Tinnefeld Effective Communication in a Global Context

Interconnectivity - Interculturality - Interdisciplinarity
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-381-12313-1
Verlag: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 306 Seiten

We're happy to announce the forthcoming release of 'Effective Communication in a Global Context: Interconnectivity - Interculturality - Interdisciplinarity.' This book presents a diverse range of chapters exploring global communication skills, cross-cultural education challenges, and practical aspects of intercultural communication. It critically examines the intersection of language, culture, and education and highlights the interdisciplinary nature of communication across borders. With a focus on virtual intercultural encounters and firsthand accounts, this book offers valuable insights into communication in a globalized world. It's a must-read for scholars, educators, and professionals navigating today's interconnected world.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Tinnefeld ist Inhaber einer W3-Professur für Angewandte Sprachen an der HTW des Saarlandes.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tinnefeld, Thomas

Leseproben

Problematizing Epistemic Dependency in Global English Language Teaching

Eugenia (Gene) Vasilopoulos & Douglas Fleming

1Introduction

This paper re-examines and problematizes the findings in our previously reported study that focused on a state-funded international teacher study-abroad project (Vasilopoulos et al. 2017, Romero & Vasilopoulos 2020). The West China Project (WCP) ran between 2015–2018 and involved 243 English language teachers from the Western Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Gansu, who came to a research-based university in Eastern Canada for three months of intensive English language teacher training. As part of the project, we collected extensive quantitative and qualitative data in Canada during the program and in China once our participants returned home.

Traditionally, as we argue below, research findings in Global English Language Training (ELT) study-abroad research highlight dominant themes and a linear transmission of uncontested knowledge from centre to periphery. This approach masks a reality that participants in programs which are funded primarily by agencies in positions of authority over them may not understandably be willing to participate unreservedly in recorded interviews / focus groups. For critical researchers, drawing attention to how we interpret participant silence and tension is a question of ethics to un-do dominant discourses that perpetuate epistemic dependency in Global ELT.

In this paper, we focus on how in Global ELT (Kumaravadivelu, 2012, Morgan 2015, Phillipson 2012) is perpetuated in the reporting of Global English research and program evaluation. Theoretically and methodologically, we draw on an (Barad 2007) and the notion of (Murris & Bozalek 2019a, 2019b) that are predicated on entanglement and not essentializing identities or reading fixed interpretations. Our renewed analysis focuses on the silences and tensions aside from the more obvious intended outcomes explicitly stated in the interview and focus group transcripts. Findings include tensions experienced in the program content, program delivery, and data collection; surveillance with the presence of party officials as supervisors / leaders in each class; self-censorship regarding the socio-material reality of teaching including political structures and agency to enact change; and dominant discourse whereby many of interviews and focus groups sounded the same.

In what follows, we first provide some background as to the conditions faced by ELT teachers in China. This is followed by a description of our participants and a brief outline of our original research methodology. We then discuss and apply our theoretical frameworks: the notions of epistemic dependency, ethico-onto-epistemological approaches, diffractive readings of texts, and response-able pedagogy. We conclude by arguing that our field must take into account the types of research challenges we have outlined and adopt ethics related to the notion of (Bozalek & Zembylas 2017).

2The Study

2.1Global ELT, the Chinese Context and the WCP

The expansion and growth of English as an international language (EIL) has increased the number of people around the world studying this language in different contexts and settings (Block 2003). As Ellis (2008) argues, teachers in foreign English language teaching and learning contexts face diverse challenges. Student motivation is often low, and classes are usually large. This results in significant challenges in terms of classroom management. In addition, the wages for language teachers are commonly low and the available teaching resources are limited. Instruction is commonly formal, teacher-centred and form-based. Students in these contexts have few opportunities to use English orally or practice spontaneous conversation. Moreover, as the participants stated, most students in rural China and living in remote communities feel that they have little use for English.

In China, English instruction has been dominated by a grammar form-focused pedagogy and the memorization of structures provided by the language teacher (Zhang & Li 2014). However, as Li & Edwards (2013, 2014) note, China has embarked on wholesale educational reform aimed at shifting English instruction from models of pedagogy based on teacher-centred transmission to those that are communicative, task-based and student-centred.

This is an integral part of changing Chinese national educational policy (as outlined in Gu 2010). To implement the new curricular innovations and to improve the standards of teaching and learning English, the leading Chinese funder of international education, the China Scholarship Council (CSC), funds projects such as the one under study that sends teachers abroad for three months to participate in professional development projects in English speaking countries, including Australia, the UK, the USA, New Zealand, and Canada.

The WCP was delivered at the Faculty of Education at a large research-based bilingual university in Eastern Canada with the assistance of the university’s Language Institute. Extensive consultation around the curricular aspects of the project was held with the CSC, the Embassy of China and the Beijing Languages and Culture University (BLCU). In view of the challenges and trends noted above, the CSC established two broad goals for this project: to help Yunnan English teachers improve their second language teaching practices and to improve their levels of English language proficiency.

The participants in the program were mostly experienced English language teachers who worked in middle and secondary schools throughout Yunnan and Gansu provinces. Around half of them belonged to various ethnic and linguistic minorities themselves. Although some worked in urban centres, the vast majority came from outlying rural areas within the province. Three-quarters of the teachers were women, and one-quarter were men. None of the teachers came from middle- or upper-income brackets. Some were homeroom teachers or heads of their local school’s English teaching department. However, most were classroom teachers with no additional responsibilities. All had English as their teaching subject.

In consultation with CSC, the provincial educational authority selected schools from various localities to participate in this project. Local school principals and colleagues then nominated those who would be asked to participate, and most were enthusiastic about participating in the project, especially given that most had never travelled beyond their home province. The teachers first participated in a month-long orientation to North American culture and pedagogy at BLCU prior to departing for the study abroad component of the program in Canada.

At the host Canadian university, the team of multicultural and multilingual professors and graduate students who delivered and designed the project were specialists in second-language education. Most had extensive international teaching experience (several in China):

Cohort/Province

Number of Participants

Years of Teaching Experience

Age/Gender

Ethnolinguistic Background/Home Language

2015 Yunnan

37

5–10

30–45 years 30 Females 7 Males

Dali; Lijiang; Puer; Yao; Weishan; Lingcang; Binchuan; Midu; Yongren; Han

2016 Yunnan

34

3–18

24–44 years 27 Females 7 Males

Lisu; Jinpo; Di; Hani; Yi; Han

2017 Yunnan

73

3–20

26–44 years 58 Females 15 Males

Dai; Yi; Bai; Wa; Han

2018 Yunnan, Gansu

105

5–25

28–50 years 79 Females 26 Males

Han; Hui; Bai; Dai; Hani; Yi; Lisu

Table 1: Participant Demographics

The syllabus was first drafted by the second author, the lead professor, in consultation with the teaching team, and included the following topics: lesson-planning, curriculum design, general linguistics, teaching material design, the role of grammar, bilingualism, decentralized curriculum decision-making; student-centred pedagogical approaches, anti-racist education, critical multiculturalism, alternate forms of educational leadership, critical curriculum theory, problematizing Canadian culture,...