Gender-just language teaching and linguistic competence development

Within a broad turn toward identity-focused pedagogies, educators are increasingly recognizing the critical impetus to engage with gender in expansive and inclusive ways. However, challenges persist. Often inadequate supports are exacerbated by a lack of empirical investigations into whether and how gender-just language teaching may contribute to student learning. Thus, very little is known about how this ethical imperative interfaces with linguistic outcomes. To respond, this study analyzed linguistic accuracy and complexity in assignment data from 112 US undergraduate students enrolled in one of three iterations of an intermediate French course, which varied in whether and when gender-just pedagogies were introduced. Results indicated that gender-just language pedagogies contribute to significantly lower overall mean error rates but do not have a statistically significant relationship with mean length of utterance. Implications are discussed, including the clear benefit of an early-and-often approach to gender justice in the language classroom.