Nathanael Rudolph

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.

Negotiating borders of being and becoming in and beyond the English language teaching classroom: two university student narratives from Japan

Abstract This article, grounded in poststructural narrative inquiry, explores the narratives of two self-identified female Japanese university students, who are conceptualizing and challenging dominant, essentialized constructions of being and doing within Japanese society and English language education situated therein. The two detail their lived experiences negotiating glocal (fluidly local–global) discourses of identity within and beyond the classroom, that seek to establish, perpetuate and maintain linguistic, cultural, national and ethnic borders around being and becoming ‘Japanese’ and a ‘user of English.’ As such, the students contend that space for ‘border crossing’ within Japanese society, and English language education situated therein, has been limited and even eliminated. The students additionally conceptualize resistance to critical and practical shifts beyond native speaker-centric English language teaching in the Japanese context, and the perpetuation and maintenance of dominant, essentialized discourses and borders of ‘Japaneseness,’ in and beyond the classroom, as intertwined. After reflecting upon the implications the students’ narratives have for conceptualizing and approaching identity and experience in terms of inquiry, the article briefly contemplates approaches to classroom practice that cultivate discursive space for identity and experience beyond essentialized categories of being and doing.

Negotiating Halil: Concomitant Marginalization and Agency as a “Non-Native English Speaker” Student, Scholar and Teacher Trainer

This co-constructed narrative explores one “non-native” English-speaking graduate student, scholar, and teacher trainers experience challenging the native speaker construct as a regime of truth in the field of English language teaching. Though marginalized academically and professionally by its discourses, Halils storyline is nevertheless one of an individual actively and methodically creating space for agency and advocacy in the classroom, in his university and in his professional activities as a member of the English language teaching and research community.

Education for Glocal Interaction Beyond Essentialization and Idealization: Classroom Explorations and Negotiations

The following chapter details a year-long, sociohistorically-situated poststructural ethnographic account (Britzman 1995) of 23 students and their teacher (this author), exploring and deconstructing fluidly local–global linguistic, cultural, ethnic, national, economic, political, religious, geographical, educational, philosophical, professional, and gender-related discourses implicated in the discursive construction of dominant and critically-oriented worldviews of globalization, and of “being equipped for participation in the global community” (グローバル人材/guroubarujinzai) in Japanese society. In and through their lived experiences, the students and their instructor conceptualize, construct, problematize, challenge, affirm, cross, and deconstruct essentialized borders of Self-Other in Japanese society, and Japaneseness-Otherness in terms of “beyond Japan.”

Essentialization, Idealization, and Apprehensions of Local Language Practice in the Classroom

This chapter details a poststructural ethnographic account (Britzman DP, Int J Qual Stud Educ 8(3):229–238, 1995) of 16 Japanese university students and their teacher conceptualizing boundaries of local language practice in one English department. Together, they apprehend local (Japanese) language practice as negotiated at the interstices of discourses of “Japaneseness-Otherness” and “native English speakerness-Otherness.” Authority to employ Japanese in the classroom was afforded to “Japanese” teachers who might then assert authority to engage in local language practice or teach content in and through the Japanese language. Additionally, “Japanese” teachers were provided space to assert identity as linguistic and cultural border crossers, whereas “native speaker teachers” were to downplay or disassociate from their lived experiences negotiating membership in Japanese society, including from their use of Japanese, in the classroom. Space for teachers, positioned as neither an “idealized NS of English” nor “idealized NS of Japanese,” was non-existent. The study troubles dominant, critically-oriented approaches to local language practice in the field of English language teaching (ELT) and its corresponding disciplines, that do not account for individuals’ negotiation of positioning and being positioned, identity-wise, and the creation, limitation, and/or elimination of space for being and becoming that may result.

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.”

Introduction: Conceptualizing and Approaching “Education for Glocal Interaction”

In this introduction, the volume editors discuss the sociohistorical negotiation of conceptual tensions and shifts within the discursive field of English language education, as stakeholders face the potential reconciliation of theory, research, and practice founded upon static, essentialized, and idealized boundaries of language, culture, place, and identity, with movement, border crossing, and hybridity (Kramsch 2014; Pennycook 2010). The editors then unpack the framework for the edited volume and provide the overview of the chapters therein.

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.