Reflecting on Cross-Cutting Research Themes in the Sophomore Welfare Classroom

As I reflect on the first weeks of my sophomore orientation course, several overarching themes emerge, connecting activities like peer video reviews, inquiry projects, and company simulations. These themes illuminate how students are growing as learners and as future professionals, while also revealing the ways I design learning with intentionality.

Pedagogy of Care: Balancing Fairness and Encouragement

In large classes, managing participation is a constant challenge. Some students submit all assignments; others do not. Designing tasks so that homework completion matters, but students are not entirely excluded for missing work, enacts a structural and situated pedagogy of care (Lisak, 2017; Stein, 2007; Campano, Ghiso, & Welch, 2016). Care here is not merely interpersonal—it is enacted through course design that recognizes students’ lived realities, disciplinary needs, and emotional burdens. Observing how students respond—supporting peers, adjusting their pace, and helping one another catch up—demonstrates how caring structures can foster engagement and resilience.

Translanguaging: Korean + English as Inclusion and Professional Skill-Building

Our bilingual classroom encourages intentional use of both Korean and English, a practice that serves inclusion and builds workplace-relevant language skills. Translanguaging allows students to express complex ideas in their stronger language while practicing English communication for professional contexts (Son, 2024; Turner, 2024). This mirrors the realities of welfare administration, where professionals navigate multiple linguistic and cultural registers daily. Students negotiating meaning across languages gain confidence in communication while developing collaborative problem-solving skills.

Professional Identity Formation: Becoming “Future Welfare Administrators”

Perhaps the most rewarding theme is identity work. Through peer summaries, company simulations, and inquiry projects, students begin to see themselves as future welfare administrators, rehearsing real-world skills like system analysis, colleague evaluation, and field observation (Bhabha, 1994; Holland, 2001; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). These activities function as small-scale simulations of professional life, fostering agency and the ability to act within complex organizational systems (Lewis, 2007).

Reflections as an Instructor

These cross-cutting themes remind me that teaching is never only content delivery. Classroom design is a form of practice-based research: integrating skill development, ethical reflection, and professional imagination. Careful attention to structure, language, and identity models the very practices students will need in their careers.

Takeaway

By intentionally connecting pedagogy of care, translanguaging, and professional identity formation, students gain more than knowledge—they gain agency, confidence, and a sense of belonging in a professional community before leaving the classroom. Confidence here is tied to both language use and professional competence (Oxford, 2017), while belonging is cultivated through a critical cosmopolitan lens (Delanty, 2006; Vasudevan, 2014). These cross-cutting themes position the classroom as a site of real-world skill-building, reflective practice, and career preparation.

References

  • Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. Routledge.

  • Campano, G., Ghiso, M. P., & Welch, B. J. (2016). Partnering with immigrant communities: Literacy through action.

  • Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (2009). Inquiry as Stance: Practitioner Research for the Next Generation. Teachers College Press.

  • Delanty, G. (2006). The cosmopolitan imagination: Critical cosmopolitanism and social theory. The British Journal of Sociology, 57(1), 25–47.

  • Holland, D. C. (2001). Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Harvard University Press.

  • Lewis, C. (2007). Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

  • Lisak, M. (2017). Developing empathy for others: Local expressions on global topics at Seoul Chapter KOTESOL Conference. Proceedings.

  • Oxford, R. (2017). Teaching and Researching Language Learning Strategies. Routledge.

  • Son, G. (2024). Translanguaging in Korean middle school EFL classrooms. Journal of the Korea Association of Teachers of English Language and Literature, 20(1), 45–67.

  • Turner, M. (2024). Translanguaging: Process and power in education. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 20(2), 1–15.

  • Vasudevan, L. M. (2014). Multimodal cosmopolitanism: Cultivating belonging in everyday moments with youth. Curriculum Inquiry, 44(1), 45–67.

  • Stein, P. (2007). Multimodal Pedagogies in Diverse Classrooms: Representation, Rights, and Resources. Routledge.

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