Week 10: Race, language, and identity: Critical multiculturalism in TESOL
SUMMARY:
The first reading for this week was written by Awad Ibrahim. The title is "Becoming Black: Rap and Hip-Hop, Race, Gender, Identity, and the Politics of ESL Learning". The article focuses on the impact that a social imaginary has on ESL learners in a community. Ibrahim examined the effect that Black Stylized English had on a group of refugee status immigrants within the context of an urban, French-Language high school in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Ibrahim defines BSE as well as how it relates to hip-hop culture. Ibrahim explains his involvement with the school as well, which went beyond the researcher/participant dichotomy. The author conducted individual interviews as well as two focus-group interview sessions. Finally, from his data, Ibrahim discussed how particular individuals perceived themselves in relation to the community they had emigrated to. The author also discussed how this perception influenced their acclimatization to the English-speaking community.
The second reading was a selection from Ryuko Kubota and Angel Lin's book "Race, Culture, and Identities in Second Language Education". The selection was the first chapter of the book and is meants to be an introduction to research and practice. In this section, the authors attempt to define race and culture with respect to TESOL, as well as present some theoretical backgrounds for the understanding of race or ethnicity within the field of TESOL. The authors also invoked Bordieu's concepts of habitus and cultural capital. The authors provide some inquiry themes for second language education, which problematizes the concept of race within the TESOL classroom as well as examines some of the manifestations of biases within these contexts.
The last reading was "Hard Times: Arab TESOL Students' Experiences of Racialization and Othering in the United Kingdom" by Sarah Rich and Salah Troudi. This article was published in TESOL Quarterly and was included in the brief reports and summaries. As the authors write "The study sought to address the following research question: How far and in what ways do Arab Muslim students perceive racialization to be significant to their experiences of Othering in a TESOL community in the United Kingdom?" The participants were all graduate-level TESOL students at a UK university. The authors discuss two aspects of racism perceived by the participants, which were categorized as such: Othering based on Non-racial categories, and accounts of Othering based on racism. Understanding the limitations of this study being so brief, the authors suggested that it be used as a stepping-stone for further inquiry into racialization with respect to TESOL pedagogy and practitions.
REFLECTIONS:
I really enjoyed all the articles we were to read this week. In particular, the Ibrahim and the Rich & Troudi. It was fascinating to hear the stories of others who have experienced racism. As a white male from a middle-class background, I feel as though I have not experienced much otherization within my lifetime. So I feel as though it is important for me to hear these stories, and that seemed to be one of the cruxes of the readings (and of this class), that we (all) should attempt to experience and hear and understand the experiences of those different from ourselves. Empathy, man, what gives?
On a more serious note, it was at some point in the Kubota and Lin reading that I began to feel guilty about my decision to become a TESOL pedagog. It's hard to communicate, but when they started talking about attitudes toward the idea that native speakers should be the ones to teach English, I began to feel it, the guilt. The authors basically encouraged me to step back and examine the choices I've made in my life, and basically question the things I understood about myself and what I wanted to do as a career choice. It was very troubling to me. I wish I could communicate it more clearly. I'll have to look for the section again and examine the emotions it evoked last night.
Further Questions:
1. How does one broach the concept of race or ethnicity in an ESL classroom without allowing the conversation to devolve into white people talk like this, black people talk like this? (I have a feeling that this may be a loaded question, with a not so clear and straight-forward answer)
2. Can we ever talk about race too much?
Regards,
TfM
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Week 8 Reading Response
Cultural Representions: Culture and Teaching Materials
SUMMARY:
Holliday et. al; A 3.1 and 3.2
Section A 3.1 discussed the the problems that media representations create with respect to intercultural communication. The authors provide us with a vignette of a Canadian teacher struggling with communicating with a refugee as a result of her perception of him being tainted by both media and professional images. The authors recommend that an individual "bracket popular representations" and rather 1. "be aware of the media, political, and institutional on our own society which lead us to see people from other cultural backgrounds in a certain way" and "See through these images and fictions when we encounter people from other cultural backgrounds, and always try to consider alternative representations."
Section A 3.2 deconstructed some real-life examples of essentialization and otherization. The authors talk about how "dominant discourses can be so naturalized that people become unaware of them". Essentialism ties very much into this notion as well. The authors suggest that we should:
"Be aware of dominant discourses which are easily perpetuated by the media, and which lead us to think-as-usual that familiar images of the foreign Other are normal."
"Be aware that even images projected by sensitive, intellectual sources can seduce our own sensitivities and intellects into thinking they are true."
Lastly the authors mention about sensationalism:
"Although sensationalism in the media is something we know about and guard against, we need to appreciate how deeply it exists in our traditional views of the foreign Other."
Holliday et al; B 3.2 and B 3.3
Section B 3.2 discusses social constructionism and social representations. The authors explain that our perceptions of the world might be said to be socially constructed. They state that social representations have an historical dimension. There are four key assumptions, according to the authors, they are:
1. A critical stance towards taken-for-granted knowledge
2. Historical and cultural specificity
3. Knowledge is sustained by social processes
4. Knowledge and social action go together
The authors finally explain in this section how to interpret and explain cultural representations.
Section B 3.3 examines representations in the media. Particularly, how these representations can be misleading for a multitude of reasons. Noam Chomsky argues that the news media provides us with 'a very narrow, very tightly constrained and grotesquely inaccurate account of the world in which we live'. Through the texts in this section, numerous authors critically challenge media discourse as being essentializing in nature.
Tyer-Mendes 2010: Construction of racial stereotypes in EFL textbooks
This article discussed the problems surrounding sample images used in EFL text books. The author researched EFL teacher and student attitudes toward images used in EFL textbooks. The responses were surprising to the researchers. They found that the subjects were responsive to the power-imbalance issues implied through the use of these images. The subjects articulated what the researchers were suggesting about the images. Finally, the researchers suggested ways of encouraging educators and students to critically think about the images presented in textbooks, and try to problematize the implications of these photos.
RESPONSE
These readings were interesting because they take another aspect of intercultural communications and critically dissect how these aspects (Media and professional images, textbook images) influence our perceptions of cultures different from our own. You never really think about where your ideas about those from different cultures come from. Sometimes, its from conversations you have with others (but you need to remind yourself that an individual does NOT represent the culture group you associate them with), and more often, it is from the media that we get our preconceived notions about different cultures. We often let the rhetoric of these discourses influence our notions of other cultures. Some times we don't even notice or are aware of the influence. This is especially problematic because we take these assumptions for granted. For example, an individual might think that a Mexican's favorite food is tacos (or nachos). Where does this notion come from? It is hard to say. But for an EFL learner, it might be even more difficult to decide what to believe, especially if they are not thinking critically about the typical assumptions we make in intercultural discourse. We, as future educators, have a responsibility to encourage critical thinking skills about the images and representations that the media portrays to us.
SUMMARY:
Holliday et. al; A 3.1 and 3.2
Section A 3.1 discussed the the problems that media representations create with respect to intercultural communication. The authors provide us with a vignette of a Canadian teacher struggling with communicating with a refugee as a result of her perception of him being tainted by both media and professional images. The authors recommend that an individual "bracket popular representations" and rather 1. "be aware of the media, political, and institutional on our own society which lead us to see people from other cultural backgrounds in a certain way" and "See through these images and fictions when we encounter people from other cultural backgrounds, and always try to consider alternative representations."
Section A 3.2 deconstructed some real-life examples of essentialization and otherization. The authors talk about how "dominant discourses can be so naturalized that people become unaware of them". Essentialism ties very much into this notion as well. The authors suggest that we should:
"Be aware of dominant discourses which are easily perpetuated by the media, and which lead us to think-as-usual that familiar images of the foreign Other are normal."
"Be aware that even images projected by sensitive, intellectual sources can seduce our own sensitivities and intellects into thinking they are true."
Lastly the authors mention about sensationalism:
"Although sensationalism in the media is something we know about and guard against, we need to appreciate how deeply it exists in our traditional views of the foreign Other."
Holliday et al; B 3.2 and B 3.3
Section B 3.2 discusses social constructionism and social representations. The authors explain that our perceptions of the world might be said to be socially constructed. They state that social representations have an historical dimension. There are four key assumptions, according to the authors, they are:
1. A critical stance towards taken-for-granted knowledge
2. Historical and cultural specificity
3. Knowledge is sustained by social processes
4. Knowledge and social action go together
The authors finally explain in this section how to interpret and explain cultural representations.
Section B 3.3 examines representations in the media. Particularly, how these representations can be misleading for a multitude of reasons. Noam Chomsky argues that the news media provides us with 'a very narrow, very tightly constrained and grotesquely inaccurate account of the world in which we live'. Through the texts in this section, numerous authors critically challenge media discourse as being essentializing in nature.
Tyer-Mendes 2010: Construction of racial stereotypes in EFL textbooks
This article discussed the problems surrounding sample images used in EFL text books. The author researched EFL teacher and student attitudes toward images used in EFL textbooks. The responses were surprising to the researchers. They found that the subjects were responsive to the power-imbalance issues implied through the use of these images. The subjects articulated what the researchers were suggesting about the images. Finally, the researchers suggested ways of encouraging educators and students to critically think about the images presented in textbooks, and try to problematize the implications of these photos.
RESPONSE
These readings were interesting because they take another aspect of intercultural communications and critically dissect how these aspects (Media and professional images, textbook images) influence our perceptions of cultures different from our own. You never really think about where your ideas about those from different cultures come from. Sometimes, its from conversations you have with others (but you need to remind yourself that an individual does NOT represent the culture group you associate them with), and more often, it is from the media that we get our preconceived notions about different cultures. We often let the rhetoric of these discourses influence our notions of other cultures. Some times we don't even notice or are aware of the influence. This is especially problematic because we take these assumptions for granted. For example, an individual might think that a Mexican's favorite food is tacos (or nachos). Where does this notion come from? It is hard to say. But for an EFL learner, it might be even more difficult to decide what to believe, especially if they are not thinking critically about the typical assumptions we make in intercultural discourse. We, as future educators, have a responsibility to encourage critical thinking skills about the images and representations that the media portrays to us.
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