Vision in Context: The Situating of an ESL/EFL Curriculum

Abstract

Language enables us to make meaning together, and at the same time, limits those meanings we can attempt to communicate to each other. ESL/EFL programs must have as their central intent the enabling of people to make meaning in English. Such programs occur within a context of culture, time, and a sociopolitical web of circumstance, and within. notions as to the meaning of education, of language and of culture. This overall context grounds the curriculum. Yet, as educators, we are also called with the learner to envision a better reality. What occurs in our classrooms does so within the tension between context and vision. Our decisions, or lack thereof, determine whether our curriculum is to reinforce injustices inherent in the status quo or to enable people to create more just, more joyful ways of being together within this country and within our world. This paper explores some of the dimensions of context and vision and the tensions which may exist between them; it endeavours to point the way to curriculum as human praxis.