Learning English at School: Identity, Socio-Material Relations and Classroom Practice - Paperback

by Kelleen Toohey (Author)

This fully revised edition provides a comprehensive discussion of how insights and concepts from new materialism and posthumanism might be used in investigating second language learning and teaching in classrooms. Alongside the sociocultural and poststructural perspectives discussed in the first edition, this new book presents insights from new materialism on identity, second language learning and pedagogical practices. This application of new theory deepens our understanding of how minority language background children learn English in the context of their classrooms. The author comprehensively explains the new materiality perspectives and suggests how research from this perspective might provide new insights on second language learning and teaching in classrooms. The book is unique in analysing empirical classroom data from a sociocultural, but also a new materiality perspective, and has the potential to change our understandings of research and pedagogical practices.

Author Biography

Kelleen Toohey is Professor Emerita, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her recent research focuses on socio-material perspectives on language learning with a particular focus on early childhood language education. She is a co-author of Disrupting Boundaries in Education and Research (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Collaborative Research in Multilingual Classrooms (Multilingual Matters, 2009) and co-editor, with Bonny Norton, of Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning (Cambridge University Press, 2004).