https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1498-8043
Abstract
This special issue explores the affordances and limitations of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as a critical social praxis, specifically within the context of teacher education. We define Critical SFL Praxis (CSFLP) as a social activist approach to teacher education that develops teachers’ ability to enact language use in literacy instruction to support learners in seeing, using, and challenging the nature of text/context relationships within and outside institutions through SFL. In this way, CSFLP focuses on preparing teachers to teach students to be adaptive and reflective, and thereby critical, in the process of deploying their language resources to achieve their own social purposes. The articles of this special issue depict both the history of CSFLP and the future possibilities for this work in teacher education.
Francis John Troyan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1498-8043
Ruth Harman https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9827-3135
Xiaodong Zhang https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7216-6542
From the very beginning, Halliday conceptualized SFL as a socially accountable linguistics (Halliday, Mcintosh, and Strevens Citation1964) that grappled with equity issues such as the social status of minoritized peoples and the need for language variation equity (Matthiessen Citation2012). In the past thirty years, this foundational work has been taken up and adapted in many different cultural contexts and has informed the preparation of teachers in enacting critical literacy pedagogies across a variety of disciplines (e.g. Brisk Citation2015; Gebhard Citation2019; Humphrey Citation2017; Morton Citation2020). Further, SFL has been advanced as a key component of the knowledge base for teacher education in a variety of contexts around the world, including Europe (e.g. Llinares and McCabe Citation2020), Latin America (e.g. Boccia et al. Citation2019; Herazo Rivera et al. Citation2021), and the United States (e.g. de Oliveira and Avalos Citation2018; Schleppegrell Citation2020).
In this special issue, we explore what we define as Critical SFL Praxis (CSFLP): A social activist approach to teacher education that develops teachers’ ability to harness SFL in literacy instruction to support learners in seeing, using, and challenging the nature of text/context relationships within and outside institutions (Troyan, Harman, and Zhang, this issue). As a means for enacting critical praxis, the pliability of SFL has enabled teachers and teacher educators to engage in collaborative spaces where ‘teachers develop a critical awareness of language and innovative pedagogical practices to support an equity agenda in their classrooms’ (Harman Citation2018, vi). However, little research to date has articulated the historical lineage and the ever evolving nature of CSFLP in teacher education in the United States and elsewhere across the globe.
In the first article, we define and contextualize CSFLP in teacher education through our report on an interview with four Australian scholars who were instrumental in developing and advancing SFL praxis: Jim Martin, Frances Christie, Beverly Derewianka, and Sally Humphrey. We examine several themes that emerged from their reflection on their work in education throughout the years and use those themes to look toward the future of the work in CSFLP. Those themes include the following:
The focus on the functions of language and the struggle to enact a shift away from Chomskyan perspectives on language, which continues today.
The social activist nature of CSFLP.
The pliability of SFL is its strength. From its early development to its current use in culturally sustaining and anti-racist genre pedagogies (e.g. Accurso and Mizell Citation2020; Ramírez Citation2020; Sembiante and Tian Citation2021) and multimodal composing (e.g. Shin, Cimasko, and Yi Citation2020), it has shifted to address current equity issues of race, class and equity.
In the second article, Accurso and Gebhard report on their comprehensive review of CSFLP in teacher education in the United States. The 136 articles reviewed by the authors demonstrate the various contexts in which SFL praxis has been enacted in teacher education in the United States. At the same time, they set a clear course for CSFLP research and practice in the United States for the years to come.
Two other studies depict teacher learning and implementation of CSFLP through long-term school-university partnerships. Matruglio examines two teachers’ CSFLP after an intensive professional development on key tenets of the theory. This comparative case study reveals the differing ways in which two teachers applied and resisted aspects of SFL from their professional development. Rosa and Drysdale, by contrast, used change theory to examine the key change points in Rosa’s SFL praxis as an elementary science teacher engaged in a five-year school-university partnership. Together, these studies are further evidence of the need for long-term engagement with teachers to respond to the particular needs, tensions, and challenges that arise as teachers apply SFL in their classrooms.
Jackson’s approach to CSFLP situates SFL and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) as robust resources for ELA teachers to examine racialized ideologies in ELA classrooms. His study, situated in a high school classroom in rural Southeastern United States, demonstrates the use of axiological constellation analysis to unpack students’ value positions about enslavement in passages from Harry Potter. Jackson shows how a combined use of SFL and LCT can support teachers in understanding show students take up and resist anti-racist, critical pedagogies.
Through SFL-informed discourse analysis and a sociocultural view of teacher development, Sembiante, Cavallaro, and Troyan examine how seven language teacher candidates referenced and applied functional language features in multiple drafts of SFL-driven text analyses. Based on the data from the teacher candidates’ texts, the authors describe four phases in teacher candidates’ development of the SFL knowledge base as they developed more ‘scientific’ notions of SFL.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
References
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