Meng Huat CHAU - Featured Speaker @ KOTESOL 2022
Featured Session
Teaching and Researching for an Inclusive World: Ecojustice, Personal Power, and Changemaking
An inclusive world emphasizes acceptance, respect and appreciation of diversity. In this talk, I present the case for action by language educators and researchers to build an inclusive world. The first part of the talk discusses the powerful role that educators and researchers can play in changing mindsets, bringing about practical action, and transforming research and teaching practices. This discussion takes place through an exploration of the notions of ecojustice, personal power, and changemaking. The second part of the talk considers a number of challenges in promoting and enacting inclusion based on ecojustice considerations. I shall suggest that while it is often thought to be impossible to change large-scale educational and social practices, it is always possible, though admittedly not easy, to change our individual behaviors. It is at this personal level that educators and researchers, I argue, can create meaningful and impactful changes, changes that can encourage and inspire students and colleagues to take personal and group action that correspondingly contributes to institutional and systemic transformations. All this is for a more sustainable, more just world for the billions of fellow humans facing poverty and discrimination in different arenas of daily life, and by extension, for our fellow animals and our Mother Nature as a whole. There is a lot of darkness in this world, as Jane Goodall (2021) reminded us recently, “but our actions create the light.” Some examples based on personal experience (of action, not darkness!) are provided, and the relevance of this experience to the points raised is discussed.
It is within this broad frame that I wish to consider the theme of the conference: Teaching for a Better World.
Time: Sunday (May 1) 3:00 p.m. KST (50 min., Synchronous)
Biosketch
Meng Huat Chau (PhD, Birmingham) began his career over 20 years ago as a teacher working with primary, secondary, and high school students, before he took up a fellowship and joined Universiti Malaya in 2010. At Universiti Malaya, Dr. Chau teaches and supervises research in applied linguistics. His teaching, research, and supervision on topics in applied corpus linguistics, Global Englishes, language and writing development, multilingualism, and language education have been motivated by ecojustice considerations. Dr. Chau holds adjunct/visiting appointments at De La Salle University-Dasmariñas in the Philippines, Jeonbuk National University in South Korea, and Yogyakarta State University in Indonesia. His publications include the edited volumes International Perspectives on Education and Corpus Applications in Applied Linguistics, both published by Bloomsbury. Together with several colleagues, he is currently working as guest editor on two journal special issues: one on practical applications of ecolinguistics for the Journal of World Languages and the other on promoting diversity and inclusion in language education through approaches based on Global Englishes and translanguaging for TESL-EJ.
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Universiti Malaya: Dr. CHAU Meng Huat
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