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Neoliberal policies in education have created a focus on profits and competition, systemically casualized teachers as workers, and commodified language and race in ways that impact teachers and how they navigate the morality of their work under these conditions. This article investigates teachers as they construct moral selves in the neoliberal context of private English language institutes in South Korea. Drawing on data from a two-year longitudinal study, it offers new insights on teacher morality construction using positioning analysis of narratives. Narrative analysis allows for situated, interactive, layered examinations of how teachers create moral selves. In their stories, explanations, justifications, and other linguistic devices mark positions in which teachers disagree with, yet align to neoliberal policies. These tensions illustrate how neoliberalism comes to be viewed as immutable, and how teachers adopt an individualized sense of justice in response, while also facing pressure to maintain privileges they gain through the system.

Unexpected conflicts, or eruptions, in class during discussions of controversial issues are not uncommon in the field of English language teaching (ELT). This can be especially true for critical English language teachers who hope to address social justice issues in their classrooms. Existing literature of these events often mentions emotional responses of teachers and students, without fully analyzing the ways in which emotions are processed and constrained around these eruptions. This article examines a homophobic incident during an in-service English language teacher course taught by the author to illustrate ways in which emotions shaped the response to the incident, and how social justice aims can be achieved for critical language teachers in emotionally challenging environments, where there may be competing claims of injustice and narratives of oppression. Drawing on feminist theories of emotion, the case is made for a conceptualization of emotions not as private, individual experiences, but rather as public, socioculturally and materially mediated experiences. Social justice is theorized as an active fight against injustices that cannot be seen as an individual, isolated effort. Implications for critical language educators are shared.

Pollution has the potential to negatively alter coastal ecosystem health, including fisheries species, through direct impacts, food web effects and habitat degradation. Vieques is an island municipality of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which lies off the east coast of the main island. In addition to normal pollution stressors associated with human activities, Vieques was also the site of a military bombing range from the 1940s until 2003. There is significant local concern about potential negative impacts of pollution from these and other activities on fisheries stocks, as well as seafood as a vector for toxic contaminants to enter the human food supply. In this study, queen conch ( Strombus gigas) tissues were analyzed for a suite of contaminants: metals, the pesticide DDT (and its degradation products), and energetic compounds (associated with munitions) from three areas around the island. The magnitude of contamination found in queen conch was within the range of values reported in other studies in the Caribbean, suggesting that the levels of these selected contaminants present in conch in Vieques are not unusual for the region.

Many early stages of estuarine species congregate at the surface or in the upper mixing layer making them prone to UV light exposure and oil sheens. Laboratory testing was used to assess UV-oil sheen interactions with grass shrimp (Palaemon pugio). Newly hatched grass shrimp larvae were exposed to a 1-μm thick oil sheen for 24 h with or without an 8-h pulse of UV light. Grass shrimp were then transferred to clean seawater and non-UV conditions to measure development, growth, and reproductive fitness. Minimal toxicity was observed after the initial exposure but larval development was significantly delayed in shrimp exposed to the UV enhanced sheen. After reaching sexual maturity, shrimp were paired to evaluate effects on reproduction. Shrimp initially exposed to the UV enhanced sheen as larvae had a significant reduction in fecundity compared to controls. This demonstrates the importance of examining interactions between UV light and oil since negative effects to aquatic organisms may be underestimated if based on standard laboratory fluorescent lighting. Acute exposures of early life stages to thin oil sheens and UV light may lead to long-term impacts to individuals and ultimately to grass shrimp populations.

This chapter describes how one teacher increased connections between the ESL classroom and the local community through pedagogic innovation. Beginning with reading circles, and drawing on critical and sociocultural views that promote learner autonomy, the teacher shares examples of reading projects that helped learners establish reading communities and connections beyond the classroom. This approach thus broadens the possibilities for what an academic reading course might entail.