From Personal Observation to Public Reasoning: Document-Based Inquiry on Policy Literacy Development in a Korean Welfare Administration EFL Course
By Maria Lisak EdD (How to cite this)
Bio: With over 30 years of EFL experience, Maria Lisak, EdD works at Chosun University, where she teaches social entrepreneurship in English using experiential learning and sociocultural approaches. Her work integrates constructivist and emancipatory frameworks, with research focusing on funds of knowledge, Gwangju as Method, and social justice education. She also designs educational technologies and materials for diverse ESP contexts, linking classroom practice with community needs. Her current interests include literacy, culture, and language education, and participatory frameworks for teacher wellbeing. Her interdisciplinary work invites reflection on multimodal pedagogies, material making, and context-driven innovation in borderland spaces.
Abstract
This study investigates how sophomore welfare administration students in an English-medium course link personal experiences of accessibility to structural and policy issues through document-based reflection tasks. Drawing on 61 written homework submissions describing imagined mobility challenges, the study examines how empathy-building exercises scaffold early policy literacy without additional interviews or surveys. Reflexive thematic analysis reveals a trajectory from descriptive personal noticing, through environmental awareness, to emergent structural and policy framing. Students' use of modal verbs, collective pronouns, and references to civic actors illustrates early civic reasoning. The findings suggest that imagination-based accessibility simulations offer a productive pedagogical pathway for integrating empathy and policy literacy in welfare administration English courses. Implications include practical guidance for curriculum design, scaffolding for low-proficiency learners, and the potential for document-based classroom research as a rigorous method in applied linguistics and professional education contexts.
Keywords: policy literacy, empathy, welfare administration, EFL, accessibility, document-based research
1. Introduction
In professional welfare administration, practitioners must navigate the intersection of individual needs, systemic structures, and public policy. For undergraduate students in Korea, however, English-medium courses often emphasize linguistic accuracy rather than civic reasoning or professional literacy. To bridge this gap, I designed a classroom exercise in which students imagined using crutches for a day, observed accessibility challenges in a midsize city in southwestern South Korea, and recorded their experiences in English.
The activity—titled "Disability Inquiry"—was intended to cultivate empathy, descriptive observation skills, and early policy literacy. Students were asked to note physical, social, and policy-related barriers in two contexts: a regular day and an imagined day using crutches.
This study addresses the question:
In what ways do welfare administration students link personal experiences of accessibility to structural or policy issues through English-medium reflection tasks?
By focusing exclusively on document-based artifacts (student observation field notes) and my tacit classroom observations, this research models a low-burden, high-insight approach to teacher-researcher inquiry.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Empathy as Pedagogical Tool
Empathy exercises in professional education encourage students to understand lived experiences beyond their own, fostering social perspective-taking and ethical awareness (Nussbaum, 1997; Zembylas, 2008). Simulation-based tasks—like imagining mobility limitations—have been shown to heighten attention to environmental barriers and social inequities (Goodley, 2014). In EFL classrooms, such tasks also provide rich linguistic input for students to describe, interpret, and communicate socially relevant phenomena.
2.2 Policy Literacy and Civic Reasoning
Policy literacy involves understanding systems, structures, and institutional responsibilities (Ball, 2018; Tichnor-Wagner et al., 2019). In undergraduate professional programs, it supports students' ability to link micro-level experiences to macro-level systems. Assignments that explicitly invite students to identify obstacles and propose solutions can scaffold early civic reasoning, especially when combined with visual or multimodal representation.
2.3 Document-Based Classroom Research
Research often relies on interviews or surveys to probe student thinking. However, document-based inquiry—analysis of existing student artifacts—offers a low-intervention method to explore cognitive, linguistic, and civic development (Creswell & Poth, 2016; Saldaña, 2021). This study situates itself in that methodological tradition, leveraging existing assignments to explore the trajectory from empathy to policy literacy.
3. Methodology
3.1 Context and Participants
Participants were 61 sophomore welfare administration majors at South Korean university enrolled in an English-medium course focused on observation, empathy, and community problem-solving. Students were linguistically heterogeneous, with varying English proficiency levels.
3.2 Data Collection
Data included 61 individual written observation inquiry projects with field notes and reflections submitted via Google Form. Each response included a descriptive observation of a "normal day" and a day imagined on crutches, with attention to five categories: physical environment, transportation, community spaces, policies and systems, and social attitudes.
No additional interviews or questionnaires were conducted.
3.3 Analytic Approach
Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic coding (Braun & Clarke, 2019). Steps included:
Open reading to identify patterns in descriptive, environmental, and policy-related language
Inductive coding, grouping excerpts into three developmental stages
Identification of linguistic markers, including modal verbs and agentive nouns
Reflexive commentary integrating teacher insights into students' interpretive trajectories
Ethical procedures included anonymization of all student data and careful masking of identifying details.
4. Findings
4.0 Overview of Thematic Distribution
Analysis of the 61 student reflections revealed varying levels of engagement across the three developmental stages and five observational categories. Table 1 summarizes the distribution of themes across student responses.
Table 1: Thematic Distribution Across Student Reflections (N=61)
Table 2: Linguistic Markers of Policy Literacy (N=23 students)
Note: Policy literacy coding required presence of at least two linguistic markers plus explicit reference to systemic or institutional solutions.
4.1 Stage 1: Personal Empathy and Embodied Noticing
Most students began with affective, first-person descriptions emphasizing physical discomfort and emotional responses. Student responses revealed heightened awareness of bodily sensation and movement:
"I felt frustrated when the sidewalk had cracks and steps. It was hard to move fast."
"Even if you get used to it, you will find it difficult to walk freely as usual. In addition, if you use it for a long time, pain begins to occur in body parts such as your hands and armpits."
"The moment I put on the crutches, this ordinary world turns into a completely different appearance."
These entries signal emotional engagement but limited awareness of systemic or policy dimensions. Students frequently used sensory language (touch, movement, fatigue, pain) to convey the embodied experience. The affective dimension was prominent across nearly all 61 responses, with students expressing frustration, anxiety, and exhaustion.
4.2 Stage 2: Environmental Awareness and Infrastructural Barriers
Students moved from personal experience to noticing tangible infrastructural and social barriers. This stage constituted the most developed portion of student writing, with detailed observations about:
Physical barriers:
"The elevator was too small for a wheelchair. Stairs forced me to take a longer route to the library."
"Uneven sidewalks or small curbs, which I usually ignored, became obstacles that required me to step cautiously for fear of falling."
"The stairs at the entrance of the cafe look like a 'just go back today' warning."
Transportation challenges:
"Buses have priority seating, but the ramp was too steep to use safely."
"Getting on and off buses is a big challenge. If the stairs are high or the entrance is narrow, you should move carefully step by step."
"Services such as Naver Map do not tell you whether the bus is a regular bus or a low-floor bus."
Accessibility gaps in community spaces:
"Many restaurants don't have elevators. There are no seats, so I go up the stairs to the second floor."
"Buildings with only stairs were practically inaccessible, and even when ramps existed, many were too steep to climb safely."
These observations constitute an intermediate stage where students link lived experience to features of the built environment. This stage frequently provided the bridge toward policy reasoning.
4.3 Stage 3: Emergent Policy Literacy and Structural Framing
A substantial minority of students explicitly named institutional or civic responsibility, demonstrating nascent policy literacy:
"The city should improve ramp access across all crosswalks to ensure equality."
"I think various institutional and facility improvements are needed."
"In order to prevent this problem, I think the problem can be improved in the direction of creating a flat path and designing a gentle slope."
"I thought that it was necessary to strengthen accessibility for the socially disadvantaged in the public and to provide policies of cultural education such as campaigns."
Modal verbs (should, need to, must, can be improved) and collective pronouns (we, society, the city) signal incipient civic reasoning. Some students also contrasted existing policy with observed implementation gaps:
"Although various policies and systems existed—such as disabled parking, elevators, ramps, tactile paving, and audio signals at crosswalks—they often came with limitations in practice."
"The gap between policy design and real usability highlighted issues with maintenance, practicality, and public awareness."
4.4 Social Awareness and Inconsistent Consideration
Students demonstrated sophisticated awareness of social attitudes, noting both positive and negative interactions:
"One of the biggest challenges I felt while using crutches was the inconsistency in people's responses and consideration."
"Some people gave impatient looks, as if I were moving too slowly and getting in the way."
"People's help and gaze are sometimes appreciated, but at the same time, they come as a burden that limits autonomy."
"Even when stopping by a mart near my house, the speed of movement was slow due to crutches, so I had to wait for concessions whenever people passed by."
This awareness extended beyond individual encounters to broader social patterns, suggesting students were beginning to think structurally about disability and inclusion.
5. Discussion
5.1 Trajectory from Empathy to Policy Literacy
Students demonstrated a gradual movement from individual empathy toward structural reasoning. Descriptive noticing of environmental barriers provided a cognitive bridge to civic framing, consistent with experiential learning and critical disability education literature (Goodley, 2014; Zembylas, 2008).
The data reveal that even brief imagination-based exercises can prompt students to:
Recognize previously invisible infrastructure
Identify gaps between policy intention and implementation
Propose systemic solutions using civic language
5.2 Linguistic Development and Modal Expression
The use of modal verbs (should, must, need to, can be) marked the transition from descriptive to prescriptive reasoning. Students who engaged in policy framing used significantly more deontic modals and collective subjects (we, society, the city, government) than those who remained in descriptive stages.
This linguistic shift suggests that the assignment successfully scaffolded academic and professional discourse patterns relevant to welfare administration.
5.3 Teacher-Researcher Insights
Document-based inquiry allowed me to capture students' cognitive and civic development without additional data collection. The reflections highlight how scaffolded tasks can promote policy literacy even in EFL contexts.
Key pedagogical observations:
Students needed explicit prompting about "policies and systems" to move beyond personal and environmental observations
Those who provided the most detailed environmental descriptions were more likely to propose policy solutions
Visual documentation (photos uploaded by students) appeared to anchor and deepen written reflections
6. Implications
6.1 Curriculum Design
Assignments that combine imagination-based empathy with observation and structured reflection can scaffold policy literacy in professional-major English courses. The five-category framework (physical environment, transportation, community spaces, policies/systems, social attitudes) provided effective scaffolding for systematic observation.
6.2 Research Methodology
Document-based, reflexive classroom research is a feasible, low-burden method for exploring cognitive and civic development, offering insights without interviews or surveys. This approach is particularly valuable for teacher-researchers with limited time and resources.
6.3 Pedagogical Extension
Future iterations might include:
Iterative reflection cycles with peer feedback on policy framing
Explicit instruction on modal verbs and civic language
Cross-semester tracking to study longitudinal development
Integration with actual policy documents or advocacy writing
7. Conclusion
This study demonstrates that even brief, imagination-based exercises can guide welfare administration students from personal empathy to early policy literacy. Written reflections collectively reveal students' trajectory from noticing individual barriers to proposing systemic solutions. The document-based inquiry approach provides a rigorous avenue for analyzing cognitive and civic development in EFL classrooms. These findings offer practical and methodological guidance for educators seeking to integrate empathy, observation, and policy reasoning into professional-major English courses.
References
Ball, S. (2018). Global Education Policy: reform and profit. Revista de Estudios Teóricos y Epistemológicos en Política Educativa, 3, 1-15.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2019). Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), 589–597. https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1628806
Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2016). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Sage publications.
Goodley, D. (2014). Disability studies: An interdisciplinary introduction (2nd ed.). Sage.
Nussbaum, M. (1997). Cultivating humanity: A classical defense of reform in liberal education. Harvard University Press.
Saldaña, J. (2021). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (4th ed.). Sage.
Tichnor-Wagner, A., Parkhouse, H., Glazier, J., & Cain, J. M. (2019). Becoming a globally competent teacher. Ascd.
Zembylas, M. (2008). The politics of trauma in education. In The politics of trauma in education (pp. 35-52). New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.
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