Pedagogies of discomfort in foreign language education: cultivating empathy and solidarity using art and literature

ABSTRACT

In this article we depart from a conceptualisation of foreign language teaching as intercultural citizenship in schools and universities. We extend this conceptualisation by suggesting that foreign language teaching can and should also sensitise students about issues of human suffering and cultivate empathy, solidarity, hospitality and inclusion. In this way language education can create spaces for fostering political, ethical, and social justice responsibilities for changing socially unjust societies. We show how this suggestion was enacted in a higher education setting in Argentina with student teachers and student translators of English using pedagogies of discomfort and pedagogies of empathy and solidarity to deal with difficult issues through arts and literature.

RESUMEN

Partimos de una concepción de la enseñanza en lenguas extranjeras como ciudadanía intercultural en escuelas y universidades. Expandimos el marco teórico y sugerimos que la enseñanza en lengua extranjera puede y debe sensibilizar a los estudiantes acerca de temas de sufrimiento humano y cultivar la empatía, la solidaridad, la hospitalidad y la inclusión. De este modo, la enseñanza de lenguas puede crear espacios para el desarrollo de responsabilidades políticas, éticas y de justicia social para cambiar las sociedades socialmente injustas. Mostramos cómo se implementó esta propuesta en un contexto de educación superior en Argentina con futuros profesores y traductores de inglés usando pedagogías del malestar y pedagogías de la empatía y la solidaridad para abordar contenido difícil por medio de las artes y la literatura.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural citizenship
• pedagogies of discomfort
• social justice
• arts-based methodologies
• empathy and solidarity

Acknowledgement

Melina Porto is grateful to Anabella Sauer Rosas for her inspiring work in the course English Language 2 at Universidad Nacional de La Plata carried out in 2016 as part of her internship, on which this article is based.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Melina Porto is a researcher at the National Research Council (CONICET) in Argentina, Professor at Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia. She holds an MA ELT from Essex University (thesis supervised by Henry Widdowson) and a PhD from UNLP (thesis supervised by Michael Byram). Her research addresses the intercultural dimension of English language teaching and intercultural citizenship education in the foreign language classroom.

Michalinos Zembylas is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus. He is also Honorary Professor at Nelson Mandela University in the Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation. He has written extensively on emotion and affect in relation to social justice pedagogies, intercultural and peace education, human rights education and citizenship education. In 2016, he received the Distinguished Researcher Award in ‘Social Sciences and Humanities’ from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Universidad Nacional de La Plata and Conicet: [Grant Number H783 and PIP Conicet 0281].