Book Review: Exploring Silences in the Field of Computer-Assisted Language Learning
Madge Mitchell, Graduate Student, Linguistics/TESOL Master’s program, University of South Florida, USA
The following is a book review of Ahmed, A. (2022). Exploring Silences in the Field of Computer Assisted Language Learning (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06501-9
The field of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) has flourished since its development in the early 20th century (Otto, 2017), right alongside the rapidly growing digital technosphere, or realm of technology. CALL researchers have assisted in the production of impactful literature and the creation of a positive view of technology within the field, which in turn has contributed to a rapid interlacing of technology and language education (Son & Windeatt, 2017). However, what is often not explored are the potential negative implications of such an interlacing. In his book, Exploring Silences in the Field of Computer Assisted Language Learning, Anwar Ahmed critically investigates five gaps, or areas that have gone ignored, in the field of CALL: (a) viewing technology as a solution to logistical dilemmas in education, (b) understanding who these technologies benefit and why they are being integrated, (c) using technology as a solution to temporal inflexibility, (d) experiencing the affective impact of tech integration, and (e) considering social media as potentially damaging to learners’ agency.
In Chapter 1, the purpose of this book is stated – to identify and address areas of silence in the field, which refers to gaps that have gone either undiscussed or (even) unacknowledged. His approach is interdisciplinary; it incorporates a philosophy of technology, a critical approach to technology from educational studies, and the subfield of Critical CALL, which investigates the assumptions and “naturalized ideas” that are core to CALL research praxis. His methodological approach, which involves an investigation of the topics, content, and lenses of inquiry in CALL-related academic journals, is informed by the idea that scholarly journals are a key component of the academic force that has shaped the field.
In Chapter 2, Ahmed addresses the concept of technological determinism, which proposes technology as the primary driver of societal change, and its impact on language education and research. This concept alone is not necessarily detrimental to the agentic power of language teachers; however, it is argued that this perspective is often fueled by a desire to logistically simplify education (e.g., measuring student success), which automatically assumes that teachers would benefit. Ahmed proposes a relational view of agency, in which teachers’ agentive power is not seen as something that is individually constructed and/or maintained but rather collectively manipulated as teachers transition across different educational contexts (or while educational contexts shift around them).
In Chapter 3, Ahmed argues that the motives behind a rapid integration of technology into public education are not always with the students/teachers in mind. Technologies have served great purposes in education (e.g., remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, teacher labor-load reduction); however, these technologies are encoded with specific socio-economic values and interests. The author declares that it is important for researchers/practitioners in critical language teaching and CALL to consider more than the (potential) instructional implications and ponder questions of who may benefit from tech integration and what un/equal educational and employee conditions may be created by it.
In Chapter 4, Ahmed claims that time, as a cultural object, is not experienced by all in the same way and universalizing digital technologies as a panacea for issues of flexibility is problematic in that it does not consider the power hierarchies, social inequalities, and economic disparities across the technology’s users. Acknowledging the intersection of time, technology, and language education, Ahmed (2022) proposes five principles to promote a reconceptualization of temporality within the field of (Critical) CALL: (a) technology is not neutral and transforms users’ relationships with others and their environment in diverse ways, (b) technology benefits some users more than others, with social inequality and access playing crucial roles, (c) learners must negotiate priorities factors (e.g., curricula and instructors) that impact their supposed autonomous use of technology, (d) structures of power affect learners, with the amount of power and privilege determining a tech user’s degree of temporal flexibility, and (e) technological innovations should only be viewed relative to users’ circumstances (e.g., capital and prior knowledge).
In Chapter 5, Ahmed promotes a view of CALL that incorporates the concept of affect and its relationship to the pedagogical implications of using technology as a medium of language education. Technology, when considering the affect associated with learner and instructor use of it, should be viewed in its cultural embeddedness. Shifts (or migrations) between various levels of technologically mediated language instruction may have a variety of impacts on pedagogies and the affective states of learners and instructors, and it is the job of CALL researchers and instructors to be mindful and cognizant of these potential impacts.
In Chapter 6, Ahmed criticizes the enthusiasm for using social media in language teaching and learning, citing social media and their algorithms as potentially damaging to users and their agency. Rather than dismissing its use altogether, Ahmed argues the task should be to teach and encourage students to engage with social media as a text within language learning contexts, in addition to reinforcing the critical literacy knowledge that online texts are not lifeless but intertextually bound to surrounding sociopolitical happenings. By involving students in the critical evaluation of materials used in the language classroom, they both participate in language learning and develop critical media literacy.
In his concluding chapter (7), Ahmed reiterates the importance of taking a critical stance on the integration of technology into language education. More specifically, these critical stances need to be hermeneutic, in that technology should be interpreted as a text. By doing this, we can enable language teachers, learners, and other stakeholders to evaluate the relationships between these digital technologies and how they intertwine with language and semiotic resources. This, in turn, can contribute to a deeper understanding of how meaning is negotiated.
Timely and relevant, the author’s criticisms of technology integration are supported by an array of interdisciplinary literature and philosophically engaged arguments. While the primary aim of this book is to explore five major gaps (silences) across the field of CALL, Ahmed also proposes potential ways to bridge these gaps (e.g., a relational view of teacher agency). In his concluding chapter, the author calls for the “new generation of [scholars] to go beyond the familiar approaches [of CALL research]” by calling into question the amount of assistance a computer (technology) may provide, as well as the cultural, social, and political implications of this assistance (p. 119). The theoretical underpinnings of Ahmed’s claims seem valuable and insightful; however, the voices of language teachers would have bolstered his claims by providing more insight into the affective and pedagogical responses to the digital technologies being brought into the language classroom. This minor shortcoming, though, is not large enough to dismiss the provision of insight this book may bring to educators and researchers in language education. Addressing silences in a field that is rapidly growing alongside the technologies in our everyday lives is paramount to the progress and benefit of language education, and we, as stakeholders in language education, may benefit from following a critical evaluation of new digital technologies that emerge around us.
References
Ahmed, A. (2022). Exploring Silences in the Field of Computer Assisted Language Learning (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06501-9
Son, J.-B., & Windeatt, S. (2017). Teacher training in computer-assisted language learning: Voices of teacher educators. In Son, J.-B., & Windeatt, S. (Eds.), Language teacher education and technology: Approaches and practices. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350020436
Otto, S. (2017). From past to present: A hundred years of technology for L2 learning. In C.A. Chapelle & S. Sauro (Eds.), The handbook of technology and second language teaching and learning (pp. 10-25). Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118914069
Madge (Madisyn) Mitchell is a graduate student in the Linguistics/TESOL master’s program at the University of South Florida. Her interests in the field revolve around (digital) discourse analysis, multimodality, and language and identity.