A Textbook Case of Antiracism

Abstract

The pedagogic assumption that English is not only a target language for international students and other L2 English users, but also a metonym for the desirable culture to which they must assimilate is still prevalent in many Canadian institutions. This chapter discusses how two teacher-practitioners wrote a first-year writing (FYW) textbook for multilingual students, drawing on critical pedagogy to resist this form of white linguistic and epistemic supremacy while also empowering multilingual writers and resolving the vexed question of content in writing textbooks. In this chapter, the authors describe their fruitless search for a suitable textbook, their decision to write their own, their articulation of the principles that would guide their composing process, the frameworks they drew upon, and the secondary research that supported their choices as they created FYW learning materials that were antiracist and anti-linguicist but supportive of the academic success of multilingual students within the prevailing assessment ecologies in their institution.