Bedrettin Yazan

Conceptualizing and Confronting Inequity: Approaches Within and New Directions for the “NNEST Movement”

This article examines inequity as conceptualized and approached within and through the non-native English speakers in TESOL (NNEST) “movement.”1 The authors unpack critical approaches to the NNEST experience, conceptualized via binaries (NS/NNS; NEST/NNEST). The authors then explore postmodern and poststructural approaches to identity and inequity that problematize dichotomies, and the implications such approaches might have for addressing inequity and cultivating inclusivity in English language teaching.

Creative dialogue: talk for thinking in the classroom

Published in 2010 this book utilises research that is both longitudinal and contemporary, in an accessible manner, that whilst not presenting an answer to the succession challenge, it does provide the reader with a detailed introduction and overview of the key issues faced in looking at the succession challenge. The book’s organisation is a key strength allowing the reader to follow a journey of understanding, or to access individual chapters in isolation. The references used are relevant and offer pertinent further reading for the researcher. This book will appeal to a wide audience, from the casual reader through to the international researcher looking for an introduction to the literature available on the succession challenge.

Being and becoming an ESOL teacher through coursework and internship: Three teacher candidates’ identity negotiation

ABSTRACT Relying on the framework of communities of practice and using qualitative case study methods, this study investigated three ESOL teacher candidates’ identity negotiation as they learned to work with English language learners through coursework and internship experiences in a 13-month MATESOL program. The findings pointed out that the participants negotiated their emerging teacher identities through teacher education courses and internship in three main ways: (a) they negotiated who they aspire to become as an ESOL practitioner as they set and revised their priorities in serving ELLs, (b) they roadtested their imagined identities through guided reflective practices embedded in the teacher education program provisions, and (c) they acquired the professional discourse which helps them make sense of and engage in the practices of the community of ESOL teachers. This study contributes to the growing research on language teacher identity by illuminating the intertwined nature of teacher learning and identity in shaping the contours of teacher identity negotiation. The study implicates that teacher education should incorporate teacher identity as an explicit goal that serves as an interpretive frame for teacher candidates’ ongoing professional learning and growth as practitioners.

“Jump in Any Time”: How Teacher Struggle with Curricular Reform Generates Opportunities for Teacher Learning

ABSTRACT With the emergence of new academic demands created by curricular reforms such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), policy makers and educators have recognized that the linguistic complexity of new curricula requires greater coordination of instructional efforts in teaching English language learners (ELLs). However, the literature has yet to explore what such collaborative efforts look like in classroom settings as teachers engage in teaching new curricula to diverse learners. In this qualitative study, we examine the collaborative interaction and learning of one fourth grade teacher and her English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) colleague as they implemented their district’s new CCSS-based English/language arts curriculum. The authors found that the teachers’ work simultaneously involved struggle and opportunity for learning as they engaged with new curricular demands. Findings from this study point to the need for further research into teachers’ collaborative practices around curriculum reform as opportunities for situated teacher learning.

Introduction: Apprehending Identity, Experience, and (In)equity Through and Beyond Binaries

The negotiation of privilege and marginalization in the field of English language teaching (ELT), traces back to the field’s sociohistorical construction in and through the British and American colonial agenda of linguistic, cultural, economic, political, religious, educational and ethnic imperialism (Pennycook A The myth of English as an international language. In: Makoni S, Pennycook A (ed) Disinventing and reconstituting languages. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, pp 90–115 (2007)). ELT was a vehicle by which to privilege British and American colonizers, and create colonial subjects modeled after their own image (Kumaravadivelu 2003; Pennycook 2010). Thus, ELT was predicated upon fluidly intertwined binaries of being, including colonizer/colonized, and Native Speaker (NS)/Non-Native Speaker (NNS). These categories were value-laden, affording linguistic, cultural and academic authority and “superiority” to individuals associated with the category of “NS,” while Othering the identities of individuals grappling with the epistemic and actualized violence of colonialism (NNSs) (see Kumaravadivelu 2016). As “local” teachers began to enter the classroom, an additional binary emerged -Native English Speaker Teacher (NEST)/Non-Native English Speaker Teacher (NNEST)- privileging “NESTs” over “NNESTs,” as teachers were collectively responsible for targeting an “idealized nativeness” conflated with the identity of an idealized colonizer. “NNESTs’” use of “local” language in the classroom to facilitate learning, was countered by the discourses of the monolingual principle (Howatt 1984), or notion that learning, and learning through, “English,” exclusively, was ideal for maximizing student growth (Hall and Cook 2012). The worldview underpinning this principle marginalized the identities of all individuals whose negotiation of being and becoming did not correspond with that of the idealized “superior.”

Contexts of English Language Teaching as Glocal Spaces

Cultural and economic globalization has considerably reinforced the use and spread of English as an international language across the world. In return, the learning and teaching of English in numerous local educational contexts has played a major role in making globalization (and its effects) possible. In this chapter, I view the dialectic of the global and the local as a complex, simultaneous, and constant interplay of homogenization and heterogenization, and convergence and divergence which repudiates the one-way flow from global to local. Resting upon the concept of glocalization, I suggest understanding the kaleidoscope of English Language Teaching (ELT) contexts as processual social, cultural, historical, and political constructions rather than essentialized, concretized, and static entities. This is an attempt to reconceptualize the ELT contexts as glocal spaces which are characterized by both global and local discourses and their dynamic interplay and mutual interpenetration. This reconceptualization can afford us the lens through which we can valorize the emergent glocal conditions in ELT practices and debunk the restrictive boundaries of dichotomous approaches. More specifically, glocalization can help gain further insights into the constructs of global ELT discourses and how they shape the possibilities of being, becoming, and knowing and impact the ways ELT professional negotiate identities, agency, and legitimacy in their glocal contexts.

Inclusive and exclusive uses of we in four American textbooks for multicultural teacher education

This study analyses four American multicultural teacher education textbooks for instances of inclusive and exclusive representations through the use of first person plural pronouns (i.e. we, us, our, ours). Positioning theory is used as a theoretical framework to examine the textbook authors’ uses of first person plural pronouns and to understand how these pronouns perform reflexive and interactive positioning and fluidly (re)negotiate and (re)delineate the borders between ‘self’ and ‘other.’ The findings suggest that first person plural pronouns are used extensively in the focal textbooks to refer to such groups as authors, Americans, humans, teachers, and teacher educators. Expressing differing levels of ambiguity in interpretation, these pronouns play significant roles in the discursive representations of inclusivity and exclusivity across topics of multicultural education. This study implicates that language teachers should use criticality and reflexivity when approaching exclusionary discourses and representations that neglect the particularities of individuals from different cultures.

Negotiating ‘ares,’ ‘cans,’ and ‘shoulds’ of being and becoming in English language teaching: two teacher accounts from one Japanese university

Abstract This study, utilizing narrative inquiry underpinned by poststructural theory, explores the lived experiences of two university-level English language teaching (ELT) professionals negotiating ‘borders’ of essentialized and idealized being and becoming, in seeking to account for the movement, hybridity, and diversity characterizing identity and interaction in and beyond ‘Japan.’ These borders relate to essentialized and idealized ‘ares,’ ‘cans,’ and ‘shoulds’ of ‘Japaneseness,’ juxtaposed against ‘Otherness’ predicated on ‘nativeness’ in English. In negotiating positionality, the two teachers choose to both discursively ‘trouble’ and not trouble who they, their colleagues, and their students ‘are,’ ‘can,’ and/or ‘should’ be or become, in complex and seemingly ‘contradictory’ ways. The study notes that the creation, limitation, and elimination of space for identity in ELT is sociohistorically, contextually, and fluidly connected to the local’global construction, maintenance, and/or challenging of borders of identity and community membership in the settings in which learning, use, and instruction take place.

Ottoman Turkish in the high school curriculum: current language planning discussions in Turkey

ABSTRACT This paper explores the recent policy decision about the teaching of Ottoman Turkish at high schools in Turkey and unpacks its historical, political, and social undercurrents. It theoretically rests upon Spolskys [2004. Language policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Language management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] and Shohamy’s (2006. Language policy: Hidden agendas and new approaches. London: Routledge] work on language policy and management at the state level, and Liddicoat and Baldauf’s [2008. Language planning in local contexts: Agents, contexts and interactions. In A. J. Liddicoat & R. B. Baldauf (Eds.), Language planning and policy: Language planning in local contexts (pp. 3–17). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters] and Chua and Baldauf’s [2011. Micro language planning. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning (Vol. 2, pp. 936–951). New York, NY: Routledge] explorations of micro language planning and agency. After providing background on the orthographic revolution in 1928 and the subsequent lexical purification in Turkey, this paper analyzes the policy decision about the incorporation of Ottoman Turkish into the high school curriculum. The analysis leads to three main observations. First, this policy decision emerged as part of the national identity reconstruction efforts stage-managed by the ruling political party aligned with neo-Ottomanist ideals. Second, the government has ideologically constructed the teaching of Ottoman Turkish at high school as essential to rebuild the connection with Ottoman-Islamic heritage lost purportedly after the Turkish Language Reform. Third, save for the attempts to address the issues about linguistic expertise and fairness in selecting teachers, this policy mostly neglected the micro-level agentive responses. This paper closes with conclusions that connect the analysis of the Ottoman Turkish case in Turkey to broader language planning research.

Reframing The National Narrative

Since the inception of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the Turkish state has utilized history textbooks to promulgate nationalist narratives and cultivate a carefully conceived notion of national identity.