Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2020.1815520
M. Wyatt, Donald Sargeant
ABSTRACT Nurturing critically engaged and reflective English language teachers is vital if the educational systems they work in are to change dynamically in response to learners’ evolving needs. Given that criticality involves constant reflexive questioning of both public discourse and one’s own beliefs and assumptions, teacher educators have a responsibility to model criticality in their own practices, through challenging their own thinking as well as the thinking of their mentees. This consideration is at the heart of our response to an article published recently in the journal Changing English. The article in question powerfully advocates criticality in respect of English language teaching in Oman, but the research it is based on appears to lack critical reflexivity in some respects. After dissecting this issue, we offer some concluding thoughts.
{"title":"As an Insider, Researching English Language Teaching in Oman, You Need to Be Reflexive: A Response to Al-Issa (2019)","authors":"M. Wyatt, Donald Sargeant","doi":"10.1080/1358684X.2020.1815520","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2020.1815520","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Nurturing critically engaged and reflective English language teachers is vital if the educational systems they work in are to change dynamically in response to learners’ evolving needs. Given that criticality involves constant reflexive questioning of both public discourse and one’s own beliefs and assumptions, teacher educators have a responsibility to model criticality in their own practices, through challenging their own thinking as well as the thinking of their mentees. This consideration is at the heart of our response to an article published recently in the journal Changing English. The article in question powerfully advocates criticality in respect of English language teaching in Oman, but the research it is based on appears to lack critical reflexivity in some respects. After dissecting this issue, we offer some concluding thoughts.","PeriodicalId":54156,"journal":{"name":"Changing English-Studies in Culture and Education","volume":"28 1","pages":"327 - 340"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/1358684X.2020.1815520","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42081173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-17DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2021.1941768
Lucinda McKnight
ABSTRACT With artificial intelligence (AI) now producing human-quality text in seconds via natural language generation, urgent questions arise about the nature and purpose of the teaching of writing in English. Humans have already been co-composing with digital tools for decades, in the form of spelling and grammar checkers built into word processing software. Yet AI has now advanced such that humans need to have less input in the writing process. This article contrasts these developments with findings from a small study of the teaching of writing in Victoria, Australia. The article proposes conceptual framing for these developments through dialogic encounters with Bill Green’s model for compos(IT)ing and Rosi Braidotti’s concept of the posthuman, making suggestions for updating thinking and offering practical strategies for future directions in the teaching of writing.
{"title":"Electric Sheep? Humans, Robots, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Writing","authors":"Lucinda McKnight","doi":"10.1080/1358684X.2021.1941768","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1941768","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT With artificial intelligence (AI) now producing human-quality text in seconds via natural language generation, urgent questions arise about the nature and purpose of the teaching of writing in English. Humans have already been co-composing with digital tools for decades, in the form of spelling and grammar checkers built into word processing software. Yet AI has now advanced such that humans need to have less input in the writing process. This article contrasts these developments with findings from a small study of the teaching of writing in Victoria, Australia. The article proposes conceptual framing for these developments through dialogic encounters with Bill Green’s model for compos(IT)ing and Rosi Braidotti’s concept of the posthuman, making suggestions for updating thinking and offering practical strategies for future directions in the teaching of writing.","PeriodicalId":54156,"journal":{"name":"Changing English-Studies in Culture and Education","volume":"28 1","pages":"442 - 455"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1941768","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46418918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-14DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2021.1925524
Eliza Kogawa
ABSTRACT This essay investigates the classroom talk and reflections of a Year 5 lesson on reading and writing beyond Standard English. Its title refers to ‘Reflecting Realities’, the CLPE survey of ethnic diversity in UK children’s books. In changing ‘reflecting’ to ‘representing’ I seek to move beyond concern with sourcing representative texts to the work of writing them, stimulating this through bringing non-standard English into the classroom in metalinguistic analysis of diverse Englishes, and in the transcription of parent/carer voice in storytelling. I explore how creative writing can be extended and informed by this process. In the lesson the classroom talk generated shared learning about language and identity. In becoming ‘reader-researchers’ the class also learnt technical elements in writing voice, extended school-home engagement, broadened choices as readers and writers, and moved towards parity between the Englishes they know and encounter – and thus between the people who use them.
{"title":"Representing Realities: Children as Speakers, Readers and Writers of Englishes","authors":"Eliza Kogawa","doi":"10.1080/1358684X.2021.1925524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1925524","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay investigates the classroom talk and reflections of a Year 5 lesson on reading and writing beyond Standard English. Its title refers to ‘Reflecting Realities’, the CLPE survey of ethnic diversity in UK children’s books. In changing ‘reflecting’ to ‘representing’ I seek to move beyond concern with sourcing representative texts to the work of writing them, stimulating this through bringing non-standard English into the classroom in metalinguistic analysis of diverse Englishes, and in the transcription of parent/carer voice in storytelling. I explore how creative writing can be extended and informed by this process. In the lesson the classroom talk generated shared learning about language and identity. In becoming ‘reader-researchers’ the class also learnt technical elements in writing voice, extended school-home engagement, broadened choices as readers and writers, and moved towards parity between the Englishes they know and encounter – and thus between the people who use them.","PeriodicalId":54156,"journal":{"name":"Changing English-Studies in Culture and Education","volume":"28 1","pages":"355 - 369"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1925524","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42004195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-14DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2021.1934401
P. Tarpey
ABSTRACT In this article I reflect on the early formation of my professional identity and practice. I argue that much of my early practice was ‘decorative’ in that it masked dominant structures and discourses that often limited learning opportunities. I consider how a dialogic approach to school English is important for offering more authentic teaching and learning experiences within present circumstances dominated by a narrow curriculum focus on canonical literature, Standard English grammar and summative assessment. I end by offering an alternative, through examples of reflective and dialogic practice, aimed at providing students with a more authentic and meaningful learning experience.
{"title":"‘Dialogue Not Decoration’ – Personal Reflections on Professional Identity and Practice in English Teaching","authors":"P. Tarpey","doi":"10.1080/1358684X.2021.1934401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1934401","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article I reflect on the early formation of my professional identity and practice. I argue that much of my early practice was ‘decorative’ in that it masked dominant structures and discourses that often limited learning opportunities. I consider how a dialogic approach to school English is important for offering more authentic teaching and learning experiences within present circumstances dominated by a narrow curriculum focus on canonical literature, Standard English grammar and summative assessment. I end by offering an alternative, through examples of reflective and dialogic practice, aimed at providing students with a more authentic and meaningful learning experience.","PeriodicalId":54156,"journal":{"name":"Changing English-Studies in Culture and Education","volume":"28 1","pages":"370 - 383"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1934401","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48356514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-12DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2021.1915747
Samuel Holdstock
ABSTRACT The literacy practices enacted in secondary school English classrooms can be influenced by the pressures acting upon teachers and students. Attention can be diverted away from the process of meaning-making when more emphasis is placed upon performance outcomes than on reading processes. This paper argues that digital forms of Interactive Fiction (IF) hold the potential to help teachers and students attend more closely to the process of meaning-making. It also argues that IF’s component parts – passages, choices and links – render it a useful resource for the scaffolding of classroom dialogue. By considering the different ways that IF could influence the choices that individuals make in the classroom, this paper suggests that works of IF could enable teachers and students to engage with texts differently, improving the literacy practices of the students involved.
{"title":"The Dialogic Possibilities for Interactive Fiction in the Secondary Academy English Classroom","authors":"Samuel Holdstock","doi":"10.1080/1358684X.2021.1915747","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1915747","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The literacy practices enacted in secondary school English classrooms can be influenced by the pressures acting upon teachers and students. Attention can be diverted away from the process of meaning-making when more emphasis is placed upon performance outcomes than on reading processes. This paper argues that digital forms of Interactive Fiction (IF) hold the potential to help teachers and students attend more closely to the process of meaning-making. It also argues that IF’s component parts – passages, choices and links – render it a useful resource for the scaffolding of classroom dialogue. By considering the different ways that IF could influence the choices that individuals make in the classroom, this paper suggests that works of IF could enable teachers and students to engage with texts differently, improving the literacy practices of the students involved.","PeriodicalId":54156,"journal":{"name":"Changing English-Studies in Culture and Education","volume":"28 1","pages":"395 - 410"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1915747","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43433767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-12DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2021.1915748
Jueyun Su, Trisna Aryanata, Ya-Ting Shih, D. Dalsky
ABSTRACT This ‘inclusive practitioner research’ study presents a collaborative ‘virtual intercultural fieldwork’ project in which Balinese and Chinese university students communicated in English to explore similar emic cultural concepts related to the Japanese concept of amae (presumed indulgence); namely, manying (Balinese) and sajiao (Mandarin Chinese), through online exchanges and interviewing. The project aimed to develop and improve learners’ (including teachers) intercultural communicative competence and multiliteracies related to linguistic competence and intercultural understandings. The project also provided opportunities for the learners to use academic English in authentic situations by posing research questions and exploring methods to discover transcultural understandings through research. Applying the principles of Cultural Linguistics, Exploratory Practice, and Team Learning, the analysis of this project’s unique virtual communication element aims to inspire innovations in classroom design for teaching English as an International Language.
{"title":"English as an International Language in Practice: Virtual Intercultural Fieldwork between Balinese and Chinese EFL Learners","authors":"Jueyun Su, Trisna Aryanata, Ya-Ting Shih, D. Dalsky","doi":"10.1080/1358684X.2021.1915748","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1915748","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This ‘inclusive practitioner research’ study presents a collaborative ‘virtual intercultural fieldwork’ project in which Balinese and Chinese university students communicated in English to explore similar emic cultural concepts related to the Japanese concept of amae (presumed indulgence); namely, manying (Balinese) and sajiao (Mandarin Chinese), through online exchanges and interviewing. The project aimed to develop and improve learners’ (including teachers) intercultural communicative competence and multiliteracies related to linguistic competence and intercultural understandings. The project also provided opportunities for the learners to use academic English in authentic situations by posing research questions and exploring methods to discover transcultural understandings through research. Applying the principles of Cultural Linguistics, Exploratory Practice, and Team Learning, the analysis of this project’s unique virtual communication element aims to inspire innovations in classroom design for teaching English as an International Language.","PeriodicalId":54156,"journal":{"name":"Changing English-Studies in Culture and Education","volume":"28 1","pages":"429 - 441"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1915748","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47231636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-08DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2021.1899799
K. Lee
ABSTRACT Life writing is frequently considered as a private act of composition and reflection. What are the benefits and challenges if students are asked to participate in a collaborative life-writing project that aims to capture, explore, and reflect upon the relationship between personal life history, memory and place? In this essay, I will demonstrate how the incorporation of a collaborative life-writing project could help develop students’ critical awareness of key narrative elements in life writing, the ethics of representing life and the co-existence of diverse perspectives towards any subject of portrayal or representation. Drawing on student interviews, I will also show how their engagement with a place that carried personal and collective significance when they narrated life stories had helped them connect with the community and be empathetic towards those with whom they would otherwise have little contact.
{"title":"Teaching Life Writing through Collaborative Projects","authors":"K. Lee","doi":"10.1080/1358684X.2021.1899799","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1899799","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Life writing is frequently considered as a private act of composition and reflection. What are the benefits and challenges if students are asked to participate in a collaborative life-writing project that aims to capture, explore, and reflect upon the relationship between personal life history, memory and place? In this essay, I will demonstrate how the incorporation of a collaborative life-writing project could help develop students’ critical awareness of key narrative elements in life writing, the ethics of representing life and the co-existence of diverse perspectives towards any subject of portrayal or representation. Drawing on student interviews, I will also show how their engagement with a place that carried personal and collective significance when they narrated life stories had helped them connect with the community and be empathetic towards those with whom they would otherwise have little contact.","PeriodicalId":54156,"journal":{"name":"Changing English-Studies in Culture and Education","volume":"28 1","pages":"384 - 394"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1899799","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46916744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-08DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2021.1895723
J. McConnel
ABSTRACT This article explores the ways in which the language of the hero’s journey can serve as a heuristic for teachers at all stages of their professional experience. Teachers in Canada and the United States were interviewed via Skype about their experiences around writing and literacy. Four teachers are profiled here, two from Canada and two from the United States. Through narrative analysis, the author suggests that using the specific language of the hero’s journey, but not necessarily its linear structure, can help articulate commonalities and divergences in teacher narratives.
{"title":"Thresholds and Ordeals: (Re)storying the Teacher’s Journey","authors":"J. McConnel","doi":"10.1080/1358684X.2021.1895723","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1895723","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the ways in which the language of the hero’s journey can serve as a heuristic for teachers at all stages of their professional experience. Teachers in Canada and the United States were interviewed via Skype about their experiences around writing and literacy. Four teachers are profiled here, two from Canada and two from the United States. Through narrative analysis, the author suggests that using the specific language of the hero’s journey, but not necessarily its linear structure, can help articulate commonalities and divergences in teacher narratives.","PeriodicalId":54156,"journal":{"name":"Changing English-Studies in Culture and Education","volume":"28 1","pages":"296 - 305"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-04-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/1358684X.2021.1895723","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44195555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2020.1811081
Ah-Young Song
ABSTRACT This work draws from a larger research project that centres a youth summer writing programme. In this article, the author recounts the multiliteracy experiences of a white student who found creative strategies to document her identity and values in her work, as she learned to navigate a learning environment that decentered whiteness. Two activities in particular helped this learner inscribe her queer identity in material form and engage in narrative play to convey personal values. Drawing from ethnographic methods and constructivist grounded theory, this study argues for the expansion of writing programmes that support various personal entryways into meaning-making. Such projects reveal the importance of student choice and multimodal forms of engagement in youth learning environments.
{"title":"Textured Texts: Demonstration of Investment through Coded Weavings and Fictional Narratives","authors":"Ah-Young Song","doi":"10.1080/1358684X.2020.1811081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2020.1811081","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This work draws from a larger research project that centres a youth summer writing programme. In this article, the author recounts the multiliteracy experiences of a white student who found creative strategies to document her identity and values in her work, as she learned to navigate a learning environment that decentered whiteness. Two activities in particular helped this learner inscribe her queer identity in material form and engage in narrative play to convey personal values. Drawing from ethnographic methods and constructivist grounded theory, this study argues for the expansion of writing programmes that support various personal entryways into meaning-making. Such projects reveal the importance of student choice and multimodal forms of engagement in youth learning environments.","PeriodicalId":54156,"journal":{"name":"Changing English-Studies in Culture and Education","volume":"28 1","pages":"196 - 207"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/1358684X.2020.1811081","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47014363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-03DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2021.1893499
J. Yandell
Not very long ago, a student on the pre-service teacher education programme that I lead told a story about the end of term test that confronted her class of elevenand twelve-year olds at her practicum school in East London. Presented with a list of poets, the pupils were asked to arrange them in chronological order, according to the date of their deaths. The task represents a form of perfection, the reductio ad absurdum of the current fashion for a ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum. Here was English as a school subject reimagined as a set of easily testable facts; more than this, though, as facts that could not possibly be of assistance to a student’s efforts to develop a coherent picture of English in general or of poetry in particular. This was English shorn not just of difficulty but of meaning itself. You may not be surprised to read that this version of English is not one that figures prominently in the essays that follow. Each, in their very different ways, wrestles with the school subject and its attendant pursuits and pedagogies as contested spaces. Each acknowledges, too, that thinking about English involves an engagement with history; but the histories that are at stake here are infinitely richer, more complex and more uncertain than a list of dates. We start with Brenton Doecke’s account of his own formation – an act of Gramscian inventory-taking that simultaneously involves probing the significance that Marxist literary theory has had for him as an English educator. As Scholes (1998, 151) suggested, ‘Understanding the category of literature as a problem – and a problem with a history – is part of what every serious student of English should know.’ Doecke, though, takes this argument further, in at least two important ways: first, that the problem extends beyond definitions to questions of value, and that doubts about what literary education is for must remain central to literary education itself; second, that the fundamental weakness of much literary theory lies in its longstanding failure to take seriously the cultural praxis that is enacted in (school) classrooms. Francis Gilbert’s exploration of the teaching of creative writing is, likewise, grounded in autobiographical reflection – in his own experiences as a creative writing student as well as in his more recent work as a teacher and educator. Gilbert offers a typology of different approaches to, and rationales for, creative writing courses; more than this, though, he insists that teachers of creative writing need to examine their reasons for teaching if they are to understand (and develop) their pedagogy. Questions of identity intersect with pedagogic strategies and dilemmas in the following four contributions. Salomé Romylos analyses the formation of the professional identities of English literature teachers in one region of South Africa. In a series of case studies, she traces the influence of larger forces and discourses on individuals, while also observing the complex relation bet
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