Creativity / Critical Thinking / 4Cs Workshop (50 mins)
An Ecolinguistics Approach to Education
Schools play a vital role in shaping students’ learning and beliefs. In light of the ecological issues facing our world today, a more ecojustice-focused approach to education is vital. The theoretical framework of ecolinguistics (Stibbe, 2020) provides a useful tool for students to critically analyze the language of the texts they encounter in everyday life, school, and the media, in order to determine their underlying “story” and impact from an ecological perspective. This presentation will discuss the potential benefits ecolinguistics can offer to educators and students, and provide examples how to incorporate it into classroom lessons through linguistic analysis of school textbooks, media sources, and modern advertising.
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Jason Gold has been teaching at universities in Japan for the past ten years, and currently is a full-time instructor at Kobe University. He holds an M.A. in TESOL, and is presently in a doctoral program at Indiana University. His research interests involve learning science/educational psychology applications for classroom teaching – particularly regarding positive psychology, academic tenacity, learner mindsets, and metacognitive strategies.