SRIS Statement of Purpose

Social Responsibility IS supports, promotes, and encourages research and classroom practices that integrate language teaching with the themes of social responsibility and world citizenship, as well as building awareness of global issues such as peace, human rights, and the environment. The Interest Section aims to promote research into and the development of classroom practices that incorporate social responsibility within the TESOL profession and to advance social equity, respect for differences, and multicultural understanding through education.

SRIS Professional Concerns:

1. To promote and support research on the development and utilization of methodologies for incorporating social responsibility into the teaching of English to speakers of other languages
   
   
2. To promote the development of professional standards for SRIS areas and work toward their inclusion into general ELT standards
   
   

SRIS Academic Concerns:

1. To develop instructional strategies which promote tolerance, global awareness, international understanding, and social responsibility among teachers and learners
   
   
2. To research language teaching content, methods, and approaches that can help students become active global citizens in their local cultures
   
   
3. To help teachers and learners around the world better understand the causes of global issues that affect the human family and strive toward finding solutions to these issues
   
   
4. To research ways to overcome stereotypes and negative images possibly held by some ESOL professionals and/or some learners that hinder peace, cooperation, and trust
   
   
5. To disseminate ideas in the form of publications, research, and ready-to-use classroom materials
   
   
6. To arrange teacher training courses and workshops that can introduce TESOL professionals to such fields as global education, peace education, environmental education, and AIDS/HIV education
   
   
7. To provide teaching resources to help teachers teach about global issues and social responsibility
   
   
8. To work to further the profession by making language teaching more relevant to world realities
   
   
9. To provide a forum for TESOL professionals to share experiences, to more effectively promote global awareness and social responsibility through content-based approaches to English language teaching
   
   
10. To establish links between TESOL members and affiliates working in areas concerned with social responsibility issues with similar national and international associations and organizations to explore ways of working together to achieve mutual goals