A critically conscious examination of special education within FSL and its relevance to FSL teacher education programs

Abstract

Using the lens of critical theory, this article explores the tenuous relationship between special education and French Second Language (FSL) education, particularly as it manifests in the issue of including students with language-based learning disabilities/difficulties within the French immersion context. Drawing on considerations of these issues within empirical, theoretical, and popular literature, the authors point out that the current tensions are borne of conflicting ideals about what should comprise the requisite educational experience of students who learn in atypical ways in an age where learner difference is fully expected to be accommodated. Through this analysis, the authors consider how FSL teacher education programs could become sites for reconciling these tensions and potentially enabling greater inclusion within FSL programs, even though their current structures could explain some of the tensions that exist between the fields of special and FSL education.