Negotiating TESOL Discourses and EFL Teaching Contexts in China: Identities and Practices of International Graduates of a TESOL Program

This article reports on a study of the material effects of the discourses circulating in a TESOL program housed in a Canadian university on the professional identities and practices that international graduates of the program negotiate and develop in their local professional contexts in China. The principal researcher and two of the study participants discuss pedagogical values salient among program graduates and explore complexities accompanying professional identity negotiation. The article offers recommendations for TESOL programs in affording EFL teachers the possibility to construct hybrid professional identities and dwell comfortably in a “third space” as educational practitioners in a globalized world

Exploring Culture in Texts Designed for Use in Adult ESL Classrooms

This article examines the presentation of culture in texts designed for adult learners of English as a second language in Canada. Guiding the analysis is a view of culture as a process of making sense of the world and a site of struggles of people with multiple and shifting identities over meaning and representation. The article discusses the role of texts as culture bearers in second language classrooms. It also addresses aspects of the method of critical discourse analysis, which is employed to tackle the following questions: What is considered cultural knowledge in the selected texts? Whose views of culture are presented in the texts? Do these texts allow students to explore and negotiate their own cultural experiences in the new Canadian environment? The article concludes that in the selected texts culture is constructed as a national attribute consisting of sets of stable values and behavior patterns, a construction that ignores the conflicts and fluidity of cultural forms that characterize human encounters

A story of texts, culture(s), cultural tool normalization, and adult ESL learning and teaching

This study explores engagements with texts as tools for cultural topic activities in two adult ESL classrooms as well as engagements with culture(s) in and outside the two classrooms. It introduces the notion of cultural tool normalization to conceptualize processes of cultural reproduction within engagements with culture(s). The study draws on classroom observations and interviews with 2 teachers and 41 students and employs sociocultural, poststructural, psychoanalytical and critical discourse analysis perspectives in analyses of the data. The study examined whether monologic or dialogic text features made a difference in possibilities for students\u27 negotiation of the texts\u27 cultural meanings. The analyses point to a complicated picture of the interaction between texts and their users, to occasions when students\u27 knowledge and views could be ignored as well as powerfully evoked when both monologic and dialogic classroom texts were interacted with. The analyses suggest that the acculturation model of cultural instruction, which entails learning about dominant forms of culture, seemed to dominate the research sites. Further, in enquiring into the students\u27 (dis)identifications with the cultural discourses thrown in their paths, the analyses point out that the adult immigrants\u27 engagements with Canadian culture(s) are affected by the variety of their social positions within these discourses. The study contends that CTN may be linked to discursively constructed desires. Further, CTN may entail the desire to continue to perform particular identity positions constructed differently in the new discourses surrounding adult immigrants or may involve the embracing of a particular new discourse and associated with it identity positions. The study concludes with implications for classroom curriculum, practices and teacher education. It points to possibilities for inviting students\u27 negotiations of the cultural discourses embedded in classroom texts, to the need for teachers and students to explore the discursive character of culture(s) through the employment of a model of critical multiculturalism in classroom settings, and to the need for teacher education practices to link issues of social change with work on teacher identities

Living With Ambiguity: Toward Culture Exploration in Adult Second-Language Classrooms

On the basis of personal experiences with immigration and current conceptualizations of culture in anthropological and culture teaching literature, this article outlines an approach to cultural instruction in adult second-language education, named "culture exploration," which calls for the recognition of ambiguity embedded in cross-cultural encounters. Culture exploration consists of employing techniques of ethnographic participant observation in and outside the classroom and holding reflective, interpretive, and critical classroom discussions on students' ethnographies. It is argued that through culture exploration students can develop an understanding of humans as cultural beings, of the relationship between language and culture, and of the necessity of living with the uncertainty inherent in cross-cultural interactions. Through this process of naming their experience of the target community culture and reflecting on it, it is hoped that students will be in a position to develop their own voice and will be empowered to act to fulfill their own goals in their new environment.En s'appuyant ala fois sur ses experiences personnelles d'immigrante et sur les conceptualisations actuelles de la culture que l'on retrouve en anthropologie et dans d'autres domaines reposant sur l'etude de la culture, l'auteure presente une approche aI'enseignement culturel aux adultes dans des cours de langue seconde. Nommee "l'exploration culturelle", l'approche veut conscientiser les interlocuteurs sur l'ambiguite inherente dans la communication transculturelle. L'exploration culturelle consiste en l'emploi de techniques d'observation ethnographique par le participant, tant a l'interieur de la salle de classe qu'a l'exterieur. Par la suite, ont lieu des discussions qui portent sur les projets ethnographiques des etudiants et qui impliquent la reflexion, l'interpretation et l'analyse critique. Ilieva maintient que l'exploration culturelle permet aux etudiants de concevoir les humains en tant qu'etres culturels, de comprendre Ie lien entre la langue et la culture, et d'accepter l'incertitude inherente dans les interactions transculturelles. L'on espere que les etudiants, en evoquant leur experience avec la culture de la langue cible et en y reflechissant, seront en mesure de trouver leur propre moyen d'expression et d'atteindre leurs buts dans leur nouvel environnement

“Doing” Internationalization: Principles to Practice

In the context of an increasing commodification of education in a neoliberal academy, this paper explores the usefulness of frameworks for principled internationalization of higher education.  We review recent theoretical analyses of ideologies and orientations of higher education internationalization as well as suggested approaches for principled and ethical internationalization as important signposts in that regard. We discuss data on the everyday experiences of internationalization of faculty, students and staff in one Faculty in Canada in light of these perspectives and propose guidelines that could influence internationalization practices in a more ethical and principled direction