International Conference: language education for sustainable development

Biel, A. & Esleben, F. (eds.) (2025). Social Justice in Language Education: Taking Action. Multilingual Matters.

This book is a collection of sixteen chapters with a strong focus on different aspects of how social justice can be implemented into language education. The edited volume starts by discussing social justice in language education from different theoretical and conceptual perspectives, before moving on to elaborating on how an understanding of language(s) can help us to work towards more equitable practices in language education. In the third part of the book, the discussion focusses on specific topics that a socially-just language classroom could include such as queerness, sustainability and anti_fatness. The last part closes with more practical examples of social justice in language classrooms and teacher education. The strength of the book lies in the fact that, in comparison to other works on social justice, it does not predominantly focus on the US/UK context, but also comprises chapters from different contexts mostly central Europe, but also Colombia. Another feature that sets this work apart from other academic publications is the fact that it does feature authors from different professional backgrounds such as university professors and early career researchers, as well as students and teachers. The main themes of this publication are in line with the main idea of this conference as the edited volume also deals with different ways of bringing cultural, political, social and ecological dimensions of our world into language (teacher) education. This is at the heart of our understanding of language education and in fact one of the key tasks of language educators today.

Albert Biel is a research assistant at the University of Duisburg-Essen in the graduate school for inclusive teacher education (GkQL: Graduiertenkolleg für inclusive Lehrkräftebildung). His research interests revolve around social justice in language education in general and more specifically queer-informed language education practices.

Fabian Esleben is currently a teacher trainee at Nordmarkt Primary School Dortmund. Fabian ́s research interests focus on the role of language in teaching contexts with a focus on English as a
Lingua Franca and Social Justice, especially in primary school settings. He previously held a research position at TU Dortmund University (2017-2023). Furthermore, he is a trained language secretary.