Word from the Guest Editors

Abstract

We write this editorial to map how we have come to see the sociolinguistic landscape of Canadian postsecondary institutions, noting the ways in which our views have been shaped by our experiences learning, teaching, and conducting research with faculty and students in several Canadian universities. From our standpoint, Canadian postsecondary institutions are experiencing greater participation of international, immigrant, and generation 1.5 students, as well as students who are fi rst in the family to pursue higher education. We are also encountering Indigenous students who are reclaiming Indigenous languages and ways of knowing, recovering learning spaces within Canadian higher education in connection with their communities. Building on Canada’s long-standing multi-ethnic society, these changes have enhanced Canadian postsecondary institutions, enriching the resources that can be drawn upon and used for teaching and learning. What were historically constructed as English or French universities entrenched in a linguistic duality of offi cial bilingualism are now faced with rethinking the monolingual, monoglossic orientations to educational spaces situated in Englishor French-dominant communities and the impact of assimilationist institutional policies (Haque, 2012; Haque & Patrick, 2015) that have contributed to the marginalization of minoritized speakers and the systematic devastation of Indigenous peoples’ languages (Ball & McIvor, 2013; Hare, 2016; Smith, Tuck, & Yang, 2018). At the same time, a multilingual, heteroglossic orientation to language and learning in higher education continues to come up against traditional second/additional language pedagogies and forms of assessment. Such approaches, originating in the monolingual habitus of the fi eld of second language acquisition (SLA), tend to measure linguistic competence according to native speaker-like norms and view the use of other languages in terms of interference or defi cit. Alongside these prevailing mindsets, the political economy and hegemonic status of English in the Western academy contributes to reifying English as the most valued language of education while at the same time fuelling innovative and critical research in language education. Nonetheless, despite the wider perspectives off ered in and through teaching and research in other languages and bi/multilingual education contexts, and the potential for reciprocal productive dialogue across these contexts, this work often remains in silos. That is, much of the current work reconceptualizing traditional theories and approaches to language teaching in Canada has