Overview

How can English language teachers contribute to peace locally and globally? English language teachers and learners are located in the global civil society -- an international network of civil organizations and NGOs related to human rights, the environment, and sustainable peace. English, with its special role as an international language, is a major tool for communication within this network. On the local level, many teachers are interested in promoting reconciliation and sustainable peace, but often do not know how to do so. This book provides information, analysis, and techniques to help teachers around the world take action toward this goal. Balancing, in a readable and accessible way, the global and the local, core and periphery, cultural diffusion and resistance, theory and practice, pessimism and optimism, outsider and insider perspectives, the expert role and the apprentice role, and prescriptive and elicitive methods, it offers an alternative to literature about critical applied linguistics, globalization, and peace education that is simply too complex and wordy to spread easily from theoretician to the classroom teacher. The English Teacher in Global Civil Society: synthesizes threads from many fields and topics into a coherent and empowering argument for the activist role English language teachers can take to promote social change draws on humanistic education, peace education, cross-cultural understanding, problem-posing, cooperative learning, and critical thinking methodologies to help English language teachers learn how to teach conflict resolution skills in their classrooms covers issues in critical applied linguistics, approaches and methodologies in ESL/EFL, global and local curricular issues, and specific skill areas such reading, writing, and speaking suggests a new goal for English language teachers: global citizenship. This engaging, informative, provocative, and highly readable book is a welcome resource for English language teacher trainers, pre-service teachers, practicing classroom teachers, and Peace Corps workers around the world.

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9780415994484

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This book, while providing information and strategies for teachers to become effective agents of change, is not, however, a dry recital of overly complex theories and ideas; it is an interesting and motivating resource that uses the Earth Charter to help empower English language teachers around the world. --The Earth Charter Initiative: Values and Principles for a Sustainable Future, August 2009

Author Information

Barbara M. Birch is Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at California State University, Fresno. She has taught EFL in Spain, Ecuador, and Pakistan, conducted inservice workshops for Peace Corps volunteers in Macedonia, and worked with English teacher trainers in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

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