In recent years, the terms ‘accessibility’ and ‘inclusion’ have become increasingly important in the field of education and language teaching. The application of guidelines such as those from the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) helps to remove barriers to learning difficulties in the language classroom by designing inclusive and 'glocal' educational interventions, based on the linguistic and cognitive profiles of students. To do that, special attention should be given to the reflective practice (Dewey, 1933; Schön, 1983; Wallace, 1991; Farrell, 2022), including its emotional affective aspects. In this presentation we would like to highlight the importance of the practice of reflection as a primary tool for ensuring inclusion and accessibility when teaching and learning a foreign language, and to stress the power of observation and reflection cycles as an educational device oriented to future action: an action that is new, justified, effective, just, and motivating. We will illustrate this by drawing on my experience teaching foreign languages (FL) at the University of Cape Town, moving as ‘teacher-researcher’, and utilizing the reflection practice firstly as a primary tool for the creation of the content to be used in class, and secondly to observe the interaction between the learners and the new inputs that are gradually experimented. Guaranteeing equality and real access in the FL classroom can, in addition to preventing loss of motivation, stimulate greater interest in the language and, in the long term, produce lasting trans-formations for the individuals and their society, in the logic of "No one left behind".

Authors:
Chiara Ronchetti, University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa

About the Presenter(s)
Chiara Ronchetti, PhD Candidate and Contract Lecturer (Italian and French Studies), School of Languages and Literatures, University of Cape Town, South Africa

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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