplines (2013) via raciolinguistic genealogy, I problematize the ways in which texts like these reinforce discourses of Black cultures and languages as subhuman, deviant threats to U.S. society.


 

Presenters

Dr. Tasha Austin

 

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