GALE SIG, the Gender Awareness in Language Education Special Interest Group of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT), works towards building a supportive community of educators and researchers interested in raising awareness and researching the ways in which gender plays a role in language education and professional interaction. We network and collaborate with other JALT groups and the community at large to promote sound pedagogical and professional practices, language teaching materials, and research that is inclusive of gender and gender-related topics. GALE is its members. Together we talk about gender issues in education through in-person meetings and mailing lists and share our insights through a newsletter and journal as well as links and other articles on this website.
We feel there is tremendous energy, enthusiasm, and interest right now among JALT members regarding various aspects of gender issues in language education and research. We also feel that the GALE SIG helps to introduce and pull many new members into JALT. Much cutting-edge research involves looking at gender as a factor in linguistic interaction, in teaching, in research, and in teacher training. We are pleased to support the efforts of JALT members in furthering such research and its applications to the foreign language classroom.
Our Mission
The Mission Statement of the Gender Awareness in Language Education National Special Interest Group (GALE SIG) in the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT) has the four following points:
To research gender and its implications for language learning, teaching, and training, such as differences in discourse styles, preferred teaching and learning styles, interests, needs, motivation, aptitude, achievement, classroom interactions, same- sex versus coeducational classrooms and same-sex vs. opposite- sex teaching, and social identity.
To improve pedagogical practices, develop language teaching materials, and provide a clearinghouse for materials inclusive of gender and gender-related topics in FL subject areas such as communication, history, literature, linguistics, science, sociology, cultural studies, etc.
To raise awareness of workplace and human rights issues related to gender for language professionals, such as discrimination, harassment, and violence based on gender and sexual orientation, and discrimination on the basis of marital or parental status, and to provide information for countering such discrimination.
To increase networking opportunities among language professionals interested in teaching, researching, and/or discussing issues related to gender and language education, such as biological sex, gender identity, gendered language, sexual orientation, gender behavior, gender roles, and gender socialization.