ISAN 2024

Conference Presentation for ISAN 2024

Title: Deconstructing Myself: An Autoethnography on Liminality and English Language Teaching

Abstract:

This autoethnography analyzes the social justice teaching of a career English language teacher. Funds of knowledge theorization frames this autoethnographic study analyzing multimodal artifacts for decolonization of the researcher's teaching practice in a liminal space. This self-analysis of ontological and epistemological changes over time identifies the circulation of various literacies. A layered narrative artifact, a Voicethread, introduces a visual story with commentaries of reflection about teaching in South Korea as a US American. This Voicethread is then reflexively analyzed in a new discourse: a panel discussion. A panel discussion was chosen as a new discourse iteration to analyze the educator’s career. Visual self-representations, or avatars, created during their career then dialog with different aspects of the researcher’s persona on their life as a transplanted teacher of English in South Korea. This autoethnography is intended as a snapshot in time to still the motion and look at the complex richness of the reciprocal flux of the researcher’s influence on their students and the students’ influence on the teacher. This work is helpful to document the ontological and epistemological changes in circulation of an Anglosphere educator decolonizing their teaching of English. This autoethnography is a limitation in a world that is dominated by quantitative generalizability. This study is a counterstory of participatory knowledge construction of frontline teachers, working on the ground within and against systems of domination in English language teaching. The rigor of this study comes from a deep dive into a complex artifact to connect the personal to the cultural landscape at this point in time.

Keywords: autoethnography; funds of knowledge; liminality; multimodal artifacts;  social justice pedagogy

Lisak, M. H. (2024). DECONSTRUCTING KOREAMARIA: AN AUTOETHNOGRAPHY ON LIMINALITY AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING (Doctoral dissertation, faculty of the School of Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Indiana University).

Video: 

References

Absolon, K. (2019). Decolonizing education and educators’ decolonizing. Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Polity, and Practice, 7(1), 9-28.

Adams, M. (2014). Social Justice and Education. Routledge International Handbook of Social Justice, 17, 249-268. 

Ahn, J.H. (2012). Transforming Korea into multicultural society: reception of multiculturalism discourse and its discursive disposition in Korea. Asian Ethnicity, 13(1), 95–107.

Ahn, J.H. (2013). Global migration and the racial project in transition: institutionalizing racial difference through the discourse of multiculturalism in South Korea. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 8(1), 29–47.

Alcoff, L. M. (2005). Visible identities: Race, gender, and the self. Oxford University Press.

Azim, K. A., & Salem, W. M. (2022). The liminality of multinational Muslim motherscholaring during COVID-19: A feminist collaborative autoethnography. Peabody Journal of Education, 97(2), 132-147.

Bhabha, H.K. (1995). The location of culture. London: Routledge.

Brandt, D. (1998). Sponsors of literacy. College Composition and Communication, 49(2), 165-185.

Butler, J. (2012). Precarious life, vulnerability, and the ethics of cohabitation. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 26(2), 134-151.

Buttaro, L. (2010). Decolonizing pedagogy in the American classroom. Innovation Journal, 15(1). 

Camiciottoli, B. C., & Campoy-Cubillo, M. C. (2018). Introduction: The nexus of multimodality, multimodal literacy, and English language teaching in research and practice in higher education settings. System, 77, 1-9.

Campano, G., Ghiso, M. P., & Welch, B. J. (2016). Partnering with immigrant communities: Action through literacy. Teachers College Press.

Chang, Y. J. (2018). Certified but not qualified? EFL pre-service teachers in liminality. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 17(1), 48-62.

Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2016). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Sage publications.

Criser, R., & Knott, S. (2019). Decolonizing the curriculum. Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 52(2), 151-160. 

Davis, E. (2018). On epistemic appropriation. Ethics, 128(4), 702-727. 

Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (Eds.). (2018). The Sage handbook of qualitative research. Sage.

Fetterman, D. M. (2010). Ethnography: Step-by-step (3rd ed.). Sage.

Freire, P. (1981). Education for critical consciousness. New York: Continuum.

Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed (revised). New York: Continuum.

González, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2006). Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Routledge.

Hall, S. (2015). Cultural Identity and Diaspora. Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory, 392-403. Routledge.

Han, S. A. (2003). Do South Korean adult learners like native English speaking teachers more than Korean teachers of English? AARE Conference Papers Abstracts 2003.

Hawkins, M. R. (Ed.). (2011). Social justice language teacher education. Multilingual Matters.

Hedges, H. (2015). Sophia's funds of knowledge: Theoretical and pedagogical insights, possibilities and dilemmas. International Journal of Early Years Education, 23(1), 83-96.

Hogg, L. (2011). Funds of knowledge: An investigation of coherence within the literature. Teaching and teacher education, 27(3), 666-677.

Holliday, A., Aboshiha, P., & Swan, A. (Eds.). (2015). (En) countering native-speakerism: Global perspectives. Springer.

Hull, G. A., & Stornaiuolo, A. (2014). Cosmopolitan literacies, social networks, and “proper distance”: Striving to understand in a global world. Curriculum Inquiry, 44(1), 15-44.

Iseke-Bames, J. M. (2008). Pedagogies for decolonizing. Canadian Journal of Native Education, 31(1).

Janks, H. (2000). Domination, access, diversity and design: A synthesis for critical literacy education. Educational review, 52(2), 175-186.

Jenks, C. J., & Lee, J. W. (2020). Native speaker saviorism: a racialized teaching ideology. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 17(3), 186-205.

Jewitt, C. (Ed.). (2009). The Routledge handbook of multimodal analysis (Vol. 1). London: Routledge.

Kim, H. A. (2020). Understanding “Koreanness”: Racial stratification and colorism in Korea and implications for Korean multicultural education. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 22(1), 76-97.

Klein, C. (2020). Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema. University of California Press.

Knowles, C. (2014). Vulnerability: Self-study's contribution to social justice education. Perspectives in Education, 32(2), 89-101.

Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2020). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. Routledge.

Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. Routledge.

Lee, Y. E., & Chan, C. (2023). Racialised teaching of English language in South Korea: Voices of university ELT teachers. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 36(1), 56-73.

Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2014). Designing qualitative research. Sage publications.

Mathebane, M. S., & Sekudu, J. (2018). Decolonising the curriculum that underpins social work education in South Africa. Southern African Journal of Social Work and Social Development, 30(1).

Medina, J. (2013). The epistemology of resistance: Gender and racial oppression, epistemic injustice, and resistant imaginations. Oxford University Press.

Mignolo, W. D. (2011). Geopolitics of sensing and knowing: On (de) coloniality, border thinking and epistemic disobedience. Postcolonial studies, 14(3), 273-283. 

Mindel, C. H., & Habenstein, R. W. (1988). Ethnic families in America: Patterns and variations. Prentice Hall.

Moll, L. C. (2019). Elaborating funds of knowledge: Community-oriented practices in international contexts. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 68(1), 130-138.

Moll, L.C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & González, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31, 132–141.

O’Halloran, K. L., Tan, S., & Smith, B. A. (2016). 20 Multimodal approaches to English for academic purposes. The Routledge handbook of English for academic purposes. Routledge. 

O'Halloran, K., & Smith, B. A. (Eds.). (2012). Multimodal studies: Exploring issues and domains (Vol. 2). Routledge.

Redmond, C. (2016). Native-speakerism in Korea: A need for change. The English Connection, 20(4), 19-20.

Robinson, J. (2003). Communication in Korea: playing things by eye. Intercultural Communication: A Reader. 57-64.

Romero-Ivanova, C.L. (Sept, 2018). A Narrative Inquiry for Understanding Women's Experiences with Being Silenced and Their Resistance/Talking Back and Resilience. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 10934937.

Ruecker, T., & Ives, L. (2015). White native English speakers needed: The rhetorical construction of privilege in online teacher recruitment spaces. TESOL quarterly, 49(4), 733-756.

Said, E. (1978). Orientalism: Western concepts of the Orient. New York: Pantheon.

Santos, B. D. S. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Paradigm. 

Savage, M. (1988). Can ethnographic narrative be a neighborly act? Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 19, 3–19.

Seo, Y. (2023). Why can’t I teach English? A case study of the racialized experiences of a female Ugandan teacher of English in an EFL context. Applied Linguistics Review, (0).

Sepúlveda III, E. (2011). Toward a pedagogy of acompañamiento: Mexican migrant youth writing from the underside of modernity. Harvard Educational Review, 81(3), 550-573.

Shahjahan, R. A., Estera, A. L., Surla, K. L., & Edwards, K. T. (2022). “Decolonizing” curriculum and pedagogy: A comparative review across disciplines and global higher education contexts. Review of Educational Research, 92(1), 73-113.

Sherman, B. (2023). Unraveling the EFL expat: Challenging privilege through borderlands and Asia as Method. Asia Pacific Education Review, 24(2), 239-250.

Shin, G. W., & Robinson, M. E. (Eds.). (1999). Colonial modernity in Korea (Vol. 184). Harvard Univ Asia Center.

Sinclair, R. (2004). Aboriginal social work education in Canada: Decolonizing pedagogy for the seventh generation. First Peoples Child & Family Review, 1(1), 49-61.

Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? Marxism and the interpretation of cultures, 271–316. London: Macmillan.

Street, B., Pahl, K., & Rowsell, J. M. (2009). Multimodality and new literacy studies. The handbook on multimodality. London: Routledge.

Sultana, F. (2019). Decolonizing development education and the pursuit of social justice. Human Geography, 12(3), 31-46.

Tomassen, B. (2014). Liminality and the modern: Living through the in-between. Surrey, UK: Ashgate. 

Turner, V. W. (1967). The forest of symbols. New York, NY: Cornell University Press.

Van Leeuwen, T. (2017). Multimodal literacy. Metaphor, (4), 17-23.

Walsh, M. (2010). Multimodal literacy: What does it mean for classroom practice? The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 33(3), 211-239.

Yazan, B., Canagarajah, S., & Jain, R. (Eds.). (2020). Autoethnographies in ELT: Transnational identities, pedagogies, and practices. Routledge.

Yin, R. K. (2015). Qualitative research from start to finish. Guilford publications.

Yum, J. (1987). Korean philosophy and communication. Communication Theory: Eastern and Western Perspectives. San Diego, Academic Press.

Zembylas, M. (2018). Reinventing critical pedagogy as decolonizing pedagogy: The education of empathy. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 40(5), 404-421.

Zipin, L. (2009). Dark funds of knowledge, deep funds of pedagogy: Exploring boundaries between lifeworlds and schools. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 30(3), 317-331.