Graduate Research Papers

Countering Deficit Ideologies in Adult Multilingual Education

Availability

Graduate Research Paper (Electronic Copy Not Available)

Abstract

When I first started my English language teaching career in Egypt, I relied heavily on established English language textbooks and trusted their content. One day, I was teaching an Egyptian 8-year-old who had brown curly hair and a light brown skin complexion. The materials used the picture of a young blond white woman wearing pearls to describe the word “beautiful” and used a picture of a younger child who had brown curly hair and a light brown skin complexion with obvious signs of physical abuse to refer to the word “ugly”. At that time, I did not know much about theories related to multilingualism and multilingual education. However, my background education in postcolonial studies guided me to understand that this lesson was a reflection of the remaining traces of colonialism and the othering of non-white individuals (Gorski, 2011). Right after this lesson, I wrote a post on social media criticizing the lesson, and I tagged a very well-known publishing company. They got back to me, letting me know that they had updated the lesson and that a lot of their materials are “many years old” (Facebook user, 2022) and needed review. This incident made me think about all the other biased, many-year-old teaching materials that have been normalized. In addition, it made me reflect on my experience growing up as an English language learner and all the teaching curricula that promoted Eurocentrism and marginalized the diverse nature of the English language learner across the globe (Flores & Rosa, 2023; Khodadady & Shayesteh, 2016). I remember teachers inferiorizing my and other learners' Egyptian Arabic accents when attempting to speak English, promoting nativeness, and marginalizing linguistic diversity (Flores & Rosa, 2023). Paulo Freire (1973) defines this process of one’s ability to identify and challenge issues of inequalities and racism as critical consciousness.

Year of Submission

2025

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Department of Languages and Literatures

First Advisor

Aliza Fones

Date Original

4-2025

Object Description

1 PDF (40 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Electronic copy is not available through UNI ScholarWorks.

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