On epistemicides in language teacher education: how does one know what one does not know?

Abstract

Building on selected key-concepts and themes that traverse the work of critical analysts such as Paraskeva (2011, 2016), Darder (2012), May and Sleeter (2010), Skutnabb-Kangas (2009), and Lucas and Villegas (2011), the proposal seeks to analyse how the received field in (language) teacher education needs to be deterritorialized in order to properly address the roots of oppression that underlie the subtractive forms of education that are imposed on bilingual/bicultural students in Portugal. Of particular interest to analyse the schooling of these children are the concepts of epistemicides (Paraskeva, 2011, 2016), critical multicultural education (May & Sleeter, 2010), bicultural education (Darder, 2012), and bilingual/ multilingual education for global justice (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2009). The narratives of experienced language teachers, on teacher education programs at the University of Minho will be used to show how epistemicides work in schools to undermine progressive and inclusive education for bilingual/ bicultural children. Their texts on their experiences and on how they resonate with critical texts on schooling will be analysed, highlighting the difficulties and dilemmas these teachers experience. These dilemmas can be attributed to the disempowering and subtractive forms of education these children are subjected to and that are seldom questioned, but also due to the ‘neutral’ curricula in language teacher education that has been systematically unable to seriously address the structural inequalities associated with these children’s education, such as racism, poverty, and widespread discrimination (cf. May & Sleeter, 2010; Darder, 2012; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2009). The results are that teacher thinking on the education of bi/multilingual children enters the realm of ‘oppressive common sense’ (Kumashiro, 2004), naturalizing their invisibility in Portuguese schools. The results also reveal the absence of ‘linguistically responsive’ (Lucas & Villegas, 2011) teacher education programs, of a ‘critical bicultural pedagogy’ (Darder, 2012) in the schools, very much justified by the prevalence of ‘teaching to the test’ classroom practices that disempower both students and teachers.