On Promoting Social Justice in the Privileged and Multilingual Study Abroad Context

Introduction

The multifaceted complexities of our increasingly uncertain and endangered world call for higher education graduates, preferably multilingual ones, with an understanding of global ethics based on principles of equity, diversity, inclusivity and social justice. In order for higher education institutions across the globe to provide meaningful as well as challenging multilingual experiences, it is of utmost importance that the university experience is underpinned by values that are culturally and emotionally responsive (Seidl, 2021a), inclusive and socially just (Rubio-Alcalá & Coyle, 2021). At the same time, learning and teaching approaches in tertiary education that pursue epistemic justice and strive for decolonizing language education have the potential to be pedagogic encounters which critically engage with “contemporary ideas of multilingualism and the very notion of language itself” (Stroud & Kerfoot, 2020, p. 3).

From the perspective of a practitioner-researcher the author will explore ways of teaching international exchange students in the privileged and multilingual study abroad context, underpinned by principles of social-justice-based language education. If Valcke et al. (2021) remind us of the temporality of the student status, of the fact that these young adults are in a dynamic and intense state of becoming and we, as educators, have the privilege to cross their paths and provide them with challenging content, this is even more true in the context of study abroad. Even if we cross paths with exchange students for only the short span of time over the course of one semester, it is possible to live up to the values of transformative higher education pedagogies. Kreber (2016) describes these as pedagogies that nurture authenticity, civic-mindedness, democracy and social justice, in students and teachers alike. Of course, teaching language and teaching about language, not only as a linguistic system, but “as a means of communication, participation and becoming within complex contextual layers of cultural, social, political, ideological, global and local considerations” (Badwan, 2021, p. 206) is by no means an easy task.

Against this backdrop, the objective of this chapter is to explore the interplay between privilege and responsibility in the context of study abroad and educational justice-oriented work. To this end, the link between social justice education with intercultural communicative competence as well as with culturally and emotionally responsive teaching practices will be discussed in the background section. Then the methodology of a small-scale questionnaire-based study with exchange students at an Austrian university will be presented in order to provide readers with insights into the student perspective on the topic under scrutiny. The findings of the study will be presented and then discussed in light of previous research on multilingualism in higher education that makes a case for students and teachers as co-participants (Li, 2020; Seidl, 2022). Finally, after addressing implications for pedagogy the chapter closes with some suggestions for further research and concluding thoughts.