Presentation title: Attending to being, becoming and belonging: A call for transdisciplinary, community-based approaches
Abstract:
In the (so-called) globalized domain of English language teaching (ELT), the dominant “critical” scope of efforts to account for the complexity of negotiated identity and interaction, and address manifestations of injustice stakeholders experience, has largely been limited to a focus on problematizing essentialized and idealized “nativeness in English,” and to reconceptualizing what is taught, how, why, and by who, in like fashion.
Recent scholarship has challenged this “critical gaze” for being conceptually and contextually myopic (Hammine & Rudolph, 2023). In simple terms, scholars are contending that if the scope of our attention to addressing “privilege” and “marginalization” is limited to “(non-)nativeness in English,” we are failing to account for how ELT both shapes and is shaped by broader, sociohistorical discourses of identity and community membership (e.g., “Koreanness/Otherness”) in the contexts in which it is situated. Can, for instance, the hiring of university-level faculty in South Korea be explained as a product of the “privileging of nativeness in English” and the “marginalization of non-nativeness,” when the majority of faculty are South Korean? And what of those individuals whose identities transcend these general categories (legal, social and educational), or whose identities do not align with either category? Additionally, and equally important, scholarship has noted that criticality has become increasingly ontologically and epistemologically exclusive, imposing ways of seeing “(in)justice” upon communities in a colonial fashion. Such work argues, instead, for transdisciplinary and community-based attention to the diverse ways people negotiate being, becoming and belonging within and transcending communities, and in educational spaces therein. The foundation of this approach to theory, research and teaching is (life-long) listening, dialoguing, relationship and trust-building, reflecting and (un-)learning -in humility- in and beyond the classroom.
In order to unpack the notion of a “transdisciplinary, community-based approach,” I will succinctly discuss identity and community membership in “Japan,” mainstream ELT in Japan predicated on essentialized and idealized “nativeness” in English and “Japaneseness,” and the breadth, limitations, and potential theoretical and real-world consequences stemming from dominant (in this case, Japan-focused) approaches to “criticality.” I will then prompt participants to reflect on the spaces in which they are living and working in South Korea. Where has (English) language-related theory, research and teaching in been in South Korea, and where might potentially go, in order to better address the challenges stakeholders face, and the realities they and others encounter, when negotiating being, becoming and belonging?
Presenter Affiliation:
Nathanael Rudolph, PhD
Professor of Sociolinguistics and Language Education
Division of Liberal Arts and General Education
Faculty of Science and Engineering
Kindai University (近畿大学)
Higashiosaka, Japan
Presenter Bio:
Nathanael Rudolph (PhD, University of Maryland, College Park) is a professor of sociolinguistics and language education at Kindai University (近畿大学) in Higashiosaka, Japan. Nathanael’s research explores themes including teacher and student negotiations of being, becoming and belonging within and transcending (language) education, and transdisciplinary, community-based approaches to identity, experience and (in)justice. His most recent work is Transcending language education in Japan: Borderland accounts of being, becoming and belonging (Bloomsbury), a forthcoming volume co-edited with Madoka Hammine. Nathanael is a managing editor for Asian Englishes (Routledge) and an associate editor for the Journal of Language, Identity and Education (Taylor & Francis).
Come view the presentation here: https://seoultech.zoom.us/j/82382731339
