Fairness, Justice, and the Certification of Teaching Competence for International Teaching Assistants

Abstract

THIS YEAR'S PERSPECTIVES COLUMN ON international teaching assistants (ITAs) launches with an anchor piece by Darren K. LaScotte, entitled "The 'Foreign TA Problem' Forty Years On." This anchor piece revisits the history of international and English learning graduate students serving as instructors in North American universities and offers the University of Minnesota as a case. Since naming ITAs as a "problem" , many universities have drafted and implemented language policies requiring nonnative-English-speaking TAs to be additionally screened and tested to ensure adequate language proficiency levels. At the same time, our field of applied linguistics has become more woke. We can now unpack the challenges and inconsistencies that are embedded in language policies, given new understandings of the linkages among language, race, and "appropriate" language. As LaScotte says, "just as language policies are colored by the ideologies of their policy makers, so too are the decisions that teachers and administrators make with regard to policy implementation and enforcement" (2022, this issue, p. XX). The commentaries rise to the occasion by exploring the issues through various critical lenses. Yi-Ju Lai takes up the issue through a lens of materiality, highlighting the embodied multi-