Abstract
This chapter describes how TESOL educators can partner with global aid organizations, local communities, and learners themselves to leverage low-tech yet innovative learning solutions like text-message lessons with the goal of more equitably reaching learners, particularly those affected by disruption to their education such as those who are migrants/refugees. Taking such action as advocates committed to closing opportunity gaps arising from social issues affecting language learning not only involves the TESOL educator in the six principles for exemplary teaching of English learners but also UN Sustainable Development Goals as a framework, trauma-informed teaching and learning, and the concept of text messages used as micro-learning. Through a UNICEF case study of practice in action, the author provides a stepwise how-to for redesigning curriculum into micro-learning appropriate for text-message delivery and offers considerations and recommendations for its dissemination, evaluation, and potential application to many other contexts and learner populations at scale.
TopIntroduction
This chapter focuses on the advocacy aspect of critical praxis in TESOL as it relates to supporting TESOL educators committed to positive social change and working with others to close opportunity gaps and solve injustices related to languages and language learners around the world. In this case, the opportunity gap relates to Venezuelan migrant/refugee (see Key Terms and Definitions) student access to continue learning that has been disrupted due to their movement through Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru in hopes of resettlement, and specifically needed during the COVID-19 pandemic occurring in the midst of their migration and resettlement (ECW, 2020). In particular, this practical chapter highlights an option for closing the stated gap through action TESOL educators can take as advocates (TESOL, n.d.b) to more equitably reach Venezuelan migrant/refugee learners wherever they go; using TESOL’s Six Principles (TESOL International Association, 2021; Hellman, Harris & Wilbur, 2019; Short, et al., 2018) and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 (UN, n.d.) as frameworks, it provides a protocol for teachers to plan and enact collective change efforts to address a social issue that impacts language learning by means of redesigning curriculum to ready it for dissemination to learners who can access it via text message. The author presents considerations, a stepwise how-to, recommendations and implications for creating a text-message learning campaign (see Key Terms and Definitions) based on her work as a consultant for UNICEF on education in emergencies for the most vulnerable learners (see Key Terms and Definitions) in Latin America and the Caribbean (Guevara, 2020; UNICEF LACRO, n.d.) from May 2020-January 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, the work of other TESOL educators who strive to be action-oriented advocates at the intersection of sustainable development goals, trauma-informed teaching and learning (see Key Terms and Definitions), and micro-learning (see Key Terms and Definitions) via accessible technology has significant potential for more equitably reaching and benefiting all kinds of learners and during times of non-emergency/crisis as well.
Key Terms in this Chapter
SMS: Also known as a text message delivered to a mobile phone that does not require Internet connectivity; different from MMS which is a text message that also includes images such as a picture or video whereas an SMS only includes text.
Most Vulnerable Learner: Term used by UNICEF Latin America and Caribbean division (LACRO) to refer to learners who are rural/remote, without Internet, indigenous, migrants/refugees, girls, and those with special needs; note the possibility of intersectionality (see entry above) where a learner could be classified into more than one vulnerable group.
Learning Campaign: The duration of planned learning taking place through text-message micro-learning (see entry below) including the time span/commitment and number of messages; typically, learning campaigns represent a single topic or theme at a single level of study.
Trauma-Informed Teaching and Learning: According to University at Buffalo’s School of Social Work and its Institute on Trauma and Trauma-Informed Care, trauma-informed education recognizes that learners' actions result from their life experiences, which in many cases have been sudden, upsetting, or traumatic either by official clinical definition or a personal one. Childhood abuse, relationship, or household disfunction, sexual assault, abandonment, poverty, accidents, community violence, the effects of structural racism, combat, and many other traumas may impact students' ability to learn.
Micro-Learning: Learning from short modules or lessons both in terms of their length and the time needed for completion; the chunking up of curriculum into bite-size units appropriate for text-message delivery.
Migrant/Refugee: Terms used to describe people who are forced, or feel an urgency to self-relocate, from their home most often by leaving almost everything behind in their home country for another country where their entry is likely not permitted, though sometimes by relocating internally to another region within the same country; migrants/refugees may pass through regions and countries on their way to a destination and/or attempt resettlement.
Intersectionality: Term used to describe how a learner could fit into more than one of UNICEF LACRO’s definitions of a most vulnerable learner (see entry below), such as a learner who is both a girl and a migrant/refugee or an indigenous learner with special needs living in a rural area without internet.