Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching: Critical Inquiries from Diverse Practitioners 9781788927536

Citation preview

Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Founding Editor: Viv Edwards, University of Reading, UK Series Editors: Phan Le Ha, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA and Joel Windle, Monash University, Australia. Two decades of research and development in language and literacy education have yielded a broad, multidisciplinary focus. Yet education systems face constant economic and technological change, with attendant issues of identity and power, community and culture. What are the implications for language education of new ‘semiotic economies’ and communications technologies? Of complex blendings of cultural and linguistic diversity in communities and institutions? Of new cultural, regional and national identities and practices? The New Perspectives on Language and Education series will feature critical and interpretive, disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives on teaching and learning, language and literacy in new times. New proposals, particularly for edited volumes, are expected to acknowledge and include perspectives from the Global South. Contributions from scholars from the Global South will be particularly sought out and welcomed, as well as those from marginalized communities within the Global North.  All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.

NEW PERSPECTIVES ON LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION: 93

Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching Critical Inquiries from Diverse Practitioners Edited by

Rashi Jain, Bedrettin Yazan and Suresh Canagarajah

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Blue Ridge Summit

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/JAIN7529 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Jain, Rashi, editor.|Yazan, Bedrettin, editor.|Canagarajah, A. Suresh, editor. Title: Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching: Critical Inquiries from Diverse Practitioners/Edited by Rashi Jain, Bedrettin Yazan and Suresh Canagarajah. Description: Bristol; Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters, 2021. | Series: New Perspectives on Language and Education: 93 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “The self-inquiries in this edited volume exemplify the dynamism that permeates global ELT, wherein professionals increasingly operate across blurred national boundaries. The chapters address a range of related issues at the intersections of personal and professional identities as well as pedagogy and research in ‘liminal’ transnational spaces”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021010573 | ISBN 9781788927512 (paperback) | ISBN 9781788927529 (hardback) | ISBN 9781788927536 (pdf) | ISBN 9781788927543 (epub) | ISBN 9781788927550 (kindle edition) Subjects: LCSH: English language—Study and teaching (Higher)—Foreign speakers. | Transnationalism. | Language and education. | Multicultural education. Classification: LCC PE1128.A2 T73 2021 | DDC 428.0071/1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010573 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-78892-752-9 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-78892-751-2 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31–34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK. USA: NBN, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2021 Rashi Jain, Bedrettin Yazan, Suresh Canagarajah and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by SAN Publishing Services. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd. Printed and bound in the US by NBN.

Contents

Contributors

vii

1 An Invitation into the Transnational ELT Landscape of Practices Rashi Jain, Bedrettin Yazan and Suresh Canagarajah

1

2 Critical Transnational Agency: Enacting through Intersectionality and Transracialization Sumyat Thu and Suhanthie Motha

14

3 The Person in Personal Narrative: Two ESOL Instructors Teaching Away from Home Anastasiia Kryzhanivska and Lucinda Hunter 

38

4 Dialoguing as Transnational Professional Mothers: Our Intersectional Identities as Transnationals, Parents and Language Teacher Educators April S. Salerno and Elena Andrei 5 Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis Through Teaching and Research Tuba Angay-Crowder, Jayoung Choi and Gertrude Tinker Sachs 6 Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging: A Collective Self-Study Christina Ponzio, Elizabeth Robinson, Laura M. Kennedy, Abraham Ceballos, Zhongfeng Tian, Elie Crief and Maíra Lins Prado 7 ‘My transnational experiences shape who I am and what I do’: Reflections of a Latina Transnational Teacher–Scholar Bita Bookman and Luciana C. de Oliveira 8 An Autoethnography of Trans-Perspective Development Through Translanguaging Research and Practice Sujin Kim v

55

71

92

112

127

vi  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

9  Ni de aquí, ni de allá: How Technology has Changed the Way We See Transnationalism Martha Sidury Christiansen

145

10 Shifting Roles and Negotiating Returns in Transnational TESOL Research Brooke R. Schreiber

160

11 Globalized Writing Instruction: The Multilingual Composition Section as a Fluid Pedagogical Space Ahmad A. Alharthi

175

12 ‘It’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’: My Navajo Students’ and my Co-Existing Translingual Identities Yi-Wen Huang

192

13 The Inclusion of Culture and Shift Toward Translingualism in my TESOL Classes Rasha S. Mohamed

210

14 Negotiating Boundaries while becoming a TESOL Practitioner in Southern Thailand Kristof Savski

227

15 A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner’s Multiple Subjectivities and Critical Classroom Negotiations in the Indonesian University Context Ribut Wahyudi

240

Subject Index

259

Author Index

263

Contributors

Ahmad A. Alharthi is a PhD candidate in English Language and Rhetoric at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he teaches both mainstream and multilingual sections of first-year composition courses. He is also affiliated with King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. His research interests include critical applied linguistics, composition studies (with a focus on second language writing), and the implications of the global spread of English. Elena Andrei is an assistant professor of TESOL and TESOL Program Coordinator at Cleveland State University. She teaches TESOL courses and coordinates the TESOL program. Her research interests include second language literacy, teacher education, and ‘non-native’ English speaking teachers. Her previous professional experience includes being an English as a second language teacher (ESL) and ESL school coordinator in Charlotte, NC, and English as a foreign language teacher in her native Romania. Tuba Angay-Crowder is the coordinator of the online ESOL and reading programs, and an adjunct professor of ESOL and Literacy Education in the College of Education at Georgia State University. Research interests include Language Teacher Education and Identities, Multimodal Literacies, and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies. Bita Bookman teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at Santa Rosa Junior College and Framingham State University. Her research interests include the intersection of transnationality and teacher identities, faculty perceptions and practices, and second language pedagogy and assessment. Suresh Canagarajah is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Applied Linguistics, and Asian Studies, and Director of the Migration Studies Project at Pennsylvania State University. He teaches World Englishes, Second Language Writing, and Postcolonial Studies in the departments of English and Applied Linguistics. His recent edited publication, The Routledge Handbook of Language and Migration (2019), won the 2020 AAAL best book award.

vii

viii  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Abraham Ceballos-Zapata is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Calvin University. He teaches Spanish courses as part of the World Language Department. He also teaches language pedagogy courses and supervises language student teaching experiences in local schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His research interests include language policies, language teacher preparation, critical language pedagogies, and humanities-oriented research approaches. Jayoung Choi is an associate professor of TESOL/Literacy Education in the Department of Inclusive Education at Kennesaw State University, Georgia. Her research aims to unpack the ways in which language, culture, identity, agency, power, and ideology affect learning and teaching for immigrant multilingual learners in and out of school contexts. Martha Sidury Christiansen is an Associate Professor of TESOL/Applied Linguistics at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is a former Fulbright Scholar and a Department of State English Language Specialist. Her research explores the intersection between digital literacy, language ideologies, identities, and cultures in offline and online social network environments. Her publications have appeared in journals such as Journal of Sociolinguistics, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, and System. Elie Crief is a student in the MSEd in the Education, Culture, and Society program at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. He started studying translanguaging as a research assistant during his undergraduate studies at Suffolk University. His research focuses on faculty teaching training and practices and how to make classrooms become inclusive spaces. His bilingual status gives him firsthand experience to understand how language plays a role in educational settings. Yi-Wen Huang is an associate professor of English and Linguistics at University of New Mexico-Gallup, USA. Her research interests include language anxiety, writing apprehension, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and Native American literacies. Lucinda Hunter received her MA in English (TESOL specialization) and is a teaching professor in the English Department at Bowling Green State University, where she currently teaches first year composition. Her research interests are motivation as applied to second language learning and justice focused grading. She enjoys traveling, knitting, crafts, and spending time with her grandchildren. Rashi Jain is an associate professor in the Department of English Language for Academic Purposes, Linguistics and Communication Studies at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. Rashi has published her research in practitioner-oriented journals, including the TESOL Journal, contributed to edited volumes, and co-edited (with Bedrettin Yazan and

Contributors ix

Suresh Canagarajah) the recently published Autoethnographies in ELT Transnational Identities, Pedagogies, and Practices. Laura M. Kennedy is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Field Experiences in the School of Education, Leadership, and Public Service at Northern Michigan University. Formerly an English language teacher in South Korea for seven years, Laura’s research draws on (auto)ethnographic, narrative, and case study methodologies to explore the lived experiences and professional identity negotiations of novice language teachers and teacher educators. Sujin Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse and Exceptional Learners program at George Mason University. Her research and teaching areas include culturally and linguistically diverse students’ academic achievement and identity development, translanguaging and transmodalising pedagogy, content and language integrated instruction, and critical discourse analysis. Anastasiia Kryzhanivska is originally from Mykolaiv, Ukraine, where she completed her BA in English Translation. She attended Ohio University and received her Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics. Currently, Ana is an English Department assistant teaching professor at Bowling Green State University, where she teaches ESOL, first-year composition, and teacher education classes. Her research interests are arts-based pedagogy, CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), and multicultural awareness. Rasha S. Mohamed has a BA in English Language and Literature, an MA in TESOL, and a Professional Certified Trainer certificate. She has been awarded many fellowships, including the Graduate Merit Fellowship, the TEFL Fellowship, and the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Fellowship. She served as NileTESOL International Affairs Committee Chair, and in the Organizing Committee of Yachay Tech’s first ELT international conference. She has taught at the tertiary level in Egypt, the USA, Morocco, and Ecuador. Suhanthie Motha (she/her), a teacher educator whose practice is located on Coast Salish homelands, centers her research on the complicated workings of race in the context of the English language teaching profession. An associate professor at the University of Washington, she is the author of Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching. Her work has been published in journals including TESOL Quarterly, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics and Race Ethnicity and Education, and as chapters in several books. Luciana C. de Oliveira is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor in the School of Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research focuses on the role of language in learning the content areas in

x  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

K-12 and teacher education for multilingual learners. She has authored or edited 24 books and has over 200 publications in various outlets. She was the first Latina to ever serve as President (2018–2019) of TESOL International Association. Christina Ponzio is a doctoral candidate in Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education at Michigan State University and lecturer at University of Michigan. She was previously an English as a second language program coordinator in Michigan. Drawing upon discourse analysis, narrative and poetic inquiry, and self study methodologies, she investigates how teacher educators, teachers, and students negotiate their language identities and broader ideologies in traditionally English-medium spaces to engage in translanguaging as a critical praxis. Maíra Lins Prado has several years of experience as a teacher of English language for speakers of Portuguese, her mother tongue. She is also a former lawyer in São Paulo (Brazil), and, through her interest in multilingual studies, first came across translanguaging when participating in a research group at Suffolk University focused on translanguaging as means of teaching for justice. Elizabeth Robinson has taught and researched linguistically and culturally sustaining pedagogy for over twenty years. She has taught emergent bilinguals both overseas and in U.S. public schools. She was an assistant professor and director of the Education Studies and TESOL Certificate programs at Suffolk University. Her qualitative research projects are conducted in teams composed of colleagues, students, and community partners and focus on translanguaging as pedagogy and as research methodology to teach toward justice. Gertrude Tinker Sachs is Chair of the Department of Middle and Secondary Education and an Associate Professor of TESOL, Language and Literacy at Georgia State University. Her research focuses on inquiry-oriented local and international teacher professional development through decolonizing and transformative culturally responsive literacy pedagogies in lowincome communities. April S. Salerno is an assistant professor of multilingual education and Curriculum & Instruction Program Coordinator at the University of Virginia, where she directs the online ESL teacher-education programs and teaches courses in ESL instructional methods. Her research interests include second language literacy, teacher education, and classroom discourse. Her previous professional experience includes teaching English language arts in New Mexico, where many of her students spoke indigenous languages, and teaching English teachers and students in Moldova. Kristof Savski is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Prince of Songkla University in Hat Yai, Thailand, and previously studied and taught

Contributors xi

­ art-time at Lancaster University, UK. His research contributes to the p fields of sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, language policy and critical discourse analysis and has been published in leading journals, such as TESOL Quarterly, Language Policy, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development and Critical Discourse Studies. Brooke R. Schreiber is Assistant Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. Her research focuses on second language writing pedagogy and teacher training, as well as global Englishes and translingualism. Her work has appeared in TESOL Quarterly, ELT Journal, the Journal of Second Language Writing, Composition Studies, Composition Forum, and Language Learning and Technology. She is co-editor of a forthcoming collection on linguistic justice and multilingual writers. Sumyat Thu (she/her) is currently working as an acting assistant professor of writing at the University of Washington, Seattle. She earned her PhD in English language and rhetoric and completed the Certificate in Public Scholarship program at the UW in 2020. Her research interests revolve around transnational and translingual literacies, the intersections of language and race, antiracist pedagogy and praxis, and community-engaged literacy projects. Zhongfeng Tian is an Assistant Professor of TESOL/Applied Linguistics at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His research focuses on bilingual education, TESOL, and translanguaging. He has co-edited a special issue ‘Positive Synergies: Translanguaging and Critical Theories in Education’ for Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts (2019). He is also the co-editor of two books: Envisioning TESOL through a Translanguaging Lens: Global Perspectives (Springer, 2020) and EnglishMedium Instruction and Translanguaging (Multilingual Matters, 2021) Ribut Wahyudi (PhD, Victoria University of Wellington) is the Lecturer in English Literature Department, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang, Indonesia. He has published book chapters, among others, with Palgrave Macmillan (2016, 2017), Routledge (2019, with Chusna) and an article with The Journal of the IATEFL ESP Special Interest Group 2016. He has been an invited reviewer for international peer reviewed journals in Australia, Europe and Canada. Bedrettin Yazan is Associate Professor of TESL Teacher Education/ Applied Linguistics at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Bedrettin has an active research program and has published in Linguistics and Education, Language Teaching Research, TESOL Journal, World Englishes and Critical Inquiry in Language Studies. He also co-edited (with Kristen Lindahl) the recently published Language Teacher Identity in TESOL: Teacher Education and Practice as Identity Work.

1 An Invitation into the Transnational ELT Landscape of Practices Rashi Jain, Bedrettin Yazan and Suresh Canagarajah

The field of English language teaching (ELT) and learning is widely dispersed and incredibly diverse. Past historical events and current global trends have collectively shaped the ELT landscape in variously documented as well as unprecedented ways, and the field continues to evolve dynamically along different directions. Amid these changing realities, English language educators and teacher educators increasingly operate within and across national boundaries, creating new ‘liminal’ spaces (Bhabha, 1992, 1994; Canagarajah, 2018), charting new trajectories (Jain, 2013, 2021), crafting new practices and pedagogies (Canagarajah, 2012b, 2019; Jain, 2014, 2017), constructing new identities (Motha et al., 2012; Yazan & Rudolph, 2018) and reconceptualizing ELT contexts (Selvi & Rudolph, 2018). In the process, the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) is being changed from within by such transnational practitioners. Now, more than ever, we need to diversify the stories that are being told and heard in ‘mainstream’ scholarship, and we need to include practitioners’ narratives of engaging in their everyday practices around teaching and research in settings around the world across a global ELT landscape. However, one of the challenges that West-based academic publishing currently faces is creating community spaces where the diverse voices of emerging and established ELT practitioners and scholars, originally from and/or operating in non-Western contexts, may find a common democratic platform along with Western and West-based scholarship. These contexts span not only the so-called non-Western ‘peripheries’, but also peripheries created within the ‘center’ when certain members and their communities are minoritized on the basis of race, language and/or place of origin. This volume is an attempt to address this gap. As editors, we have aimed to facilitate a book that serves as a community space where inquiries from transnational practitioners across the complex landscape of ELT practices (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 1

2  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

2015) may find a permanent home. As part of creating this ‘transnational home’, we invited ELT practitioners and scholars, or pracademics (see Jain, 2013, 2021) as we ‘reimagine’ them (and ourselves), to bring their unique transnational perspectives into the community space. The chapters in this book encompass those perspectives, spanning both identities and practices. This volume thus comprises critical transnational inquiries of diverse pracademics (see also Yazan et al., 2021) who engage in second and foreign language pedagogy and research, as well as language teacher education and research, within the USA and around the world, with chapters that report on individual and collaborative inquiries. In this first chapter, we introduce the volume and contextualize the collective work within the most current scholarship around transnational language education and research (see Canagarajah, 2018, 2019; De Fina & Perrino, 2013; Duff, 2015, 2019; Phan, 2016; You, 2018). There have been past instances of TESOL practitioners and academics who have provided narrative accounts of their journeys across countries, cultures and languages (e.g. Belcher & Connor, 2001), as well as written pieces that attempt to ‘demystify’ border-crossing and boundary-spanning professional trajectories (see Kubota & Sun, 2013), but without specifically focusing on the transnational scope of these journeys and trajectories. At the same time, transnationalism itself has been a topic of scholarly interest and discussion for many years now, especially in the field of migration studies (e.g. Levitt, 2001; Vertovec, 2009), as also discussed in more detail within the other chapters in this book (especially Chapter 7). More recently, however, there seems to be increasing interest in examining the transnational construct in the context of English language instruction. In their recently published volume, Robinson et al. (2020), for instance, focus on undergraduate and graduate programs in the USA and explore the intersections of the translingual practices and transnational identities of their domestic and international students of color. The authors offer an analytical framework that is ‘based on the prefix trans-, which brings translinguality and transnationality together’ (Robinson et al., 2020: 12). They first explore everyday translinguality and then transnational translingual literacies in their two-part volume. Insightful and timely as the work of Robinson et al. (2020) is, it is also delimited to its focus on the US higher education context, thus offering only a partial snapshot of a global landscape of ELT practices. Canagarajah (2018) has also recently focused on the interconnections between transnationalism and translingualism and espoused the use of transnational literacy autobiographies by migrant scholars and students as translingual writers in his US-based second language education courses. This work is unique in the sense that Canagarajah first provides his own literacy autobiography along with scholarly discussions in the first part of the book, followed by selective student literacy autobiographies in students’ own ‘voices’ in the second half – an instance of an academic looking back on his own practices in the

An Invitation into the Transnational ELT Landscape of Practices  3

classroom (and therefore embodying the role of a pracademic), in addition to validating his students’ authentic voices within a scholarly publication. In a three-part edited volume, You (2018) also focused on transnational writing education, albeit with a more global scope by bringing together scholars from and/or embedded in Asia-Pacific nations including China, Japan, Nepal, Syria and Taiwan, in addition to the USA. You (2018) defines transnational writing education as ‘efforts made to enable students to recognize with, deconstruct, and transcend … boundaries in the teaching of writing, ultimately cultivating flexible and responsible global citizens’ (You, 2018: x). While You’s work is more global in scope, it still primarily encompasses the voices of scholars and academics, only some of whom examine their own classroom practices or focus on their own roles as practitioners in the volume (e.g. Canagarajah, 2018; Liu, 2018; Yang, 2018). It seems, therefore, that while there are instances of researchers and academics examining the practices and identities of other stakeholders in transnational ELT, there is a need to balance these perspectives by including more, conceptually vigorous and, at the same time, linguistically accessible voices of the practitioners and scholars themselves, especially those focusing on their own transnational practices and identities in global settings. This volume attempts to address this gap. As co-editors, we also reflect upon our own transnational journeys that have transcended borders, in keeping with the personal nature of this genre of research and publication. Our journeys have taken us from the so-called ‘periphery’ to the so-called ‘center’ across a myriad and diverse landscape of practices. Rashi Jain and Suresh Canagarajah are both originally from South Asia – India and Sri Lanka, respectively. Bedrettin Yazan is originally from Turkey, a transcontinental country that has been a borderland between Asian and European identities. After engaging in ELT in our countries of origin, we all transitioned to the USA at different times to pursue graduate studies – Suresh in 1985, Rashi in 2004 and Bedrettin in 2009 – and gradually integrated into the US academia in different ways and to different extents. Suresh’s trajectory involved some transcontinental shuttling, as he returned to war-torn Sri Lanka for a few years of teaching before fleeing the fighting to the USA in 1994 (see Canagarajah, 2001). Upon completing their respective doctorates, both Suresh and Bedrettin moved more deeply into the academic ‘center’ by following the path of securing tenure at large public universities and working in the field of language teaching and teacher education (Canagarajah, 2012a; Yazan, 2019). Rashi, on the other hand, followed a trajectory out of the university system, post-PhD, by eventually becoming a full-time ELT practitioner in a community college setting and staying connected to the academic community more peripherally (Jain, 2013) for a few years. She then began to re-engage more proactively in the academic community through practicebased research and scholarship (Jain, 2021) and scholarly collaborations such as this one.

4  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

To explain the idea of professional trajectories further, we draw upon Wenger’s (1998) seminal conceptualization of communities of practice visà-vis Western academia. Suresh has a tenured position as a professor at a large Northeastern US public research university and an exemplary publication record that spans many global contexts and comprises groundbreaking scholarship. His journey can be identified as embodying an insider trajectory, where ‘the formation of an identity does not end with full membership … [and] … new events, new demands, new inventions, and new generations all create occasions for renegotiating one’s identity’ (Wenger, 1998: 154). Suresh can also be seen as a veteran and insider in US-based academia who, for at least two decades now, has been serving as a role model for emerging scholars, especially those who self-identify as persons of color and/or originally hail from a non-‘inner-circle’ English context, like himself. As a ‘more experienced peer’ and ‘role model’, Suresh can also be identified as being on a paradigmatic trajectory (Wenger, 1998), and ‘represents the history of the practice’ as someone who is part of the ‘living testimonies to what is possible, expected, ­desirable’ (Wenger, 1998: 156). In these insider and paradigmatic roles, Suresh has been providing mentorship to Rashi since 2007 and to Bedrettin since 2019. Bedrettin and Rashi, however, chose to follow diverging trajectories in relation to academia. After completing a master’s in education at a large public research university, Rashi started her doctoral studies in 2006 at the same institution. She participated actively in teacher-education-based teaching, research and administrative activities as a graduate assistant for several years, as part of an initial inbound trajectory (Wenger, 1998) where, as a ‘newcomer’, she joined the university-based academic community with the ‘prospect of becoming a full participant in its practice’ (Wenger, 1998: 154). However, as she moved more deeply into the doctoral program, Rashi also found herself increasingly drawn back to ELT and began to teach English as a second language as an adjunct at a community college during her doctoral studies while simultaneously continuing to carry out a wide range of academic roles and responsibilities that included engaging in teacher education practices through teaching, research and administrative assistantships within her program, as well as occasionally mentoring new international teaching assistants and supporting visiting international teachers through fellowships and additional assistantship assignments. During this time, Rashi began to agentively change her trajectory in academia from an inbound one to an increasingly peripheral one, wherein ‘by choice or by necessity, some trajectories never lead to full participation. Yet they may well provide a kind of access to a community and its practice that becomes significant enough to contribute to one’s identity’ (Wenger, 1998: 154). After completing her dissertation in which she focused on her own practices as a practitioner–researcher in the community college context (Jain, 2013), Rashi continued to teach as an adjunct in the community

An Invitation into the Transnational ELT Landscape of Practices  5

college context, while holding full-time faculty and administrative positions in various university settings, before securing a full-time teaching position at a large Mid-Atlantic urban community college in 2016, where she has been since (Jain, 2021), thus moving from an inbound to an insider trajectory with regards to community-college-based ELT. Once established in her chosen context of instruction and advancing from an assistant professor position to associate professor (with the prospect of advancing to full community-college-based professorship in a few years), during which time she focused primarily on her practices of teaching and engaging in practitioner inquiries and published only occasionally, Rashi began to transition from a peripheral trajectory vis-à-vis academia to a boundary trajectory (Wenger, 1998), finding ‘value in spanning boundaries and linking communities of practice’ (Wenger, 1998: 154) in her role as a community-­ college-based practitioner–researcher. When Bedrettin started his doctoral studies in 2009, in the same department as Rashi, he also embarked upon an inbound trajectory (Wenger, 1998), with an identity ‘invested in  …  future participation’ (Wenger, 1998: 154). After serving as a graduate teaching, research and administrative assistant for five years while pursuing his doctoral studies at a large public research university, where he was also afforded legitimate peripheral participation (Wenger, 1998) in university-based teacher education and research practices, Bedrettin completed his doctoral dissertation that focused on TESOL teacher education in the US context (Yazan, 2014) and secured a tenure-track position at another large public research university, successfully obtaining tenure in 2020 and thus transitioning from the title of assistant professor to associate professor. With a well-­established publication record, Bedrettin has now transitioned from the inbound trajectory to an insider trajectory (Wenger, 1998), like Suresh, and is on the path to obtaining a full professorship in universitybased academia, specifically at a large, urban university located in South Central USA. Despite the fact that all three of us have been on varying personal–­ professional trajectories (Yazan et al., 2021), in collaborating on this project as transnational pracademics (Jain, 2021) – a deliberate self-positioning – we recognize that we are creating and operating across a unique liminal space, where these different personal–professional trajectories not only intersect but also transcend the idea of a single community of practice. We thus also draw upon Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner’s (2015) conceptualization of complex landscapes of practices, wherein a ‘landscape of practice’ consists of ‘a complex system of communities of practice and the boundaries within them’ (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015: 13) to make meaning of our collaboration ‘as globalization, travel, and new technologies expand our horizons and open up potential connections to various locations in the landscape’ (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015: 15). Whether primarily a community-college-based practitioner

6  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

(Rashi) or primarily university-based academics (Suresh and Bedrettin), all three of us also engage in intersectional practices that span teaching and research, examining not only the transnational practices of ‘others’, but also our own (such as here), thus going beyond the traditional notions of collaborations between ‘practitioners’ and ‘academics’ to become pracademics (Jain, 2013) – an equitable amalgamation of the two terms that (dis)privileges neither – as part of the ‘evolution of the nexus of teaching and research in higher education’ (McKinley, 2019: 879). In doing so, we hope to offer the transnational pracademic identity to other members in the global landscape of ELT practices in ways that transcend traditional identities and practices. As Wenger (1998) writes: Embroiled in the politics of their community and with the confidence derived from participation in a history they know too well, [old-timers] may want to invest themselves in future not so much to continue it as to give it new wings. They might thus welcome the new potentials afforded by new generations who are less hostage to the past. (Wenger, 1998: 157)

We also hope that this chapter, with its deeply reflexive self-inquiry, creates a suitable context for all the other contributions in this book that collectively create a snapshot in time of diverse teaching and research practices within the complex global ELT landscape, thus contributing to a ‘body of knowledge’ that goes beyond the printed page to encompass ‘a community of people who contribute to the continued vitality, application, and evolution of the practice’ (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015: 13). All the other authors in this book also engage in self-inquiries, both collaborative (Chapters 2–7) and individual (Chapters 8–15), using diverse frameworks and methodologies to explore their transnational trajectories, practices and identities, sometimes tracing their origins back to different countries around the world and situating their teaching and research practices in diverse contexts that span and transcend national (and linguistic) boundaries. As Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015) state: As a trajectory through a social landscape, learning is not merely the acquisition of knowledge. It is the becoming of a person who inhabits the landscape with an identity whose dynamic construction reflects our trajectory through that landscape. This journey within and across practices shapes who we are. (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015: 19)

To the best of our knowledge, there is no prior instance in the literature of such multi-layered and deeply self-reflexive collaborations that focus on diverse transnational pracademic voices in the global field of ELT and across the complex transnational landscape of ELT teaching and research practices. Indeed, what’s been missing from the literature is a framework

An Invitation into the Transnational ELT Landscape of Practices  7

that connects different pracademic voices together as part of one continuing yet immensely diverse landscape. We attempt to bridge this gap through our current conceptualization of (this volume as a community space for) transnational pracademics engaging in teaching and research practices across a dynamic, global ELT landscape. The rest of the book is now introduced by providing an overview of the chapters, highlighting the conceptual, theoretical and methodological underpinnings of each contribution and weaving them into our conceptualization of transnational pracademic identities across a dynamic global landscape of ELT practices. We begin with Chapter 2, a collaborative narrative inquiry where Thu and Motha emphasize the need for enacting critical transnational agency and draw upon their lived transracial (and transnational) experiences to theorize deeply about the construct of transnationalism within their situated contexts. Thu applies the construct of transnational intersectionality to her exploration of her myriad practices as a researcher, scholar and teacher, and Motha looks at transnationalism through the lens of transracialization to explore her agency as a teacher educator with the intention of disrupting and transgressing inequitable social structures and categories; both provide concrete examples from their own practices and contexts to illustrate what equitable transnational pedagogies may look like. In Chapter 3, Kryzhanivska and Hunter present another collaborative inquiry, engaging in an evocative duoautoethnographic dialogue with vulnerability and exploring key themes in terms of the internal and external struggles the authors faced across transnational practices that span the USA and Ukraine, and the USA and China, respectively. Providing poignant details from their lived experiences, the authors simultaneously identify themselves as a non-native English speaking teacher (NNEST) and a native English speaking teachers (NEST), respectively, and go beyond their identities as ‘non-native’ and ‘native’ English speakers – indicative of larger tensions within the field where such labels and artificial dichotomies are both reproduced and problematized (sometimes within the same texts) – to delve deeply and bravely into the complex, often emotional, negotiations that they engaged in as transnational practitioners in their transitions across continental, national, cultural and linguistic borders. The authors discuss and summarize key analytical findings from the themes – including the issue of perceived visibility/invisibility, the impact of transnational politics on teacher trajectories and the need to look at the emotional negotiations in classroom spaces in addition to structural ones – and end with implications and recommendations for the field of transnational ELT and teacher education at large. The next three chapters present three separate collaborative self-­ studies. In Chapter 4, Salerno and Andrei explore how their identities as transnational mothers inform their practices as teacher educators in the USA. Similar to Thu and Motha (Chapter 2), Salerno and Andrei draw

8  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

upon the concept of intersectionality in addition to transnationalism in their scholarship, but they focus specifically on simultaneity and complexity to theorize about their intersectional identities as language teacher educators who are also transnational mothers. Salerno and Andrei also draw upon elements of autoethnography and use dialoguing, like the authors of Chapter 3, albeit within the methodological framework of self-study. In Chapter 5, Angay-Crowder, Choi and Tinker Sachs ‘dialogue’ with each other to draw upon the concepts of both transnationalism and translinguistic-identity-as-pedagogy as part of their inquiry into their engagement in mentor–mentee relationships and the development of their transnational and ‘translingual–multiliterate’ identities as language teacher educators. Deliberately positioning themselves as pracademics, the authors also discuss the affordances and challenges of drawing upon these layered identities in their critical pedagogies. In Chapter 6, seven transnational TESOL practitioners – Ponzio, Robinson, Kennedy, Ceballos, Tian, Crief and Prado – describe their creation of an online virtual community, an inquiry group they call ‘transnetworking for TESOL teachers’, to explore a shared interest in translanguaging and social justice and the constructs’ application in their work as students, teachers, teacher educators and researchers. In this ‘translingual contact zone’, the seven collaborators engage in conversations around creating an inclusive inquiry community, examining their own identities and practices, and problematizing inequitable language ideologies. Chapter 7 acts as a bridge between the first part of the book comprising collaborative inquiries and the second part of the book with its focus on individuals’ self-inquiries. Bookman and de Oliveira collectively present a single case study, with one of the two authors as the ‘participant’ (a US-based Latina transnational teacher–scholar) and use a positioning theory framework to examine the participant–researcher’s nuanced identities and layered perceptions around the challenges in creating a sense of belonging as a minoritized foreign-born transnational teacher–scholar who works primarily in a complex US context. Chapter 8 marks the beginning of the contributions of individual authors in this volume and presents an analytical autoethnographic inquiry by Sujin Kim, who examines the development of her transnational trajectory and ‘trans-perspectives’ as a Korean immigrant scholar in the USA. Documenting her translanguaging research across a variety of contexts, including online immigrant youth communities, multilingual children and their families, and teacher education programs, Kim calls for a ‘pedagogy of community translanguaging’, while acknowledging the challenges created by engaging in such a pedagogy in an inequitable linguistic landscape. In Chapter 9, Christiansen draws upon her own bicultural (Mexican and American) and her students’ bilingual (English–Spanish) identities to

An Invitation into the Transnational ELT Landscape of Practices  9

show how traditional notions of transnationalism are being challenged through the use of digital spaces. Like Kim, Christiansen also explores how her past and current research have informed and transformed her own pedagogical practices and ideologies. Chapter 10 showcases Schreiber’s critical reflections on transitioning from being a teacher to a researcher across the USA and Serbia, and her negotiation of the resulting contradictory and overlapping transnational identities. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 therefore comprise inquiries of scholars looking at their own practices as transnational practitioners and researchers (or transnational pracademics) within the global ELT landscape. In Chapter 11, Alharthi continues the thread of TESOL pracademics, looking at his own practice-based scholarship, and theorizes about employing a translingual approach that balances a pedagogy of shuttling with a pedagogy of settling, in first-year composition classes, by drawing upon his own site of instruction in a teaching composition program at a large research university in the USA. In Chapters 12 and 13, two practitioners engage in individual teacher inquiries to also examine their transnational identities and pedagogies. Huang, in Chapter 12, traces her journey from Taiwan to the border of Arizona and New Mexico, where she currently teaches English to minoritized and peripheralized Native American students within a two-year college in the post-secondary setting, and takes on the role of teacher–researcher to examine how her own and her students’ unique ‘transnational’ identities – as those who identify themselves both as Americans and belonging to the sovereign Navajo Nation – shape their complex, and sometimes contradictory, linguistic practices and identities in the classroom. In Chapter 13, Mohamed also focuses on translingualism, along with intercultural communication, in the context of her transnational journeys across Egypt, the USA, Morocco and Ecuador, tracing how her conceptualization and practices around teaching culture and language evolved with each site. In describing this personal–professional trajectory, Mohamed brings in some much-needed insights about a practitioner from a ‘noncenter’ context teaching in both ‘center’ and ‘non-center’ contexts. The last two chapters of the book – Chapters 14 and 15 – present two transnational autoethnographic accounts of practitioners currently embedded in Thai and Indonesian ELT contexts, respectively. In Chapter 14, Savski examines three types of ‘boundaries’ – across learning cultures, disciplines and academia-based center–peripherality – that he traversed as he moved from Slovenia to the UK and finally to Thailand. Savski then theorizes about how these boundary-crossings have impacted his own professional habitus, leading to a ‘hybrid TESOL–sociolinguistic’ identity. In Chapter 15, Wahyudi explores his own movement across Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand to examine how the transnational

10  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

experiences inform his pedagogy as a TESOL practitioner in a post-­ secondary university setting in Indonesia. Employing primarily a critical analytical autoethnographic approach with elements of practitioner– researcher, Wahyudi identifies himself as a transnational TEGCOM (teaching English as glocalized communication) practitioner who holds multiple subjectivities as he strives to engage in a critical pedagogy that de-centers Western hegemonic knowledge, while also upholding the need to integrate Islamic values in his teaching, as per institutional and state requirements, and the resulting ‘critical classroom negotiations’. As the preceding overview suggests, this volume serves as a community space for diverse transnational pracademic voices to coexist within its pages. To inquire deeply into their own identities and practices, the contributing authors draw upon a range of theoretical–conceptual frameworks pertinent to the creation of hybrid identities and liminal spaces, including (but not limited to) transnationalism, intersectionality, translingualism and translanguaging, as well as research methodologies spanning autoethnographies, narrative inquiries, self-studies and practitioner research. In terms of the manner in which the chapters are structured, while most follow a more traditional format, many of the collaborative writings are presented as dialogues between the authors, and all the inquiries maintain a focus on the authors’ practices as researchers and teachers. The individual and collaborative narratives also capture the authors’ diverse personal–professional trajectories across continents, nation-states, languages and institutions in ways that both problematize as well as transcend traditional notions around ‘center–peripheries’ and provide a comprehensive snapshot in time of the range of identities and practices that exist across an ever-changing global ELT landscape. As we close this first chapter, we make some final observations from an editorial perspective. First, bringing the diverse writings and writing styles of 29 transnational pracademics (including the three editors) into one common space ensured generative tensions. As editors, we had to walk a fine line in requiring the contributors to streamline their contributions without losing the unique voices and perspectives they brought to the table. Some decisions were easier than others – such as preserving the linguistic variations and transitions within and across languages as submitted by the writers. Others required greater negotiations, such as when we occasionally asked for additional clarifications and explanations across theoretical frameworks, research methodologies, data descriptions and analyses, and so forth. We are grateful to all of the contributors in their willingness to work on multiple drafts through the two-year-long process of collaborating on this volume. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewer who provided a very positive and supportive review in addition to a comprehensive commentary that helped us fine-tune this volume even further.

An Invitation into the Transnational ELT Landscape of Practices  11

We now look back on the entire process and reflect on how, to echo Iyer (2013), we started with a wish to create ‘a moment of stillness’ amid rapidly changing times to capture how the global practices and identities of transnational practitioners in TESOL are helping the global landscape of ELT practices keep pace with the changing times. In essence, ‘It’s only by stopping movement that you can see where to go’ (Iyer, 2013). It matters ‘where we are going’ as a field and this book is an attempt to step back for a moment in time to assess where we are collectively headed as a community. On a final note, when we first conceptualized this volume, there was no indication that the world was about to be changed, perhaps forever, by an unprecedented global pandemic. We, along with our contributing authors, were unprepared for how things evolved and yet we have all persevered through these changed and changing circumstances to continue our work and to bring it to you, our audience. We now invite you to read this volume and learn more about the transnational identities and practices that diverse ELT pracademics engage in around the world as part of the dynamic and ever-evolving landscapes of ELT practices. References Belcher, D. and Connor, U. (eds) (2001) Reflections on Multiliterate Lives. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Bhabha, H. (1992) The world and the home. Social Text 31/32, 141–153, doi:10.2307/466222. Bhabha, H.K. (1994) The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: The Question of Agency. New York: Routledge. Canagarajah, S. (2001) The fortunate traveler: Shuttling between communities and literacies by economy class. In D. Belcher and U. Connor (eds) Reflections on Multiliterate Lives (pp. 23–37). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Canagarajah, S. (2012a) Teacher development in a global profession: An autoethnography. TESOL Quarterly 46 (2), 258–279, doi:10.1002/tesq.18. Canagarajah, S. (2012b) Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. New York, NY: Routledge. Canagarajah, S. (2018) Transnationalism and translingualism: How they are connected. In X. You (ed.) Transnational Writing Education: Theory, History, and Practice (pp. 57–76). New York, NY: Routledge. Canagarajah, S. (2019) Transnational Literacy Autobiographies as Translingual Writing (1st edn). New York, NY: Routledge. De Fina, A. and Perrino, S. (2013) Transnational identities. Applied Linguistics 34 (5), 509–515. Duff, P.A. (2015) Transnationalism, multilingualism, and identity. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 35, 57–80. Duff, P.A. (2019) Social dimensions and processes in second language acquisition: Multilingual socialization in transnational contexts. The Modern Language Journal 103, 6–22. Iyer, P. (2013) Where is home? See https://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_where_is_ home?language=en (accessed March 2021).

12  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Jain, R. (2013) Practitioner research as dissertation: Exploring the continuities between practice and research in a community college ESL classroom. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Maryland. See http://hdl.handle.net/1903/14515 (accessed March 2021). Jain, R. (2014) Global Englishes in adult ESL: Classroom materials, tools, and strategies. Paper presented at TESOL 2014 International Convention: ELT for the Next Generation, Portland, OR. Jain, R. (2017) Towards a translingually responsive pedagogy: Implications for teacher education, practice, and research. Paper presented at Conference on Language, Learning, and Culture, Fairfax, VA. Jain, R. (2021) (Re)Imagining myself as a pracademic, a translingual, and a transnational: A critical autoethnographic account. In B. Yazan, S. Canagarajah and R. Jain (eds) Autoethnographies in ELT: Transnational Identities, Pedagogies, and Practices. New York, NY: Routledge. Kubota, R. and Sun, Y. (2013) Demystifying Career Paths after Graduate School: A Guide for Second Language Professionals in Higher Education. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Levitt, P. (2001) The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Liu, J.Y. (2018) The affordances of Facebook for teaching ESL writing. In X. You (ed.) Transnational Writing Education: Theory, History, and Practice (pp. 203–221). New York, NY: Routledge. McKinley, J. (2019) Evolving the TESOL teaching-research nexus. TESOL Quarterly 53 (3), 875–884. Motha, S., Jain, R. and Tecle, T. (2012) Translinguistic identity-as-pedagogy: Implications for teacher education. International Journal of Innovation in English Language Teaching and Research 1 (1), 13–27. Phan, L.-H. (2016) Transnational Education Crossing ‘Asia’ and ‘the West’: Adjusted Desire, Transformative Mediocrity and Neo-colonial Disguise. New York, NY: Routledge. Robinson, H., Hall, J. and Navarro, N. (2020) Translingual Identities and Transnational Realities in the U.S. College Classroom. New York, NY: Routledge. Selvi, A.F. and Rudolph, N. (2018) Introduction: conceptualizing and approaching “education for glocal interaction”. In A.F. Selvi and N. Rudolph (eds) Conceptual Shifts and Contextualized Practices in Education for Glocal Interaction (pp. 1–14). Singapore: Springer Nature. Vertovec, S. (2009) Transnationalism. London and New York: Routledge. Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger-Trayner, E. and Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015) Learning in landscapes of practice: A framework. In E. Wenger-Trayner, M. Fenton-O’Creevy, S. Hutchinson, C. Kubiak and B. Wenger-Trayner (eds) Learning in Landscapes of Practice: Boundaries, Identity, and Knowledgeability in Practice-based Learning (pp. 13–30). New York, NY: Routledge. Yang, S. (2018) Potential phases of multilingual writers’ identity work. In X. You (ed.) Transnational Writing Education: Theory, History, and Practice (pp. 115–137). New York, NY: Routledge. Yazan, B. (2014) How ESOL teacher candidates construct their teacher identities: A case study of an MATESOL program. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland. Yazan, B. (2019) An autoethnography of a language teacher educator: Wrestling with ideologies and identity Positions. Teacher Education Quarterly 46 (3), 34–56.

An Invitation into the Transnational ELT Landscape of Practices  13

Yazan, B. and Rudolph, N. (2018) Introduction: Apprehending identity, experience, and (in)equity through and beyond binaries. In B. Yazan and N. Rudolph (eds) Criticality, Teacher Identity, and (In)equity in English Language Teaching (pp. 1–19). Dordrecht: Springer. Yazan, B., Canagarajah, S. and Jain, R. (eds) (2021) Autoethnographies in English Language Teaching: Transnational Identities, Pedagogies, and Practices. New York, NY: Routledge. You, X. (2018) Transnational Writing Education: Theory, History, and Practice. New York, NY: Routledge.

2 Critical Transnational Agency: Enacting through Intersectionality and Transracialization Sumyat Thu and Suhanthie Motha

Transnationalism is an inherent part of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), with most TESOL practitioners drawing on multilingual or transnational life experiences in constructing our complex identities and pedagogies and attending to students who live transnational lives. Canagarajah points out the incoherence of nation-state boundaries to transnationals, who often create ‘liminal spaces between communities, languages, and nations’ (Canagarajah, 2018: 41). As transnational TESOL practitioners, part of our work therefore includes questions about constructs that are central to our discipline, such as race (Motha, 2020a; Von Esch et al., 2020), language, and nation (Motha, 2020b). Whether or not we realize it, the project we are called to engage in requires us to repeatedly consider the boundaries around such complicated and deeply racialized notions as nativeness, English, pedagogical excellence, academia, research, and nation. As we implement our practice, we are making decisions, wittingly or unwittingly, to either reaffirm these boundaries or to reformulate, reimagine and redraw them. We are aware that many practitioners practice within contexts that promote norms of monolingualism and are therefore not supported in understanding their own or their students’ life experiences as multilingual and transnational as they construct identities and pedagogies. One question that then arises is about agency. To what degree are the ‘linguistic creativity and cosmopolitan identities’ (Canagarajah, 2018: 41) and challenges to normative racial and linguistic categories that emerge from these processes of transnationalism a natural but passive process, and to what degree do we as TESOL professionals need to be deliberately agentive in adopting transnationalism as a pedagogical strategy that is part of an antiracist agenda? In this chapter, we argue that it is not enough for TESOL professionals to be transnational, that we need to be 14

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  15

transnationally agentive and in fact actively embrace a critical transnational agency. We ask • What does it mean for us to intentionally and deliberately enact a critical transnational agenda as we seek to challenge racial, linguistic and national categories and roles, and embrace a mindful antiracist equityminded vision of scholarship and pedagogy? • How might we support the development of critical transnational dispositions in relation to our institutional identities, both within ourselves as scholars/practitioners and also in our students? • How can we enact meaningful transgressions that make visible the frailty of normative logics of racial and national categories? In this chapter, noting the interconnectedness of the personal, the professional and the political (Noffke, 1997), we draw on our lived experiences in institutional spaces to further theorize the construct of transnationalism within situated context. While Sumyat weaves together the concepts of transnationalism and intersectionality and explores how her research, scholarship and pedagogy can transform when they are informed through this intertextual, liminal lens, Suhanthie puts transnationalism into conversation with transracialization (Alim, 2016), considering the potential of transgression (Alim, 2016; hooks, 1994; Pennycook, 2007) to highlight power inequities and function as an avenue for critical transnational agency in her teacher education practice. Sumyat’s Story: Transnational Intersectionality in My Scholarship and Pedagogy

‘You’re an Asian in America’, a good friend of mine kindly and responsively adapts her language for me after I tell her that I do not identify as an American and, therefore, nor as an Asian American. I was born and raised in Burma (also known as Myanmar) until I moved to the USA for college studies 10 years ago. In thinking about my transnational lived experiences in relation to my scholarship and pedagogy, I find Wendy Hesford and Eileen Schell’s definition to be helpful and generative: they conceptualize transnationality as ‘the movements of people, goods, and ideas across national borders … to highlight forms of cultural hybridity and intertextuality’ (Hesford & Schell, 2008: 463). I am interested in identifying and better understanding these new avenues and formations of hybridity and intertextuality in search of how they can be meaningful for changing and transforming our academic and pedagogical practices to be more equitable and just. In different kinds of migration and immigration via forced displacement or movement for better educational and socioeconomic opportunities, people who move across borders enter an emergent, ongoing process of bringing into contact what they have understood to be

16  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

the meanings of social categories such as race, class and gender with the new meanings they encounter in a different geopolitical place. The new hybrid meanings gained out of a process of adjusting, reinventing and remaking oneself to be read legible in a different social space help us negotiate new social identities from who we were before, in our former homeland. As Suhanthie draws attention to the notion of agency later in this chapter, the ways we negotiate our shifting identities bring up a strategic question for those of us with transnational identities: how can we exercise agency in our institutionalized roles as scholars, practitioners and teachers, and to what ends? In this narrative, I draw on Samy Alim’s (2016) notion of ‘transracial subject’ arisen out of transnational lived experiences in relationship with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality and explore what it means for me to make good use of my transnational intersectionality in my practice of scholarship, community engagement and pedagogy. In ‘Who’s afraid of the transracial subject?’, Alim defines transracialization as ‘a dynamic process of translation and transgression’ (Alim, 2016: 34). Although race formations are often destabilized and revealed to be more fluid than they seem across national and cultural boundaries, before we can perform any meaningful transgressions we are often first and foremost translated by others as pertaining to a certain raciallydefined group that subjects us to the normative racial structures in a nation-state. In the USA, people often read me as an East Asian and assume I must be Chinese, Japanese or Korean, presumably because of my lighter skin color and also because East Asians are culturally and socioeconomically most visible compared with many other Asian identities in the USA. Back in my homeland of Burma though, I am often read as either Chinese or more accurately as mixed-race because of my lighter skin color and almond-shaped eyes I inherited from my Chinese father and my facial resemblance with my mother, who is ethnically Burmese. Having lived in in-between social categories, the gift of transnational mobility for me has been being able to compare different sociocultural societies and ‘see’ through my lived experiences that the ways in which race, class, gender and nation are constructed reflect recurring ‘fictional’ beliefs, as Suhanthie calls it later in this chapter, particular to the historical and contemporary power structures of a nation. And yet those different fictional beliefs are still connected by the global threads of nationalism, empire and colonialism, and transatlantic slavery, and their ongoing ramifications on today’s politics. In my personal navigation of racial ideologies in Burma and the USA, what connects for me is colorism, apparent in both nations, and my lightskin privilege albeit with different intersectional implications. In Burma, I was aware that women with lighter skin like me are considered more attractive or publicly presentable and associated with higher socioeconomic class whereas people with darker skin such as immigrants in Burma who are of Indian descent are systematically discriminated in the

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  17

government apparatuses of naturalization as well as in mainstream social spaces. Although I had light-skin privilege, I could relate to the struggles with citizenship that communities of Indian and largely South Asian descent experience in Burma because immigrants of Chinese ancestry like me are also considered second-class citizens when it comes to the institutional hurdles that we face in gaining the full rights of citizenship. In my lived experiences in the US context over the years, my racial identity becomes Asian, and I find that my light-skin privilege still carries and is translated at times as White-adjacentness. Privilege that comes with colorism and the notion of ‘model minority’ for Asian communities work together to socially place Asians in the USA as a racial wedge between structural Whiteness and other racially marginalized groups. Racialized Asian experience in the USA entails interesting contradictions, with antiAsian racism on one hand and having a privilege of distance from antiBlack violence on the indigenous land on the other. When we critically reflect on our experiences of being transracial subjects in terms of the intersectionality, shifting forms of agency and accountability that comes with our changing social positions, we can tap into the potentials of how transnational identities can question and challenge the normative social hierarchies that are continually redrawn and taken for granted in a bounded social space. In other words, we can begin to make transgressive moves with intentional agency that actively work toward social equity in spaces that are otherwise sedimented in their stabilized categories and boundaries that privilege certain groups over others. However, because transgressive and/or transracial acts are not inherently socially progressive toward equity and justice, Alim reminds us that ‘transracialization must also be a collective process of social transformation’ (Alim, 2016: 37). Here is where I put transracialization in conversation with Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality, which Crenshaw (1991) developed to fill in a conceptually crucial gap that both of the discourses of feminism and antiracism then were missing in accurately representing the experiences of women of color. Intersectionality as a theoretical and analytic tool helped illuminate the interlocking power structures of racism and sexism that shape the experiences of women of color in issues such as employment discrimination and domestic violence. Since Crenshaw developed the framework of intersectionality in 1989– 1990, this key concept has been used by many marginalized communities of race, class, gender, sexuality and others to better account for how oppression works in multiple and intersecting axes of identity. In putting transracialization in conversation with intersectionality, I argue that the way we think about transracialization must incorporate an analysis of intersectionality of ourselves and others we work with. In the context of transnational movements, we have to keep in mind that the many axes of social hierarchies and divisions we were once subject to shift along with our transnational intersectional identities. We therefore have to practice

18  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

reflexivity in retraining ourselves to see the shifting power relations, who we align with and the potentials of how our shifting positionalities can implicate us in the opposite directions of furthering oppression or building solidarity with the marginalized and working toward collective liberation. Just before I moved to the USA for undergraduate studies, I met with a study-abroad advisor at a learning center operated by the US Embassy in Burma. Along with general, practical suggestions in preparation for my move, the advisor also added that it would be better if I didn’t go to Black neighborhoods because, in her words, ‘Black neighborhoods are high in crimes’. I then had very little knowledge of the legacy of slavery and genocide of Native Americans and theft of their land in the USA, but I wondered to myself just on the basis of faulty over-generalizing logic that it could not be true that every single Black neighborhood in the country is ‘high in crimes’. Over the years I have lived in the USA, I often read and hear from writers and activists in the larger Asian American community about how they lament the ways some of the Asian immigrants across generations buy into the narratives of anti-Blackness and dissociate themselves from Black communities, instead of building mutual understanding and solidarity as people of color who can resist together the structural racism we find in the USA. Witnessing and experiencing structural racism and the dominance of Whiteness in the USA is at times complicated by different kinds of racial ideologies that one experienced and may have even participated in the former homeland. The desire to be a socially acceptable, ‘good’ and economically successful immigrant who can ‘make it’ in ‘America’ aligns well with the neoliberal values and capitalist order of social relations that often make it convenient to not examine the harmful dominant narratives of anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity that one often comes across. As Alim (2016: 43) writes, ‘Being recruited into racism is certainly one of the limits of transracialization’. The truth is, transracial acts can certainly be deployed even by people of color to advance the agenda of upholding White supremacy that runs deep in the USA and similarly in the rest of the world. Disappointingly, there are Asian immigrants who would call Black people by the N-word or who wouldn’t mind accepting the label of Asians as ‘honorary Whites’ or the ‘model minority’ (Tuan, 1998). Transracialization certainly brings us a troubling mixed bag – on the one hand we get called ‘yellow’, ‘slants’ or a random ‘Ni Hao’ from White people in the USA, but on the other we are also simultaneously forced upon with narratives that are anti-Black, anti-Native, antiLatinx and anti other marginalized groups. The trope of ‘model minority’ is a good example of how transracialization of Asian immigrants in a diaspora is translated and labeled by the dominant ideology1 to put one minority group on a pedestal just high enough that other minority groups such as Black, Native and Latinx people can be brought down. When we

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  19

are not able to see the interconnectedness of the dominant discourses about all marginalized groups, we inadvertently play into the divide-andconquer tactics of the systems of oppression. As we make sense of our transnational identities, we have to recognize our agency to either buy into the anti-marginalized narratives and unfairly practice intersectional privilege or actively transgress and resist the dominant social categories and inequities. In incorporating transnational intersectionality into the context of our professional identities as scholars, teachers and practitioners, it is up to us to figure out how we might want to productively disrupt institutionalized boundaries and roles in the ways that we conduct research, reconceptualize what counts as scholarship and revise our epistemologies building on our collective experience of transnational intersectionality. For me, my transnational intersectionality as an international student migrant in the USA, a first-generation PhD student in my family and growing up in Burma under a dictatorship government all contribute to the way I think about scholarship as knowledge-making for the goals of community empowerment and positive social change. When I started conceptualizing my dissertation study, I wanted to devote my research to the diasporic Burmese American community in the Greater Seattle area, where I currently live. By building on the existing relationships I have from prior teaching and volunteering in the community, I wanted to work and learn with the multilingual students of color in my community about how they practice literacy and language across spaces of home, school work and community. In doing community-engaged research, I have to be critically reflexive about my intersectional privilege because the transnational journeys of my student participants and myself are radically different. My student participants moved to the USA as political refugees, belonging to ethnic minority groups in Burma that had to endure military persecution and had to flee the country because of threats to their safety and wellbeing. Even though I have my share of difficult and complex experiences with language and race as an international student migrant in the USA, my student participants have had much harsher experiences of oppression – trying to survive and thrive in the path of being a refugee, losing or being cut off from family or relatives transnationally, having interrupted education, and learning with resilience to make the most of the educational resources in the USA. Working with the diasporic Burmese community taught me the stories of learning to overcome intergenerational trauma and rebuilding one’s life as a refugee and immigrant. Inter-ethnic community relationships and new knowledge about my homeland that I did not have access to, back in Burma, is made possible under the diasporic relationships I get to build here in the USA. In learning with and working with my student participants who have different transnational intersectional identities from mine, I find that we get to take part in a critical inquiry process and co-construct new

20  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

knowledge that questions and complicates the stabilized social categories that we are subject to in the USA. As an example, one of my student participants said in our research interviews, ‘When I came here, I didn’t know about Asian Americans, which is a whole new identity for me’. She questions the validity of ‘Asian’ identity: ‘I was kind of mad – why are only East Asian people Asian American? Who gets to be Asian? I don’t know what counts as Asian American, really’. From her lens of experiencing transracialization, my student participant draws attention to the totalizing tendency of the racialized Asian category defined by the dominant epistemology of Whiteness that often erases the existence of Brown Southeast Asians, South Asians and Pacific Islanders. The way the student raised critical awareness on the Asian identity made me appreciate the new liminal spaces that our transnational experiences can show us so that we do not passively accept the identity labels and categories we are translated into in a different nation-state, but that we have agency to productively resist the social boundaries that those in power have repeatedly demarcated and ask the questions Whom are these boundaries serving? How can our transnationalism effectively challenge those boundaries and redraw them for more accurate representational and equitable practices? As Alim (2016: 47) argues, ‘the transracial political project is about developing a more nuanced, strategic stance that requires us to know when (and when not to) uphold, reject, and exploit racial categorization’. Developing such a strategic repertoire of questioning, critiquing and making new knowledge on the social hierarchies is something we, as transnational citizens, can enact in different ways in our scholarship and practice and, in turn, help students develop such capacity in our pedagogy as well. Along the lines of ‘translinguistic identity as pedagogy’ that Motha et al. (2011) have argued for, we can tap into our transnational identity and agency to help transform the language learning and writing curricula that we teach to be less US-centric and more interculturally conscious. 2 When educators in the USA have a general consensus that the curricula at different levels of education can easily perpetuate the norm of US-centric or Eurocentric epistemologies, rethinking our curricula and pedagogy is a fruitful area of intervention that those of us with transnational lived experiences can take part in and help students develop the dispositions of transnational curiosity, intercultural communication and understanding, and translingual orientation. We can rethink our pedagogical practices with two concrete examples: examining students’ naming practices and transnationalizing the curricula that we teach. In English language learning classrooms, both in the USA and abroad, it is sometimes common practice for students to come in with an adopted Anglicized name or, perhaps more problematically, for teachers to give students their ‘choice’ of an Anglicized name from a teacher-provided list. In my own teaching experience, whenever I have international students

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  21

who have adopted Anglicized, American names, I have a complicated mixed reaction to it because students change their names for various, complex reasons. Some take an Anglicized name in order to overcome academic and social barriers, which functions as a survival tactic; others adopt a new name to put a stop to people in the new cultural context repeatedly mispronouncing their name, in which case it is an act of agency and self-preservation; others might also adopt a new name in the form of playful manipulation of naming practices (McPherron, 2009). In the context of forming one’s transnational identity through lived experiences of (im)migration, a name is indeed an important site of marking and negotiating one’s identity and a simultaneously symbolic and material way of relating to the systems of power. As researchers have noted, for transnational students in a US academic context, ‘English names are seen as a resource for transnational mobility and a default identity label in communication with Americans’ (Diao, 2014). Though that is the status quo, we have to question why people with transnational identities have a tendency to immediately and seemingly ‘naturally’ resort to Anglicized names associated with Whiteness while the USA has always been a multicultural, multiracial society. I am by no means suggesting that transnational students should culturally misappropriate Black, Native, Latinx and other ethnic names that they do not historically have a relationship to. My point is to draw our attention to the invisible, institutionalized barriers in our educational culture that result in placing the burden on students to change their identity marker, instead of rethinking our teacher education that would help educators develop interculturally competent skills that honor students’ names in the first place. As an important aspect of culturally sustaining pedagogy, Marrun (2018: 20) argues that educators have ‘a responsibility to learn how to correctly pronounce students’ names as a way to value and honor their families and identities’. At my institution’s writing center, one of the quarterly workshops for tutors is led by a Chinese graduate student who teaches tutors with varying levels of phonological sophistication how to pronounce Chinese names. Educational institutions and language learning programs can similarly develop resources to help teachers practice anti-racist and culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris et al., 2017). Especially in English language learning classrooms and the TESOL context, just as we challenge the notion of monolithic standard English and its complicity in upholding Whiteness, naming practice is also an important area where teachers can help students critically question the implications of changing or not changing one’s ethnic/cultural/transnational name. A second concrete example of transnationally informed and agentive pedagogy is, when we transnationalize a curriculum and incorporate content from different cultural contexts, we need to think about what effects it would have on not only conceptualizing and designing a curriculum, but also how we can rethink our classroom pedagogy, facilitate discussions

22  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

with students and help them examine uncritical assumptions in reading, writing and learning about people from non-US cultures and intercultural social constructs. As an example, in a composition class I taught designated for multilingual learners who self-identified to enroll in the class, we watched a documentary in class called Nu Shu: A Hidden Language of Women in China (Yang et al., 1999). The film depicts how a group of rural working-class women in a Chinese village developed a secret code language to communicate with other women without the knowledge of their husbands and other men in the village. The filmmakers followed the women while they completed everyday activities (such as performing tough, physical labor as agricultural workers) and interviewed them about the origin of the Nu Shu language and how they were able to sustain it secretly as a women’s-only language in the village. After showing the documentary in class, I opened up the discussion with students and asked a general question of what the students thought of the film. One White male student, who was often enthusiastic and confident about participating in class discussions, raised his hand and went on to speak extensively about the women’s poverty and their harsh ‘third-world’ circumstances, and that the film was quite depressing, in his opinion. I was taken aback by the student’s comment, which exclusively focused on the physically unappealing conditions in which the women seem to live while the film spent the majority of the time foregrounding the conversations of how the Nu Shu language was developed and maintained. The frustration I felt as a teacher in that moment reminded me that transnationalizing a curriculum is not, by nature, socially progressive or anti-racist, just as transgressions in and of themselves are not by default socially good, as I wrote earlier. We have to take such moments of talking past one another – either between the student and the teacher or among the students themselves – as indicative of a structural problem in the US education system: that in both K-12 and higher education, there has not been enough learning about the sociocultural and political contexts that exist outside of the USA and that the system does not see it as a priority that students should develop dispositions and skills for intercultural competence and understanding. As educators, if we want to promote the learning outcomes of critical intercultural awareness, translingual competence, social equity and social justice, we have to reflexively enact transnational pedagogies that do not essentialize or tokenize non-US cultures and simultaneously help students question the US-centric and Eurocentric narratives that reify the norms of Whiteness, as well as ways of knowing, assuming and being that students – especially those from the socially dominant positions – might be accustomed to. Particularly, because we are teaching in Western educational contexts that uphold Whiteness systemically, we have to anticipate and build in time and space in our classroom pedagogy to help students explore epistemologies that exist beyond US-centric and Eurocentric modes of thinking, learning, perceiving, interpreting and communicating.

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  23

Intersectionality can – and should – become a tool of analysis that students apply to learning about and with people in transnational contexts. We can help students explore a range of questions: • How do our intersectional identities shift in transnational, transcultural contexts via travel, migration, immigration and repatriation? • How can we critically understand the horizontal and vertical axes of social division and hierarchies that adapt to transnationally interconnected spaces? • What are the globally connected racial and social systems of oppression that run as undercurrents in our English language learning and teaching, and in our transnational lived experiences? Transnational intersectionality that is decidedly antiracist and equityfocused serves as a conceptual and ethical framework for me to navigate how I move through the academy, which often comprises White-dominant spaces in their representation and modes of knowledge-making. To enact transnational agency in line with my principles, I remind myself to contribute knowledge from liminal spaces that I inhabit in ways that I practice scholarship, pedagogy and collaborative work in community spaces. Transnational intersectionality as a framework allows me to keep myself accountable and to keep in mind the interests of the communities that I want to be a part of and maintain solidarity with: diasporic communities of Burma, immigrant and refugee communities, and marginalized communities at large across imagined borders of race, language and nation. Suhanthie’s Story: Transnationalism, Transracialization and Teacher Education

One day, in a grocery store, a woman approached me and started speaking to me in Amharic. We had a brief conversation during which I confessed (as I have confessed in multiple similar interactions with strangers) that I did not understand Amharic and she asked me, in puzzledsounding English, ‘Where are you from?’. Perhaps you can relate to the vacillation this pesky question usually evokes in me. I have lived in a number of countries and been recognized as a citizen by three (the complicated notion of citizenship (Rankine, 2014) has been weighing heavily on my mind lately). Sometimes I try to offer a contextualized response, hoping that a little more information about my personal background might shed light on my often-jumbled response to questions about belonging and affiliation and origin. Sometimes, like the day when the above conversation took place, I submit to the hurried pace of life and offer a shorthand and inadequate response. I conjectured that the woman in the store was asking this question because she was curious about my racial appearance – my skin is brown and my hair, which I had allowed to airdry on that day, was very curly. So I responded ‘Sri Lanka’, although I left

24  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

that country as a baby and have a complicated linguistic identity in relation to Sri Lanka. It’s not exactly a lie – in many ways I am from Sri Lanka. But in other ways, to offer this shorthand response is to repudiate a chance at what Alim (2016), lacing together wisdom drawn from hooks (1994) and Pennycook (2007) with his own, refers to as transgression. To transgress is to refuse to slide gracefully into the categories standing by, waiting for us to slot ourselves into … or be slotted into. Transgression when put into conversation with transracialization can draw attention to the power differentials, missed opportunities and violence that frequently result from racial uncertainties, and it can ultimately help us to challenge the logics undergirding the seeming intractability of racial hierarchies and oppression. Transracialization is, however, a thorny issue. Transracialization is helpful in bringing into focus the instability of widely accepted connections drawn among race, nation and language – forcing us to consider questions about what it means to be incorrectly racially identified – but it is important to consider the ways in which transracialization can promote a neoliberal agenda by commodifying racial difference and helping to idealize a racially hybrid, flexible subject. The notion of transracialization can be put into the service of identity theft or appropriation. For instance, Rachel Dolezal claimed that she was being ‘transracial’ when she passed as a Black woman for many years and became president of the Spokane National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter. Similarly, Jessica Krug, who built an academic career in Black transnational cultural studies as a faculty member at George Washington University while claiming to be of North African heritage, might offer us an example of critical transnational agency and more one of fraud and cultural appropriation. Politician William Wages, who Pringle and Elmahrek (2018) report received millions of dollars in federal contracts by claiming to be indigenous despite no such documented ancestry, may have been what Nagle (2019) refers to as a ‘pretendian’ offering us an example of the fraudulent exploitation of protections intended for a group that has been tyrannized and persecuted for many centuries. At the same time, it is important to honor, as highlighted by Patricia Baquedano-Lopez (2021), the insufficiency of ‘normative geopolitical categories’ to capture and express our contemporary understandings of racial subjectivities, shaped by histories of ‘internalized erasures,’ displacements, and resettlements. Baquedano-Lopez writes of her complicated sense of belonging to her immigrant, Indigenous, Latinx, Arab and Spanish ancestries, mitigated and manipulated by powerful external forces. Alim, too, writes of his complicated racial subjectivities. His point of entry into his discussion of transgression is race, specifically transracialization, but transgression cannot be only about race, as nothing can ever be only about race. Transgression necessarily implicates race, language, gender, religion and numerous other categories, including nation. My

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  25

conversation with my Amharic-speaking acquaintance, ostensibly a moment of confusion about language, was also a moment of confusion over national identity intertwined with other entanglements, including quite significantly muddled racial identity. Race, language and nation in particular all construct, invent and remake each other. Adopting what they term a raciolinguistic perspective, Rosa and Flores (2017) consider how race and language became ‘co-naturalized’ historically and ask how the denaturalization of the linkage between the two can contribute to the dismantling of White supremacy. Within teacher education, the interconnectedness of race and language shapes and racializes not only language practices but also language pedagogical practices in often indiscernible ways: discovering how to reveal these can help to thwart the workings of White supremacy, as I will discuss in this section. Close attention to the role that transracialization and, specifically, race play in transnationality is of particular importance. In this section, I argue that any analysis of transnationalism is necessarily a racial analysis, including an analysis of transracialization, whether by doing so consciously or by reifying neutrality, because our understandings of communities and networks and therefore practices are rooted in systems of racial organizing, classifying and sorting. While race, language and nation are difficult to unravel from each other, within this triad, shining a flashlight on race (to the extent that these three can be conceptualized separately) allows us a deeper understanding of how unequal power relations between humans came to be. Our current global context is a network of centuriesold systems and institutions that were specifically designed to create and underscore the notion of race in order to promote and perpetuate racial inequity and justify unequal treatment among humans, appearing to naturalize dehumanizing and uneven relations of power between people, often on the basis of national origin, so that an understanding of how power circulates in transnationalism is meaningless without a lens on race. Underscoring this unevenness, which we call race, allows the production of capital, referred to by Gilmore (in press) and others as racial capitalism (Kelley, 2002). When it is repeated over time, this unevenness leads us to believe in reassuringly stable boundaries that are actually a fiction, but a fiction that nonetheless carries powerful and enduring consequences. What does it mean to trouble this fiction? What might it mean in our dayto-day lives, in the context of transnationalism, and what consequences might it offer in our teacher education practice? In this narrative, I draw upon bell hooks’ (1994) and Samy Alim’s notion of transgression to help me theorize transnational agency as I bring together transracialization and transnationalism in my teacher education practice. The concept of transnationalism, with its fluid and dynamic lens, offers great promise to TESOL teacher education, but it can be a doubleedged sword. Kubota (2016) has called for increased attention to power and inequality as we respond to notions of hybridity, fluidity and

26  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

flexibility cultivated by a neoliberal agenda in language teaching. The fluidity inherent in transnationalism appears to be well-suited to the economic purposes of a globalized profession such TESOL, just as plurilingualism becomes a commodity that suits the purposes of global neoliberalism (Flores, 2013). Transnational workers able to move with agility between sites and to develop, deliver and implement pedagogical and teacher education practices that can be imported from one context to another are able to shape English teacher and teacher education into a profitable and marketable commodity. For this reason, if it is not approached with caution, the concept of transnationalism carries the potential to magnify the inherent hierarchies of our teacher education spaces, and this includes all manner of hierarchies: teacher–student hierarchies, language hierarchies, racial hierarchies, gender hierarchies and colonial hierarchies. This is partially because transnationalism, as Sumyat has pointed out, is not a power-neutral concept. New hybrid understandings and networks are interwoven spaces in which some ‘people, goods, and ideas’ (Hesford & Schell, 2008: 463) carry more social and material power than others, so that the ‘intertextuality’ (Hesford & Schell, 2008: 463) that comes from transnationality can be unevenly coaxed in one direction or another. Our goal as teacher educators is therefore to highlight not only the transnationality in our practice but also the processes that produce or magnify power inequities that live within t­ ransnationality. A first step is to see these processes ourselves and a second is to make their visibility a routine part of our teacher education practice, which requires transnational agency. Alim (2016) sees hybrid, liminal spaces and identities as opportunities to be grasped, and I agree. Indeed, beyond examining the effects of border-crossings and globally-networked interconnectedness in TESOL professionals’ lives, we might venture further to explore how we can be agentive in actually upending – in a deliberate and active manner – normative conceptualizations of race and nation, to embrace what we are calling transnational agency, in order to support our ability to resist patterns of global racial inequity. Just as categories of race and nation can be hazy, so too can those involving language identity. Those looking at me do not for a moment perceive me to be White, but when I am on the phone, the Englishdominant contexts I have lived in the longest – my childhood that was spent in large part in Australia, my undergraduate years in Canada and much of my adulthood in the USA – appear most distinctly in my voice, and I am often presumed to be White. Within the social imaginary, these three countries are largely associated with Whiteness, despite all playing home to significant populations that are not White-identified (Carey & McLisky, 2009). Within real lives, humans do not actually fit neatly and uniformly into these normative categories in ways that always click tidily onto each other like evenly-sized Lego blocks. Rather, our complicated, relational, mobile lives often leave us balanced precariously on in-between

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  27

ledges, spilling out of ill-fitting boxes. And because identities can be imposed as well as claimed, even an identity that seems unquestionable can become ambiguous depending on context. It is these unexpected overlaps that provide fertile space for questions rooted in our lives. The fact that Sumyat Thu, Samy Alim and I – and indeed most of us in some form or another – inhabit racial, national and linguistic identities that map onto each other in ways that do not affirm normative logics allows us to occupy a strange territory, referred to by Samy Alim as transracialization – a space irretrievably intertwined with transnationalism. Canagarajah (2013: 42) tells us that ‘the term transnational looks at relationships that transcend the nation-state … Though people are located within nation-state borders, many of their relationships, experiences, and affiliations are not bound by them. These are ties of liminality … we inhabit another space that transcends nation-states, with a life and an identity of its own’. This softening, even contesting of the boundaries around nation-states can also be found in the liminality Alim (2016) associates with transracialization. I do not mean to suggest that race and nation are parallel or equal in any way – while the workings of nation-state as a category are of course related to race, its material, social, economic and political effects are in many ways quite different (for a deeper discussion see Ngai (2004)) – but rather I submit that transracialization, like transnationalism, offers us the opportunity to challenge ontologies about race and nation, including what I have termed elsewhere ‘a nation-conscious applied linguistics’ (Motha, 2020b). In the context of teacher education, an important part of an antiracist and transnational ethic is knowing how to create the space to consider, make judgements and interpret real moments; to analyze the relationships among race, nation and capital; and then to make astute judgements to challenge, assert, ignore or negotiate racial and national ontologies. My engagement with transnationalism and transracialization is further shaped by my interactions with other transnational professionals (Haque, 2012; López-Gopar, 2016; McIvor, 2020; Paris, 2017; Simpson, 2017) in recent years, who have promoted a growing urgency to undo the invisibility of settler colonialism around the world, altering my relationship with the physical land I walk on and the social systems I participate in within my life on Coast Salish ancestral homelands in the USA and confounding and reformulating my ideas about nationhood. The histories of these lands were often invisible or shrouded to me when I moved to Nacotchtank lands in Maryland, USA, in the 1990s, and in my earlier life on Ngunawal land (Canberra, Australia), on Haudenosaunee land (Toronto, Canada) and to a lesser degree during my four years in another White-settler colonial land, Kanaky (Nouméa, New Caledonia, which was colonized by France). As I learn more about the suppression and erasure of, for instance, the histories of stolen land, forcible displacement, abduction and massacre in individual corners of the USA

28  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

whenever I prepare to travel to them, I am reminded of my complicity with systems that fail to ask questions about how nation-states are formed, who gets to define them, who needs to collude and at what cost to whom, in order that their existence be maintained and histories be hidden. And I am left with questions about what it means to benefit from the privilege of living on stolen land as an immigrant woman of color and am forced to recognize the degree to which failing to ask questions amounts to complicity with and participation in Whiteness and settlement. Transnationalism – in this case the interconnectedness of wisdom stitched together within the liminality of and across settler–colonial experiences – has engendered meaning and values that would otherwise be elusive. In that context and at this moment of writing (July 2019), the Thirty Meter Telescope project moves forward to desecrate Mauna Kea, a sacred site of major cultural significance to the Kanaka Māoli (Indigenous Hawaiians), without informed consent and consultation and therefore in violation of Articles 19 and 28 of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and with the criminalization, including arrests, of peacefully protesting kupuna (elders) protectors. We have just heard the President of the USA tell four Congresswomen, racially minoritized US citizens, to ‘go back where they came from’. The exigency of disrupting the very concepts of citizenship and the USA in various corners of my life, especially in my teacher education practice, and making visible the frailty of the construct of its nationhood therefore become more pressing. Transnationalism and transracialization help me in this effort by supporting me in thinking critically about borders, with the concept of transgression offering an avenue for transnational agency. As two transnational/(im)migrant racially minoritized women entering, practicing, writing and theorizing in academic spaces, the mere fact of my and Sumyat’s identities challenges the status quo we discover in the professional spaces we occupy, troubling institutional boundaries and opening up possibilities for constructing transnational, liminal (Canagarajah, 2018) social and professional spaces. However, transgression, according to Alim (2016), takes more than merely the presence of a transracialized (or transnational) identity – it requires more than just showing up. There is an element of deliberate agency implied, an active resistance to categorization that highlights the absurdity of unquestioned racial logics: ‘Transracial subjects can be truly transgressive if and only if their raciolinguistic practices highlight the fallacy of normative, hegemonic ideas of race that rest on the shaky ground of biology, genetics, ancestry, and so on’ (Alim, 2016: 46). Alim points out the potential in working to notice and then highlight for each other the flaws in our categorizing logics: ‘… I argue that not only can transracial subjects change their “race” but also that their raciolinguistic practices have the potential to transform the oppressive logic of race itself’ (Alim, 2016: 34). I hasten to clarify that

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  29

I am unequivocally not (I repeat, not!) suggesting that we try to pass for racial groups whose histories we do not share, nor that we appropriate lived experiences of another community. Rather, in demonstrating in any number of ways that we do not truly reside within the compartments we are translated (Alim, 2016) to occupy, thus revealing the fragility of the perimeters around the compartments and the reality of the compartments themselves, we implement a form of transgression that makes visible our conscious and fluid travels across perimeters and borders, allowing us to resist by laying bare the fragility of national and racial boundaries and disrupting restrictive systems of categorization and hierarchy. Transgression can be a valuable tool in critical teacher education practice, supporting our reflection on ways in which normative categories of race and nation reinforce language hierarchies, but an important question that arises relates to how we might support the development of transnational dispositions in the relation to our institutional identities. How do we enact meaningful transnational or transracial transgressions? Rather than offering successful narratives from my teacher education practice (which are, frankly, elusive!), I will share a reflection on a concern that I am currently grappling with in my life as a teacher educator. The intertwined themes of nation and race are present throughout our teacher education practices almost imperceptibly every day, in ways I often don’t notice until much later. These are salient in relation to transnationalism and can be especially convoluted if teacher candidates are drawing on experiences as English learners in one context, teacher candidates in another, practitioners in yet another and expecting to return ‘home’ (Iyer, 2013) to carve out long-term careers. The economic and ideological patterns that make sensical the leaving of a home community to go halfway around the world to learn how to teach in order to return to that same local community to practice in it are carefully choreographed by many participants in a complex network and are a testament to the insidiousness and pervasiveness of racial and national hierarchies (Motha, 2002a, 2014). Park (2014) noted that the USA is often represented as a destination not only for permanent immigration, but also one that fulfills desires for shorter-term study by allowing the accumulation of symbolic and cultural capital, falling in line with cosmopolitan striving of middle classes (Park & Abelmann, 2004), and purporting to offer the development of fluency in English and a US accent (Bae, 2013; Kang, 2012) and a closer association with a country that is highly influential in the global economy. Phan Le Ha (2016) has criticized the adjusted desire for an imagined (and often misinformed) ‘West’ among various stakeholders of transnational education. These desires are not only transnational, they are also transracial, as the forces that promote the USA, Australia, the UK, Canada and other English-dominant nations associated with Whiteness as desirable targets for English teacher education are part of a large and complex network

30  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

(Lin & Motha, 2021; Motha & Lin, 2014) in the marketing of English, including both varieties of English and pedagogical practices associated with Whiteness as superior: race, and specifically Whiteness, are being produced in order to produce capital. My concerns about my transnational agency as a teacher educator therefore need to be balanced against my self-questioning about my participation in a system that promotes a teacher candidate traveling so far in order to learn how to teach in a building next door to her home. If we are to rely on our teacher candidates’ and our own transnational experiences to support us in thinking critically about the role that nation plays in shaping our ideas about TESOL methods, we need to include an adequate engagement with the power dynamics involved in our analysis. One pattern that creates an ethical struggle for me in my teacher education practice involves the type of guidance around pedagogical methods that arises out of my student-teaching seminars. Imagine this scenario, a fictional one, but inspired with creative license out of many from real life. Let us pretend that, in a student-teaching seminar, our small class is watching the video-recorded microteaching of a teacher candidate who is not White-identified, who has come to the USA from what could be any number of faraway countries to learn to teach English. He plays for us the recording of a class he taught the previous week, in which he is teaching an academic English class in a university-based intensive English program. In the recording he begins his class with the introduction: ‘Good morning. Today we’re going to be talking about the simple present. The simple present is used in six situations. One, for repeated actions, for example, I often drink a smoothie for breakfast. Two, for things in general, for example it rains a lot in April. Three, for regular events, for example, I play tennis every Tuesday evening …’ As part of the seminar class, he regularly observes an assortment of other teachers, sitting through at least one observation a day, additionally watching one or two of his peers’ videotaped microteaching lessons each week and, as he sits in these classrooms in Seattle, he is gradually incorporating some of the practices he observes into his own teaching. Today, in his own post-observation self-reflection, he proposes adaptations to his lesson, which I imagine to be influenced by the pedagogical norms he is observing around him in his day-to-day life. He contemplates his video, then makes several suggestions, including these two: (1) opening class by summoning his students’ attention with a friendly greeting and an inquiry about how students are or about their weekend (i.e. initiating some sort of exchange that more closely approximates natural conversation and closes the distance between teacher and student) and (2) toying with a more inductive and interactive approach to his instruction of the grammar rules, with his students providing examples, perhaps by constructing an activity that has his students using the present tense in context and then guessing appropriate situations and deriving grammar from the language

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  31

they have produced, which would make for a more time-consuming and interactive lesson. I know that these are both practices that he is seeing frequently during his various required classroom observations this academic quarter, also a part of the seminar class. At the back of my mind sit nagging questions. To what extent are hierarchies of race and nation shaping these pedagogical suggestions? What pedagogical ontologies are reaffirmed by the suggested modifications to the lesson, such as greeting students in a manner that mimics that of a greeting outside class and establishing a relationship with students by inquiring about their weekends, and how are these related to nation and race? Even if I resist essentializing an entire nation’s pedagogical orientation, this teacher candidate has shared that his earlier national context affirmed a more time-efficient, deductive, teacher-­ centered pedagogy that was responsive to his earlier classroom environment, including to class size and previous students’ expectations. These latter practices are often associated with national trends and may be valued in some contexts more than others. Teachers are often explicitly encouraged, through various means, to adopt pedagogies more associated with ‘Western’ practices (Li, 1998). While my initial instinct tells me that a communicative, interactive, inductive, authentic approach is desirable pedagogy, more likely to be rewarded by his peers in the seminar class and the students in the class of his student-teaching placement, I can’t help but wonder: to what extent do I believe that these practices are desirable ­pedagogy because they are associated with, for instance, the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia, and therefore Whiteness, and have consequently become linked within the social imaginary to other constructs such as cosmopolitanism, coolness, sophistication and modernity (Motha & Lin, 2014)? In theory, transnationality swirls around every moment and every square inch of the class. The members of the teacher education class have lived in multiple national contexts, have developed globally-contextualized understandings of the pedagogical and epistemological underpinnings of the classroom decisions being made, and learned, taught and lived rich lives in multiple languages – all experiences that have infused transnational wisdom into our collective pedagogical knowledge and practice and have resulted in new, hybrid understandings of pedagogy that can be applied and adapted in local contexts. Yet, as Sumyat wisely pointed out, transnationalism on its own is not enough. All members of the higher education community are operating in a context that reinforces pedagogical practices associated with ‘Western’ epistemologies, for instance communicative practices, authentic interaction, a leaning towards inductive grammar teaching and student-centeredness, so some degree of invisibility oversees the interconnectedness of racial and national categories. Teachers in the study of Chowdhury and Ha (2008) found that some pedagogical practices that had been offered to them in their ‘Western’

32  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

teacher education contexts lacked suitability when they returned to their Bangladeshi local contexts; for instance, ‘student-centered teaching’ was impractical, democratic classrooms were inappropriate in the cultural context of student–teacher relationships in their local communities and communicative language teaching (CLT) represented too significant a departure from the foundation on which their students had received their prior learning. Similarly, Canagarajah’s (2019) international students described writing pedagogies that coaxed them towards US-centric academic writing practices and structures that they experienced as too simplistic or aggressive. Furthermore, Nyinondi et al. (2016) found that pedagogical methods developed and popularized in North American and British universities, primarily CLT, necessitated a goal of teacher-centered classes that stood at odds with the ‘authority vested on the lecturers’ (Nyinondi et al., 2016: 97) and furthermore imposed the expectation of diminished social distance between teachers and students – a mismatch for the Tanzanian educational context they were practicing in. My sense is that part of my charge as a teacher educator is to explore ways of drawing on not only our transnationalism, but also on our criticality and our transnational agency to undo the invisibility around the role of race and nation in pedagogy, to offer support for our analysis of the ways race and nation are encoded in our pedagogical practices. I do not pretend to know what pedagogical decisions or ideologies would have made sense for this semi-fictional student in this context, but some broad themes of concern for me at this moment include the following. • What do I need in order to more effectively reflect on and support explicit probing about ontologies and epistemologies embedded in the knowledge and practices being supported in my classroom? • What do I need to understand about my own racial and national identities in order to adequately support transnational agency and analysis of the ways race and nation are encoded? • What types of explicit routine questioning in our teacher education practice about how race and nation are encoded in TESOL might support our analyses of global racial inequities? • How might we make visible not only intersectionality but also the processes that obscure the interconnectedness of intersecting categories? • When we become aware of moments of confusion, discomfort or evasion about racial identification, what reflections might support us in centering power and marginality as they connect to nation and race? • Who do I need to be as a teacher educator in order to lead this conversation, acknowledging curricular patterns without essentializing practices according to national contexts and resisting framing methods as modern or outdated?

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  33

Conclusion

In this chapter we have reflected on our teaching, scholarship and teacher education practices, coming to terms with our awareness that transnationalism, while offering us the potential to ‘recognize, negotiate with, deconstruct, and transcend national, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and linguistic boundaries’ (You, 2018: i), is in and of itself not enough to transform and move us in the direction of more equitable institutions. However, theorizing through our practice allows us to explore transnational agency (i.e. the practice of transnationalism with deliberate agency) that actively works towards antiracist and socially equitable learning, teaching, researching and working conditions in TESOL. Exploration of and challenges to normative racial and linguistic categories that emerge from transnationalism can happen passively, but we argue that it is not enough for practitioners to be satisfied with this. Rather, a deliberate stance of transnational agency needs to be an instrumental and effective part of TESOL professionals’ antiracist agendas and TESOL teacher education needs to include attention to supporting teacher candidates as they become transnationally agentive. In her narrative, Sumyat argues for an identity construction of transnational intersectionality for us as TESOL scholars and practitioners, drawing our attention to the importance of seeing transnationalism as an always-already part of our intersectional identity that gets foregrounded and is generative in helping us think about new ways we can disrupt the seemingly stable institutionalized constructs and roles in the ways that we conduct research, practice pedagogy and collaborate with colleagues and students. When we come together to understand the nuances of the different privileges and marginalizations we have in our transnational intersectionality, there is powerful transgressive work that we can do together in reworking the ways we produce scholarship and re-envisioning what transnational pedagogy looks like in order to disrupt the normative categories of race and nation. What this means more concretely is that we each need to define different versions of transnational agenda within our own situated local, institutional context. Suhanthie acknowledges the urgency of highlighting power, specifically the relevance of race and transracialization within the notion of transnationalism. She finds promise in Rosa and Flores’ (2017) call to consider how denaturalizing the ‘co-naturalized’ connections between race and language can help to undo the work of White supremacy and in hooks’ (1994) and Alim’s urging us to embrace transgression as a route towards challenging global inequities. Just as every move we make takes place on ground that is racialized, we also move on terrain that is shaped by its historical and contemporary relationship with the concept of nation, which itself is racialized, also in invisible ways, and which impinges on our ability to reshape equity and justice. Peeling back this invisibility and allowing ourselves a deepened

34  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

understanding of the ways power and transnationality influence our knowledge construction and pedagogies are important steps in equipping us to enact transnational agency. Our collaborative exploration and inquiry – a foray into new territory for both of us – has spawned more questions than it has answered and we now share some of the most pressing that have emerged. • How can engagement with our transnational identities become part of an active and deliberate transnational agenda that challenges racial, linguistic and national categories and roles and, in doing so, questions and dismantles the faulty logics of White supremacy and discourses of Whiteness? • What types of explicit routine questioning about how race and nation are encoded in our scholarly practices might support our analyses of global racial inequities? • What steps can we take to ensure that our troubling of racial and national categories (a transracial position) does not unwittingly slide into a denial of the consequences of racial and national categories (a post-race approach)? • How can critical engagement with our transnationality provide us with analytic tools and practice to be explicitly and unapologetically antiracist and equity-minded in our existing and new modes of knowledge production and scholarship? • How might we complicate stabilized institutional roles and boundaries by developing transnational dispositions that are cohesive with our institutional identities as scholars, teachers and teacher educators? As we consider these complicated questions and our ambitious dreams to answer them, we return to the classroom as a space for inspiration and enactment, remembering bell hooks’ (1994) astute words from Teaching to Transgress: ‘The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy’. Notes (1) The term ‘model minority’ was coined and popularized by a White male sociologist, William Petersen, in a 1966 publication of the New York Times Magazine during the era of the civil rights movement (Wu, 2013). (2) Please see a related discussion of antiracist pedagogy and writing program praxis in Thu et al. (forthcoming).

References Alim, H. (2016) Who’s afraid of the transracial subject? Raciolinguistics and the political project of transracialization. In H.S. Alim, J.R. Rickford and A.F. Ball (eds) Raciolinguistics (pp. 33–50). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bae, S.H. (2013) The pursuit of multilingualism in transnational educational migration: Strategies of linguistic investment among Korean jogi yuhak families in Singapore. Language and Education 27 (5), 415–431.

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  35

Baquedano-Lopez, P. (2021) Language purism as settler colonial logics of erasure. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Meeting (­virtual), March 20, 2021. Canagarajah, S. (2019) Transnational Literacy Autobiographies as Translingual Writing (1st edn). Abingdon: Routledge. Canagarajah, S. (2018) Transnationalism and translingualism: How they are connected. In X. You (ed.) Transnational Writing Education: Theory, History, and Practice (pp. 41–60). New York, NY: Routledge. Canagarajah, S. (2013) Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. Abingdon: Routledge. Carey, J. and McLisky, C. (2009) Creating White Australia. Sydney: Sydney University Press. Chowdhury, R. and Ha, P.L. (2008) Reflecting on Western TESOL training and communicative language teaching: Bangladeshi teachers’ voices. Asia Pacific Journal of Education 28 (3), 305–316. Crenshaw, K. (1991) Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43 (6), 1241–1299. Diao, W. (2014) Between ethnic and English names: Name choice for transnational Chinese students in a US academic community. Journal of International Students 4 (3), 205–222, doi:10.32674/jis.v4i3.461. Flores, N. (2013) The unexamined relationship between neoliberalism and plurilingualism: A cautionary tale. TESOL Quarterly 47 (3), 500–520. Gilmore, R.W. (in press) Change Everything: Racial Capitalism and the Case for Abolition. Chicago: Haymarket Books Haque, E. (2012) Multiculturalism within a Bilingual Framework: Language, Race, and Belonging in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hesford, W. and Schell, E. (2008) Configurations of transnationality: Locating feminist rhetorics – Introduction. College English 70 (5), 461–470. hooks, b. (1994) Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York, NY: Routledge. Iyer, P. (2013) Where is home? See https://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_where_is_ home?language=en (accessed March 2021). Kang, Y. (2012) Singlish or Globish: Multiple language ideologies and global identities among Korean educational migrants in Singapore.sup.1. Journal of Sociolinguistics 16 (2), 165. Kelley, R.D.G. (2002) Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Kubota, R. (2016) The multi/plural turn, postcolonial theory, and neoliberal multiculturalism: Complicities and implications for applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics 37 (4), 474–494. Li, D. (1998) ‘It’s always more difficult than you plan and imagine’: Teachers’ perceived difficulties in introducing the communicative approach in South Korea. TESOL Quarterly 32 (4), 677– 703. Lin, A. and Motha, S. (2021) Reconstituting desire in TESOL: Collectivity and empire. In R. Arber, M. Weinmann and J. Blackmore (eds) Rethinking Languages Education: Directions, Challenges and Innovations (pp. 15–25). New York, NY: Routledge. López-Gopar, M.E. (2016) Decolonizing Primary English Language Teaching. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Marrun, N. (2018) Culturally responsive teaching across PK-20: Honoring the historical naming practices of students of color. Taboo 17 (3), 6–25. McIvor, O. (2020) Indigenous language revitalization and applied linguistics: Parallel histories, shared futures? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 40, 78–96. McPherron, P. (2009) ‘My name is Money’: Name choices and global identifications at a South-Chinese university. Asia Pacific Journal of Education 29 (4), 521–536.

36  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Motha, S. (2020a) Is an antiracist and decolonizing applied linguistics possible? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 40, 128–133. Motha, S. (2020b) Afterword: Towards a nation-conscious applied linguistics practice. In K. McIntosh (ed.) Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching in the Neo-Nationalist Era (pp. 295–310). Cham: Springer Nature. Motha, S. (2014) Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching: Creating Responsible and Ethical Anti-racist Practice. New York, NY: Teachers College, Columbia University. Motha, S. and Lin, A. (2014) ‘Non-coercive rearrangements’: Theorizing desire in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 48 (2), 331–359. Motha, S., Jain, R. and Tecle, T. (2011) Translinguistic identity-as-pedagogy: Implications for language teacher education. International Journal of Innovation in English Language Teaching and Research 1 (1), 13–28. Nagle, R. (2019) How ‘pretendians’ undermine the rights of Indigenous people. High Country News, 2 April. Ngai, M.M. (2004) Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Noffke, S. (1997) Professional, personal, and political dimensions of action research. Review of Research in Education 22, 305–343. Nyinondi, O.S., Mhandeni, A.S. and Mohamed, H.I. (2016) The use of communicative language teaching approach in the teaching of communication skills courses in Tanzanian universities. International Journal of Research Studies in Language Learning 6 (3), 89–99. Paris, R. (2017) The Forgetting Tree: A Rememory (1st edn). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Paris, D., Alim, H.S., Kinloch, V., Bucholtz, M., Casillas, D.I., Lee, J.-S., . . . Lee, C.D. (2017) Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World. New York: Teachers College Press. Park, J.S.-Y. (2014) Cartographies of language: Making sense of mobility among Korean transmigrants in Singapore. Language & Communication 39 (1), 83–91. Park, S.J. and Abelmann, N. (2004) Class and cosmopolitan striving: Mothers’ management of English education in South Korea. Anthropological Quarterly 77 (4), 645–672. Pennycook, A. (2007) Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. London: Routledge. Phan, L.-H. (2016) Transnational Education Crossing ‘Asia’ and ‘the West’: Adjusted Desire, Transformative Mediocrity and Neo-colonial Disguise. New York, NY: Routledge. Pringle, P. and Elmahrek, A. (2018) House majority leader Kevin McCarthy’s family benefited from U.S. program for minorities based on disputed ancestry. Los Angeles Times, 14 October. Rankine, C. (2014) Citizen: An American Lyric. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press. Rosa, J. and Flores, N. (2017) Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society 46 (5), 621–647. Simpson, L.B. (2017) As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Thu, S., Malcolm, K., Bawarshi, A. and Rai, C. (forthcoming in 2021) Anti-racist translingual praxis in writing ecologies. In J.R. Daniel, K. Malcolm and C. Rai (eds) Writing Across Difference: Theory and Intervention. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press. Tuan, M. (1998) Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites?: The Asian Ethnic Experience Today. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Critical Transnational Agency: Intersectionality and Transracialization  37

Von Esch, K., Motha, S. and Kubota, R. (2020) Race and language teaching. Language Teaching 53 (4), 391–421. Wu, E. (2013) The Color of Success: Asian Americans and The Origins of the Model Minority (Politics and society in twentieth century America). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Yang, Y., East-West Film Enterprise and Women Make Movies (1999) Nu Shu: A Hidden Language of Women in China. New York, NY: Women Make Movies.

3 The Person in Personal Narrative: Two ESOL Instructors Teaching Away from Home Anastasiia Kryzhanivska and Lucinda Hunter

The number of people living in countries not their own now comes to 220 million, and that’s an almost unimaginable number […] Already, we represent the fifth-largest nation on Earth Iyer, 2013

Teaching away from home is often painful both for native Englishspeaking teachers (NESTs) overseas and non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) in the USA. But, as Brené Brown (2010) contends in her TedTalk, ‘we [often] numb vulnerability’ as well as other negative emotions in stories, autoethnographies and in literature, emphasizing instead successes and achievements. In doing that, however, we do a disservice to our teachers because the same emotions that open us to vulnerability are also the ones that allow us to create unique powerful selves. In the following narrative, a collaborative effort that represents the experience of two ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) instructors – Lucinda (a NEST teaching in China) and Ana (an NNEST teaching in the USA) – we highlight our remarkable differences and surprising similarities in teaching experiences, cultural backgrounds, student–teacher ­interactions and community integration, and include reflections on isolation, stress, exhaustion, and emotional and physical vulnerability. We strive to present ‘data with soul’ (Brown, 2010) and share honest and hopeful experiences. Methodology

In order to focus on our experiences, we began by crafting a series of questions broadly divided into ‘teaching’, ‘integration’ and ‘wider community’, and then transcribed, analyzed and categorized the 38

The Person in Personal Narrative: Two ESOL Instructors Teaching Away from Home  39

interviews, each of which was roughly one hour in length. Using evocative duoautoethnography with analytic elements (Rinehart & Earl, 2016), we present our personal experiences in the form of a dialogue, along with a discussion and recommendations that are based on our narratives and previous research, with, we hope, implications for our readers’ own stories. As a research method, duoautoethnography is a collaborative practice based on self-analysis and exploration of personal experiences, beliefs, values and practices. By adding analytic elements, we include theoretical and research-based components into our storytelling. While still retaining the aurality of the transcripts, this chapter, is an edited version of the real conversation between the two authors and is our effort to allow ourselves to be seen, ‘really seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen’ (Brown, 2010). It is important to note that although we consider this autoethnography our stories, we acknowledge that our friends, relatives, colleagues and acquaintances helped make our life stories what they are. Introduction of Authors

Anastasiia (Ana) is an NNEST who grew up in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. She received her MA in Applied Linguistics and was offered a full-time position at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), where she has been teaching since fall 2016. Lucinda is a NEST who has been teaching at BGSU since 2007. She recently taught ESOL courses at Tianjin Polytechnic University (now Tiangong University) in China for two academic years as part of a joint partnership, returning home in 2018. Lucinda and Ana first met via Skype in 2016 when Ana was being interviewed for a position at BGSU. The year Ana joined the ESOL program was the year Lucinda first went to China. They briefly met in person in 2017, when Lucinda returned to the USA after her first year of teaching in China, and finally started working together in fall 2018. Our Stories All of us are multi – multi-local, multi-layered. To begin our conversations with an acknowledgement of this complexity brings us closer together, I think, not further apart Selasi, 2014

This section, an evocative part of our narrative, represents three major themes that emerged from our dialogue: Moving ‘abroad’, Negotiating classroom spaces and Comfort and caring. As we talked further, other subtopics arose and are also highlighted in this section: politics, visas, age, teaching experience, visible and invisible ‘otherness’, culture and society.

40  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Moving ‘abroad’ Lucinda: I have always wanted to go abroad to teach. My husband died in 2013 and, suddenly, I was alone. The assignment to teach in China for an academic year came up and I had a very short time to decide. I thought, why not? I was already lonely; I would be lonely in China; it wouldn’t be much different. In the end, I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. The arrangements were made, I got my visa, got on the plane and was gone. The opportunity was presented to me and I jumped on the bandwagon. Ana: For me, the factors that influenced my decision to go study and teach abroad were related to the political and economic situation in Ukraine as well as the status of teachers. Ukraine and Russia have been in conflict, a war state – to be precise, since the fall of 2013. The starting point of the conflict was the fact that our former Ukrainian president had publicly pledged to sign the deal with the European Union, but at the last minute, he refused to do that. This deal was meant to become a Ukrainian pathway to possible EU membership but would have endangered ties with Russia. When the Ukrainian president announced his decision not to sign the deal, the protests and the revolution started.   I personally participated in some initial protests in my home city as well as in the capital of Ukraine. Being open about my political views made me one of the outliers in my region. I was standing in Kyiv, the capital of our country, next to other people with their banners protesting this decision that seemed to have become an obstacle to a better quality of life. The initial protests were non-violent. But then the conflict started escalating. Protesters were beaten and shot on the streets by the police, which made even more people join the protest. Eventually, the president had to flee the country and the protest leaders stepped in. The country was in need of skillful economists, political science majors, strong leaders, diplomats and soldiers, but not English teachers.   I stepped out of the protests right before they got violent, and I observed the horrific state of our country from the US territory. I was really glad to get out and felt relieved when I got on the plane. In a situation like this, my decision to leave Ukraine was partly supported by the fact that I didn’t fit in this society either politically or professionally. Studying in the United States seemed like a great professional development opportunity, and it was also a chance for me to improve my financial situation. At the same time, I was ashamed of myself because I felt like a deserter fleeing Ukraine when my family and friends had to stay. Those mixed feelings, together with the fact that my husband (boyfriend – at that time) was left behind in Ukraine, put me in a state close to depression, and the first month in the USA was extremely difficult for me.

The Person in Personal Narrative: Two ESOL Instructors Teaching Away from Home  41

Lucinda: P  olitical decisions and political implications affect people like us who are teachers. My students and I were watching the 2016 election results in the US on our phones (in China), and I was crying. It was also hard when there were negative comments being made about China by politicians, and my students were comforting me about the election! Ana: W hen I received an offer from the English department chair at BGSU over the phone, I was excited and terrified at the same time. ‘Time to ask about a visa’ I thought. This was a very uncomfortable situation because I had to ask for something that’s very unusual and could even be a deal breaker for the employer. I was relieved to hear a calm ‘We will work on it’.   The efforts our department chair made to learn about the visa process and the arrangements that needed to be done made me almost confident that I would be able to stay longer. Now, I’m getting closer to the crossroads again. My work visa expires in several years and cannot be extended any further. Can I become a permanent resident in the US? Can my university help me? Should I go back to Ukraine instead? The country I was a citizen in has drastically changed, and I am no longer the same. My graduate degree is from the US, my whole teaching career was built in the US, my professional ­development, publications and work ethics are that of North America. Going back to Ukraine, in fact, would mean for me packing my whole life in the US into two suitcases, going abroad, and starting from scratch. Honestly, I’m terrified of this. And these thoughts often keep me up at night. Lucinda:  W hen I went to China, the administrators here were relying on the Chinese counterparts, and the issue from the beginning was the fact that I could never apply for a work visa because my age was over 55, the legal retirement age for women. The first year I had a business visa, and as long as I left China every 90 days and went back in, then I was okay. It seemed to be standard practice, and I didn’t give it much thought.   The second year, however, which was 2017, I was not granted that same visa, and I didn’t know if I should go. I was worried that if I got in, would I be able to get out? And, then, if I got out, could I go back in? I did get on the plane, but it made me really nervous because I didn’t know what would happen. When I got there, I visited immigration offices in China with the program administrator. She made the case that I needed some kind of visa in order to do the program, and they did extend it for 30 more days. And after that, I was advised to get a tourist visa. And in order to get one, you have to provide evidence of a hotel, plane tickets, and travel plans. I didn’t understand the language, and I had a fabricated story, and if someone questioned me, I would have to basically lie. That made me very uncomfortable to say the least. And it

42  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

made me question both parties in sending me to a country while brushing my concerns under the rug. The legalities of what’s acceptable, what people can do or not, are really important.   When I went back in the spring of 2018, I tried to ask people again about getting the visa and nobody could tell me what to do, including passport services. The understanding was that the practice of teaching with a tourist visa was not uncommon, but times had changed. To this day, I ask myself, ‘Should I have said no and not gone back?’ But by my own volition, I put one foot in front of the other and got on an airplane, and was there. The immigration officials in China, however, found that I had a tourist visa and was teaching classes. So I was summoned with two minutes’ notice to a meeting with the university administrators and immigration. I was petrified when they came to pick me up to take me to that meeting. I threw things in a bag in case they took me away somewhere; I was honestly worried that I would be arrested. They interviewed me in Chinese, which of course I didn’t understand. I think the uncertainty and the anxiety was based on language and not knowing the system, not knowing if the police was my friend. The university had to provide a lot of documentation about what classes I was teaching, how many students were in the classes, and what the schedule was. The immigration official said he would ‘take care of it’, but what did that mean? And then one night I got a phone call from the administrator who said, ‘How fast can you get ready to leave China? You’re being sent out of the country’. I was shocked, although I shouldn’t have been. I asked, ‘What are you talking about? Now?’. All I could think of was that I needed to say goodbye to my students. I sent everyone a message and said: ‘Please meet me in my office. Come and say goodbye, I’m being told to leave China. We won’t be having class anymore’. And they all came one by one to say goodbye and take photos. And it was really sad. The thing that makes me angry at this point is that I feel like I probably should never have been allowed to go there, or I should have had more assistance in terms of getting the visa, or what to do without the correct visa. I really was out there all on my own. I think that administration – the bureaucracy – does matter to teachers. They make your life either stressful or not.   When they sent me home, everybody was thoughtful. The associate dean of the College even said he would come to Detroit to pick me up! It’s not that they didn’t worry, but nobody thinks about how the teacher feels. It becomes like a cloud and overshadows things. It impacts your view of the world, in a way. My feelings when I left China were so different from the hopes with which I began to teach that first day.

The Person in Personal Narrative: Two ESOL Instructors Teaching Away from Home  43

Negotiating classroom spaces Ana: W  hen I walked into the classroom for the first time, I remember seeing the surprised eyes of my students. They probably had something like ‘Oh my gosh, she’s so young’ on their minds. Then, I introduced myself and saw the expression on their faces: ‘She’s not even a native speaker, and she’s going to teach us English!’. It might all have been only in my head, but I think that a lot of my students expected to see a native speaker as their teacher in the US. Most of them were very pleasantly surprised, though, to learn that I am also a foreigner. It was a way to connect with them, and it certainly sounds more convincing when I say ‘I know how you feel’ rather than when a native English-speaking teacher says that.   The first couple of semesters a lot of students asked me directly how old I was, and I got some suggestive and flirtatious comments too, but then they stopped; perhaps because right now I mention my husband in class very often or maybe I just look older now and more stressed out. Anxiety about the future, perhaps, aged me. I was really worried about my teaching and class evaluations in my first year. I wondered what the students had to say about me at the end of the semester, what my colleagues would say, how the observations would go, how those evaluations would be reviewed by different committees, if administration would really care about them, and how much they would affect the merit score and/or promotion possibilities.   The departmental meetings during my first year were really challenging for me too; it’s not that I didn’t understand everything – my English is fine – I understood every single word but I couldn’t make sense of them when I put them together. Committee assignments, departmental mergers, standards, and a whole lot of other abbreviated things were discussed; it was way over my head. It felt to me as if I was watching a TV series after I missed the first four seasons and I didn’t know who the main characters were and what their storyline was.   After all, there are a lot more differences than similarities in Ukraine and the US. Here teachers have syllabi, a structure in a class and specific goals. In the Ukrainian education system, syllabi are not used. They might exist in a form of departmental plans but students don’t know about them. Another difference is that everybody in one program has the same classes and the same assignments at the same time. As a student you’re just following the crowd. Most assignments are distributed on a daily basis, which makes it difficult to work ahead. We also have mostly a theoretical approach; at least, that’s what I experienced in my field in my particular university in Ukraine. Most classes are held in a traditional lecture-type setting when the professor talks at you. Student talk-time is only in seminars, which are taken together with lecture sections.

44  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

  Surprisingly, it didn’t take me very long to adjust to the new system. This new structured way was really exciting for me! It finally felt as if I found the exact way I wanted the class to look. I like when the topics and assignments are outlined, and when the class has a purpose. Don’t get me wrong – there are advantages in the Ukrainian system too. It is very flexible and very adaptable. As a student, you can get a really deep theoretical background. When I finally started teaching in the US, though, I realized that the methods commonly used here are more suitable for my mentality. Lucinda:  I purposely went to China with an open mind to differences. What I did not expect was the chaos of the classes. I went to my first class and over a hundred students showed up. What would I do with this room full of people? I was totally overwhelmed! It wasn’t easy to approach someone; when faculty members were in their offices, their doors were closed. In the end, I met with students either in the dining hall or in the classroom after or before class, rather than having official office hours.   I always thought that part of my purpose was to help prepare students for coming to the US. I didn’t try to match the Chinese system very much, but I tried to be attentive to what they might not understand. But I felt like it was important for them to experience me as an American teacher. It was a conscious choice to do the same interactive communicative activities that I had done in the US – things like group discussions, role plays, and interviews. I really wanted for them to interact with other students from across campus. But they were never in classes with any international students, which I had never experienced before. I might say: ‘So, who’s in your economics class?’ And they looked at me and said ‘The same people!’. So the cohort students were the same in most of their classes and even in their dorms.   I also wasn’t prepared for how carefully the students memorized their oral presentations word for word. And it must have taken them a very long time. When they gave their presentations, it was so different from what I had been expecting them to do. It was obvious that they had not blown off the assignment, that they had worked really hard, but they had memorized a seven-minute speech! I was so caught off guard, I didn’t know how to grade them. They had really made such a good effort to get up and talk in English in front of everybody. Some of them even told me that they had never spoken in English in front of a group before. While they were giving their presentation or working in groups, there were other students who were walking by in the hall, and they stopped and looked in, and listened to me and my students. I was so

The Person in Personal Narrative: Two ESOL Instructors Teaching Away from Home  45

surprised that students and even sometimes their parents gathered in the back of the classroom to observe this new English-speaking class with the foreign teacher. Student evaluations showed that students appreciated communicating with the teacher and each other; that, in turn, helped them improve their oral English. Chinese and English – everyone talking together – it felt like a cross-cultural hub; it was vibrant and lively. Ana:  In the US, I am impressed with how much respect teachers get regardless of their age. In Ukraine, if you’re a teacher, you really have to be older than your students for them to respect you. Otherwise, students start doubting your competence as a professional. There is a lot of doubt towards young professionals in general, in my experience. I remember not being taken seriously when I worked on educational projects as a part of a local NGO, and I remember being very frustrated with the fact that I had to prove myself a lot more than an older person who had less project management experience. Then there’s also socially accepted disrespect toward educators in general. They are not very well-paid; therefore, from the economic standpoint, they are not valued in the Ukrainian society as much. This, in turn, devalues education in general and, consequently, underrates teachers in the eyes of their students creating a vicious cycle. Being a younger teacher in the US but also being respected by your students and by your colleagues felt invigorating and encouraging. I will never forget how comforting the audience was at my first conference presentation in the US. I was trusted and not a single person told me I looked too young to be a good presenter and teacher.   When I first started teaching at BGSU, I felt more connected to students rather than faculty. All the ‘grown-ups’ in the department were sharing their stories about their kids and families, their pets, renovations of their houses, and vacation plans. I simply couldn’t relate to any of that. I was completely alone, like most international students, and it was, in a way, easier for me to associate myself with them. We share the same struggles, restrictions, and experiences. The longer I work in the US, the more I blend into the community of faculty members, though. Lucinda:  I really felt connected to my students, too, because they were about the only ones who spoke English. I felt the most at home and at peace among them and in interactions with them. One of the loneliest places was the faculty dining hall. Instead of eating there, I ate in the student dining hall because I felt more comfortable there. Sometimes students got my food and brought it to me at the table. It just seemed so kind. I always felt grateful while I was there, which I

46  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

think was a really positive experience. To feel profound gratitude at the very same time as feeling ‘other’ was really a gift.   During class, the students had a really hard time understanding me and so they were almost constantly talking in Chinese. One person was translating for the others, and it was somewhat chaotic, so I tried at first to limit it. In the end, though, I decided to utilize those students, and I told them when they could translate so that someone wasn’t talking over me. Then I asked the students to repeat back to me what they heard. It was time-consuming but fun, too.   I felt satisfied that I was helping students to meet their goals, and it was a deep satisfaction. In the US I’m always questioning what I’m doing. And I don’t always feel good about myself or the way the class went. But there I usually felt happy at the end, like: ‘oh, that class went well!’ or ‘the students seemed to enjoy that’. And I think the fact that it was so novel to them and the fact that they were so motivated really helped. Here, I am just one more class they have to take. I’m not the center of their lives here by any means. There were moments when I felt ‘this is why I’m a teacher!’, and I do have those moments here, too, but they’re a lot farther apart. So I really miss that satisfaction with my job. Ana: I can definitely relate to the teaching moment too. I think most of my successes I associate with teaching. ‘Oh, this went very well!’ brings me a lot of joy. I often find myself thinking ‘I wish somebody would have done something like that when I was a student in Ukraine!’. Lucinda: I n China I tried to replicate what I was accustomed to, with the exception of not using technology as much. I went back to a paper-based approach and kept a spreadsheet on my computer. I was piloting the writing class there with the idea that had those classes gone on, we would be able to use the same types of assignments. The classes were bigger than our classes here, so I always had five groups with four students, and if I wanted to play language games then I had multiple stations at the same time. In a report assignment, they had to do a survey and I invited all of my students, about a hundred in the one cohort, to come to one of the class sessions at night. They all came and conducted their surveys by asking the questions to the other sections of the class. And that was really a happy night because they were sending their survey questions by WeChat to me, they were working hard, and they were asking their questions, and they were very attentive.   One thing that I was totally not used to was the difference in schedule. Classes are divided up into 45 minutes with a 10-minute break between them. At night, there wasn’t

The Person in Personal Narrative: Two ESOL Instructors Teaching Away from Home  47

anybody in the building except for me and my class. In my evening class, two male students got into a fight and they were pushing and hitting each other, and one guy’s lip was bleeding. It was unsettling because I’ve never had that happen to me before and because it was at night, there wasn’t any security person there. So, I got one of the other students and did get it stopped, and he said ‘Yeah, they’ll be fine’. I wasn’t worried in terms of violence because it seemed more like immaturity somehow. My insecurity and a lot of my discomfort were based on language; just not being able to get help because I wouldn’t have known what to say.   My insecurity was also highlighted out on the streets where I looked like an outsider. I looked so different people wanted to take pictures with me. They grabbed my arm, turned me around, and pointed their phones at me, indicating that they wanted to take a picture. It happened at parks, at Forbidden City, and on the street. At first, I automatically assumed that they were criticizing my appearance or making fun of me – but I found out they weren’t. They were just interested and curious! I wondered if the photos would end up on social media and what they would say to their families – ‘Look, we met a foreigner!’. In the classroom, I usually felt secure and confident – it was my area of expertise. When I traveled, I ventured out of my safe zone, and I think that’s when I truly gained a sense of crossing barriers. Ana:  My ‘otherness’ is invisible. I am white, blond, petite, have grey eyes, and used to wear my hair long. I could easily be mistaken for a sorority girl. Nothing in my appearance would give me away as a foreigner. It is only when I start talking that one can notice my accent. People start asking where I am from, and one time I had someone ask me where my accent was from. I thought that it was very strange to single out my accent from me as a whole person. It was as if he was asking me where it was from so that he could go and get one for himself too. But I am whole, and I cannot leave, trade, sell or forget my accent.   The feeling of detachment accompanied me throughout my first year at BGSU. Even though I was trying to make connections, everything was quite overwhelming – new teaching, program, colleagues, students – everything was new. The first couple of months I brought my lunch to work and ate alone in my office because I had no idea there were any other options. As I started exploring, I learned that we have a lounge where people can get together to socialize. One of our colleagues also invited me to the community Common Meal – biweekly potluck community dinner gatherings. It was one of the first places I went outside of the university. I was very nervous before going there because I wasn’t sure what I should bring. A lot of the times, when you join a new group, you are sitting alone and nobody talks to you

48  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

because nobody knows you. But it wasn’t like that at all during that gathering, and I was really involved in the conversation. It is strange how nerve wracking it was before I went there, and then how calm and comforting the situation really was when I arrived and when I started going there regularly.   This community opened up so many doors for me. This is where I found not only good food but also good conversation, friendship and support. Together with one of the members of this potluck group, we started going to the contra dance events. Through the contra dancing community, I learned about the ballroom dancing club. Ballroom dancing is something I did as a kid, and it was my big comeback into dancing after almost a 15-year break.

Comfort and caring Lucinda:  Our feelings of comfort are often from situations where we’re outside of our usual environment. Stepping into discomfort actually turns into comfort. My only community was the community of my immediate students. I did not feel connected at all to the city except as a way to shop. Basically, I went from my hotel to my class and back to my hotel, and then stopped at some campus supermarkets if I needed some supplies or if I just wanted to look around or get a snack. When I think about that, that sounds really pathetic, but it wasn’t. It was sort of pleasing. Teaching took up a lot of time with the way the classes were scheduled every day, and all day long and in the evening. I was really busy, so I didn’t feel like I had a lot of time when I was just hanging out being lonely. We had a shorter semester, so I did some prep, went to class and went home to the hotel to grade. It was a different rhythm from the meetings, the politics, the interrelationships with colleagues. It was simple. Clean.   I started to travel on my own, and I asked students to help me plan itineraries. The first semester, I really wanted to see peonies in their natural environment. One of my students lived in Luoyang, the peony capital of the world, and he volunteered to make an itinerary and all the arrangements for me. When I heard where he lived, I said: ‘I’ve always wanted to go there!’ and he said: ‘Let me make you a trip’. He checked on my hotel to make sure it was ok, and he wrote some words and phrases down for me for when I got there – things about the bus and the taxi. That was the first major trip traveling by myself in China and it was really successful, and I was very happy with it. But the fact that the student went to that effort was comforting. It made me feel cared for in a way that, I think, is very unique.

The Person in Personal Narrative: Two ESOL Instructors Teaching Away from Home  49

Ana:  One of the ways I felt cared for was when my friends from the Common Meal group helped me with transportation. In my first year in Bowling Green, I didn’t have a car. It made it very challenging to go to different places because there is no public transport here, but the people from the potluck group were always ready to help me out. Some of them took me grocery shopping, others gave me a ride to work in winter when it was really cold to walk or took me to the airport.   I didn’t always feel comfortable contacting people for a ride, though, and I sometimes didn’t do certain things because it was too hard for me to get there. With grocery shopping, for example, I biked to the store, loaded most things in my backpack and put two bags on the bike handles for balance. I tried to only contact people when I needed to bring something really large, like five pounds of potatoes or a gallon of milk. Other large things, like laundry soap, I tried to order online. I had to plan my groceries very carefully because I didn’t want to bother people too often. It meant that I would only get potatoes and a gallon of milk once a month. And I biked to the store over the weekend for fruit, vegetables, and other things to fill up my pantry. Because of all of these manipulations, grocery shopping took me on average 4–5 hours every week.   When it got really cold and icy for biking in winter, I discovered that there is a campus bus that goes to one of the larger grocery shops off campus. So, after work, I took one bus from campus to the store, shopped there, took the bus back to campus, and then took another bus that goes south off campus. I hopped off at the stop the farthest from campus and closest to my place and walked to my apartment for 15–20 minutes. This kind of grocery shopping also took me about 3–4 hours if I didn’t miss the bus. Shopping for clothes in town took even more than 4 hours for me. The round trip to the local mall alone took more than two and a half hours on foot. Lucinda:  I am really struck by the idea of transportation and how challenging it is in the US in contrast to China. I did walk to the stores on campus, but I could also take the subway to the city or other suburbs. The subway was right outside of campus, and it was very convenient to walk there. I could go anywhere on my own without asking for someone to take me. Ana:  A nother challenge presented itself by the end of my first year in Bowling Green. In April as I was on my way from the grocery store, it was so incredibly windy that the bags on the handle bar of the bike were swayed by the wind, I lost control over the bike, slipped from the sidewalk and fell on the road. I didn’t have any major injuries, except for a bleeding knee and scratched skin on my hands. I wasn’t too worried about this incident at first, but I wanted to give myself time to recover from the fall and decided to stop biking for a week. After four

50  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

weeks of pain in my knee I knew that something was definitely wrong. But I didn’t know what doctor to see, how much it would cost, and whether the insurance would cover any of that. This is my first full-time job with benefits in the US and I wasn’t sure how my insurance and benefits would work. When I went back to Ukraine for the summer, my doctor sent me for an X-ray, and we found out why my knee wasn’t recovering. In a way, I’m grateful for this incident because I wouldn’t have known about those problems otherwise and wouldn’t have been able to address them properly. I wasn’t able to return to biking after that, though. Psychologically, I cannot make myself bike again. Lucinda: That was one thing I didn’t have to do – negotiate the healthcare system or the clinic on campus. I had a doctor from the US who said that I could Skype with her or that I could send her an email or take a picture and send it to her and that she would help me; it always was in the back of my mind. It adds a level of anxiety. Ana:  A nother important aspect of my first-year teaching at BGSU was the fact that I was often alone when I was not in class. Mostly I felt very comfortable being on my own, except for, maybe, on holidays or on weekends. I didn’t have a lot of people to talk to, and I didn’t have a lot of people to celebrate the holidays with, and ‘on my own’ turned into ‘lonely’. To avoid this feeling of loneliness, I started working more. I remember not wanting to go back home because nobody was waiting for me there and I would rather spend the time in my office finishing grading and lesson planning. I wasn’t married yet, so I worked hard and was mostly constrained to the cycle of home–work–home, with Skype conversations added in between.   By the end of my first year here I seemed to have overcome the emotionally challenging and exhausting phase and started looking for places to go. I was still a part of the Common Meal potluck group, and I discovered a community recipe book club in the public library. This community also opened doors to other events in town for me. Lucinda:  I can relate to that too. Our introverted personalities served us well in that way because when the teaching day was over, I, too, was really ready to just be by myself. And I felt like when you are in a different country and dealing with language issues all day, that takes so much energy. I was quite content and felt safe in my hotel room. I did have the option to live in an apartment off campus. But I felt like the hotel provided the sense that there were people around me. I totally felt like I was simplifying my life. It was very pleasing, in a way, to have to only concentrate on teaching, preparing, grading and then resting. It seemed very streamlined in a way.

The Person in Personal Narrative: Two ESOL Instructors Teaching Away from Home  51

Lucinda and Ana: It’s apparent that leading a simple life helped us both deal with the obstacles and complexities of living in a new land away from home. Discussion

In this section, an analytic part of our narrative, we summarize findings from the dialogue above, describing the three themes as well as making connections among them and highlighting the similarities and differences of our experiences. Starting the project, we were drawn first to our striking differences, both visible and invisible: Ana is a novice teacher whose appearance is not recognized as foreign, while Lucinda is a seasoned faculty, who noticeably stood out from the Chinese community. As the interviews developed, however, our candid reflections brought similarities to light – and in ways that were often painful and anxiety producing. For example, in the section ‘Moving “abroad”’, in spite of having different motivations for going overseas, we found that politics has a profound impact on teachers. Having no training or expertise in the political and social field, we found ourselves responding to the challenges of the globalized world where educational and political goals are often juxtaposed (Alexander et al., 2020). In fact, teaching itself is considered to be a political act where a curriculum either encourages or discourages students to critically examine power relations and social inequities (Benesch, 1993) and where the national political environment impacts all members of the educational process – students, teachers, parents and administrators (Hillygus, 2005; Rogers et al., 2017). When discussing visas, we discovered that it is not enough to simply acknowledge that a visa, along with a passport, must be procured before teaching abroad. Rather, for both Ana and Lucinda, the requirements of the bureaucratic systems of governments and institutions often created dilemmas, and this complicates the processes that teachers must endure. Likewise, in ‘Negotiating classroom spaces’, we found it is not enough to simply state that ‘teaching systems are different’ without delving into the emotions that are created when one walks into a classroom looking like one of the students (Ana) or when one must break up a fight without any backup (Lucinda). Emotions such as uncertainty, lack of confidence or even fear threaten to derail a teacher’s desire to persevere. Just as we were unprepared for the similarities we faced in reacting to painful moments, we were also surprised by the deep feelings of gratitude and satisfaction towards our students and colleagues that surfaced in our ­conversations. In ‘Comfort and caring’, we discovered a multitude of ­kindnesses, whether it was an invitation to a community potluck (Ana), helping with grocery shopping (Ana and Lucinda) or an itinerary planned by a student (Lucinda). We found that these acts of kindness were not culturally specific, but rather were universally human and often allowed us to transcend the negative emotions and situations we faced.

52  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Whether in ‘Moving “abroad”’, ‘Negotiating classroom spaces’ or ‘Comfort and caring’, it is the range of emotions that we want to highlight here – from the lows of depression, anxiety and fear all the way to acceptance, tranquility and joy. From a sense of unworthiness and lack of confidence to deep feelings of accomplishment and success, it is the totality of experience that is elicited by our self-interviews. We found that emotional labor, also acknowledged and investigated in previous research (Cowie, 2011; Gkonou & Miller, 2019; Loh & Liew, 2016), is multidimensional and stems from not only professional, but also social, political and personal factors. ‘Revolving around a pleasure–pain axis’ (Loh & Liew, 2016: 276), educators’ jobs have both positive and negative returns that may be intensified when combined with cultural factors and expectations, which in turn becomes a necessary stage in developing transnational or transcultural awareness. In the end, we are hopeful that this duoautoethnography inspires more teachers and trainers to become ‘researcher–storytellers’ (Brown, 2010) so that teacher candidates can make conscious personal and professional choices while being aware of not only achievements in their selected field but also of the whole spectrum of their work. We ultimately found that, in teaching abroad, we experience joy in a unique way that is woven throughout struggle that only continues to deepen. This leads us to say, ‘Would we do it again? All in good time’. Implications and Recommendations

Reading and writing ethnographies and autoethnographies is a powerful self-assessment tool and could be an exploratory research project. As the authors of this chapter, we explored, analyzed, compared and contrasted our experiences and drew conclusions from them – something we probably would never have done otherwise. Likewise, a project on translingualism as part of the course ‘Introduction to Sociolinguistics in Education’ at the University of Pennsylvania (Flores & Aneja, 2017) allowed teachers in training to reflect on the relationship between language, power and identity, to explore tensions and complexities that bilingual teachers experience and to develop their teaching philosophy and classroom practices. Critical autoethnographic narrative as a part of teacher training at the University of Alabama (Yazan, 2019) provided teacher candidates with a discursive space to discuss their experiences within sociocultural and political contexts, allowed them to negotiate identity and language ideologies and to explore the elements constructing teacher identity. In addition to ethnographies and autoethnographies, arts-based research assignments in TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) curricula also offer a possibility to promote teacher self-­ identification and self-reflection because art has ‘potential to promote deep

The Person in Personal Narrative: Two ESOL Instructors Teaching Away from Home  53

engagement, make lasting impressions, and therefore possesses unlimited potential to educate’ (Leavy, 2018: 3). The arts as a teaching method and praxis ‘offers ways to tap into what would otherwise be inaccessible, makes connections and interconnections that are otherwise out of reach, asks and answers new research questions, explores old research questions in new ways, and represents research differently and to broad audiences’ (Leavy, 2018: 9). Among all art forms, there are several that have been researched and proven to be especially efficient: narrative (Freeman, 2018) and poetic inquiry (Faulkner, 2018), collage (Scotti & Chilton, 2018) and comics (Kuttner et al., 2018). These fall into the categories of literary genres and visual arts that could be seamlessly integrated in TESOL curricula. Finally, we recommend that teacher trainers incorporate teacher reflection assignments and activities on identity. Qualitative research of the Master of Education TESOL program at Simon Fraser University, Canada, revealed that ‘non-directive reflective practices may open spaces that allow for robust expression of agency in the professional lives of its graduates’ (Ilieva & Ravindran, 2018: 16). Assignments like these allow students to explore their professional identities and backgrounds, develop self-awareness and co-construct their practices and understanding of the profession. If we could talk to our younger selves, we would tell them about the liminality of their status, about the failures, doubts and fears they will experience and emphasize how precious all their achievements, encouragements and hopes are. They would be better prepared for this adventure, then, and would be free to decide whether it’s worth it. We hope that the discussion presented here will be particularly useful for English teacher trainers as they help their teachers find home. References Alexander, C., Fox, J. and Aspland, T. (2020) ‘Third wave’ politics in teacher education: Moving beyond binaries. In J. Fox, C. Alexander and T. Aspland (eds) Teacher Education in Globalised Times: Local Responses in Action (pp. 1–21). Singapore: Springer. Benesch, S. (1993) Critical thinking: A learning process for democracy. TESOL Quarterly 27 (3), 545–548. Brown, B. (2010) The power of vulnerability. See https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_ brown_on_vulnerability (accessed May 2019). Cowie, N. (2011) Emotions that experienced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers feel about their students, their colleagues and their work. Teaching and Teacher Education 27, 235–242. Faulkner, S.L. (2018) Poetic inquiry – Poetry as/in/for social research. In P. Leavy (ed.) Handbook of Arts-based Research (pp. 208–230). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Flores, N. and Aneja, G. (2017) ‘Why needs hiding?’ Translingual (re)orientations in TESOL teacher education. Research in the Teaching of English 51 (4), 441–463. Freeman, M. (2018) Narrative inquiry. In P. Leavy (ed.) Handbook of Arts-based Research (pp. 123–140). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

54  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Gkonou, C. and Miller, E. (2019) Caring and emotional labour: Language teachers’ engagement with anxious learners in private language school classrooms. Language Teaching Research 23 (3), 372–387. Hillygus, D. (2005) The missing link: Exploring the relationship between higher education and political engagement. Political Behavior 27 (1), 25–47. Ilieva, R. and Ravindran, A. (2018) Agency in the making: Experiences of international graduates of a TESOL program. System 79, 7–18. Iyer, P. (2013) Where is home? See https://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_where_is_ home?language=en (accessed March 2021). Kuttner, P.J., Sousanis, N. and Weaver-Hightower, M.B. (2018) How to draw comics the scholarly way: Creating comics-based research in the academy. In P. Leavy (ed.) Handbook of Arts-based Research (pp. 396–422). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Leavy, P. (2018) Introduction to arts-based research. In P. Leavy (ed.) Handbook of Artsbased Research (pp. 3–21). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Loh, C. and Liew W. (2016) Voices from the ground: The emotional labour of English teachers’ work. Teaching and Teacher Education 55, 267–278. Rinehart, R.E. and Earl, K. (2016) Auto-, duo- and collaborative- ethnographies: ‘Caring’ in an audit culture climate. Qualitative Research Journal 16 (3), 210–224. Rogers, J., Franke, M., Yun, J.E., Ishimoto, M., Diera, C., Geller, R., Berryman, A. and Brenes, T. (2017) Teaching and Learning in the Age of Trump: Increasing Stress and Hostility in America’s High Schools. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access. Scotti, V. and Chilton, G. (2018) Collage as arts-based research. In P. Leavy (ed.) Handbook of Arts-based Research (pp. 355–376). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Selasi, T. (2014) Don’t ask where I’m from, ask where I’m a local. See https://www.ted.com/ talks/taiye_selasi_don_t_ask_where_i_m_from_ask_where_i_m_a_local (accessed May 2019). Yazan, B. (2019) Identities and ideologies in a language teacher candidate’s autoethnography: Making meaning of storied experience. TESOL Journal 10 (4), 1–21.

4 Dialoguing as Transnational Professional Mothers: Our Intersectional Identities as Transnationals, Parents and Language Teacher Educators April S. Salerno and Elena Andrei

In this self-study dialoguing project we set out to explore how our transnational experiences intersect with our identities as mothers and language teacher educators, and how that might help us understand our teaching practices. Drawing from autoethnographic principles, our self-study dialoguing involves careful analysis of dialogues we created together to explore questions about our experiences as transnational teacher educators and parents. We view this kind of work as essential for better understanding the human-ness of teaching and learning. Teachers (and teacher educators) are humans after all, with their own multiple intersecting identities that affect their teaching practices in various complex ways. By selfstudying (Peercy & Sharkey, 2018), through dialoguing (McVee & Boyd, 2016), how our own intersecting identities as mothers, transnationals and language teacher educators emerge, we hope to illuminate how teacher educators’ intersecting identities and language teacher education are connected. The two of us have grown together into the language teacher educators we are today. We met during our doctoral studies and we have since become close friends and peers in our journeys as scholars and mothers. Our friendship and collaborations have been informed by some other key personal and professional parallels as well. We are ‘inverse language partners’ (Salerno & Andrei, 2020): Elena’s first language is Romanian and 55

56  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

second language is English, while April’s first language is English and second language is Romanian. Not only do we share languages, we also share similar cultures: Elena grew up in Romania and moved to the USA more than a decade ago; April grew up in the USA and has lived in Moldova1 twice during her adult years. We both were language teachers and became language teacher educators due to our desire to have an even bigger impact on students in schools by working with teachers. Together in our studies and in our work in academia we continue our learning and pursue our passion for teaching and learning by doing research that informs our practices. In the following sections, we first provide an overview of two important concepts that have informed our scholarship – transnationalism and intersectionality. We then describe the methodology we employed in this study, followed by key findings. We end the chapter with a discussion, some implications and some suggestions for further research. Transnationalism

Transnationalism is often described in terms of transnational communities in literature. Farr (2010: 46), for instance, describes a transnational community ‘which lives on both sides of a nation-state border and maintains social, economic, political, and emotional ties that extend across that border’. While this definition seems to fit the communities of immigrant-origin students that we work with who had moved back and forth between the USA and their home countries, we had to look deeper into the literature, past the idea of transnational communities, at more individual transnationalism to fit our experiences. While we do not see ourselves as part of transnational communities per se, we do see how our identities are intertwined with aspects of both American and Romanian/ Moldovan culture that are unconstrained by political boundaries. Through our connections to multiple cultures, our transnational identities might be thought of as emerging in new, hybrid ways, with such hybridity serving as an important resource for teaching and learning (see Gutiérrez et al., 1999). In coming to this realization, we considered Grosjean and Byers-Heinlein’s (2018: 12–13) three characteristics of biculturals: (1) taking part, to varying degrees, in two or more cultures; (2) adapting attitudes, behaviors, values, languages, etc., to the cultures; (3) blending aspects of the cultures involved. Our definition of transnationalism takes these ideas of biculturalism and moving them across national borders. Canagarajah (2018) uses the term transnational in a way that highlights this border-crossing: … the term transnational looks at relationships that transcend the nationstate. That is, there are social ties and relationships that are not constrained by or contained within nation-state boundaries. Though

Dialoguing as Transnational Professional Mothers  57

people are located within nation-state borders, many of their relationships, ­experiences, and affiliations are not bound by them. These are ties of liminality. They occur between and beyond boundaries and borders. (Canagarajah, 2018: 42) Intersectionality

We also explore the concept of intersectionality in considering how our multiple identities overlap and co-exist (Romero, 2018). Viewing intersectionality as social action, May (2015) contends: Intersectionality … is not a cumulative or arithmetical identity formula (race + gender + class + sexuality + disability + citizenship status, and so on, as if these were sequential, separate factors). Instead it focuses on simultaneity, attends to within-group differences, and rejects ‘single-axis’ categories that falsely universalize the experiences or needs of a select few as representative of all group members. (May, 2015: 22)

Further, Collins and Bilge (2016: 2) include in their definition of intersectionality that it ‘is a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity in the world, in people, and in human experiences. The events and conditions of social and political life and the self can seldom be understood as shaped by one factor’. We draw upon these ideas around simultaneity and complexity to make sense of our intersectional identities as transnational mothers and language teacher educators. It is also worth pointing out that while parenting identities might seem as only one factor within teacher educators’ intersectional identities, Romero (2018) sees parenting itself as intersectional in nature. Through this intersectionality, ‘… a combination of parents’ social positions interact in various times and places, presenting advantages or disadvantages for childcare and for accessing quality education and socializing processes that are inclusive of families’ racial, sexual and class history’ (Romero, 2018: 25). However, Romero (2018: 17) describes ‘transnational parenting’ as parents moving abroad for work while leaving children in the home country. While we view this as one important variety of transnational parenting, we also extend transnational parenting to include families like ours, that move across borders together. The struggles and challenges of mothers as parents in academia, specifically, have been shared in various forms, such as via research and practical guides (Bueskens & Toffoletti, 2018; Connelly & Ghodsee, 2011) as well as through stories of migrant mothers in academia (Arnoldi & Bosua, 2018). Bueskens and Toffoletti (2018) explored the gap between what professional mothers are told about their work environments as supporting families and what they actually experience. The authors contend that rhetoric conveys that universities will provide flexibility for ‘work–life balance’ but, in actuality, universities prioritize institutional goals and

58  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

require mothers to have supports outside of the system if they are to ­succeed in academia while mothering. Kim et al. (2018) provide one of the few known self-studies on transnational (or, as they say, immigrant) mothers as teacher educators. The authors, who are all mothers, immigrants to the USA from South Korea and early childhood teacher educators, explored their experiences as mothers and advocates of culturally responsive teaching. They found that, despite their professional knowledge about the importance of heritage language, their mothering practices were often ambivalent. They were cautiously involved in their children’s schools and they felt vulnerable sharing first-hand experiences as immigrant mothers with their teacher-education students who were mostly White females (see also Peercy & Sharkey, 2018). Methods

This dialogue-based project adds to the much-needed literature on language teacher education (Faltis & Valdés, 2016) and motherhood, particularly as a self-study in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) (Peercy & Sharkey, 2018). We draw from principles of autoethnography in that we engage in ‘deep and careful self-reflection … to name and interrogate the intersections between self and society’ (Adams et al., 2014: 2). Yet our methodology focuses on analysis of interactive dialoguing work with each other. We view dialoguing as dynamic: ‘a continuous, developmental communicative interchange through which we stand to gain a fuller apprehension of the world, ourselves, and one another’ (Burbules, 1993: 8; McVee & Boyd, 2016: 48). As part of the dialoguing, we wrote to each other regularly by asking questions and providing responses. This dialogue dovetailed a previous dialogue in which we had considered how our language-learning experiences related to our teaching practices (Salerno & Andrei, 2020). That initial dialogue began with the question ‘Can you tell me about your language learning and teaching background?’ and continued for four months. This current project continued that dialogue, beginning with two questions from Elena to April: • You noticed that I always say I moved to the US and not immigrated. Do you say the same about your transition to Moldova? • What makes us immigrants or not? We also listed topics we hoped to explore, including transnationalism, immigration, bilingualism and parenting. While writing the dialogue, we became interested in how our identities as transnational mothers appeared within language that we used in our actual teaching. To get a sense of this, we read 11 teacher-education courses we had taught. We read online discussion boards and face-to-face discussion transcripts and identified instances where we explicitly mentioned our families or our identities as mothers, and we then discussed those instances as part of the dialogue.

Dialoguing as Transnational Professional Mothers  59

This dialogue extended across five months and we eventually focused on exploring a specific question: ‘How, if at all, do our identities as transnationals and, especially, as mothers intersect with our identities as language teacher educators?’. As part of this exploration, we role-played our dialogue by reading it aloud together, while adding comments and questions. We open-coded the dialogue for emergent themes and organized them into topics that became the sections for the findings (Miles et al., 2014), which we discuss next interspersed with dialogue excerpts. Findings Finding 1: Making transnational family decisions

Much of what has previously been written about decision-making in transnational households has focused on the decision to immigrate to another country and related financial choices (Zontini, 2010). As our data analysis revealed, our focus was not on these choices about immigration itself but on the myriad decisions we made in our day-to-day lives as transnational parents. The transnational label was not always one we readily embraced but, though we initially had difficulty adopting the label, we saw that our transnationalism was intersecting with our additional identities as mothers in multiple ways. The dialogue further revealed that we frequently made family-related decisions informed by our transnational experiences. Some decisions were large (e.g. where to buy a home), while others were small (e.g. whether to follow news in both countries, where to shop and which holidays to celebrate). It would be impossible to list them all here, so we share the most salient. Children’s names

These decisions first became evident when discussing how we named our children. Elena: We wanted a name that is easy to read and write in both languages and cultures so it is easy to navigate, a true transnational. So we chose a name that has no special characters for one language or another and no special pronunciation … April: … you’re right that we both have put thought into having children with transnational names … [The woman we named our daughter after] is one of the strongest women I know. So I wanted her to have her name. I also really valued that it was a name that represented Moldova for me … We were concerned that Americans might mispronounce it. So we actually tested it out on various cashiers at stores … People pronounced it correctly, so we felt good about her not being called the wrong thing all through school or being told that her name was hard to pronounce.

60  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

April continued to explain that naming her son was a similar process. Though we believe it is a sign of respect to learn to pronounce someone’s name correctly, we wanted our children to feel they belonged in both cultures without having to constantly teach their names to others. We realized through this discussion that both of us had purposefully given our children names that would not only reflect our transnational values but also position our children as transnationals. Elena even explicitly called the name she gave her son, the name of ‘a true transnational’. She went on to explain why she wanted her son to be transnational. Elena: I value the fact that I am transnational, bilingual, and bicultural a lot, and I want my son to have the same experiences because I think this is very enriching. He is not transnational now, but at least he is a kid of transnationals, and I want him to have all the tools to be a transnational if he so chooses. He literally has the whole world as his and he can live anywhere he wants.

Ironically, these discussions were interlaced with our consideration of the transnational label; long after these comments, we were still exploring the extent to which we are transnationals and we were still debating whether our children are necessarily transnational simply because we are and our transnationalism provides them with transnational relationships and identities. Language and school choices

We had long been aware of our decisions for ourselves about using language. But when we found out we would be parents, we were faced with a variety of new decisions in shaping our children’s language use and we turned to the literature we knew as language teacher educators for guidance. In our dialogue, we explored both (1) how our different contexts influenced our decisions about language use and (2) how we intentionally chose contexts that would support those language decisions. For example, Elena sent her son to full-time English preschool from infancy, while speaking Romanian at home, Skyping regularly with Romanian grandparents, interacting with Romanian-speaking friends (including April’s family) or hiring part-time Romanian babysitters. April spoke mostly English at home but also chose to move to Moldova, partially to give her daughter Romanian exposure. The year she moved back to the USA, she chose a preschool that included other children who had just moved to the USA, and she and her family purchased a home in the attendance area of the only local elementary school with a dual-language immersion program, in this case, Spanish–English. April explored the tensions created in the process of helping her daughter’s acquisition of her parents’ multiple languages.

Dialoguing as Transnational Professional Mothers  61

April: A complicating factor is that [my husband] and I don’t share the same languages  …  He is bilingual with Spanish, and I with Romanian, so we naturally talked English together because it was what we shared. When [our daughter] was born, we considered whether we would speak three languages to her. We have to an extent, but now I’m saddened to see that her English and Spanish (which she’s immersed in at school) are taking off, and her Romanian remains very elementary. When she was first born, I wanted to speak Romanian to her, but I also found it unnatural to speak ‘baby talk’ in Romanian … I felt really silly saying things like ‘Where are your toes?’ in Romanian. I mean, it’s pretty silly in English already. So I tried for a while, but I didn’t persist with it. I didn’t want talking to my daughter to feel unnatural.

Interestingly, this decision from April was also supported by our academic understandings about encouraging parents to speak their home languages with children (e.g. Tabors & Snow, 2001). In this way, our roles as language teacher educators influenced our parenting decisions. With April’s multilingualism at home, they ultimately developed a language routine. April: … it’s true that we do use a lot of languages. It’s funny that the other night, I noticed that we switch languages sometimes based on food. It was taco night for dinner, and we were talking Spanish. When it’s mămăligă [polenta] night, we speak Romanian. It just feels natural that the language follows the food/culture. Elena: …  At the same meal, we might eat food that has Mexican, Indian, Romanian, and American influences … We try to stay in Romanian at home even when [my son] starts talking in English.

Here, it is clear that our contexts influence our language choices, which also extend to additional bilingual literacy practices. In particular, we both have had to be creative in accessing children’s books. Before she had amassed a Romanian book collection, Elena would place masking tape with Romanian translations in books for her son to see while reading to him. Elena: …  I begged my mom to send me books, which she did even though sending them was super expensive  …  When we went home to visit two years ago, it was [my son]’s birthday and Mom made sure she told everyone we want books if they want to buy a present.  …  I was happy to have ANYTHING instead of nothing.

April similarly needed English books for her daughter when they lived in Moldova; she brought back a suitcase of Romanian books for Elena, but both families have found that suitcases only go so far toward daily read-alouds.

62  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Finding 2: Feeling ‘in-between’ and developing core values

In addition to affecting our decisions as transnational family members, we found that our transnational identities shaped our feelings of how we fit in the places where we lived, and ultimately shaped our core values. In-betweenness

In many ways, we found that our language use sometimes marked us as different. These language choices, along with a host of cultural factors, seemed to remind us on a very concrete, everyday and individual basis, of our ‘in-betweenness’, defined by Iannacci (2008: 121) as ‘a sense of living in the middle of two languages and cultures’. We found through our dialogue that both of us were proud to show our second language skills publicly, but we also were conscious of situations in which speaking one of our languages might make us ‘stand out’. Elena related an example of how these situations extended to school settings. Elena: [My son] takes a toy to school every day … One day, I got there and he told me directly in Romanian, kind of loud: Mami, nu-mi găsesc avionul! Hai să-l căutăm [Mommy, I can’t find my airplane! Let’s look for it]. … I tried to answer him in English … I do not want to be judged that I don’t speak English or to let them think [my son] doesn’t speak English properly.

In this case, typical of our data, Elena was conscious of others’ perceptions (see Pagett (2006) for related findings on families not wanting to be ‘different outside (the home)’ (Pagett, 2006: 142). Similarly, Elena described another circumstance in which she used Romanian at her son’s school to discipline him. A teacher commented to him, ‘Your mom used that secret language. Good for you’. Despite general positive interactions with the teacher, Elena recalled feeling in that moment vulnerable and different. Additionally, for Elena, ‘in-betweenness’ showed up when she discussed how she and her husband think about who her son is and who he will become, questioning whether he will identify as American, Romanian or both. Similarly, April related three key events in which her daughter felt ‘inbetweenness’ not necessarily because of language difference but due to cultural differences. April: The first happened the year we were back from Moldova. [My daughter] had become fast friends with another American girl from preschool. So [we] went to the library with the girl and her mom. The girls were having a good time and they were looking at books. [My daughter] and I actually found a book on the shelf about Moldova. [She] was really excited to show her friend the

Dialoguing as Transnational Professional Mothers  63

statue of Ştefan cel Mare [a Romanian/Moldovan national hero] and to show her some pictures of Moldova. But the little girl looked at her blankly and said ‘I don’t want to read that. I don’t like that stuff’. Her mom was really embarrassed and tried to show interest in the book for [my daughter] to show her instead and I tried to tell the little girl that it was where we had lived before. But the little girl would have none of it and the damage had been done. It’s hard for any adult to counter a peer who rejects your culture that way. And I saw [my daughter]’s face melt. She didn’t cry. Worse, she said she didn’t want to look at the book either. I was devastated.

This moment was powerful for April. Even in re-reading the data during analysis, April teared up. In our dialogue, April described two similar situations as the one above. One involved mămăligă, a traditional Romanian/ Moldovan dish that her daughter had previously claimed as her favorite food but then refused to take for school lunches after classmates made fun of it. In this situation, April’s husband was actually invited to the school to talk about culture. He shared mămăligă with the class but found the same reaction – many children did not want to taste it and said it looked funny. And a final event involved mărţişori, red-and-white talismans given on March 1 for the start of spring. April’s daughter brought these one year to her preschool classmates but in kindergarten refused to do so because the preschoolers had joked that mărţişori were late Valentine’s. In this case, April’s husband tied a mărţişor to her backpack; a friend at the bus stop saw it and wanted to have one too, so they invited the friend over for a mărţişori-making playdate. April described this as a positive interaction that ‘healed [her] transnational mom’s heart a little’. These events were all moments when April saw her daughter caught in ‘in-betweenness’. What was especially painful for April was her daughter’s reaction to diminish or erase markers of Moldovan culture. Ironically, although in these situations April’s daughter had her culture questioned by other children, April saw her daughter doing the same thing to others in a different situation. The children had all been discussing holidays and her daughter became jealous that other children received presents for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr and asked the children to stop talking about that holiday. April and her husband responded by borrowing a book about the holiday from one of the children’s family to read with their daughter. In this event, it became clear that the same children who are themselves made to feel in-between because of their transnational cultures may also act in ways that make other children feel in-between. For April, navigating these events has become key in defining herself as a transnational mother. She and her husband have selected particular responses to each situation but have often been uncertain of the correct path to take or if there even is a ‘correct’ path. The dissonance of ‘being different’ created reasons for our having to make any number of additional decisions.

64  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Core values

The decisions described above have helped us see and verbalize our core values as transnational mothers. We found that recurring core values, which related to our transnational identities, were always present beneath the decisions we were making. For Elena, a core value for herself is living in different cultures. Elena: Being a transnational is an experience of a life time. Not sure if I say this correctly in English: Să locuieşti ȋn altă ţară e o experienţă de o viaţă [to live in another country is the experience of a lifetime]. Living outside your culture is eye-opening. It is more intense and deeper than being a tourist  …  I would not trade it for anything.

Through the dialogue, it became apparent that Elena also wanted to share this core value of experiencing different cultures with her son. Elena: All the US map and the map of the world is literally his. If he lives in [my state] all his life and does not experience the world, I will be a disappointed transnational mom, and I might think I failed. There is nothing wrong with living all your life in one place, but the value and experience that moving gave me is worth the whole world.

Throughout the dialogue, Elena repeatedly indicated that helping her son to be able to experience the world (e.g. teaching him about world maps and his birthplace, moving within the USA, traveling, reading books about different places, etc.) underlies the various transnational decisions she makes. Just as, in our dialoguing, we struggled with to what extent to apply the transnational label to ourselves, here Elena suggests that for her son to be a ‘true transnational’, he would need to travel and experience different places. This explanation might be seen as incongruent with the definition we espoused of transnationalism – that transnational relationships, experiences and affiliations transcend national borders (Canagarajah, 2018) – but it also illustrates the complex nature of our journey in applying terms and definitions to ourselves and our families. Elena contends that her son is not now a transnational, but at other times she says he is. In discussing this irony, we realized we were both reluctant to impose a transnational identity on our children. This is partly because we want to allow them space to adopt and develop their own intersectional identities; it is also because of our own difficulties in unproblematically applying the label to ourselves, even as language teacher educators and academics who study complex ideas such as transnationalism. While Elena’s recurrent core value appeared to be related to exposing her son to various places, April’s core value was a little broader – teaching her children there is value in difference.

Dialoguing as Transnational Professional Mothers  65

April: I think a big part of our parenting as transnational people has been at least our attempts to teach mindsets of transnationalism: that something isn’t ‘weird’ (as she said yesterday about something) but that it can be different for different people and different cultures.

April further linked this core value of difference to the family’s transnational identity and to Elena’s core value of experiencing different places. April: I guess the underlying question here is: do we consider ourselves and our families to be transnational? I think this is a big answer for me: we often feel in our family that we don’t quite belong here in the US, and I think that’s because we’ve seen our culture by living outside of it, and we also have a feeling of belonging somewhere else. I think that it’s comforting to think that transnationalism might explain that for us … I’d be happy if my kids also adopt the label of ‘transnational’ because, as you said, I would feel it means that they know more than one place and are able to understand cultures on a deeper level. (Similar, I guess, to how you would like [your son] to live in more than one place.)

We found that our core values are actually two sides of the same coin: they originate within the same idea of helping our children appreciate crosscultural differences in the world around them and we hope to transmit our transnational identities (even as we continue to explore how these identities operate for us individually) to our children as well. For Elena, this is accomplished through experiencing different places; for April, it is through everyday interactions, acknowledging people’s differences (our own and those of others) across cultures. But for both of us, values that we have been adopting for ourselves as transnationals are values that we see as important to instill in our children, with full recognition that, as they grow, they may or may not decide to adopt those values as their own. Finding 3: Teaching as transnational mothers and language teacher educators

Our findings so far have focused on our identities as transnationals and as parents. In this section, we add another intersectional layer – our identities as language teacher educators. Just as we faced a variety of decisions as transnational parents, we also have made instructionally related decisions as teacher educators that have grown out of our intersected identities as transnationals, parents and people who have come to hold the core values described above (see Griffith et al. (2016) for more on teacher decision-making). For this section, we looked not only at our dialogue but also at transcripts and online discussions from our courses. Through this review, we discovered that we made fewer references in

66  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

course discussions to our identities as family members than we had expected, while we more often referenced our language-learning ­experiences and our experiences living outside the USA. Our fewer family references might in part be due to the fact that the courses reviewed are only a segment of the courses we actually taught, but it might also be explained by a related finding, that many times, while thinking about our families, we chose to comment without explicitly mentioning them. For example, several times, April found that she recommended ­children’s books she had read with her daughter but opted not to mention that she had encountered the books as a mother rather than as a teacher. In our dialogue, we discussed that sometimes we opted not to mention parenting because we thought we might alienate students who are not parents or because we felt vulnerable, or even unprofessional, sharing too many personal details. It might be, too, that we were responding to messages within academia that disprivilege our intersectional identities as mothers and professionals. In retrospect, however, we can also problematize these decisions as perhaps artificially limiting who we are and the access to examples we might otherwise provide to students. At other times, though not frequently, we found places where we shared parenting examples that illuminated content covered. For example, April described examples of her infant son’s language acquisition and having a home visit from her daughter’s duallanguage teachers. Elena problematized in a face-to-face course how a preschool teacher at her son’s school complained that a student had to catch up on English after visiting his parents’ homeland. We see in these examples potential for us to share more of our experiences as transnational parents, as they relate to instructional objectives, and we hope we will feel more confident in sharing these in the future. We expressed this in our dialogue. Elena: I think who I am makes me a better teacher as I can tell stories. And stories are very powerful and we remember them, so it is a big advantage that I can tell stories about me to make a point about my content. Would you agree in your case? April: I definitely use examples from being a mom with my students … Now that [my daughter] is in the bilingual program, I have perspectives as a parent about dual-language models … I shared in my introduction about the different languages we speak, and one of my students this semester, who is … raising multilingual children, said he was glad to talk to someone else who has a lot of different languages going on at home.

In addition to explicit references to parenting and transnational identities, we also must acknowledge that our intersecting identities as transnational parents and our related core values affect our teacher-education practices as well. April discussed the intersectionality of parental, transnational

Dialoguing as Transnational Professional Mothers  67

and teacher educator identities when sharing what we have now identified as her core value of teaching about difference. April: …  this parental message of ‘It’s ok to be different’ is maybe something that I even subconsciously expect the teachers I work with to exhibit toward their students. I don’t want them to expect their students (regardless of the student’s home culture) to conform to everything a school requires of an individual. I’m sure that’s a persistent theme that runs pretty deep beneath the messages I send in my teaching.

Similarly, aligned with her core value, Elena tells her students that TESOL can provide opportunities to live outside their culture or to interact with people from other cultures. We see that, aligned with work on intersectionality, our identities (with the entailing privileging and disprivileging) cannot be divorced from each other. Just as May (2015) argued that intersectional identities are not the equivalent of an arithmetical sum of each other, we also found responsiveness across our identities, although this requires more exploration, as we discuss next. Discussion, Implications and Need for Further Research

This self-study tells an intersectional story of how we grappled with labeling ourselves as transnationals while simultaneously unveiling that our transnational identities were informing our parental decision-making, core values and teacher-education practices in sometimes resolvable and at other times conflicting manners. We were surprised when we actually examined our course data and found that we were discussing our transnational parent identities much less often than we had imagined. These results align with Kim et al.’s (2018) findings that they were cautious in what they shared with teacher-education students and related to feelings of vulnerability and racial differences between them and most of their students. We recognize, however, that as White teacher educators, we are working from positions of privilege, in comparison to Kim et al. (2018), in that we share White racial identities with many of our students. We view Kim et al.’s (2018) findings as extremely important in that the authors highlight how teacher educators from ethnic minority backgrounds face extra challenges in sharing personal examples with their students. We also found that we are both privileged and disprivileged in relation to different parts of our intersectional identities. Though we both ethnically appear White, Elena described how being a language minority marks her as different from some of her students. We found that we, like Kim and colleagues, hesitated to share our parenting experiences with students for fear of distancing them or being seen as unprofessional. Viewed

68  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

through a lens of gender, one might interpret these results as our taking on gender-biased perspectives that have historically portrayed the feminized role of mother as not belonging in professional spheres (Connelly & Ghodsee, 2011), even within teaching, a profession often characterized as feminine (Hoffman, 2003). It might also be because sharing personal experiences in higher education settings can be at odds with institutional norms that promote the ideal role of academics as neutral scientists in scholarly settings. We, however, view such neutrality norms as in conflict with the idea of intersectionality and as unrealistic in generating and relaying knowledge (Erickson, 1986). Alsup (2006) investigated how pre-service teachers explore which aspects of their personal lives to share with students. We found that we, as teacher educators, also faced these questions. We have seen through our study that there is value in sharing our experiences with students and how the experiences exemplify the concepts we are teaching. We reject the idea that our lives as mothers are inappropriate topics within our instruction. Instead, sharing personal experiences with students, such as how Elena made careful decisions about using or not using Romanian with her son at school, or how April’s daughter felt ‘in-betweenness’ when other children made fun of her school lunch, can provide starting points for future teachers to think about how they can support transnational students and families. We hope, by sharing our stories, we will help our classrooms to be places where all of our students, including those from a variety of family and language backgrounds, would feel comfortable sharing their stories as well. In this chapter, we have described how our parenting and transnational identities affect our teacher educator identities, but a future inquiry could explore how our teacher educator identities have also affected our transnational, parenting identities (e.g. that we turn to literature on how to balance language use with our children, guide our children’s literacy exposure or interpret our children’s language use based on language-acquisition research). Further, in approaching this work, we recognize that our families represent a particular family structure – that of heterosexual marriage partners with one or two children. At the time of this study, our children were young: Elena’s son was 4 and April’s children were 5 and 1. We recognize our partners’ roles in the parenting decisions described, and we hope fellow teacher educators will conduct similar studies on families involving single-parent or same-sex structures and with children of various ages. We also urge language teacher educators to engage in similar dialogues and self-study. Through dialogue, we believe that language teacher educators, like us, might discover any number of important values and identities that underlie their teaching practices. We also encourage teacher educators to share their transnational parenting experiences as they relate to the instructional objectives to allow for insightful examples for their students. Connelly et al. (1997: 666) discussed ways in which teachers’ instructional practices are shaped by their ‘personal practical knowledge’,

Dialoguing as Transnational Professional Mothers  69

which is in ‘the teacher’s past experience, in the teacher’s present mind and body, and in the future plans and actions’. They describe how this knowledge can be explored through sources such as teachers’ autobiographical writing and family stories. We add that teachers’ and teacher educators’ transnational experiences and identities are key sources for exploration. Previously, we have conceptualized and begun using a dialoguing assignment for our students to use with each other (Salerno & Andrei, 2020). We believe that teacher educators also would benefit from sharing their stories with supportive colleagues. Through dialoguing about language and cultural experiences with other teacher educators, we might as a profession explore how these personal experiences affect the ways we are preparing future teachers and understand which personal experiences we should share in the classroom. Note (1) Romania and Moldova are geographically next to each other in Eastern Europe and share history, language and culture. Historically, the two were part of the same country, and many Moldovans identify ethnically as Romanians.

References Adams, T.E., Holman Jones, S. and Ellis, C. (2014) Autoethography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alsup, J. (2006) Teacher Identity Discourses: Negotiating Personal and Professional Spaces. New York, NY: Routledge. Arnoldi, E. and Bosua, R. (2018) Identity and inclusion in academia. Voices of migrant women. In A.L. Black and S. Garvis (eds) Lived Experiences of Women in Academia: Metaphors, Manifestos and Memoir (pp. 119–129). New York, NY: Routledge. Bueskens, P. and Toffoletti, K. (2018) Mothers, scholars and feminists. Inside and outside the Australian academic system. In A.L. Black and S. Garvis (eds) Lived Experiences of Women in Academia: Metaphors, Manifestos and Memoir (pp. 13–22). New York, NY: Routledge. Burbules, N.C. (1993) Dialogue in Teaching: Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Canagarajah, S. (2018) Transnationalism and translingualism: How they are connected. In X. You (ed.) Transnational Writing Education: Theory, History, and Practice (pp. 41–60). New York, NY: Routledge. Collins, P.H. and Bilge, S. (2016) Intersectionality. Cambridge: Polity Press. Connelly, R. and Ghodsee, K. (2011) Professor Mommy: Finding Work–Family Balance in Academia. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield. Connelly, F.M., Clandinin, D.J. and He, M.F. (1997) Teachers’ personal practical knowledge on the professional knowledge landscape. Teaching and Teacher Education 13, 665–674. Erickson, F. (1986) Qualitative methods in research on teaching. In M. Wittrock (ed.) Handbook of Research on Teaching (pp. 119–161). New York, NY: Macmillan. Faltis, C.J. and Valdés, G. (2016) Preparing teachers for teaching in and advocating for linguistically diverse classrooms: A vade mecum for teacher educators. In D.H. Gitomer and C.A. Bell (eds) Handbook of Research on Teaching (pp. 549–592). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

70  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Farr, M. (2010) Language, education, and literacy in a Mexican transnational community. In M. Farr, L. Seloni and J. Song (eds) Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Education: Language, Literacy and Culture (pp. 44–68). New York, NY: Routledge. Griffith, R., Bauml, M. and Quebec-Fuentes, S. (2016) Promoting metacognitive decisionmaking in teacher education. Theory into Practice 55, 242–249, doi: 10.1080/ 00405841.2016.1173997. Grosjean, F. and Byers-Heinlein, K. (2018) The Listening Bilingual: Speech, Perception, Comprehension, and Bilingualism. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Gutiérrez, K.D., Baquedano-López, P. and Tejeda, C. (1999) Rethinking diversity: Hybridity and hybrid language practices in the third space. Mind, Culture, and Activity 6 (4), 286–303, doi: 10.1080/10749039909524733. Hoffman, N. (2003) Woman’s ‘True’ Profession: Voice from the History of Teaching. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Iannacci, L. (2008) Beyond the pragmatic and the liminal: Culturally and linguistically diverse students code-switching in early-years classrooms. TESL Canada Journal 25 (2), 103–123, doi:10.18806/tesl.v26i1.132. Kim, J., Wee, S. and Kim, K.J. (2018) Walking the roads as immigrant mothers and teacher educators: A collaborative self-study of three Korean immigrant early childhood educators. Studying Teacher Education 14 (1), 22–38. doi:10.1080/17425964.2 017.1411255 May, V.M. (2015) Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries. New York, NY: Routledge. McVee, M.B. and Boyd, F.B. (2016) Exploring Diversity through Multimodality, Narrative, and Dialogue: A Framework for Teacher Reflection. New York, NY: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315700311 Miles, M.B., Huberman, M.A. and Saldaña, J. (2014) Qualitative Data Analysis. A Methods Resource Book. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pagett, L. (2006) Mum and Dad prefer me to speak Bengali at home: Code switching and parallel speech in a primary school setting. Literacy 40 (3), 137–145. doi:10.1111/ j.1467-9345.2006.00424.x Peercy, M.M. and Sharkey, J. (2018) Missing a S-STEP? How self-study of teacher education practice can support the language teacher education knowledge base. Language Teaching Research 24 (1), 105–115, doi:10.1177/1362168818777526. Romero, M. (2018) Introducing Intersectionality. Cambridge: Polity Press. Salerno, A. and Andrei, E. (2020) Suntem profesori/We are teachers: Self-exploration as a pathway to language teacher education. In N. Rudolph, A.F. Selvi and B. Yazan (eds) The Complexity of Identity and Interaction in Language Education (pp. 154−170). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Tabors, P. and Snow, C. (2001) Young bilingual children and early literacy development. In S.B. Neuman and D.K. Dickinson (eds) Handbook of Early Literacy Research (pp. 159–178). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Zontini, E. (2010) Transnational Families, Migration and Gender: Moroccan and Filipino Women in Bologna and Barcelona. New York, NY: Berghahn Books.

5 Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis Through Teaching and Research Tuba Angay-Crowder, Jayoung Choi and Gertrude Tinker Sachs

A growing body of research shows that critical approaches to language teacher education (CLTE) validate and empower teachers’ and their students’ transnational and multiliterate identities that are intimately tied to globalization (e.g. Canagarajah, 2018; Gebhard & Willett, 2015). These approaches explicitly, ideologically and multimodally support the ways in which teachers make sense of their own and students’ transnational lives. Thus, both teachers and students create more powerful identity positions, which then inform translinguistic pedagogies in the classroom (e.g. Motha et al., 2012). However, reports of how language teacher educators (LTEs) engage in critical approaches collaboratively are limited. To address this gap and to promote the acknowledgement and transformation of teacher identities in English language teaching (ELT), the authors engaged in a collaborative self-study, a research approach that conducts investigations collaboratively and enhances educators’ knowledge, skills and emotional states by examining the role of social support and collegial relationships in teaching and research (Loughran, 2007). Reflecting on the stories of others through self-study is also highly significant and reaffirms identities as LTEs. In this chapter we describe how, as three LTEs in mentor–mentee relationships, we utilized our translingual–multiliterate identities through mentorship in teaching ELT courses, conducting research and engaging in critical praxis during our academic careers. Our purpose is to recommend guidelines that could be pursued by LTEs and teachers who aim to place their translingual–multiliterate identities into the center of their curriculum and research practices. First, we define the research issue and then we describe our mentorship relationships and the identity development that 71

72  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

have unfolded along with our teaching and research practices in ELT over the years. Finally, we discuss what and how we learned from this selfstudy that may ‘ring true’ (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2001: 16) for LTEs in other contexts. However, self-study may include disconfirming data (Loughran, 2007) as well; our purpose, therefore, is not necessarily to find answers to all questions directed in the literature. We problematize the research issues at hand and reflect on our failures because describing ‘the failed, the difficult, and the problematic’ (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2001: 18) enriches self-studies of CLTE. The Research Issue

In our globalized world, the multiliterate identities of language learners who are developing competence in multimodal practices (see New London Group, 1996) are deeply interconnected with semiotic flows and translingual settings. As recent technologies introduce new ways of semiotic expression and transnational communication, language learners incorporate them into their lives. Teachers now must use these rich resources to teach that students and/or their languages and cultures are not ‘inferior’ (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018: 4) or that students are not ‘defective communicator[s]’ (Selvi, 2014: 577) while standard languages are still prioritized and/or privileged in the classroom. Teachers need to learn how to navigate through these unequal power relationships that generate conflicts and cultural clashes (Canagarajah, 2018). However, language teachers may have limited knowledge of and practice with multiliterate and transnational realities intersecting in ELT classrooms (Canagarajah, 2018). Consequently, they may struggle with reconceptualizing their knowledge base of teaching and creating a critical praxis, one that ‘combines critical reflection and action’ (Kubota & Miller, 2017: 141) with ‘constructive blending of theory and practice’ (Waller et al., 2017: 5). To achieve this harmonious blend, language teachers need to question the dichotomies around theory, practice, language and identity. More specifically, they need to narrow the gaps between constructs by problematizing the issues of transnationalism and identity such as privilege, marginalization and ‘critically-oriented binaries’ (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018: 8) (e.g. monolingual/multiliterate/translingual, Turkish/English/Korean/Bahamian of African, White/Black/Yellow, Native/non-Native, Muslim/Christian, personal/professional), which are our focus in this chapter. Narrowing the gap by taking action for praxis is not easy because the ways in which ‘translingualism challenges the conventional understanding of language as a bounded normative unit and opens up a possibility for legitimating expressions of multilingual repertoires’ (Kubota & Miller, 2017: 146) are not the actual discourses that academia always welcomes in reality. That is, we either create or are faced with (un)intentional contradictions in and between texts lived (e.g. blogs, conference notes, chat discussions, emails)

Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis  73

and texts studied (e.g. academic writing and publications). Although we acknowledge the influence and affordances of translingualism in our academic lives, we still (un)intentionally allow formal academic discourses such as standard language practices in English only and institutional expectations to dominate our academic experiences. Collaborative self-studies, mentoring and reflection encourage educators to craft identities, (re)model their discourses, research and teaching practices, and then propose powerful philosophical questions of purpose for transformative practices (Cobb et al., 2006; Loughran, 2007; Tinker Sachs et al., 2011). The purpose of this self-study is, then, to document how we – as three LTEs who started academic careers as language teachers in mentorship relationships – developed translingual–multiliterate identities and to theorize how our relationships and identities influence the ways we enact critical praxis in ELT. Responding to the issues of identity (Canagarajah, 2018; Yazan & Rudolph, 2018) and the call for creating a critical praxis grounded in semiotic approaches to identity in ELT (see Gebhard & Willett, 2015), we provide accounts of how we draw upon our own and students’ translingual–multiliterate identities for the purpose of improving our research and teaching practices. We utilize collaborative self-study as well as Yazan and Rudolph’s (2018: 11) conceptualization of ‘criticality’1 in order to ‘provoke, challenge and illuminate rather than to confirm and settle’ (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2001: 20) issues of identity that influence critical praxis in ELT. Background Literature

ELT, as an international field, has only recently begun to be fundamentally concerned with the issues of language and the translingual–multiliterate identities of those who are residing in transnational spaces and ‘shuttling between community or nation-state boundaries’ (Canagarajah, 2018: 43). These individuals, with transnational connections both in their homeland and the new country, develop interests ‘which cannot be satisfied by monolingual language ideologies or practices’ (Canagarajah, 2018: 43). Subsequently, an increasing number of studies have investigated the connection between teacher identity and practices (e.g. Jain, 2014; MenardWarwick, 2008; Motha et al., 2012). These studies have emphasized the importance of putting more value on the pedagogical resources that participants with translingual–multiliterate identities bring to ELT. They argue that teachers who fail to acknowledge their own and students’ identities as valuable assets in the classroom miss opportunities of not only empowering their students but also transforming their own professional identities as pedagogical resources in language classes. In developing identities as pedagogical resources, Menard-Warwick (2008) and Motha et al. (2012) give importance to pushing beyond the potentially over-simplistic dichotomy between native English speaking teachers (NESTs) and

74  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs), which is an important responsibility when reconceptualizing language learning and eliminating inequalities for all students (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018). Although educators are willing to challenge these dichotomies that are not in favor of disadvantaged learners, they may have concerns over ‘real-world consequences for attending to (in)equity’ (e.g. manuscripts rejected by journal editors due to not conforming to traditions) and, thus, fall into the similar conceptual contradictions such as ‘idealized NNEST/NS/NEST’, ‘Self–Other’ (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018: 10) in the workplace or classroom. Motha et al. (2012: 13), drawing from the traditions of narrative inquiry, have called for LTEs ‘to explicitly and deliberately support teacher candidates’ understandings of the ways in which their lives interact with their teaching’. However, there are limited accounts of how LTEs reflect on their own lived experiences through narrative approaches or, more particularly, self-studies to develop their transnational identities and pedagogies (e.g. Gagné et al., 2017; Ishihara & Menard-Warwick, 2018; Yang, 2014). Using a self-study approach, Gagné et al. (2017) addressed the issues of teaching about refugees in initial teacher education and suggested that teachers experiment with critically oriented tasks and culturally responsive pedagogy to gain transnational perspectives. Similarly, Yang (2014) used a self-study approach to examine the ways in which international ELT teachers developed transnational identities, and highlighted the importance of intercultural awareness, competence, culturally responsive practices and translingual practices such as translanguaging. Finally, Ishihara and Menard-Warwick (2018: 255), drawing on life-history interview data, investigated language teachers’ translingual identities and discovered that even teachers who used languages with perceived difficulty demonstrated ‘sociocultural in-betweenness’, which refers to the capacity to co-construct meaning across languages and language varieties. Although previous research studies focusing on transnational identities have helped teachers understand the ways in which students travel and negotiate ideologies between communities as they engage in transliterate practices with diverse semiotic resources, critical approaches to ELTrelated research still need more work at multiple levels. To our knowledge, no collaborative self-study has yet examined how LTEs explicitly draw upon their translingual–multiliterate identities to improve strategies for critical praxis in ELT. Our study is thus a small but crucial addition to the literature as it shows how LTEs may use narrative approaches to grapple with the implications of the theory and research that shape our transnational lives inside and beyond K-12 classrooms. Framework

In the context of globalization, there is a call for transnationalism that creates spaces in which educators and students can detach themselves

Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis  75

from limiting language ideologies and ‘facilitate the creativity that attempts to go beyond existing language systems and monolingual ideologies to construct new textual homes’ (Canagarajah, 2018: 58). The theoretical framework of transnationalism emphasizes the shift from multilingual to translingual approaches to education, in which ‘Translingual considers the languages in contact, generating new forms and meanings in synergy’ (Canagarajah, 2018: 42) and where languages as non-separate entities are rich semiotic resources (including, but not limited to, multiple modalities such as visuals, images and sound) and communicative tools that transform the established norms and relationships in meaning. Accordingly, Canagarajah (2018: 41) invites educators to inhabit a transnational space ‘that is liminal – i.e. between communities, languages, and nations’ and to develop transnational identities that ‘go beyond bounded, static, and territorialized constructs and norms’. Language and identity are indeed integrally related in CLTE (Hawkins & Norton, 2009). Correspondingly, one of primary roles of language teachers is to address issues of inequality and power in classrooms that both reflect and change the larger social and cultural world. In teaching praxis, ELT teachers’ responsibility is to retain constant questioning about the types of theory and practice and to bridge the divide between theory, practice and identity via praxis that requires continuously reflective integration of thought, desire and action. Hawkins and Norton (2009: 37) defined this type of praxis as ‘the emerging awareness (on the part of the teacher-learners) of ways in which societal discourses have shaped their self-perceptions, and thus their ability to act on the world’. Aligning with this critical view in praxis, Morgan (2004: 178) established a central role for ‘teacher identity as pedagogy’, which refers to ‘a conflation or synthesis more in keeping with the continuous interweaving of identity negotiation and language learning’. Such perspective requires that we not only explain the inequalities between students, but also that we utilize differences in students as valuable assets in the process of learning. In this pedagogy, perceived dichotomies with deficit views are eliminated and students’ identities are affirmed through student–teacher interactions, which deepens their relationships and creates new possibilities for developing identities. Building on Morgan’s (2004) concept of identity as pedagogy, Motha et al. (2012) advocated that LTEs use their complex multiple identities to enhance teaching and learning experiences through synergy. Motha et al. explored transnational teachers’ praxis for the purpose of establishing the balance between theory and practice through reflections. They underlined that language teachers need to engage in critical reflection with action and transformative practices to disrupt patterns of inequality in education. However, within the frameworks of transnationalism and identity as pedagogy, there seems to have been no exploration of how translingual–multiliterate educators use selfstudy to develop the capacities and dispositions for critical praxis that can

76  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

help transform social and ideological structures, and power inequalities in language, discourse and society. In this self-study, drawing upon theoretical frameworks of transnationalism (Canagarajah, 2018) and translinguistic identity as pedagogy (Motha et al., 2012), we asked the following questions. • How do we, three LTEs in mentor–mentee relationships, develop our translingual–multiliterate identities for our teaching and research? • How do we use these translingual–multiliterate identities as pedagogical resources to create critical praxis in ELT? Methodology

We pursued self-study because we felt urged to respond to the call for a critical praxis in addressing the problem of the gap among teachers’ multiple identities, theory and practice. Self-study, exploring the experiences of ‘“I” as a living contradictions’ (Whitehead, 2000: 93), provides a vehicle to navigate conflicts between teacher educators’ and education researchers’ values about their academic work and actual practices. The validity in our methodology requires ‘a validation process based in trustworthiness’ (LaBoskey, 2004: 817). Accordingly, we required evidence of transforming practices in our teaching and research, using multiple methods to gain a comprehensive perspective on the issues under investigation. We asked, • What are our subjectivities in our speaking and writing about theories of identity and language, and what are our actual practices of language learning and related identity development through actions that have nurtured equity for marginalized groups? • How might we model closing the gap between theory and practice? Accordingly, the motivation for this self-study stemmed from Waller et al.’s (2017) call for critical praxis that necessitates responses to students’ needs and transforms multiple identities through dialogic engagement and reflexivity of teachers who, first, examine their own ideologies in teaching and research, and then take and challenge actions based on critical discussions of transnationalism. Following a collaborative self-study method that Lin et al. (2004: 488) modelled as a ‘collective, dialogic writing project’, we first exchanged emails that constitute our narratives, questions and reflections on our mentorship relationships, identity development and practices of critical praxis that are traceable in our curriculum based on lived experiences, teaching and research. Second, utilizing Yazan and Rudolph’s (2018) conceptualization of criticality, we identified the affordances, challenges, tensions and commonalities in addressing the issues of identity and creating critical praxis. In this process, we paid special attention to how we

Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis  77

afforded, limited and eliminated spaces for critical praxis as we negotiated local–global, linguistic, professional, cultural, ethnic, religious, geographical and gender- and class-related discourses. Third, we examined and responded to the emerging themes in one another’s narratives by highlighting noticeable excerpts from our narratives, summarizing emerging patterns, and analyzing and problematizing their underlying ideological implications under the light of transnationalism. Our dialogue, through questions and narratives among us, presents evidence for the study and, through collaboration that relies on perspectives presented by each other, we aimed to contribute to the debates among values, beliefs and research-based evidence within self-studies. Our findings also provoke, challenge and illuminate the assumed perception of what is ‘good’ teaching and research. Our self-study weaves together our narratives as LTEs, researchers, mentors and mentees as we carried out a critical dialogue to reflect on, question and challenge the ways in which our developing identities influence our critical praxis in ELT. We next discuss how we developed our translingual–multiliterate identities as mentors and mentees in teaching and research. Then, we address how we use our translingual–multiliterate identities as pedagogical as well as research resources to create critical praxis in ELT. Our Practices as Translingual–Multiliterate Identities in Different Contexts

Presently located in the USA, and originally from the Bahamas, South Korea (hereafter Korea) and Turkey respectively, we identify ourselves as transnational scholars. We all met at Georgia State University (GSU) and our mentorship relationships still continue to this day. We first describe how our lives crossed and intersected as mentors and mentees. Intersecting our lives as mentors and mentees Gertrude:  As a transnational–bidialectal educator from the Bahamas who has lived in Canada, Hong Kong, and now the US, I wanted all my transnational students to feel at home in working with me. Feeling at home means that the students must recognize that I am here to build them up to be the strongest professors they could be. I believe that my Hong Kong students respected me because they saw that I truly wanted to learn about them and from them. Mentors are learners. I set out to learn about Tuba and Jayoung and where they came from (I have even made it my business to visit their home countries more than once). Once we know our students, we empower them to be strong because they see our investment in them through our learning about them.

78  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

I learn about their languages, their cultures, their families in Turkey and Korea. I learn about their troubles, and I learn about their joys. I learn about what touches them in education, and I use their personal interests as fertile ground to develop their research interests. I set out to initiate them into the academy in all my undertakings as I encourage them to engage in the critical discussions of identity in all opportunities such as meetings and/or cultural celebrations. I help them become confident scholars with strong transnational identities as I teach them to take deliberate positions when deconstructing the intersectionality of local–global, cultural, ethnic and linguistic discourses in past and present events. I challenge my own as well as my students’ Europrivileging colonized ways of thinking and believe that my success is theirs and theirs is mine. My students and I are forever inextricably linked. I am because we are, and we are, because I am! Jayoung:  W hen I first met Gertrude upon entering a doctoral program at GSU, I was struggling with teaching my first language, Korean, at another institution. I had mainly attributed my challenges to varied proficiency levels of heritage language (HL) learners in a class as well as a lack of experience and confidence in teaching my native language. However, Gertrude helped me see how my intertwined and complex gender, linguistic, cultural, teacher and transnational identities played a significant role in what I was experiencing (Choi, 2014). For instance, I realized that I felt uncomfortable and vulnerable teaching mostly male students as a young Korean female who grew up in a patriarchal society. In addition, my preferred linguistic identity as the user of English at that time did not give me confidence as a Korean language teacher. She also challenged me to see multiple layers and complexities of a phenomenon that I would bring to her. Over the last 15 years, I have embodied the values that she has instilled in me through her actions and our conversations: appreciating my own heritage and what I bring, keeping a bigger perspective on hectic, competitive lives in higher education, putting learners at the center of the messy, complex educational research and practices, believing in the goodness of people as well as my inner strengths, and fighting for justice for me and for others in small and big ways.   I got to know Tuba as she was my graduate research assistant in her doctoral program at GSU. I remember that she joined the program with a commitment to researching second language writing. Around the time I met her, I had also developed a growing interest in the ways multilingual writers compose scholarly work in their additional language,

Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis  79

English. Because of our common scholarly interest and our transnational background, we bonded quickly. Over the years, I have enjoyed developing ourselves as transnational and multilingual writers in academe. Tuba:  During my PhD degree, I afforded ‘academic authority and superiority’ (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018: 1) to my professors and mentors, including Gertrude and Jayoung, not because they were associated with the category of ‘Native Speaker’ (NS) but simply because they were professors or mentors, and I was a student. Regarding my writerly translingual identity development, Gertrude’s inspiration was the turning point. She encouraged me to write my first solo publication, in which I described my curriculum as a lived experience based on my own cultural identity and art practices in Turkey as well as my developing professional identities in the US (Angay-Crowder, 2015). Thanks to this publication, I made my Turkish voice heard in the ELT world that was dominated by the construct of ‘idealized nativeness’ (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018: 1). Since Gertrude became my advisor, we have met regularly, and she has always shared stories from her own cultural background in local and global places when making suggestions for current and future projects. She also consistently asks how life is going and cares for my emotions and feelings.   Gertrude introduced Jayoung to me as a mentor, suggesting that we learn from each other as she was an ELT faculty. Gertrude’s support for the notion that ‘mentors become learners’ transformed my transnational identity because, in my home country, I thought that only students would learn from professors. The conceptualization of teachers and mentors as learners did not really resonate with me until I met Gertrude. Jayoung was friendly and open to dialogue with me. This new relationship was foreign to me because, in my home country Turkey, a professor could be only formal with their students. Her approach to our relationship challenged my perceptions and helped challenge the dichotomy between the personal and the professional. Developing researcher–teacher identities as translinguals and multiliterates

Our collaborative work over the years offered opportunities for us to contribute to the understanding of LTEs’ transnational practices based on our experiences and academic goals. The following narratives represent how we, as teachers and researchers, often reflected on the lessons learned from each other and developed researcher–teacher identities as translinguals–multiliterates. We all challenged one another in shaping our

80  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

perspectives on multimodal practices, transnationalism, identity and critical praxis into this publication. Gertrude:  Coming to the US, I came to realize profoundly the segregated nature of race and class in all its ugly manifestations. I, therefore, became more committed to teaching globalmindedness, acceptance of difference, language variations, and transnationalism, which all impacted my research because when you ‘feel’ something, you want to research it, and when you see evil, you want to teach against it. I am hyperaware of how my bidialectal and transnational identities have an impact on my work. I utilize the lenses of criticality, which borrow from post-colonial, black, feminist, intercultural and intersectional theories (Tinker Sachs, 2014). These critical theories align with fluid, multiliterate identities. We all need to draw on our living, teaching and researching contexts to create the conditions for the betterment of humankind while fostering acceptance of ambiguity that is part of criticality and the warp of life, not something to be eliminated. Jayoung:  I have always had a special love for languages and different cultures. Learning about them has often been a psychological escape for me. With my growing proficiency in other ­languages and frequent border-crossings as well as more conscious efforts to move beyond binary notions around languages and identities prevalent in the field, I no longer consider myself as a subsequent bilingual in Korean and English but a multilingual, transnational and global citizen. I bring in the holistic me and my personal and professional identities and histories into teaching and research. For example, as part of the ELT course work, my students in my courses learn about my struggles as well as successes with learning English as a multilingual learner. They also learn about the perspectives of an immigrant parent who is raising her children as trilinguals in a monolingually-normed society (Choi, 2018). Tuba:  During my doctoral studies, I aligned myself with the theories, pedagogies and research related to multimodal practices (see Yi & Angay-Crowder, 2016). Although I privileged the concept of design and focused on digital literacies and technology integration in language learning, I overlooked the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity as local and global resources as well as commitments to equity and social justice within theories that necessitate both semiotics and critical perspectives. Now, I realize the importance of an ideological space in which I should honor identities (including my students’ and mine) through semiotic and critical strategies. Drawing upon the notion of transnationalism,

Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis  81

I am still trying to broaden my researcher and teacher identities by focusing not just on spoken language and a variety of communicative modes as part of my rich linguistic repertoire but on language practices such as translanguaging that ‘transgresses and destabilizes language hierarchies’ and ‘that transform a present space with historicity, creativity, criticality and power’ (García & Li, 2014: 68). I promote transnational perspectives for my students, and I witness how the Spanish-speaking students in my classes use translanguaging that contradicts monolingual language policies and ideologies at transnational levels. They easily make connections to their own culture and the many Latinx students whom they teach. However, I feel like I need to make an extra effort to help my students to connect with my own Turkish identity because I do not have any Turkish students in my classroom. Sometimes, I ask myself: ‘In the “non-dominant” or “underrepresented” groups in this society, where do I stand within the degrees of marginalization?’. Negotiating privileges and marginalization

Privilege and marginalization coexist in our stories. Our identities and related stories are interconnected in many ways as we have journeyed through teaching and advising graduate students in our US ELT programs. This self-study gave us an opportunity for reading our work and learning about each other’s perspectives even more closely. Consequently, we realized that our privileges sometimes mask the issues of marginalization and vice versa. In the end, we (re)learn how to (re)negotiate our contested transnational identities. Gertrude: I have always been enamored with and intrigued by ‘difference’. People from different backgrounds offer new and exciting possibilities for learning about who they are and the places from which they came. Learning another language is a privilege since it enriches the understanding of transnational spaces and identities. At high school, I fell in love with French language learning as I could visit foreign places. Other than my teachers of French, I knew no one who spoke other languages. Going to school in Canada, I experienced firsthand the deep, oftentimes divisive emotional, social, political and historical perspectives of language use. I saw how immigrants who spoke languages other than English or French were treated as they stood in line for their immigration papers. In Canada, I became even more enamored by my own English code-switching capacities because I saw the privileges that were bestowed upon those that spoke the ‘standard or international variety’, and I heard the disdain

82  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

heaped upon those who came from the Caribbean for speaking the local. My early musings and observations solidified for me the associations of accent and linguistic choice with class, status, skin color and country of origin. I have always been a passionate language variationist and love the rich expressive cadences of the vernacular or the local in music, poetry, dramatic plays and stories, and the international forms of speaking in formal spaces. My sojourn in colonialized Hong Kong further brought out my commitment to learning and applauding the local Cantonese variety of Chinese over the prestige of English even though I was there to teach teachers how to be strong teachers of English. As a lover of things different, being in Hong Kong taught me the importance of self-love, which grows with the acceptance of fluid identities, over the colonial love, which thrives with imperialist identities and oppression. Jayoung: I am from a lower rung of socio-economic class in Korean society, and I am familiar with what it is like to be discriminated against and bullied for being the one who deviates from mainstream. My care for everyone’s well-being as well as my experience of being othered early on naturally drew me to the marginalized in societies, motivating me to write poetry about social injustice on the impoverished working class as well as to fight for women’s rights and the lives of the then-small population of LGBTQ and immigrant workers in my own small ways.   When I came to the US in my early 20s, I fell in love with this multilingual and multicultural society that was very different from my country of origin. At the same time, I quickly learned about the much-racialized society that operates on binary and divisive terms in many aspects. It did not matter that I was from a particular subgroup of an Asian country with my own individual identities. In this new country, I was seen as one of the prototypical Asian girls, whatever the stereotypes this imposed identity stamped me as. I also quickly learned that certain people are treated poorly at work and in communities because of skin color, language or sexuality. For instance, I often heard discriminatory, denigrating comments made about Black children and co-workers in my own immigrant communities. I tried to challenge their uncritical acceptance of racist discourses about marginalized populations that is pervasive in the US. I invited people to reflect on their own prejudices and stereotypes that they might have brought from the home countries by sharing my own. I had informal conversations about the systematic racism against Black persons in the US. In my teaching and research, I problematize the privilege that the English language has over other home and minoritized languages in the world as well

Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis  83

Tuba:

as that the NSs have over NNSs. In addition, I empower my ESOL teachers who often are not entitled to the same status as other content area teachers in our K-12 schools, partly because ESOL is not recognized as a major subject. Before coming to the US, I never thought about my privilege as a doctoral student and teacher educator who is perceived as ‘white’ because of my white skin. In Turkey, I self-identified as Turkish without a color because, growing up, race was a rare topic of discussion in society, and I believed that Turkish identity was mainly based on Turkish citizenship, not on race or skin color. In the US, I contributed to the marginalization of ‘NNESTs’ as I sometimes did not respond to, or simply kept silent when I heard labels such as ‘NNESs’ that my colleagues or students uttered in critical conversations. Other times, I was marginalized by ‘Others’ who perceived me as ‘Muslim’ from a non-Christian culture. I felt vulnerable since I was conscious about the stereotypes that ‘Others’ attached to my racial identity. In terms of my accent, I knew that British and American accents have historically been the norm in the West (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018). I asked, ‘Where does my accent fit?’. Should I feel happy when some friends claim ‘Your accent is not hard to understand’?. I still ask, ‘How marginalized will I become when I do not conform to the suggested accent for English language ­teachers? Is my accent deemed “inappropriate” for my ­profession?’. Some of my colleagues in the US confirmed that it is a matter of discrimination. I always bring the issue of accent into my students’ consciousness. Letting them know that I am aware of the pre-judgments around the issue of accent is a way of liberation for me.

Creating critical praxis with translingual–multiliterate identities

Within the pursuit of creating our own critical praxis that requires transformation of consciousness in teaching and research practices, we synthesized the theories and practices of identity in our local and global contexts and reflected on how we draw upon critical approaches to language learning and teaching. In this section, our narratives demonstrate how we utilize criticality, critical theories and pedagogies such as multiliteracies and translanguaging, together with discussions of identity that we place in the center of our curricula. Gertrude:  Critical praxis comes out of the local, national and global ills of the world that you recognize as wrong. Some of these ills may also be experienced at the personal level. Many times, we as educators lack an awareness of the ‘wrongs’ because of our own privileges, ignorance, biases and

84  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Jayoung:

Tuba:

subjectivities. It is only through engagements with others, openness to hearing, and reading of others’ stories that we may become aware of how our ways of interacting and speaking with others create trauma. As educators, it is our life’s work to create optimal conditions for teaching and learning (Tinker Sachs et al., 2011). In the field of ELT, I take my developing criticality to challenge ways of seeing and viewing that may be limiting and hurtful such as the privileging of one’s accent, class, race, gender and/or nationality over others’. How do we create optimal conditions if we cannot see the ways that our texts, representations, words and actions cause emotional damage and diminish learners? My teaching starts with understanding the self so that we can teach in culturally and linguistically responsive ways to build up the resources inherent in all learners. In my research and teaching, I draw on identity theories as well as theories of translanguaging and multiliteracies that legitimatize and honor multiple linguistic repertoires as well as semiotic resources that mutilinguals have at their fingertips for meaning-making. My research projects explored how K-12 teachers provided transformative opportunities for multilingual learners to be designers in their curriculum by adopting the multiliteracies lens (Choi & Yi, 2016), how NESTs in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context implemented culturally sustaining pedagogy, and how teachers responded to the growing linguistic and cultural diversity in their classes in Korea. When I teach, I openly translanguage into minoritized languages, Korean and Farsi, and challenge teachers to discover hidden multilingualism and to foster multilingual ecology (García & Li, 2014) in their classes, schools and communities. Over the years, my teachers have shared with me young elementary school students’ ‘coming out’ as being fluent in another language at home and now feeling confident using their own HL with their learners in school. Since I realize that I need to focus on the most neglected component of multiliteracies, which is the critical engagement with texts (Yi & Angay-Crowder, 2016), in my Second Language Acquisition (SLA) courses, I require inquiry approaches to multiliteracies and the use of ‘identity texts’, which are multimodal products with transformative and empowering statements that students make about themselves (Cummins et al., 2015: 559). With this approach, my aim is to create critical praxis opportunities for my students. For example, I conducted research in Spring 2018 and asked teacher candidates to work with an ‘inquiry as stance’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009: 123) approach because it is

Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis  85

a powerful way for teachers to understand the complexities of teaching and learning, interrogate their own assumptions, and bridge the gap between theory and practice by offering praxis in SLA (see Selvi & Martin-Beltrán, 2016).   Accordingly, I implemented an inquiry-based multiliteracies project that was grounded in the principles of multiliteracies pedagogy (see New London Group, 1996): situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing and transformed practice. In this project, online discussions and assignments, such as multimodal compositions that aimed at counterattacking deficit views in society, helped teachers engage in critical reflections verbally and nonverbally. They contested and questioned arguments in course readings and thoughts posted by classmates, attached a non-linguistic text, and wrote a rationale for choosing that particular text. Thus, inquiry-based multiliteracies and identity texts functioned as a form of critical praxis in my teaching. Discussion

In this self-study, we challenged our translingual–multiliterate identities and, thus, created our own critical praxis that is our unique worldview about teaching and research. Furthermore, we discussed theories that are relevant to our own political and ideological world and reflected on past and present actions, stemming from our translingual–multiliterate identities, as well as future actions that we will take as a result of this self-study. Thus, we have developed our translingual–multiliterate identities as pedagogy (Morgan, 2004) and a site for critical praxis in which the transformation of awareness and positionalities takes place. In the next section, we discuss the affordances and challenges of drawing upon our translingual– multiliterate identities as pedagogy and a site for critical praxis. Closing the gap between mentor–mentee dichotomy

With this study, all three of us discovered many things we wanted to learn about ourselves and supported each other through mentoring that involved collaborative research and co-teaching. In this way, mentoring transformed our conventional roles as teachers and researchers (Tinker Sachs et al., 2011). Consequently, we established a strong affinity among transformational learning, mentoring, teaching, research practices and identity formation. In addition, in both personal (e.g. birthdays, weddings) and formal settings (e.g. conferences, school), we discussed differences as well as similarities in Bahamian, Korean and Turkish cultures. That is how we learned to wear post-structural lenses through which we could see there is not always ‘separation between local-global, the

86  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

classroom-beyond, nor the personal-professional’ (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018: 9). Our mentorship relationship is based on the centrality and intersectionality of local–global discourses (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018), equity and, more importantly, ‘identities of competence’ through which educators ‘challenge the devaluation of students’ language, culture and identity in the wider society’ and promote the development of translingual–multiliterate identities (Cummins et al., 2015: 564). Furthermore, reflecting on emotions in our lived histories was ‘a critical element in self-transformation’ (Song, 2016: 632). It contributed tremendously to our developing identities. Closing the gap between researchers and practitioners with translingual–multiliterate identities

With this self-study, we explored dialogically how we took up empowering identity positions for research and teaching. Thus, we provide a model for how other educators can close the gap between their roles as researchers and practitioners in their professional development. In this process, our narratives have become ‘[the] autobiographical self as research instrument’ (Park, 2017: 30) because we learned, developed and challenged our translingual–multiliterate identities as research instruments as well as a theoretical framework to investigate and improve our teaching, research and pedagogical knowledge. In this process, we further positioned ourselves as ‘pracademics’ (Jain, 2014), an amalgamation of the terms ‘practitioners’ and ‘academics’, embodying ‘a professional identity that expresses the duality of teaching and research adequately without privileging one over the other’ (Jain, 2014: 495). By responding to the monolingual paradigms and reflecting on the increasingly dynamic and complex global English realities, we attempted to fill in the gap between identity, theory and practice. For example, Tuba’s inquiry-based multiliteracies project engaged students in comparing and (dis)confirming the theories and practices of SLA to formulate their own theory of how languages are learned. With this approach, Tuba’s students became active users and producers of theories. Gertrude had discussions on the interplay between research in ELT issues and language teaching. Her students unpacked language theories, concepts and culturally appropriate strategies, and considered what critical content was important for their own contexts. Similarly, Jayoung required her students to infuse translanguaging into lesson plans and to challenge classroom discourses depending on societal ideologies and diverse identities. Challenges in promoting criticality in critical praxis

Applying criticality in our narratives was helpful in dismantling the challenging issues of power, privilege and marginalization, which have

Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis  87

origins in race, gender, sexuality, class, religion, country of origin and language (Park, 2017). While the mainstream ELT research and practice still largely followed positivist paradigms (Lin et al., 2004), our narratives reflected the issues of how we could bridge the gap between theory, practice and identity in our discipline ‘that has generated inadequate theories of practical knowledge concerning the work of frontline TESOL practitioners’ (Lin et al., 2004: 496). At the same time, we unwittingly reinforced the conceptual contradictions that we criticized when, for example, we positioned ‘ELT’ against positivist paradigms. In the context of accountability systems that constrain critical reflection through testdriven approaches to teaching, our challenging responsibility was (and still is) to help teacher candidates understand the issues of critical praxis, such as power, privilege, race and culture, so that they could teach how to analyze texts and discourses in social, cognitive, academic and ideological ways in the transnational world. Another challenge was to teach critical praxis in ways that help our students become aware of their own empowered positionalities in course discussions and writings. In response, we successfully drew on our life stories to provide modelling strategies about how our students could position themselves to actively participate in and transform the world around them. We did not remain invisible or silenced although Gertrude ‘never got a chance to study [her] own enslaved past … and the whole world predated [her] existence …’ (Tinker Sachs, 2014: 113), and sometimes the stereotypes about Korean and Turkish cultures overlooked Jayoung’s and Tuba’s unique identities. We asked, ‘How can we enable students to consider the ideological implications of their own subjectivities and language choices, and assist them to create knowledge according to their own ideological orientation?’. In response, we discussed ways of implementing critical language awareness (CLA) perspectives and asking teachers to analyze and critique their own and students’ positionalities in the context of transnationalism (see Gebhard & Willett, 2015). CLA can make pedagogy visible, assisting teachers with teaching how and why linguistic choices relate to social and power differences in society (Hawkins & Norton, 2009). Equipped with CLA, translinguals can take control of their learning process and eliminate existing inequalities as they understand how different positions in power relations can become visible and challengeable. Living in contradictions: Privileging certain constructs and discourses of identity

In this self-study, we chose to liberate our translingual–multiliterate identities by rejecting certain labels and emphasizing others. For example, instead of addressing our students as English language learners (ELLs) or English as second language students (ESLs), we promoted the use of

88  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

translingual–multiliterate identities. Thus, we consciously erased the perceived power of ‘idealized NS’ (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018: 3). However, we also (un)consciously fell into the hegemonic practice of using border frames, which contributes to the essentialized linguistic and cultural knowledges, or dominant conceptualization of teacher identities (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018). For example, we initially had ‘TESOL’ (teaching English to speakers of other languages) in our title when we submitted the chapter proposal for this edition. Later, we decided to replace the term with ‘ELT’, hoping that the term ‘ELT’ can better reflect the ways in which we challenge the ‘fundamental premises of the TESOL discipline’ (Selvi, 2014: 573), such as of language ownership, idealized NS, language standards and monolingual teaching. Still, we, as ‘living contradictions’ (Whitehead, 2000: 93) replicated other dichotomies such as L1/L2, EFL/ ESL and bidialectal/multilingual/trilingual/bilingual. We also maintained monolingual practices since we did not engage in translanguaging in the writing of this publication. Finally, either consciously or unconsciously, some aspects of identity, including class, gender and sexuality, were not fully discussed, which all have important roles in discussions of critical praxis (Kubota & Miller, 2017). Challenging the dominant discourses in these topics would contribute to more justice in critical praxis. Implications and Conclusions

The journey of LTEs’ translingual–multiliterate identity development is not simple but can be nurtured when educators engage in critical praxis. Narratives in self-studies are powerful for creating critical praxis since they challenge the dichotomies concerning translingual–multiliterate identities and contribute to the ongoing, reflexive engagement with theory, identity and language. We need more self-studies with narratives that conceptualize teachers’ translingual–multiliterate identities in the context of globalism and ‘liminal translingual spaces’ (Canagarajah, 2018: 58), in which educators push CLTE forward beyond the dominant and deficitoriented binaries of identity (e.g. everyday English/standardized English, local/global) that are constructed by power dynamics in relation to the issues of class, race, gender, nation and religion (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018). Future research and teaching practices should ask, ‘How can teachers problematize taking culturally and linguistically liberating stances in their classrooms and research practices?’. We suggest that researchers use positioning to understand teachers’ and students’ CLA perspectives because critical approaches require a process of actively becoming aware of one’s own position in teaching and learning (Kayi-Aydar, 2019). Since language teaching demands awareness of positioning in cultural domains (KayiAydar, 2019), these teachers should become aware of the tools of CLA that can help challenge (non)privileged, (non)dominant or (dis)advantaged positionalities in classrooms and society. Questions remain as to how

Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis  89

teachers can position themselves in relation to their translingual–multiliterate histories, their own students and other teachers and researchers in the broader social and cultural educational contexts, including the political climate of classrooms and academia. We suggest that educators use and analyze semiotic resources when (de)constructing dichotomies (e.g. selfother) in transnational contexts. In addition, we should ask how we can make educators aware that their emotions matter in language teaching and research. Addressing these problems, we call for greater attention to powerful teacher voices, liberating positionalities in teaching and research (Hawkins & Norton, 2009) and culture-specific emotions in context when creating critical praxis in language teacher education (Song, 2016). Silencing diverse voices will reinforce Western cultural hegemony (Kubota & Miller, 2017). For the future, the sharing of our lived experiences and autobiographies, as well as engaging in academic conversations with each other as mentors–mentees, will continue to complicate our identities of race, gender, class and language. Our narratives will help further deconstruct how we shape our identities as pedagogies and how we encourage each other and our students to engage in self-reflection through autobiographies, identity text, self-studies and stories to understand the ways in which we participate in, raise consciousness and challenge the issues of critical praxis in ELT. We suggest that all educators use their narratives about translingual–multiliterate identities and identity texts as a form of inquiry and as a research instrument when they make sense of their lives, curriculum practices and research. Finally, instead of promoting the notion of language teacher reflection, we highlight the importance of collective and concrete action, such as writing collaborative self-studies for translingualism, which can transform disadvantageous discourses about language learners and teachers. Do our self-reflections truly matter unless we develop translingual–multiliterate identities as actions for critical praxis? Note (1) Here, we draw upon Yazan and Rudolph’s (2018: 10) conceptualization of ‘criticality’, which requires that critical scholars apprehend, problematize, address, move beyond inequality and ‘attend to the ever-emergent complexity of identity’ that is connected to questions of gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity, culture, identity, politics, ideology, discourse and positionality.

References Angay-Crowder, T. (2015) Arts in Turkey and need for multimodally-oriented curriculum based on lived experiences. Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the Arts 2 (1), 90–123, article accessed 16 March 2021. http://ed-ubiquity.gsu.edu/wordpress/angay-crowder-2-1/

90  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Bullough, R. and Pinnegar, S. (2001) Guidelines for quality in autobiographical forms of self-study research. Educational Researcher 30 (3), 13–21, doi:10.3102/ 0013189x030003013. Canagarajah, S. (2018) Transnationalism and translingualism: How they are connected. In X. You (ed.) Transnational Writing Education: Theory, History, and Practice (pp. 57–76). New York, NY: Routledge. Choi, J. (2014) A beginning professor’s linguistic and teaching identity. In G. Tinker Sachs and G. Verma (eds) Critical Mass in the Teacher Education Academy: Symbiosis and Diversity (pp. 87–97). Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing. Choi, J. (2018) Raising children as multilinguals in the U.S. context: Perspectives from a parent and educator. Multicultural Perspectives 20 (4), 247–252, doi:10.1080/152109 60.2018.1527157. Choi, J. and Yi, Y. (2016) Teachers’ integration of multimodality into classroom practices for English language learners. TESOL Journal 7 (2), 304–327. Cobb, M., Fox, D.L., Many, J.E., Matthews, M.W., McGrail, E., Tinker Sachs, G. and Wang, Y. (2006) Mentoring in literacy education: A commentary from graduate students, untenured professors, and tenured professors. Mentoring & Tutoring 14 (4), 371–387. Cochran-Smith, M. and Lytle, S.L. (2009) Inquiry as Stance: Practitioner Research for the Next Generation. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Cummins, J., Hu, S., Markus, P. and Kristiina Montero, M. (2015) Identity texts and academic achievement. TESOL Quarterly 49 (3), 555–581. Gagné, A., Schmidt, C. and Markus, P. (2017) Teaching about refugees: Developing culturally responsive educators in contexts of politicised transnationalism. Intercultural Education 28 (5), 429–446. García, O. and Li, W. (2014) Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gebhard, M. and Willett, J. (2015) Translingual context zones: Critical reconceptualizing of teachers’ work within the context of globalism. Linguistics and Education 32, 98–106. Hawkins, M. and Norton, B. (2009) Critical language teacher education. In A. Burns and J. Richards (eds) The Cambridge Guide to Second Language Teacher Education (pp. 30–39). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ishihara, N. and Menard-Warwick, J. (2018) In “sociocultural in-betweenness”: Exploring teachers’ translingual identity development through narratives. Multilingua 37 (3), 255–274, doi: 10.1515/multi-2016-0086. Jain, R. (2014) Global Englishes, translinguistic identities, and translingual practices in a community college ESL classroom: A practitioner researcher reports. TESOL Journal 5 (3), 490–522, doi:10.1002/tesj.155. Kayı-Aydar, H. (2019) Positioning Theory in Applied Linguistics: Research Design and Applications. Cham: Springer. Kubota, R. and Miller, E.R. (2017) Re-examining and re-envisioning criticality in language studies: Theories and praxis. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 14 (2–3), 129–157, doi: 10.1080/15427587.2017.1290500. LaBoskey, V.K. (2004) The methodology of self-study and its theoretical underpinnings. In J.J. Loughran, M.L. Hamilton, V.K. LaBoskey and T. Russell (eds) International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (Vol. 1, pp. 817–869). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lin, A., Grant, R., Kubota, R., Motha, S., Tinker Sachs, G., Vandrick, S. and Wong, S. (2004) Women faculty of color in TESOL: Theorizing our lived experiences. TESOL Quarterly 38 (3), 487–504. Loughran, J. (2007) Researching teacher education practices: Responding to the challenges, demands, and expectations of self-study. Journal of Teacher Education 58 (1), 12–20.

Three ELT Transnational Practitioners’ Identities and Critical Praxis  91

Menard-Warwick, J. (2008) The cultural and intercultural identities of transnational English teachers: Two case studies from the Americas. TESOL Quarterly 42 (4), 617–640. Morgan, B. (2004) Teacher identity as pedagogy: Towards a field-internal conceptualization in bilingual and second language education. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 7 (2–3), 172–188, doi:10.1080/13670050408667807. Motha, S., Jain, R. and Tecle, T. (2012) Translinguistic identity-as-pedagogy: Implications for language teacher education. International Journal of Innovation in English Language Teaching 1 (1), 13–28. New London Group (1996) A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66 (1), 60–92. Park, G. (2017) Narratives of East Asian Women Teachers of English: Where Privilege Meets Marginalization. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Selvi, A.F. (2014) Myths and misconceptions about nonnative English speakers in the TESOL (NNEST) movement. TESOL Journal 5 (3), 573–611, doi.org/10.1002/ tesj.158. Selvi, A.F. and Martin-Beltrán, M. (2016) Teacher-learners’ engagement in the reconceptualization of second language acquisition knowledge through inquiry. System 63, 28–39. Song, J. (2016) Emotions and language teacher identity: Conflicts, vulnerability, and transformation. TESOL Quarterly 50 (3), 631–654. Tinker Sachs, G. (2014) Essentialism and respecting the other. In G. Tinker Sachs and G. Verma (eds) Critical Mass in the Teacher Education Academy: Symbiosis and Diversity (pp. 111–129). Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing. Tinker Sachs, G., Fisher, T. and Cannon, J. (2011) Collaboration, mentoring and coteaching in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education for Sustainability 13 (2), 70–86, doi: 10.2478/v10099-011-0015-z. Waller, L., Wethers, K. and De Costa, P.I. (2017) A critical praxis: Narrowing the gap between identity, theory, and practice. TESOL Journal 8 (1), 4–27. Whitehead, J. (2000) How do I improve my practice? Creating and legitimating an epistemology of practice. Reflective Practice 1 (1), 91–104. Yang, J. (2014) The development of intercultural awareness in transnational experience: An autoethnographic inquiry of an international ESL teacher. International Journal of Adult, Community & Professional Learning 20 (4), 13–23. Yazan, B. and Rudolph, N. (2018) Introduction: Apprehending, identity, experience, and (in)equity through and beyond binaries. In B. Yazan and N. Rudolph (eds) Criticality, Teacher Identity, and (In)equity in English Language Teaching (pp. 1–19). Dordrecht: Springer. Yi, Y. and Angay-Crowder, T. (2016) Multimodal practices for ESOL teacher education in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 50 (4), 988–998.

6 Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging: A Collective Self-Study Christina Ponzio, Elizabeth Robinson, Laura M. Kennedy, Abraham Ceballos, Zhongfeng Tian, Elie Crief and Maíra Lins Prado

I feel at home everywhere I go, but I cannot stay. I am seen as a foreigner, or an outsider. It is not until you have a work visa or the sponsorship to stay that you tie yourself to that place. Home goes beyond place. Home, for me, has to be a concept that allows for more than one physical space. Rather than not thinking about place, I think about place even more, in new ways, and with new forms, and new interactions. For many people, land and their space, and their ancestral space are very, very, important. We are the people who are colonizing other peoples’ lands and stealing them. I feel guilty to feel home. I am benefitting from the gentrification that happened before. I cannot stay. The ability to be able to build community and then claim that you are part of that community reflects privilege. It’s a continuous process, resignifying home. Our group is a home. We have a supportive, safe emotional comfort. It is about community and trust. We’re willing to step out of our comfort zones and interrogate ourselves to become a better person during this process. We have multiple conflicted voices that can co-exist in the same space. We are willing to be vulnerable in this space.

92

Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging  93

The more I become comfortable in my own skin and believe in my own sense of self-worth, the more at home I feel. We are not talking about the past. We are living in the present and for better future possibilities. Home is not where we sleep, but where we stand. A space felt, not seen. A space within, not amid. A heteroglossic, multi-voiced reflection on home by Maíra, Abe, Laura, Elie, Christina, Elizabeth and Zhongfeng1

The home that we have had the privilege to construct exists in a virtual space where we discuss, explore, theorize, research and challenge our experiences juntos2 /together (García et al., 2017). Our collaboration as seven transnational teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) practitioners – students, teachers, teacher educators and researchers – grew out of our shared interest in translanguaging in TESOL. While we trace the history of our community in greater detail later, the short version of the story is as follows. In the 2017–2018 academic year, some of us from institutions in Massachusetts (Elizabeth and Zhongfeng) and in Michigan (Christina) found ourselves presenting in the same session at an academic conference. We were excited by the similarities in our work and the challenges we face. We also identified a shared commitment to social justice within teaching English. We wanted to talk further. Given that we worked and lived in different states, we began meeting in May 2018 through the online conferencing platform Zoom. In September 2018, our group grew to our current seven members as Abe, Elie, Laura and Maíra were invited to join. We have named our home Transnetworking for TESOL Teachers (TTT). Together, we have written this chapter to explore how we have adopted and adapted the framework of translanguaging to (1) create an inclusive inquiry community, (2) examine our own identity constructions as well as language and teaching/learning practices and (3) disrupt pervasive monolingual ideology and challenge power dynamics for ourselves and society more broadly (De Costa & Norton, 2017). To do this, we took a collective self-study approach (Davey & Ham, 2009; Gallagher et al., 2011; Lighthall, 2004). Theoretical Framework

We define translanguaging as a ‘practical theory of language’ (Li, 2017: 3), referring to the dynamic and fluid meaning-making (i.e. linguistic, semiotic, embodied) practices of multilingual speakers (García & Li, 2014; Otheguy et al., 2015). We are drawn to translanguaging as a theory of language because it blurs the perceived boundaries between sociallyconstructed named languages and offers transformative possibilities with respect to leveling linguistic hierarchies and uprooting monolingual ideologies (García & Otheguy, 2019; Poza, 2017). Likewise, we define

94  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

translanguaging as a pedagogy of language that amplifies the creative and critical capacity of multilingual learners, who leverage their full linguistic and semiotic repertoires to negotiate meaning within communicative contexts (García et al., 2017). In reflecting on the development of our online community, we were profoundly influenced by Canagarajah’s (2013) discussion of ‘contact zones’ within translingual contexts. The notion of contact zones emphasizes the ‘linguistics of contact’ in ‘social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other’ (Pratt, 1991: 29). Rather than focusing on the ‘linguistics of community’ where a community employs a static set of communicative practices, our opportunities for contact catalyze the development of a shared repertoire of communicative resources. Therefore, when people from diverse language communities are brought together, such as our inquiry group, they often co-construct new meaning-making practices in order to interact across language boundaries. Certainly, contact zones can be conflictual spaces, but they also create authentic contexts and purposes for people to construct new language identities and adapt language practices to negotiate meaning with others. As a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) brought together by our common interest in translanguaging across landscapes of practices (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2015), our inquiry group functions as a contact zone where we have developed both a shared purpose and communicative repertoire to advance our inquiry into translanguaging. We also draw upon Canagarajah’s (2013) description of translingual awareness to refer to our capacity (1) to see through the socially-­ constructed boundaries around language and (2) to instead perceive the possibilities to fluidly co-construct meaning across linguistic and semiotic resources. As a part of this awareness, individual speakers demonstrate a ‘cooperative disposition’ (see Table 6.1) to negotiate meaning within an everyday communicative context (Canagarajah, 2013: 180–181). Through our shared negotiation of meaning, as individual speakers we develop ‘synergy’ and ‘serendipity’. The former term, used by Canagarajah (2013: Table 6.1  Canagarajah’s (2013) cooperative disposition of translingual speakers Domain

Features

Language awareness

• Language norms as open to negotiation • Languages as mobile semiotic resources • A functional orientation to communication and meaning

Social values

• An openness to diversity • A sense of voice and locus of enunciation • A strong ethic of collaboration

Learning strategies

• Learning from practice • Adaptive skills • Use of scaffolding

Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging  95

41), refers to the effort each of us puts forth to communicate and the latter refers to our acceptance of each other on their own terms and our openness to the unexpected emerging communication. Even when lingua franca English is the shared resource in a translingual contact zone, we center on our shared practice rather than grammatical norms or common identities. Methods

As language learners, speakers, teachers and teacher educators, we came together as a community eager to examine our experiences both personally and professionally with translanguaging practices. We wanted to explore the gaps that existed between the theory and our practice, between the vision and our reality. The focus of self-study on the critical examination of one’s own practice guided our approach to both data generation and analysis. We used collective self-study (Davey & Ham, 2009; Gallagher et al., 2011; Lighthall, 2004) and self-study of language and literacy teacher education (Peercy, 2014; Samaras, 2010; Sharkey & Peercy, 2018) as the guiding methodological frameworks to examine our linguistic identity constructions as well as our language teaching and learning practices in hopes of disrupting monolingual ideologies and challenging linguistic power dynamics. Unlike (duo)autoethnography, which describes studies of the self situated in broader cultural contexts, self-study lends itself to analysis at a smaller grain size, often with a particular problem of practice and situated context in mind (Hamilton et al., 2008). We were drawn to self-studying methodologies because collaboration is one of the defining characteristics of self-study (Lighthall, 2004). Together, members of selfstudy communities of practice (Kitchen & Ciuffetelli Parker, 2009) assume ‘a pedagogical responsibility to continuously monitor [their] progress; to check for discrepancies between [their] ideals and [their] practice’ (LaBoskey, 2004: 839). However, we have chosen to describe our approach as collective self-study, rather than collaborative self-study, because our data and analysis are a collection of our thoughts, experiences and learning. We view ourselves not as a collaboration of seven individuals, but as a collective community. Tracing our Community’s History

Zhongfeng and Elizabeth first connected in January 2017 when Zhongfeng reached out to find possible collaborators doing work in TESOL teacher education in the Boston area. Their collaboration grew to include Elie, an undergraduate in Elizabeth’s class and also her research assistant, and Maíra, who had recently moved to the Boston area and was interested in enrolling in Elizabeth’s class. Together, the four of them

96  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

began collaboratively exploring the process of transforming a TESOL certificate that had been designed from a sheltered English instruction (SEI) approach into a translanguaging-based TESOL certificate. In East Lansing, Christina and Abe met in August 2016 when they were assigned to be co-instructors for a TESOL practicum course offered to undergraduates at Michigan State University; translanguaging had been introduced into the curriculum by the supervising professor that year. Two years later, Christina would teach that same course with Laura. In the interim, Christina and Zhongfeng were introduced to each other by a common colleague, which led to Christina joining a symposium that Zhongfeng had organized for the American Education Research Association’s annual conference in April 2017. However, it was not until Christina bumped into Elizabeth and Zhongfeng at a roundtable session at the conference that the three of them began discussing their shared interest in translanguaging. Later that summer, they met to discuss how they could support each other in the development of their respective undergraduate courses, where translanguaging pedagogy played a central role. The self-study group grew from that initial discussion (see Figure 6.1) and eventually Elizabeth and Zhongfeng introduced Elie and Maíra to Christina, while Christina invited Abe and Laura to join the group.

Figure 6.1  Tracing our community’s history

Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging  97

Data Generation and Analysis

Using Zoom and a shared Google Drive folder, the group began to meet twice a month to explore translanguaging, an inquiry that led to further investigation into our individual backgrounds and contexts, language repertoires and translanguaging practices. This virtual space was our primary contact zone (Pratt, 1991), where we were able to blur the lines around what it means to form a linguistic community (Canagarajah, 2013). As Zhongfeng explained, ‘During this process, we inform each other, and we treat each other as knowledgeable resources. We push forward, we push each other’s thinking. I think it’s more than exploratory to me. It’s also critical; it is also liminal’ (19 November 2018). Figure 6.2 is a screenshot of us, engaging in one of more than a dozen meetings throughout that first year of collaboration. In the first year of our collaboration, we met 12 times in as many months, each meeting running for between one and two hours. Using constant comparative methods (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), we identified emerging themes in our conversations. To explore our identities as well as our triumphs and challenges in taking up translanguaging pedagogy in our teaching practices, we examined the transcripts and meeting notes, our reflective analytic memos and artifacts that included syllabi, lesson plans and course assignments. However, in this chapter, we focus specifically on the transcription data from our first year of collaboration. Table 6.2 provides an overview of our coding scheme as well as data exemplars for each code. It is important to note that all transcripts were analyzed by two or, in some cases, three or more members of our community.

Figure 6.2  Members of the TTT group during an online meeting

98  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Table 6.2  Coding scheme and data exemplars Coding Stage

Codes

Data Exemplars

Deductive coding

Creating community

It’s really interesting to see how our space evolved because originally, we came together just to say, ‘Okay, let’s share our different experiences’. That’s kind of our original purpose [. . .] During this process, [. . . ], and we treat each other as knowledgeable resource. (Zhongfeng, 19 November 2018)

Examining practices

I was in a Spanish class in college right after returning from Kenya where I was learning Swahili and 1 was getting the two languages mixed up in my writing speaking. I was growing increasingly frustrated with folks not understanding and being patient as I was sorting out languages. (Laura, 8 February 2019)

Disrupting monolingual ideologies

It’s kind of empowering that you have your own culture and how beautiful it is, but it’s also confusing. I don’t know. [. . . ] I like when people are reminding themselves, ‘Why are you using the English words? You live here and you have a very good word for this’. (Maíra, 12 October 2018)

Interrogating ‘practitioner’

I think this idea around practitioners . . . but like this idea that we’re pushing on the boundaries of what a practitioner who does translanguaging, who does research? (Elizabeth, 19 November 2018)

Crafting our story

This connects to Laura’s suggestion about a possible structure. Perhaps this conversation space or this multi-voiced whatever this is, is part of how we’re thinking about opening up that space. (Christina, 19 November 2019)

Exploring ‘home’

I don’t want to stay in the same place all the time. But I’m like, I will always feel like I was a colonizer. I think it’s a privilege because of colonization [. . .] My passport was stronger, or I’m intruding in certain people’s place or benefiting from the gentrification that happened before.  Al1 the stuff like that, so I always feel guilty. (Elie, 18 March 2019)

Finding translanguaging

So that’s the reason why I like this concept because it’s not me against all this body of literature or all this body of research. [. . .] I have my voice, even though it’s not published, or it’s not codified. (Abe, 22 February 2019)

Open coding

Selective coding

While a discussion of any one of the following findings could be the sole focus of its own chapter, we want to take this opportunity – our first publication as a self-study community of practice – to briefly address each of the three most salient themes of our work to date: how our collaboration has (1) grown into an inclusive inquiry community, (2) supported us in examining our language practices, identity constructions and teachinglearning practices and (3) allowed us to begin disrupting a pervasive monolingual ideology and challenging power dynamics.

Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging  99

Findings Creating an inclusive inquiry community

Brought together by our shared interest in translanguaging, our group quickly developed into an inclusive inquiry community. Our shared virtual meeting space has essentially served as a contact zone (Pratt, 1991); through Zoom, we have been able to meet across physical space, connecting people who are in Massachusetts (Elie, Elizabeth, Maíra and Zhongfeng) and Michigan (Abe, Christina and Laura). Members within the group have also brought their experiences from previous contexts as well as their rich and diverse linguistic repertoires. As a result, our shared online space has made possible the ‘multilateral flow of people, things, and ideas across borders’ and ‘made more visible mixed forms of community and language’ (Canagarajah, 2013: 25). More specifically, as we have interacted in the group, we have explicitly examined and shared our respective language identities and practices, a point that we will return to later. During a meeting in the fall of 2018, we discussed how our online space allowed us to compare and contrast across our contexts, experiences and identities: Elizabeth: [T]ranslanguaging is … you know, the thing that joins us, but then within this space, we’ve found this contact zone to work on our identities as practitioners. It’s one thing to work individually within your context to try to shift [larger systems of power], but then to do this imperative work that only can happen, really, in this liminal contact zone, which is our translanguaging group. So we can sort of see what other people are doing. That really opens up the spaces for us, you know, that we wouldn’t have without that, without our Zoom group. (19 November 2018)

In response, Christina connected Elizabeth’s point to the construct of contact zones: Christina: There’s something about these contact zones that [is] fostering our engagement with … potentially with our engagement of our translingual selves … the compare and contrast [helps] us to see what’s possible that we might not be able to see if we were only doing this ourselves in our own respective contexts. (19 November 2018)

As highlighted in Elizabeth and Christina’s exchange, the online group has created a social space where members and their linguistic and cultural practices could bump up against each other through interaction. In other words, when juxtaposed together, our group demonstrated greater openness

100  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

to each others’ diverse positionalities and meaning-making practices, actively seeking to understand and affirm each others’ backgrounds and experiences as we illustrate below. As a contact zone, our online group has also blurred the lines around ‘linguistics of community’ and illuminated the ‘linguistics of contact’ through our shared meaning-making (Canagarajah, 2013). More specifically, through our interaction, we have demonstrated the ‘cooperative disposition’ associated with translingual awareness. For instance, in our meeting on 22 February 2019, Abe introduced the Spanish term ‘lírico’ to describe his evolving language identity since moving to the USA from Mexico over ten years ago; he explained that the term might translate to ‘lyric’ or ‘lyrical’ in English, but was unsure. When Elizabeth interjected to share that she had looked the term up on Google Translate, the two began co-constructing a shared understanding of the term: Abe: Oh, okay. Okay. So what does it say? Elizabeth: (Laughs) I think it said lyrically or to put to song or something like that Abe: Okay. So what do you understand in English when you think about that word? Elizabeth: I under – I understood it as lyrically, but more like as a sense of musicality Abe: Oh ok, so it’s like musicality. It’s related to that. But I think this is like a, so like, it took a new meaning – So like growing up, [lírico] had a like slightly different meaning. And so I’ll try to explain that and see how, show you how that connects to something I’m trying to write

While English served as the shared resource in Abe and Elizabeth’s exchange, through their interaction, Abe described how he employed lírico according to his respective cultural values and identity to construct a shared meaning of the term. As Abe continued, he explained how the term is used in his context in Mérida, Mexico, to distinguish between músico profesional and músico lírico, where the former is classically trained in the theory of music and the latter has learned by doing. Both Abe and Elizabeth demonstrated a negotiation of meaning together, reflecting the ‘synergy’ and ‘serendipity’ that Canagarajah (2013: 41) uses to describe individual speakers’ acceptance of the other on his or her own terms and openness to the unexpected emerging in communication. As a result, Abe was able to share a vulnerable part of his language identity and experience, namely the uncertainty he felt about his use of English in professional interactions as a graduate student and the courage it took: Abe: I always felt like there was the sense of ‘I’m missing some language here. I’m missing some, some of the language

Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging  101

that people use to talk about all sorts of things like research, teaching or service or all the things that people do in academia’. So having that feeling and in the back of … and the same time, having the courage to go and do it, even though I was missing the language. So I, I felt like every time I was doing, like, I was teaching as a lírico, right, as someone who is trying to pay attention to the people, to the interactions and being aware that there is, there’s some language that you are missing but doing it anyways. (22 February 2019)

The term lírico has not only proven generative for Abe, but also opened up possibilities for our group as we blurred the boundaries of our respective named language practices to instead consider our own fluidity, or líricamente, of language. Examining our identity constructions and language, teaching and learning practices

Within our TTT group, we have interrogated our experiences as language learners, practitioners and teacher educators. We have also examined our transnational and translingual identities (Canagarajah, 2013), noting the fluidity and evolution of these constructs over time. Here we highlight the voices of each team member to illustrate and unpack the heterogeneity in our language identities and practices. Our group formed with the explicit intention of exploring translanguaging as theory and as pedagogy; the openness of the theory allowed us space to make meaning of various components of ourselves and our practices as related to translanguaging. We found the positive affirmation of multilingual identities to be a relevant and important result of exploring translanguaging, especially for members of our group who hold multilingual and transnational identities. For instance, Elie shared the following. Elie: I was learning as a student about translanguaging, and I didn’t know anything about it. And I didn’t know much linguistics, education, and language. So, it challenged me and I learned a lot about how to see myself. So, I’m a little bit better with confidence and language. But I still see myself as an emergent bilingual. (18 March 2019)

Elie’s introduction to translanguaging provided him with new knowledge and ways of understanding. His learning challenged some of his ideas and feelings about his own language use and provided him with more confidence. Similarly, Zhongfeng reflected on the relationship between his identity and translanguaging.

102  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Zhongfeng: [L]earning translanguaging, I think, it just affirms my identity … People see language mixing as a natural practice and as sophisticated, creative, critical use of different language features from their repertoire. When I learned translanguaging, I just feel like, yes, this is … finally I found the theory that really resonates with me, that speaks to my experience, my identity. (22 February 2019)

Zhongfeng’s language experiences with Mandarin, Cantonese and English are legitimized by the theory of translanguaging. Instead of a deficit view focusing on the lack of English, the evolving and shaping of one’s language repertoire is seen as positive and augmenting. Language mixing is seen as a creative, critical, conscious, active and involved process. This narrative of linguistic practices affirms how Zhongfeng identifies himself, and the same was true for Maíra: Maíra: I cried when I finished it [the Flores and Aneja (2017) article] because (laughs) it got me so involved, and I realized so many things that I thought about myself and of my teaching while I was doing that. I started teaching when I was 17 and I was always questioned […] And so we are not kind to ourselves as teachers and as students and as English speakers. (12 October 2018)

Maíra’s response highlights the transformative possibilities (Poza, 2017) of translanguaging. It was emotional for her to realize that she had been evaluating herself through the lens of English supremacy. Adopting a kinder, more affirming lens, and shifting from a deficit to a resource point of view brought Maíra to tears; it also impacted the way Elizabeth came to view her work. Elizabeth: ESL was no longer a home for me … I didn’t feel like I was doing justice work in ESL. I felt like I was just preparing people to teach people English and that didn’t feel good anymore. So this notion that accepting people and what they bring in their languages and their cultures was part of translanguaging, that really resonated with the dissatisfaction I was feeling with English as a second language. (18 March 2019)

For the TTT members whose home language was English (i.e. Elizabeth, Christina and Laura), it was important to challenge monolingualism both within their own identities and also as it played out in their teaching and learning practices. As Christina shared: Christina: I see myself as having a responsibility to, one, broaden my perspective of the affordances that non-native English speaking teachers and pre-service teachers bring, and

Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging  103

lifting that up because in doing so, I’m also thinking of how I lift up or amplify the voices of my non-native Englishspeaking students. And so that requires examination of the privilege that I have as a monolingual English teacher and teacher educator. (12 October 2018)

Christina understands her privileged position as a monolingual English teacher in the US context. A fixation with native speakerism is allied to English language hegemony and permeates the fields of education and teacher education, allowing monolingualism to be seen as a privilege. Monolingualism of no language other than English is seen through the same lens. Christina sees her role as a teacher educator as coming with a responsibility to promote the abilities of multilingual (pre-service) teachers. This thought is echoed in Abe’s reflection on his practices as a multilingual and transnational teacher-educator as well. Abe: Because they [students] are also interested in teaching language, they not only appreciate your perspective, but they need to see you doing those things, like working through stuff, because you are showing the example of, ok, this is how from an – I’m living in language, I’m aware of the language that is happening at every single point of this lesson, and they need to see that. (25 October 2018)

Abe’s teaching and modeling of ‘living in language’ is an example of the work that Christina wants to lift up and amplify in her classes. Admittedly no one in our group is a translanguaging expert; instead we share our process of exploration in ways that we believe are consistent with a translanguaging approach to learning. As Laura explains of her own journey: Laura: I was already halfway through my PhD before I came into translanguaging, and I just remember that it made a lot of sense, in that I wish that’s how I had been learning languages … And I don’t know that I’ve ever been a student in a language classroom that encouraged translanguaging, which means so when my students asked me, ‘Well, what does this look like in a classroom?’ I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced it. And so I think that’s what draws me to it still. So this like mystery, what is this? What could … What could this be? And I love thinking about that. (18 March 2019)

Laura beautifully demonstrates the openness, honesty and shared sense of wonder that we have co-constructed in our TTT group. These are our linguistics of contact (Pratt, 1991), our shared repertoire of linguistic

104  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

resources that we use not only to communicate but also to reflect on ourselves and our practices. Our collective goal has been and continues to be to open ourselves up to the mystery and possibilities of translanguaging. Disrupting pervasive monolingual ideology and challenging power dynamics

More broadly, our collaboration has reinforced our capacity to challenge traditional (false) dichotomies in TESOL (e.g. native/non-native, researcher/practitioner) and the underlying power dynamics of monolingualism through a translanguaging lens (Jain, 2013; Lee & Canagarajah, 2019a; Yazan & Rudolph, 2018). We have worked to collectively envision a more critical and socially-just way forward in our practices as TESOL teachers, teacher candidates and learners. Our conversations can be interpreted by looking at both the content and the context. If one starts with the context, exploring how the conversations came to take place, a pattern of synergy and serendipity begins to emerge. The content of the conversations tackles experiences in broader professional contexts as well in the specific work of TESOL educators. Together, we tease out meanings around the notion of monolingualism. On the one hand, members of the TTT research group who spoke languages other than English shared their experiences of feeling the pressures of monolingual environments in their various professional contexts, while members who considered themselves to be monolingual speakers of English explored their roles as TESOL educators in such contexts. The tone is key in how these conversations unfolded. While some members were prompted to analyze their own roles in a monolingual society, the conversations did not turn into a session of ‘scolding’, ‘shaming’ or ‘blaming’ the other. It was not about people complaining or accusing – it was a conversation in which TTT members understood that they were navigating structures larger than themselves. Thus, these conversations lent themselves to fruitful insights. To illustrate what we mean, consider our meeting in November 2018. Zhongfeng captured this ethos of respect in the following way. Zhongfeng: I think our group is a good demonstration of [how] we [are] trying to disrupt the power dynamics, because we are in different stages in our academics and careers. So we, you know, and we just really respect for each other’s opinions and value each other’s perspectives in this virtual space. (8 November 2018)

An ethos of respect has proven to be necessary because conversations of this kind can often turn personal and, if not handled professionally, they can pull people apart.

Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging  105

Not only were we aware of the dominance of English in our conversations, we also explored the dominance of English in our contexts. As an example of this, we turn to our conversation in October 2018, stemming from an observation Zhongfeng shared with the TTT group about TESOL students in China: Zhongfeng: And in terms of the reality that the marketing, you know, the TESOL profession marketing. You always see job requirements, like, native speakers preferred. Always this. No matter how hard we push against this monolingualism. Always you can see one of the job requirements is, ‘Ok, so native English speaker preferred. And this kind of always put us in, you know, I don’t know, put us in a less competitive position’. (12 October 2018)

Zhongfeng’s comments moved Maíra to share what she referred to as a ‘mutt complex’, a term coined by the Brazilian writer and playwright Nelson Rodrigues to refer to a kind of inferiority that Brazilians tend to experience in comparison to the rest of the world. As Maíra explains in her own words: Maíra: [A] general feeling, like we’re not good enough as a nationality, like Brazilians are not as good, we wished we lived somewhere else … and we make fun of ourselves with our accents. If you know just a little English, you already look down upon people who know a little less. (12 October 2018)

Elizabeth responded with an introspective look at her own perspectives. She used the image of a mirror to describe how the interaction with Maíra served as a ‘check’ on her position. Elizabeth explained how her interactions with other members of the group have enhanced her awareness of monolingual ideologies. Elizabeth saw her own actions and perspectives as language educators through the actions and perspectives of the group’s multilingual educators, stating: Elizabeth: I mean, as monolingual people, and I know that I’m problematizing that and understanding that that’s not necessarily who I am, but so much of that thinking goes into my teaching. Like, I think also it’s so amazing to have people who are coming at this with much broader linguistic backgrounds than I have to sort be our accountability check, to be our partners. So thank you, Abe and Maíra, and you know, cuz I think that that’s really hard to have to play that role (laughs) and saying, ‘Oh, that was a really monolingual thing for you to say’, (laughs) but just to help us and to push on those perspectives that we might still be trying to work through. (25 October 2018)

106  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Christina then continued the line of reasoning Elizabeth started and elaborated on the implications for her role as a teacher educator in affirming bilingual prospective TESOL educators. Christina: There are less [educators] who would consider themselves being bilingual than there are monolingual English, at least in the US. And we also know that having educators who are bilingual … those educators who are bilingual have more asset-based orientations toward their learners. And so I guess what I’m getting at is when I think about our teacher preparation programs, if we really are committed to this work, part of it means ensuring that people who are bilingual feel like our TESOL teacher preparation programs are spaces that they can enter and be affirmed and feel successful. (25 October 2018)

Christina posed a question that would lead the group into a discussion of paradoxical situations in TESOL. She wondered, ‘What does that mean for me, in doing the work, to ensure that I am not marginalizing them?’ Drawing from Flores and Aneja (2017), Zhongfeng’s reply reflected on a paradox that addressed this question, responding: Zhongfeng: And I think that one paradox right now in TESOL programs, especially master’s programs, like, they recruit lots of students internationally, around the world. I don’t know, this is the case at least at [Boston University], when I was a TESOL master’s student, actually the majority are from China, you know. The majority are not monolingual English speakers, but the paradox, the problem is, they don’t create that space for us, like, to interrogate the monolingual ideologies. That’s why after graduation, lots of us, like I mentioned last time, we ended up finding jobs teaching Chinese, not teaching English necessarily. (25 October 2018)

From there, Abe related his experience wondering about how to create a space for students intending to teach abroad. Abe expressed his goal of making explicit in his courses that many of his students can and will go abroad to teach English from a place of privilege. Abe: … especially for the ones who are going abroad and they’re going to teach English, to help them think that … from a space of privilege or from a place of dominance, right? Because of the things that their language, country, affords them and perceptions and ideologies, that’s the reason why they can do a lot of those things and it doesn’t mean it’s evil that they go and do that, but for me, they need to interrogate that. (25 October 2018)

Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging  107

Based on those conversations, we have identified several opportunities for the work of disrupting monolingual ideologies highlighted by the experiences of the TTT group. One is the role that instructors play in opening spaces to question monolingual ideologies. Another opportunity is challenging the roles we play in marginalizing multilingual speakers. In particular, teacher educators need to be aware that some students, as Maíra highlighted, have internalized what she called a mutt complex and thus arrive in TESOL programs feeling the need to keep a low profile of their linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The paradoxical nature of translanguaging in TESOL education points at the challenge monolingual ideologies represent for students from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds. At the same time, it reveals opportunities to open space where students and instructors can challenge such ideologies. Discussion and Implications

Translanguaging is what brought us together. We had already accepted it as a theory, we were already excited by its possibilities and we were interested in using it in our teaching and learning practices. Our interaction within the TTT group allowed for self and group exploration. We originally believed that the best way to realize our goal of envisioning a more critical and socially-just way forward was to develop our translanguaging stance (García et al., 2017). A translanguaging practitioner’s stance, or underlying philosophical or ideological system, is described by García et al. (2017: 50), with the word juntos/together. This stance of working juntos reflects three core beliefs about joint construction: • recognizing that students’ language and cultural practices ‘work juntos and enrich each other’ • that students’ families and communities are resources to be leveraged for learning • the understanding and creation of a classroom as ‘a democratic space where teachers and students juntos co-create knowledge, challenge traditional hierarchies, and work toward a more just society’. Our team has worked to adopt this juntos stance not only within our classroom practices but also within our practices as a TTT group. Our first finding demonstrated the ways that we created an inclusive research community juntos. We did this by creating a contact zone in which everyone’s cultural and language practices were resources leveraged for our learning juntos. We collectively decided what activities we would engage in during our meetings. Sharing memos, reflections on readings and our multimodal linguistic autobiographies allowed us to learn about, and learn from, each other’s cultural and linguistic resources. Our second finding helped us realize our need to further develop the cooperative dispositions as translingual speakers described in our

108  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

framework (see Table 6.1) that includes an openness to diversity and collaboration as well as a set of practices to negotiate meaning (Canagarajah, 2013). Our exploration of our own language practices, identity constructions and teaching–learning practices led us to interrogate our openness to language plurality. Especially for the three group members who referred to themselves as monolinguals, interrogating their use of this label in relationship to their actual linguistic practices and complex linguistic r­epertoires moved their dispositions. With the support and insight of the transnational, multilingual members of TTT, our group recognized the importance of countering monolingual dispositions. In fact, we believe the development of a translingual disposition, theorized by Canagarajah (2013) and elaborated elsewhere (Lee & Jenks, 2016; Lee & Canagarajah, 2019a, 2019b), is a fundamental component of constructing a translanguaging stance. As described by Canagarajah (2013: 179), this ‘cooperative disposition’ refers to the open humility exhibited by translingual speakers, whose language awareness, social values, and communicative strategies reflect a willingness to negotiate diversity and co-construct meaning with others (Lee & Canagarajah, 2019a, 2019b). In our group, as in our classrooms, one way of developing a translingual disposition begins with challenging the notions of named languages and bringing into focus the harm brought about by perpetuating English supremacy through unchecked monolingualism. An understanding that grew from our work together is of the interdependent relationship between translingual disposition and translanguaging stance and the ways in which the two fuel each other. While there is not space in this chapter to explore this further, we look forward to investigating this relationship in our future collaboration. It was not uncommon for our group’s discussion to highlight the interconnectedness of examining ourselves and examining dominant structures and practices. The process of self-reflection that resulted in our second finding would lead to pushing back on pervasive power structures bringing us to our third finding. Our third finding focuses on how we attempted to disrupt monolingual ideology and challenge power dynamics for ourselves and society more broadly. As Christina explained in November of 2018: ‘We’re opening up this space to look at the self, but we’re looking at the self to look back outward again’. Every exploration we entered into juntos resulted in raising our group’s awareness of dominant power dynamics. In our exploration of our TTT members’ linguistic autobiographies, we sought to understand how the preference for ‘native’ English speakers plays out not only in the USA but also internationally. In our exploration of our group members’ definitions of home, we grappled with the questions of ancestral lands, colonialism and what it means to claim a place as home. In our exploration of different classroom practices, we questioned the locus of knowledge and the consequences in academia of co-constructing knowledge against traditional US assumptions about the roles of teachers/professors.

Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging  109

Conclusion

TTT is our academic home. ‘Living’ in TTT has been transformative. We understand our transformation as being brought about by each members’ agency, which, as Haapasaari et al. (2016: 2) wrote, ‘develops the participants’ joint activity by explicating and envisioning new possibilities’. Transformative agency goes beyond the individual as it seeks possibilities for collective change efforts. We have all seen the transformative impact of TTT on our individual lives and practices. For Abe, TTT provided a space that affirmed his experiences as he explored the vulnerability he has experienced with respect to his language identity and practice and the feeling that he was ‘missing something’. His critical reflection on courageously ‘living in language’ provided a model for the whole group for sharing our personal learning processes in our classrooms and our writing. For Elie, TTT bolstered his confidence as he was able to apply translanguaging to his own emergent language. He shared his questioning of social constructions around language identity and practice, and furthered the group’s interrogation of the privilege of calling a place home. For Zhongfeng, TTT has affirmed his identity, experience and practice. He has helped us to recognize how, within our group, we have valued and respected every member and worked to challenge the hierarchies so deeply embedded in academia. For Maíra as well, TTT was a space that affirmed her experiences. The shared readings and discussions within the group provided Maíra (and others) with tools to question the hegemonic presence of English. She shared with the group her shifting view of her language practices from a deficit to a resourceoriented lens. She also transformed her perspectives on teaching to see the value of drawing on multiple languages. For Christina, TTT was a safe and generative space to explore the ‘privileges’ of monolingualism. Her probing questions helped the group explore ways to amplify the voices of all emergent bilingual students. For Laura, TTT provided a forum to explore the mysteries and complexities of teaching language. Her reflections opened up possibilities for exploring new practices in classrooms. For Elizabeth, TTT provided her with valued ‘critical friends’ willing to help check her monolingual bias. She realized that ESL was no longer her ‘home’ and that her commitment to justice was shared and intensified by the group. For all of us, TTT has served as a contact zone where we co-constructed new understandings and practices, new ways of being. Our membership in TTT has challenged us to consider how we carry what we are learning and exploring in our group into our practices as language speakers, learners, educators and researchers. We have experienced the beginnings of disrupting power dynamics in our personal lives. Our group membership has enabled us to bring that experience into this chapter to be shared with a broader audience. While we are not surprised,

110  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

we are impressed by and thankful for our newly found ways of engaging in academia. TTT is a democratic space where ‘we juntos co-create knowledge, challenge traditional hierarchies, and work toward a more just society’ (García et al., 2017: 50). We are at the beginning of the ongoing process of collective transformation. We aspire to co-create endless new possibilities for envisioning TESOL practices through translanguaging. Notes (1) The lines from this poem were taken from across the transcriptions of our group meetings, where we used ‘English’ as our shared resource to negotiate meaning. While we acknowledge that our use of English in this context may reflect its hegemonic presence as a dominant named language system, we view our use of English as a reflection of one of the shared linguistic features in our respective repertoires. Furthermore, while English was used as the linguistic resource to communicate in speaking and writing in this context, woven throughout our ‘process of knowledge construction that goes beyond language’ (Li, 2017) are our diverse personal histories and perspectives of ‘home’. (2) While APA conventions would have us italicize terms used in our writing from named languages other than English, we have chosen not to distinguish between linguistic features in this way in order to consciously resist this expectation and its underlying monolingual bias.

References Canagarajah, A.S. (2013) Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. New York, NY: Routledge. Davey, R. and Ham, V. (2009) Collective wisdom: Team-based approaches to self-study in teacher education. In C.A. Lassonde, S. Galman and C. Kosnik (eds) Self-study Research Methodologies for Teacher Educators (pp. 187–203). Rotterdam: Sense. De Costa, P.I. and Norton, B. (2017) Introduction: Identity, transdisciplinarity, and the good language teacher. The Modern Language Journal 101 (S1), 3–14. Flores, N. and Aneja, G. (2017) ‘Why needs hiding?’ Translingual (re)orientations in TESOL teacher education. Research in the Teaching of English 51 (4), 441–463. Gallagher, T., Griffin, S., Parker, D.C., Kitchen, J. and Figg, C. (2011) Establishing and sustaining teacher educator professional development in a self-study community of practice: Pre-tenure teacher educators developing professionally. Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (5), 880–890. García, O. and Otheguy, R. (2019) Plurilingualism and translanguaging: Commonalities and divergences. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 23 (1), 17–35. García, O. and Li, W. (2014) Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. London: Palgrave Macmillan. García, O., Johnson, S.I. and Seltzer, K. (2017) The Translanguaging Classroom: Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon. Haapasaari, A., Engeström, Y. and Kerosuo, H. (2016) The emergence of learners’ transformative agency in a Change Laboratory intervention. Journal of Education and Work 29 (2), 232–262. Hamilton, M.L., Smith, L. and Worthington, K. (2008) Fitting the methodology with the research: An exploration of narrative, self-study and auto-ethnography. Studying Teacher Education 4 (1), 17–28, doi:10.1080/17425960801976321.

Unpacking Identities and Envisioning TESOL Practices through Translanguaging  111

Jain, R. (2013) Practitioner research as dissertation: Exploring the continuities between practice and research in a community college ESL classroom. PhD dissertation, University of Maryland. Kitchen, J. and Ciuffetelli Parker, D. (2009) Developing self-study communities of practice. In C. Lassonde, S. Galman and C. Kosnik (eds) Self-study Research Methodologies for Teacher Educators (pp. 101–122). Rotterdam: Sense. LaBoskey, V.K. (2004) The methodology of self-study and its theoretical underpinnings. In J.J. Loughran, M.L. Hamilton, V.K. LaBoskey and T. Russell (eds) International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (pp. 817–869). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lee, E. and Canagarajah, A.S. (2019a) Beyond native and nonnative: Translingual dispositions for more inclusive teacher identity in language and literacy education. Journal of Language, Identity & Education 18 (6), 352–363. Lee, E. and Canagarajah, S. (2019b) The connection between transcultural dispositions and translingual practices in academic writing. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 14 (1), 14–28. Lee, J.W. and Jenks, C. (2016) Doing translingual dispositions. College Composition and Communication 68, 317–344. Li, W. (2017) Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics 39 (1), 9–30. Lighthall, F.F. (2004) Fundamental features and approaches of the s-step enterprise. In J.J. Loughran, M.L. Hamilton, V.K. LaBoskey and T. Russell (eds) International Handbook of Self-study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practice (pp. 193–246). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Otheguy, R., García, O. and Reid, W. (2015) Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review 6 (3), 281–307. Peercy, M.M. (2014) Challenges in enacting core practices in language teacher education: A self-study. Studying Teacher Education 10 (2), 146–162. Poza, L. (2017) Translanguaging: Definitions, implications, and further needs in burgeoning inquiry. Berkeley Review of Education 6 (2), 101–128. Pratt, M.L. (1991) Arts of the contact zone. Modern Language Association 91, 33–40. Samaras, A.P. (2010) Self-study Teacher Research: Improving Your Practice Through Collaborative Inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sharkey, J. and Peercy, M.M. (eds) (2018) Self-study of Language and Literacy Teacher Education Practices: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Contexts. Bingley: Emerald Publishing. Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. (1998) Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Wenger, E. (1998) Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger-Trayner, E. and Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015) Learning in landscapes of practice: A framework. In E. Wenger-Trayner, M. Fenton-O’Creevy, S. Hutchinson, C. Kubiak and B. Wenger-Trayner (eds) Learning in Landscapes of Practice: Boundaries, Identity, and Knowledgeability in Practice-based Learning (pp. 13–30). New York, NY: Routledge. Yazan, B. and Rudolph, N. (2018) Introduction: Apprehending identity, experience, and (in)equity through and beyond binaries. In B. Yazan and N. Rudolph (eds) Criticality, Teacher Identity, and (In)equity in English Language Teaching (pp. 1–19). New York, NY: Springer.

7 ‘My transnational experiences shape who I am and what I do’: Reflections of a Latina Transnational Teacher–Scholar Bita Bookman and Luciana C. de Oliveira

Transnational scholars contribute significantly to education as they bring various experiences and backgrounds to their work. Levitt and Jaworsky (2007: 131) describe transnationalism as a process that takes place ‘within fluid social spaces that are constantly reworked through migrants’ simultaneous embeddedness in more than one society’. Accordingly, transnationals are individuals who are embedded in a social field created by cross-border connections. The type and scope of transnational activities may vary among individuals and even across the lifespan of one individual. Some individuals may take part in ‘comprehensive’ transnational practices (i.e. participate in many cross-border activities) while some other individuals may only have ‘selective’ transnational practices (i.e. taking part in fewer activities) (Levitt et al., 2003: 570). Further, transnational connections may be of an informal nature, such as family ties, or may be formal, such as political, financial or sociocultural pursuits (Faist, 2006; Portes et al., 1999). As Boccagni (2012: 128) has argued, ‘Rather than as something out there, the transnational should be understood as a matter of situated attributes that may emerge, to different degrees and under distinct circumstances, in migrants’ lives and in migration-related social formations’. Therefore, transnationals’ cross-border connections are highly dynamic, context-specific, in flux and shifting (e.g. Carrano & Sandoval, 2016; Itzigsohn & Giorguli Saucedo, 2002; Purkayastha, 2005). Transnational cross-border connections are becoming even more evident as globalization creates new patterns of immigration in which large 112

‘My transnational experiences shape who I am and what I do’  113

numbers of people migrate from their homelands to other countries in pursuit of a better life. At the same time, the global market has increased competition for foreign talent among more economically-developed countries. In an increasingly competitive global market, attracting and retaining highly-skilled professional migrants have become crucial, and governments often have initiatives in place to attract and retain highlyskilled professionals who can contribute to their nation’s growth and prosperity. The USA is no exception. For instance, during President Obama’s administration, the US government initiated a number of reforms to attract and retain highly-skilled immigrants. These initiatives were created to ‘make the United States more attractive to highly-skilled foreign students and workers, thereby improving the competitiveness of US companies in the world market and stimulating US job creation’ (Department of Homeland Security, 2012: para. 3). The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2019) reports that there are 28.4 million foreign-born persons1 in the US labor force, of which 3.8%, or over 1 million, are employed in education, training and library occupations. Nearly a quarter of the faculty in postsecondary institutions in the USA identify as foreign-born and, at many institutions, the number of international faculty exceeds that of US-born faculty of color (Theobald, 2013). This substantial number of foreign-born faculty provides fertile ground for research on the lived experiences and identities of foreign-born transnational faculty, especially in humanities, social sciences and education fields (Foote et al., 2008; Mamiseishvili, 2013). Studies about lived experiences and professional practices of foreign-born transnational faculty can yield much-needed insight into their perceptions about and positionings into their social and professional communities. This insight can then help institutions implement initiatives to better meet the needs of their foreign-born faculty, which in turn may help increase the faculty’s retention and embeddedness (Mitchell et al., 2001) at their institution. The concepts of transnationalism and transnational identities have been a recurring topic in the migration literature since the 1990s (e.g. Bloemraad, 2015; Boccagni, 2012; Glick Schiller et al., 1992; Louie, 2006; Portes et al., 1999; Vertovec, 2009). Several studies have explored how transnationals construct their identities (e.g. Louie, 2006; Purkayastha, 2005; Somerville, 2008; Ubalde, 2013). Ubalde (2013), for example, examined the lives of nine Japanese–Filipino children born in the 1980s and 1990s residing in the Philippines and the different ways they constructed their identities and positioning in Filipino society. Her study showed that the ethnicity with which her participants identified depended on the situation and the audience with whom they interacted (Ubalde, 2013). Somerville (2008) studied 18 transnational second-generation individuals between the ages of 12 and 21 from India living in Canada, and the research revealed that participants’ identities shifted depending on the changing social contexts and social networks. For Somerville’s (2008)

114  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

participants, feeling more Indian or more Canadian depended on the particular context in which the interaction took place. Similarly, Purkayastha’s (2005) study of affluent, young, second-generation South Asian migrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal showed that these individuals developed transnational identities as a resource and used hyphenated identities as a coping mechanism against structural constraints such as racial discrimination, laws that prohibited certain practices and marginalization due to not fitting into any preconceived social category. Focusing on the process of identity construction, Somerville (2008) observed that the participants in her study exhibited their bicultural identities through several processes, such as their choice of clothing, expressing allegiance to both Canada and India, and expressing emotional connections to both India and Canada through, for instance, claiming hyphenated identities. She also found that her participants constructed hyphenated bicultural identities as a resource to cope with structural constraints such as racial discrimination. All these studies add to our understanding of transnational identities and the process of transnational identity construction; however, very little is known about identities and practices of transnationals in the USA, especially those of transnational faculty (Menard-Warwick, 2008; Sanchez & Kasun, 2012). The few studies about transnational teachers that do exist have shown that transnational lived experiences shape teachers’ identities as well as their linguistic and teaching practices (e.g. Bookman, 2020a; Jain, 2014; Menard-Warwick, 2008; Petrón & Greybeck, 2014; Yazan & Rudolph, 2018). Adding to the conversation about transnational teacher– scholars’ identities and positioning, this chapter reports from a case study where we looked at how Luciana, a teacher–scholar with comprehensive transnational ties, constructed her identity and positioned herself in her social field. To examine Luciana’s construction of transnational identity, we analyzed what Levitt and Glick Schiller (2004) referred to as ‘ways of belonging’. Ways of belonging consist of practices that signal a sense of belonging and membership in a particular group as well as the ‘awareness of the kind of identity that action signifies’ (Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2004: 1010). In other words, in ways of belonging, individuals may intentionally engage in a transnational activity – for example observing traditional celebrations and wearing traditional clothes – in order to construct and maintain a certain identity and belonging to a group. These ways of belonging are not superficial appropriation of other cultures or declaration of support for diversity; rather, they are avenues for transnational self-positioning and claiming cross-border belonging. Using positioning theory (Davies & Harré, 1999) as a theoretical lens, this study examined Luciana’s ways of belonging through which she negotiated her transnational identity in her narrative. Additionally, this study is mainly concerned with what Guarnizo and Smith (1998: 3) call ‘transnationalism from below’, which they define as

‘My transnational experiences shape who I am and what I do’  115

transnational associations that are initiated and built by individuals, not governments, corporations or institutions. As such, the subject of investigation in this study is transnationalism at the micro level (i.e. Luciana’s lived experiences, perceptions and practices). At the same time, this study also connects Luciana’s lived experiences to the structural forces in which she is situated. Guarnizo and Smith (1998: 25–26) in their oft-cited work ‘Locations of transnationalism’, warned that ‘in privileging “personal knowledge,” researchers may develop a kind of solipsistic tunnel vision that altogether fails to connect human intentions to social structure and historical change’. Individuals’ everyday activities and relationships influence and are influenced by a multitude of structural factors, such as laws and institutional, cultural and social norms and practices. As Guarnizo (2003: 670) stated: ‘Transnational living is an evolving condition contingent on the relationship between migrants’ resources and sociocultural positioning, as well as the historical contexts in the specific localities where they live’. Thus, contextual background, such as local, political and historical particularities, are important when investigating transnational lives and practices. Additionally, although this study differentiates micro-level activities from macro-level structures, it avoids a binary local–global perspective as individuals’ activities may simultaneously influence and be influenced by structural factors (Guarnizo & Smith, 1998). Also, individuals’ activities may be simultaneously influenced by social institutions of more than one nation-state (Levitt & Glick Schuller, 2004). Therefore, in this study, Luciana’s narrative is situated in her particular spatial and sociopolitical context and includes the many macro and meso structures that interacted with her identities and practices as a transnational teacher–scholar. Some examples of these macro and meso structural forces that influenced Luciana’s activities, relationships and perceptions included the accessibility of technology for her cross-border communications, Trumpism in the USA after the 2016 election, the turbulent sociopolitical climate in Brasil (her country of birth), the election process and voting, US immigration laws and visa requirements for visiting faculty (whom Luciana supported as an administrator) and the institutional policies and departmental practices where she worked (e.g. the reduced workload accommodation during her leadership role in a professional association). Research Method

This case study is a part of a larger research project that aimed to explore foreign-born transnational teacher–scholars’ identities and positionings, as well as teaching, research and service scholarship approaches across the USA. The purpose of this case study is to focus on the intersection of transnationality and self-positioning by examining how Luciana, a transnational TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages)

116  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

scholar and practitioner, positioned herself within her personal and professional social field. The research questions were as follows. • How does Luciana position herself as a transnational teacher–scholar in the USA? • What insights can be gained from Luciana’s narrative? Data were collected by an initial reflection questionnaire (IRQ) and semistructured interviews, which elicited Luciana’s experiences and perceptions through several critical incidents (Tripp, 2012) and a personal artifact. The IRQ elicited Luciana’s biographical information, her transnational journey and her perception of her self-positioning as a foreignborn transnational teacher–scholar in the USA. In the IRQ, Luciana also narrated several critical incidents, defined in this study as events that have had a special significance or lasting effect on Luciana as a transnational or as a teacher–scholar. After Luciana completed the IRQ, Bita and Luciana engaged in two semi-structured interviews to clarify and expand on Luciana’s responses to the questionnaire. In the second interview, Bita asked Luciana to show her and describe a personal artifact (i.e. an object she owned) that represented her transnational or teacher–scholar identity and explain why it was significant to her. Using the data collected, Luciana’s narrative was co-constructed and analyzed qualitatively for emerging themes (Barkhuizen, 2011; Schaafsma & Vinz, 2011). Rather than chronicling Luciana’s entire life history, the narratives in this study focus on her transnational ties and her perceptions of her experiences in the USA as a transnational teacher–scholar. Data collection, constructions of the narrative and data analysis were a recursive process, and member-checking occurred throughout the data analysis. The Participant

Luciana, self-identifying as a Latina, was born in the mid-1970s in Brasil. At the time of data collection, she was a full professor and department chair. In addition to teaching and research, she was heavily involved in service and served as the President of TESOL International Association, a role for which her institution had given her a reduction in her teaching load and temporary release from her administrative duties. Her transnational ties were comprehensive and included regular trips to Brasil, frequent interactions with her relatives and friends overseas, international travels for conferences and extensive international research collaborations. As a foreign-born transnational faculty in the USA, Bita (the coauthor) shared many of the experiences that Luciana elucidated in her narrative. Bita and Luciana’s common experiences worked as a catalyst in their discussions of transnationality, belonging and positioning as women,

‘My transnational experiences shape who I am and what I do’  117

minority faculty in the USA. Their common experiences also facilitated the co-construction and interpretation of Luciana’s narrative. Theoretical Framework

This study uses positioning theory (Davies & Harré, 1999) as the theoretical framework to examine the identities and perceptions of Luciana, a foreign-born transnational teacher–scholar. In positioning theory, positioning is ‘the discursive process whereby people are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced storylines’ (Davies & Harré, 1999: 37). However, positions are constrained by individuals’ presumed rights, duties and status within the particular context in which a communicative event takes place. As Harré and Van Langenhove (1999: 4) stated: ‘not only what we do but what we can do is restricted by rights, duties and obligations we acquire, assume or which are imposed upon us in the concrete social contexts of everyday life’. Thus, individuals acquire a sense of self and interpret the world from the position they have taken or the position imposed on them. Positioning theory allows us to gain insight into the positions, rights, duties and responsibilities that individuals take up. In our case study, we use positioning theory to examine Luciana’s identities and perceptions as a foreign-born transnational teacher–scholar in the USA. Luciana’s Narrative

In the study, Luciana self-identified as both a Latina and a Brasilian. This self-positioning is seemingly contradictory yet interesting because it signals that Luciana simultaneously identified as a member of two distinct groups: immigrants to the USA from Latin America (which includes Mexico, South America and Central America), commonly referred to as Latinos/Latinas, and Portuguese-speaking Brasilians who do not share the same colonial history as Spanish-speaking countries in South and Central America. Her use of the letter ‘s’ instead of ‘z’ in the words Brasil and Brasilian also confirms her desire to be identified as a member of both of these groups because these words are spelled with an ‘s’ in both Spanish and in Portuguese. Growing up in the countryside of the state of São Paulo, Luciana had regular contact with second-, third- and fourth-generation Brasilians who were monolingual Portuguese speakers and were fully integrated into the Brasilian culture. Luciana’s exposure to other languages and cultures was extremely minimal and consisted of a few interactions with American missionaries, a brief English course with an American instructor, a trip to Disney World with her family and trips to neighboring Argentina and Paraguay. Other than these brief incidents, Luciana did not encounter or interact with individuals from other countries before relocating to the USA at the age of 22.

118  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Luciana had always dreamed of coming to the USA and hoped that studying there would enable her to learn about the process of communicating in English. After completing her undergraduate studies in Brasil, she embarked on a study-abroad program in the USA. A placement agency placed her in an intensive English program at a university in California. Her score on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) was so high that the program director advised her to take courses in the English department. Later, the MA TESOL program coordinator encouraged Luciana to apply to the MA TESOL program, which Luciana thought was a great opportunity. Her family supported her decision and she began her graduate studies in the USA where she met her now-husband. After completing her PhD, Luciana learned that there were more opportunities for professional growth in the USA than in Brasil. Consequently, she decided to stay and work in the USA. Self-identifying as a transnational, Luciana’s most frequent cross-border interaction – at the time of the data collection for this study – was with her and her husband’s family and relatives who all lived in other countries. She interacted with her family through WhatsApp several times a day and visited them in Brasil once or twice a year. In addition to interacting frequently with her family in Brasil, Luciana had regular contact with her friends and colleagues in other countries through Facebook and Messenger. 2 For instance, she was sometimes contacted by her international colleagues to help identify opportunities for fellowships and internships as well as advice on how to write things correctly in English. Also, Luciana was involved in a transnational collaborative research project with a group of Brasilian teachers whom she hosted on her campus for professional development training in 2018. Additionally, Luciana held a leadership role in an international professional association, as mentioned earlier, a role that provided her with the opportunity to travel internationally extensively to represent the association and for speaking engagements. For instance, just in the first half of 2018, she traveled to Canada and several countries in Eastern Europe, East Asia and Central America. Emotional attachment to Brasil: ‘I still feel that Brasil is my country’

Luciana described herself as emotionally very attached to her family: ‘I miss my family a lot – I know this is part of the life I chose but it’s still hard even after 21 years in the US’ (Luciana, IRQ, submitted 13 June 2018). Her frequent WhatsApp calls with her family, which index her emotional attachment to them, make her feel connected: I feel the connection … even though I’m not there present 100% of the time … I don’t need to be desperate to know where people are or what

‘My transnational experiences shape who I am and what I do’  119

they’re doing and to me that’s very important. (Luciana, interview 1, 15 June 2018)

In an emotional description of her attachment to Brasil, she explained how she grapples with guilt for leaving Brasil and why her involvement in Brasil’s education system was important to her. She stated: I still want to contribute to the education in Brasil, and I think there is an element of feeling guilty for leaving because for me it was a choice … all of my family is still in Brasil … So this connection to me to Brasil … is really really important  …  Because I still feel that Brasil is my country … even though I have lived [in the US] for 21 years and have dual citizenship. I don’t think I will ever be disconnected from Brasil. (Luciana, interview 1, 15 June 2018)

Luciana also claimed a strong Brasilian identity by her choice of clothing and by her accent: I try to continue to show my ‘Brasilian-ness’ through what I wear, for example, and I know that my accent also shows that I am Brasilian which I am proud of. (Luciana, IRQ, submitted 13 June 2018)

In these quotes, without the intention to perpetuate cultural stereotypes, Luciana’s use of the term ‘Brasilian-ness’ indexed her self-alignment with a certain kind of dress code and accent that she personally perceived as Brasilian. Despite her strong emotional attachment to Brasil, Luciana did not foresee moving back to Brasil because of its political turmoil and poor economy. State of in-betweenness: ‘I don’t think I will ever feel a sense of belonging in the same way as folks who are not transnationals’

Luciana described her experience as a transnational as a state of inbetweenness or ‘being between worlds’ (Luciana, IRQ, submitted 13 June 2018) carrying with her a ‘feeling of almost not having a home and yet having two homes’ (Luciana, interview 1, 15 June 2018). She explains her feeling of in-betweenness as the following: I don’t quite ‘fit’ in the US or in Brasil any longer. I always feel like a foreigner in both countries … it’s a feeling of not belonging to either country and yet still functioning well in both … . I don’t think I will ever feel a sense of belonging in the same way as folks who are not transnationals. (Luciana, IRQ, submitted 13 June 2018)

Luciana added that being in a state of in-betweenness also meant that she experienced certain linguistic challenges when she traveled back and

120  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

forth between Brasil and the USA. She noticed that when she visited Brasil, she sometimes struggled with speaking Portuguese, particularly with new terminology, slang and the everyday Portuguese that she had lost: ‘I struggle sometimes and it takes just a little time for me to get my Portuguese back’ (Luciana, interview 1, 15 June 2018). She stated that she experienced the same process when she returned to the USA: ‘For the first few days I’m like oh I need to remember how to say this in English’ (Luciana, interview 1, 15 June 2018). Luciana noted that she now struggled with Portuguese more than with English. She attributed this to changes that occur when one becomes bilingual: ‘You do change over time and you become more bilingual and bicultural, and so I think that it has to do with that process’ (Luciana, interview 1, 15 June 2018). This may also be due to the fact that in both the main contexts where she interacts in the two languages – English or Portuguese – she is using one language at a time. Mobility for professional growth: ‘I go where the opportunities are’

While Luciana’s strongest emotional tie was to her hometown in Brasil, she has also developed ties to all the places she has lived in: ‘I think in every place that I have been, I have made friends and I have a special connection … to that place’ (Luciana, interview 2, 21 September 2018). However, despite her emotional attachments to places, Luciana was eager to relocate to new places for new career opportunities: I go where the opportunities are for me and where I feel that I’m going to grow as a professional. If I feel that there are constraints in where I am at the university or my department or the school then I wanna move, I wanna go somewhere where I can improve as a professional. (Luciana, interview 2, 21 September 2018)

She attributed her mobility to several factors, such as the fact that she did not have school-aged children and that neither she nor her husband had any family members or relatives in the USA. She elaborated: [My husband and I] don’t have all these ties that other people might have, people who do have kids, because they’re going to schools, they have their friends, … if they have family in the same region, they may wanna stay in a place. But we’re very mobile … we’re transnationals. (Luciana, interview 2, 21 September 2018) The impact of the political climate: ‘We are very very worried’

Luciana found the political climate after Donald Trump won the ­presidency stressful and worrying. She also believed that she was

‘My transnational experiences shape who I am and what I do’  121

personally impacted by it because her work was directly connected to immigrant children and their education. She described how she felt about watching the news: [My husband and I] can’t watch the news anymore … it’s so sad, it’s so draining, and sometimes when I get to work I’m already so tired from just watching the news, what is going on … I feel like for the past couple of years it has had an effect both on me and my husband and how we feel because also my work is so connected to a lot of the issues … what is happening now on the borders and people taking kids and separating kids from their parents and all of this, it’s just disheartening. (Luciana, interview 1, 15 June 2018)

Although Luciana admitted to often thinking about leaving the USA due to Trumpism, her commitment to making a difference had kept her there. She and her husband were committed to doing what they could to help make a change, for instance by voting: We feel like the US still needs people like us to stay and fight, fight, fight … it would be really important to have two more people voting democratic in [my state]. I mean it’s only two people, but it is also significant. (Luciana, interview 1, 15 June 2018)

Luciana also believed that she could make a difference by teaching her student-teachers ‘how to be more open to immigration issues … how to treat people … how to be more humane’ (Luciana, interview 1, 15 June 2018). Discussion

The most prominent theoretical themes highlighted in Luciana’s narrative are spatial attachment, feeling of in-betweenness, mobility for professional growth and concern over Trumpism. Luciana described herself as a person who was very emotionally attached to her family. This was evidenced by her regular technology-mediated interaction with them and her regular visits to Brasil. Technology such as WhatsApp greatly facilitated Luciana’s ties with her family in Brasil as she interacted with them several times a day and stayed informed of their day-to-day activities (Ryan et al., 2015). Having a strong emotional attachment to her home country of Brasil, she actively constructed a Brasilian identity for herself by her choice of clothing, referring to her Brasilian accent and speaking frequently about her family and relatives in Brasil. Throughout her narrative, Luciana thus positioned herself as a proud Brasilian who was emotionally very close to her family and relatives in Brasil despite being physically far away from them. She felt guilty about leaving Brasil; as a result, she visited Brasil at least once a year and sought

122  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

out opportunities to get involved in teacher training and research projects that could contribute to the education system in Brasil. She also requested that Brasil and Brasilian be spelled with an ‘s’ in her narrative. These ways of belonging – or activities to intentionally construct a certain identity (Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2004) – signaled Luciana’s negotiation of her self-positioning as a Brasilian. In addition to maintaining intense emotional attachment to Brasil, Luciana expressed spatial attachment to California where she had completed her master’s and doctoral studies, and, to a lesser degree, to the other US states she had lived in. However, despite expressing these spatial attachments, Luciana positioned herself as a transnational who did not quite belong to either here or there, was between two worlds and always felt ‘like a foreigner’ in both the USA and Brasil. Whenever she traveled back to Brasil, she felt she did not quite fit there and yearned to leave after a few weeks. At the same time, she did not feel that she fit in the USA either. Luciana positioned herself as a transnational who would never be able to feel a sense of belonging to a place. She claimed that she probably would never feel a sense of belonging in the same way non-transnationals would. This lack of belongingness went hand in hand with her self-positioning as a highly mobile person who was willing to relocate anywhere for professional growth. She expressed an enthusiastic willingness to relocate to a different US state or another country if the right career opportunity presented itself. Although Luciana reported she felt she belonged to neither here nor there, her knowledge of English and Portuguese languages and the American and Brasilian cultures enabled her to live, work and ‘function’ in either country and across them as well. For instance, in the USA she was a prominent scholar in her field, had published extensively, obtained full professorship and has held elected leadership positions in professional associations. As she demonstrated, feeling in-between worlds has not impeded her ability to be successful professionally. Thus, along with her spatial mobility and a sense of in-betweenness, Luciana has claimed a functional identity that enables her to function anywhere as a teacher– scholar (Bookman, 2020a; Hanauer, 2008). Her transnational interactions have also provided her with an extensive professional network she can use as a resource when needed. For example, when asked by a colleague, she was able to use one of her transnational contacts to recommend internship options in Europe. Her transnational ties have provided her with a source of strength both for her and for her students and colleagues. Luciana’s narrative of belonging also demonstrates the intersection of in-betweenness, transnationality and linguistic challenges. Luciana described her difficulty with switching between Portuguese and English when traveling between Brasil and the USA. The process has changed over the years; while in her early years in the USA she struggled with English

‘My transnational experiences shape who I am and what I do’  123

after returning from a visit from Brasil, she began to find it more difficult to remember everyday Portuguese language after living in the USA for many years. The thought of being trilingual (English, Spanish and Portuguese) yet having linguistic challenges has played a role in her transnational identity and feeling of being in between worlds. In addition, the turbulent sociopolitical climate in the USA after the 2016 election impacted Luciana as a foreign-born transnational faculty. Luciana believed that she was affected by the policies of the Trump administration because her work was directly linked to macro-level discourses on immigration and education. The political and economic turmoil in her home country, Brasil, also took an emotional toll on her. She positioned herself quite strongly against these developments and was committed to do what she could, for instance, by voting, to fight what she called a ‘sad’ and ‘draining’ situation. Implications for Practice

This case study adds to the literature on transnational practitioners with complex personal and professional histories in the field of secondand foreign-language pedagogy. A study such as the one presented here can provide much-needed insight into transnational practitioners’ perceptions about and positionings into their social and professional communities. Luciana’s experiences as a TESOL practitioner and leader show the complexities of identifying as a transnational individual. This chapter also has some implications for practice. The insights provided by this study can help institutions implement initiatives to better meet the needs of transnational scholars, which in turn may help increase the faculty’s retention (Bookman, 2020b; Mitchell et al., 2001) at their institution. We encourage teacher education, master’s and doctoral programs to incorporate explorations of the lived experiences of TESOL practitioners, including transnational individuals, as a critical component of their curricula. We suggest a specific focus on transnational identities as we have described here. Because their lived experiences may shape their identities as well as their linguistic and teaching practices, future teachers, teacher educators and scholars should reflect on how these experiences affect who they are and what they do as professionals. We also encourage those who have immigrated from Latin America, in particular, to volunteer to be participants in research studies about transnational practitioners as there is very little research exploring this population. Because of the diversity of the Latinx population in the USA and other countries around the world, there is much work to be done in the field of TESOL. Our collaboration, for instance, is a fruitful example as we took different roles to write this chapter. The results of Luciana’s narratives, part of Bita’s dissertation study, were used as a basis for the current work. The focus on critical incidents was particularly significant

124  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

as they had a special significance or lasting effect on Luciana as a transnational or as a teacher–scholar. As we engaged in conversations about these critical incidents and Luciana described a personal artifact, we further reflected on Luciana’s transnational or teacher–scholar identities, and deepened our own understanding of this complex, nuanced and multilayered area of inquiry. We encourage others to engage in this kind of meaningful collaboration. Notes (1) In this study, foreign-born is defined as an individual who is not a US citizen at birth, including those who obtain US citizenship through naturalization (US Census Bureau, 2019). (2) Messenger, developed by Facebook, is an online messaging platform.

References Barkhuizen, G. (2011) Narrative knowledging in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 45 (3), 391– 414, doi: 10.5054/tq.2011.261888. Bookman, B. (2020a) The intersection of transnationality and scholarship: Selfpositioning and teaching, research, and service practices of three transnational teacher–scholars. International Journal of Research in Teacher Education 11 (4), 1–15. Bookman, B. (2020b) Foreign-born faculty’s perceptions and experiences in a turbulent sociopolitical climate. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Perspectives in Higher Education 5 (1), 52–75, doi:10.32674/jimphe.v5i1.2726. Bloemraad, I. (2015) Theorizing and analyzing citizenship in multicultural societies. The Social Quarterly 56, 591–606, doi: 10.1111/tsq.12095. Boccagni, P. (2012) Rethinking transnational studies: Transnational ties and the transnationalism of everyday life. European Journal of Social Theory 15 (1), 117–132, doi: 10.1177/1368431011423600. Carrano, A.A.L. and Sandoval, A.M. (2016) Profiling the Mexican community leaders in the United States: Networks for better public policy. Huellas de La Migración 1 (2), 149–174. Davies, B. and Harré, R. (1999) Positioning and personhood. In R. Harré and L. Van Langenhove (eds) Positioning Theory: Moral Contexts of Intentional Action (pp. 32–52). Oxford: Blackwell. Department of Homeland Security (2012) DHS reforms to attract and retain highly skilled immigrants. See https://www.dhs.gov/news/2012/01/31/dhs-reforms-attract-andretain-highly-skilled-immigrants (accessed February 2020). Faist, T. (2006) The Transnational Social Spaces of Migration. COMCAD working paper 10. See https://nbn-resolving.org/ urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-350692 (accessed March 2021). Foote, K.E., Li, W., Monk, J. and Theobald, R. (2008) Foreign-born scholars in US universities: Issues, concerns, and strategies. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 32 (2), 167–178, doi:10.1080/03098260701731322. Glick Schiller, N., Basch, L. and Blanc Szanton, C. (1992) Transnationalism: A new analytic framework for understanding migration. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 645, 1–24, doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1992.tb33484.x. Guarnizo, L.E. (2003) The economics of transnational living. International Migration Review 37 (3), 666–699, doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2003.tb00154.x.

‘My transnational experiences shape who I am and what I do’  125

Guarnizo, L.E. and Smith, M.P. (1998) The locations of transnationalism. In M.P. Smith and L.E. Guarnizo (eds) Transnationalism From Below (pp. 3–31). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Hanauer, D.I. (2008) Non-place identity: Britain’s response to migration in the age of supermodernity. In D. Gerard, R. Wodak and P. Jones (eds) Identity, Belonging and Migration (pp. 198–218). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Harré, R. and Van Langenhove, L. (1999) The dynamics of social episodes. In R. Harré and L. Van Langenhove (eds) Positioning Theory: Moral Contexts of Intentional Action (pp. 1–13). Oxford: Blackwell. Itzigsohn, J. and Giorguli Saucedo, S. (2002) Immigrant incorporation and sociocultural transnationalism. International Migration Review 36 (3), 766 –798, doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2002.tb00104.x. Jain, R. (2014) Global Englishes, translinguistic identities, and translingual practices in a community college ESL classroom: A practitioner researcher reports. TESOL Journal 5 (3), 490–522. Levitt, P. and Glick Schiller, N. (2004) Conceptualizing simultaneity: A transnational social field perspective on society. International Migration Review 38 (3), 1002–1039, doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2004.tb00227.x. Levitt, P. and Jaworsky, B.N. (2007) Transnational migration studies: Past developments and future trends. Annual Review of Sociology 33, 129–156. Levitt, P., DeWind, J. and Vertovec, S. (2003) International perspectives on transnational migration: An introduction. International Migration Review 37 (3), 565–575, doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2003.tb00150.x. Louie, V. (2006) Second-generation pessimism and optimism: How Chinese and Dominicans understand education and mobility through ethnic and transnational orientations. International Migration Review 40 (3), 537–572 , doi: 10.1111/j.1747-7379.2006.00035.x. Mamiseishvili, K. (2013) Contributions of foreign-born faculty to doctoral education and research. New Directions for Higher Education 163, 89–98, doi:10.1002/he.20068. Menard-Warwick, J. (2008) The cultural and intercultural identities of transnational English teachers: Two case studies from the Americas. TESOL Quarterly 42 (4), 617–640, doi: 10.2307/40264491. Mitchell, T., Holton, B., and Lee, T. (2001) Why people stay: Using job embeddedness to predict voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal 44 (6), 1102–1121. Petrón, M.A. and Greybeck, B. (2014) Borderlands epistemologies and the transnational experience. Gist Education and Learning Research Journal 8, 137–155. Portes, A., Guarnizo, L.E. and Landolt, P. (1999) The study of transnationalism: Pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field. Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (2), 217–237. Purkayastha, B. (2005) Negotiating Ethnicity: Second Generation South Asians Americans Traverse a Transnational World. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Ryan, L., Klekowski Von Koppenfels, A. and Mulholland, J. (2015) ‘The distance between us’: A comparative examination of the technical, spatial and temporal dimensions of the transnational social relationships of highly skilled migrants. Global Networks 15, 198–216, doi:10.1111/glob.12054. Sanchez, P. and Kasun, G.S. (2012) Connecting transnationalism to the classroom and to theories of immigrant student adaptation. Berkeley Review of Education 3 (1), 71–93, doi:10.5811/westjem.2011.5.6700. Schaafsma, D. and Vinz, R. (2011) Narrative Inquiry: Approaches to Language and Literacy Research. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Somerville, K. (2008) Transnational belonging among second generation youth: Identity in a globalized world. Journal of Social Sciences 10, 23–33. See http://www.krepublishers.

126  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

com/06-Special Volume-Journal/JSS-00-Special Volumes/JSS-SV-10-Youth-MigrationWeb/JSS-SV-10-03-023-08-Somerville-K/JSS-SV-10-03-023-08-Somerville-K-Tt.pdf (accessed February 2020). Theobald, R. (2013) International faculty: A source of diversity. In H.C. Alberts and H.D. Hazen (eds) International Students and Scholars in the United States: Coming from Abroad (pp. 111–130). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Tripp, D. (2012) Critical Incidents in Teaching: Developing Professional Judgement (Classic edn). London: Routledge. Ubalde, M. (2013) Diverging narratives: Lives and identities of Japanese–Filipino children in the Philippines. Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia 49 (2), 76–115. US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2019) About Foreign Born. https://www.bls.gov/news. release/pdf/forbrn.pdf (accessed February 2020). US Census Bureau (2019) About foreign born. See https://www.census.gov/topics/­ population/foreign-born/about.html (accessed March 2021). Vertovec, S. (2009) Transnationalism. New York, NY: Routledge. Yazan, B. and Rudolph, N. (2018) Introduction: Apprehending identity, experience, and (in)equity though and beyond binaries. In B. Yazan and N. Rudolph (eds) Criticality, Teacher Identity, and (In)equity in English Language Teaching (pp. 1–19). New York, NY: Springer.

8 An Autoethnography of Trans-Perspective Development Through Translanguaging Research and Practice Sujin Kim

The proliferating trans-perspective (Hawkins & Mori, 2018) is compelling not just because of its new theoretical underpinning that spans the phenomena of transnational movements and the resulting simultaneity of translocal life (Levitt & Glick-Schiller, 2004), transcultural capacity of brokering between different cultural worlds (Orellana, 2009) and translanguaging practices among multilinguals drawing from their entire semiotic spectrum (García & Li, 2014). It is also particularly appealing to transnational scholars because of its truer-to-life resonance with their liminal experiences of not being able to pinpoint just one place, identity, language and nation-state with which to belong or their sense of belonging to multiple places simultaneously. Living a trans-life is challenging, while at the same time offering a vantage point in understanding the complexity of life at the borderland (Anzaldua, 1999) and facilitating innovative visions of the field, teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) in my case. This chapter documents an autoethnography of how my trans-perspective has developed particularly through a trajectory of translanguaging research and practice. I remember my first encounter with the term translanguaging and its conceptualization by such scholars as Li Wei (2011) and Ofelia García (2009). It accompanied a feeling of liberation unlike other terms such as bilingualism and code-switching, whose implied separatist view of one’s linguistic capacity across named languages presupposes that one can possess multiple languages as if they are distinct entities that are separable, comparable and hierarchical. From the separatist view, one has compartmentalized languages waiting to be picked up and used for different 127

128  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

communicative events. They do not exist in equal status, however, rendering one language less than the other(s) in proficiency, social status and its associated identity. Likewise, I felt less capable and articulate in English with my indelible ‘foreign’ accent and sense of otherhood. Translanguaging afforded a different identity frame. The detractive sense of self, defined by what I lack and what I cannot do with my adopted language, was replaced by an integrative view of who I am and what I do with language as a whole. The acute sense of being forever short of nativelike English proficiency and its implied association with lesser membership in my immigrated country, faded. This identity shift was a watershed moment where I realized that research can not only inform the day-to-day practice of the field, but it may also shape and change the founding framework behind education and identity politics. The personal note in this chapter resulted from such alignment between my new sense of identity and the conceptual shift in the transdisciplinary field of TESOL, applied linguistics, second language acquisition, new literacy studies, migration studies and media studies. As a transnational scholar, I now find home in the liminal status of trans-experiences and perspectives. Using an autoethnographic approach, this chapter documents my own lived experiences from the liminal space to share how a transnational scholar’s journey is inevitably transdisciplinary, transbordering and transformative, with the potential of bridging and expanding repertoires of identity resources, semiotic tools, intercultural experiences and pedagogies. This personal sketch also integrates translanguaging scholarship and my own research studies with Korean immigrant youths, multilingual and multiracial families and their community members, and teachers of English learners (ELs) to explore the implication of the trans-space through an ecological lens. Together, I build a narrative that serves as a home across my identities as a TESOL researcher and practitioner, and as a transnational nomad. Frameworks and Methods of Inquiry for Trans-Experiences Trans-space for distancing and reframing

The affix ‘trans-’ evokes a sense of mobility across and between two or more entities, situations or statuses. Transnational migrants, for instance, cross international borders to work and resettle in another part of the world. Immigrant youth often serve as transcultural brokers between monolingual communicators with their translingual capacity that involves moving across and bridging different cultural systems, values and ways with words (Orellana, 2009). In such daily crossing across different, often dissonant, cultural and linguistic worlds, language brokers experience what’s called transcultural repositioning through which they reflect and redefine their position and identity (Guerra, 2007). Through trans-experiences, they defy binaries and have the potential to transform

An Autoethnography of Trans-Perspective Development  129

‘what currently exists, into something we perhaps cannot even imagine’ (Orellana, 2017: 210). Anzaldua (1999: 25) has described life in the borderland as merging two different worlds and forming a ‘third country’ of new consciousness; trans-perspectives involve processes of distancing from and reframing what’s deemed normative. The profundity of the border-crossing experience, whether physical or symbolic, can be detrimental and enriching at the same time for those affected. Their liminal status, with its challenges and possibilities, characterizes trans-experiences of crossing, blurring, challenging and erasing borders, and generating new ways of interacting, representing and being beyond the normative view of national, cultural and linguistic identities. Their challenges include navigating and dealing with disparities, searching for new identities and coming to terms with living and speaking from an in-between space (Hall, 1995). Opportunities, on the other hand, come from the complexity of practice when people appropriate, redesign and recontextualize global and transnational experiences for their local context. This constant blending is often called hybridity in the third space (Bhabha, 1994) where people adapt, resist and transform existing norms and values, creating new interpretive frames and practices. Semiotically, such blending manifests in many innovative variations, especially through digitized communication channels that can transplant anything anywhere with transformed meanings and representations (Kress, 2010). Ecological approach across contexts

The overarching framework of this autoethnography is grounded in the ecological approach to language practice (van Lier, 1997). The ecological approach illuminates how the intersections of languages, language users and language environment are contingent on the particular sociopolitical and historical context (Blackledge, 2008). With the ecological metaphor of language as evolving, growing and changing, Hornberger (2003) argues how certain languages can be dominant or endangered within a particular environment, and promotes the multilingual approach in which language policy and planning serve to protect the linguistic human rights in a multilingual society. Such efforts involve exploring the contextual impact on language, power hierarchy across languages, maintenance of minority languages and the relationship between language ideology and its manifestation at multiple levels. When combined with the ideology of language being the core feature of national identity, for example, language planning and policy serve against bi/multilingualism for the cause of national unity and security, associating monolingualism with undivided loyalty to the country (Pavlenko, 2002; Wiley, 2014). Thus, the ecological approach to multilingual language policy is founded on the understanding that languages ‘live and evolve in an eco-system along with other

130  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

languages; interact with their sociopolitical, economic, and cultural environments’ (Hornberger, 2003: 35). These ideological underpinnings then shape contexts in which people’s language practices, resources and learning opportunities can converge on the continuum rather than as dichotomous polarity. Such a continuum model, like the continua of biliteracy model (Hornberger, 2003), allows learners to draw flexibly from the entire spectrum of their communicative experiences for meaning-making. Translanguaging is built on the continuum model, regarding a bilingual person’s language practice as drawing from the person’s entire linguistic and semiotic repertoires for meaning-making instead of viewing one’s ‘first’ and ‘second’ language as separate and compartmentalized in one’s linguistic brain (García, 2009). Contexts and their relations are the central focus of examination in ecological models. van Lier’s application of Bronfenbrenner’s developmental concentric systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1993) in language learning suggests different ways to consider contexts – microanalytic or macroanalytic or both – ranging from studies of classroom practices to the concept of culture to the language ideologies of society. The increasing intricacies of the multi-scaled contexts in today’s transnational world are also reflected in the complexity of language learning and teaching, which is difficult to capture through the analysis of any single component or ‘inhabitant’ of the ecology. Vertovec (2007) described such unprecedented complexity borne out of transnational migration and communication as change from diversity to superdiversity, which Blommaert (2013: 193) rephrased as ‘diversification of diversity’. In the superdiverse world, what is at stake is certainty. No finite or stable identities, social norms and knowledge are available; instead, these are replaced with a fleeting, fluid and evolving sense of self and belonging in the changing world. In education, superdiversity compels us to grasp, in a different light, what it means to learn and teach in a classroom where superdiversity is not new but a norm. Analytic autoethnography: Method of reflection

I have journeyed through a multi-layered trans-space during the last decade as a TESOL scholar, teacher educator and transnational migrant, whose identities have nearly been lost in complex trans-experiences then gradually reclaimed with new, transformative visions. In the following, I explore how my liminal trans-identities have evolved through an autoethnographic description (Anderson, 2006). Similar to Canagarajah’s (2012) analytic documentation of his identity development as an English language teacher, I take analytical autoethnography (Anderson, 2006) as my method of reflection. My narrative meets the five features of analytical autoethnography proposed by Anderson (2006). Firstly, I have been a complete member researcher (CMR) of the trans-space, the social world under investigation. My CMR status as a

An Autoethnography of Trans-Perspective Development  131

transnational, ‘non-native’ speaker of English and teacher educator for teachers of ELs has afforded me a compelling ethnographic experience of ‘being there’ in the trans-space. Secondly, analytic reflexivity has guided my work, which inevitably involved a process of transformation in my researcher identity and practice as well as my approach to (English) language education. The third feature, researcher visibility in the text or research representation, ensures the utmost level of self-reflection during and after the research process. The field data from the case studies I describe in this chapter are, therefore, the recording not only of the site and its participants but also of myself, the participant–observer and researcher. The fourth feature of analytic autoethnography is engaged dialogues with the data and/or others beyond the self to avoid the pitfall of seeing only (through) oneself. My research with immigrant youths, their transnational families and community members, and teachers of ELs, who were my fellow members of the trans-spaces, has expanded my vision of liminal status, identifying challenges and hopes through varying trans-experiences. This led me to work with the fifth feature of autoethnography, commitment to an analytic agenda, which in my case is translated as understanding and theorizing the trans-experience, particularly of translanguaging. Building on these five features as the criteria of my analytic autoethnography, I present a narrative of self and my co-participants in transspaces, mainly focusing on our language practices or translanguaging to illuminate what we do with language, how we build unique trans-identities with languaging and what translanguaging has afforded for TESOL. The ethnographic data for this chapter were collected at different points across my research trajectory between 2012 and 2019, from different sites and participants – immigrant youth in online affinity communities (Gee, 2001), multilingual and multiracial elementary students and their families in an after-school literacy program and in-service teachers in a TESOL teacher education course. Looking back on my research trajectory, I realize that it is not merely a compiled history of different stories – it is a documented effort to make sense of our shared trans-experiences. The story of translanguaging in this chapter thus features a personal and collective story of trans-experiences. Trans-Trajectories: Connecting the ‘Dots’ Extending ‘self’ in the transnational (digital) social field

The simultaneity of transnationals’ lives, as they engage in the sociocultural and political events from both their native and settlement countries (Levitt & Glick-Schiller, 2004), has been further promoted by advancement of communication technologies that connect relationships across national, geographical and cultural borders (Kim & Dorner, 2014;

132  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Kim, 2018a). Superdiversity is the result of such simultaneous lives of transnationals, which forces us to relinquish our assumptions of clear-cut boundaries drawn along the national, ethnocultural or linguistic lines. Particularly, transnational interactions in the digital space challenge and reshape existing linguistic norms and practices, creating new ways with words and sign systems, as well as new agents whose identities and relationships are not tied to one nation, culture or language. These multilingual subjects (Kramsch, 2006) constantly negotiate their existing and emerging identities, which evade any simple categorization, thus transcending the either–or identity politics. My first identity crisis came during my initial years in the USA as a new immigrant with an acutely conflicting sense of who I really am and where I belong, as if such a fixated self had ever existed. The feeling that I was short of the full sociocultural and linguistic membership in my adopted country left me stuttering, mumbling and muted when I needed to assert myself in the face of numerous discriminatory moments based on my race and ‘accented’ English. Linguicism – discrimination based on ones’ language use (Austin, 2009) – occurs presumably against the norm of ‘ideal native-speakers of English’ or the racialized ideologies of ‘listening subjects’ who judge some ‘accented’ and others ‘accent-less’ (Flores & Rosa, 2015). An added challenge arose unexpectedly from my own two children’s identity crises starting around their adolescent years. Their legal/national, cultural and linguistic identities were nebulous and only complexly unfolding at best, perplexing their sense of self and belonging. They resisted the socially imposed identity labels, Korean, Asian, foreigner and immigrant (or non-immigrant alien) as imperfect, misleading and limiting. These personal and familial challenges from our liminal status led me to study immigrant youth identity work. Particularly, I noticed that their challenges were uniquely embedded within a new communicative landscape with digital technologies and across transnational and global communities; these new communication channels had not been available to the previous immigrant generation during their adolescent years, the very delicately malleable and vulnerable period in one’s identity development. Seeing the convergence between my personal challenges and the research gap in immigrant youth identity development in the transnational media age, I explored as my doctoral dissertation topic the intersection of transnational migration, digital literacy and youth identity work in the transnational social field (Levitt & Glick-Schiller, 2004). I viewed this trans-space, facilitated by new digital communication media, as a new developmental ecology for transnational youth, composed of multiple interlocking sociocultural relationships through physical and digital connections. Drawing from multimodal new media literacy studies (Kress, 2000, 2010; Lam, 2008), I attended to the literacy practices of my young participants, who were middle- and high-school Korean immigrant

An Autoethnography of Trans-Perspective Development  133

students in a Midwestern city, to explore how they designed and articulated their complex sense of self and belonging in and with digital media. I followed four case youths for a year and a half (2012–2013) across their homes, schools, local communities and digital affinity spaces. I collected and analyzed diverse sets of data in relation to their identification with multiple communities of affiliation, as well as their responses to identity markers such as nationality, ethnicity, language and race (Kim, 2018a, 2018b). Constraints and opportunities of transnational identities

Due to the vantage point of my positionality as an immigrant, I was able to connect more deeply with the youths’ transbordering experiences, reflected in their daily connection with local, transnational and global audiences such as classroom peers and teachers, transnational family and friends, and global affinity group members. Individual interviews revealed that, developmentally, the youths perceived their transnational ‘inbetween’ status as troubling, disorienting and disempowering. For example, being Korean or Asian in the USA meant a confounding status involving unwanted categorization and/or a nuanced membership as a ‘forever foreigner’, regardless of the legal US citizenship. Being Korean also served as an ethnic bind, constantly pressuring them to fulfill the unattainable expectation of the general public – demanding their undivided loyalty to the USA on the one hand, but at the same time expecting them to be ethnically authentic (and even exotic) through full proficiency in Korean culture and language. These anchored identities over which they do not have choice or control, such as nationality, ethnicity and race (Merchant, 2006), placed the youth on the narrow slip of borderland in which they felt pushed against from both ends. Initially, I perceived what I found from the youths’ interview data as congruent with my expectation that these youths would be more vulnerable to the detrimental impact of societal pressures to conform to norms and identity politics than adult immigrants, who would better cope with such challenges with a more solid set of established identities built from their previous social, cultural and linguistic world. The finding, however, was only a half-told story. Because of their trans-experiences and the availability of a different set of identity resources in the transnational social field, most youths (if not all) demonstrated a greater agency in addressing their layered identities in ways that resisted the prescriptive identity labels. They embraced transbordering experiences and made contextual choices for their identity building. With their consent, as a ‘follower’ or ‘friend’ of the four focal youths in their online communities (including Google+, Facebook, Tumblr and Shelfari), I followed my participants and observed their social exchanges, relationships and thus their identity representations across diverse social

134  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

communities. Not only as a researcher but also as a parent of transnational children and new media user myself, I was curious as to how youths made sense of their identities in the new transnational digital age and what the new communicative landscape afforded for these Korean immigrant adolescents’ identity work. To my delightful surprise, the findings revealed a different set of experiences from those of older immigrants in significant ways. For the youths, most of whom grew up as digital natives, their home country was not merely a symbolic or nostalgic location but remained a crucial part of their daily social, cultural and linguistic world – as evidenced in their translanguaging practice across named languages (Korean and English), modalities (verbal, audiovisual, gestural and combined) and cultural experiences of diverse systems (e.g. social, educational and political). For example, one focal youth differentiated her translanguaging messages for different audiences. While she made variations across the audiovisual and textual modes, but only in English for the classroom audience, she dexterously combined English and Korean, writing and speech, audiovisuals and verbal texts, videos with narrations, gestures and captions, and other extended combinations for the transnational family members and online global community members. Accordingly, the spectrum of the youths’ identities expanded from members of the local classroom/learning community to being transnational family members, Korean–English bilinguals as well as global affinity group members with shared transnational experiences (Kim, 2018b). I thus noted that translanguaging was the emblem of these youths’ fluid identity work across contexts, despite constraints from rigid identity categories that were externally imposed. The multimodal composition of messages enabled youths to express the complexity of living in the transspace through creative designs using ‘selections and arrangements of resources for making a specific message about a particular issue for a particular audience’ (Kress, 2010: 28). The scope of their design was wider than that of non-transnationals or older generations due to their expanded semiotic and cultural repertoires across languages, digital and technological modalities (e.g. streaming videos, hyperlinks, fonts, colors) and their experiences of navigating different, often disparate, cultural systems, values and expectations. As a result, they socialized with a wider range of audiences, crafting new modes of identity. Their multimodal digital translanguaging featured an interactive ecology of transnational literacies (Hornberger & Link, 2012; Lam & Warriner, 2012) incorporating multiple lifeworlds and their affordances beyond the local boundary and the nationalistic US monolingual ideology and identity politics. Collaborating with ‘other inhabitants’

The multimodal translanguaging texts in youths’ daily literacy practices matched what Cummins et al. (2015) call ‘identity texts’, through

An Autoethnography of Trans-Perspective Development  135

which youths negotiate and affirm their richer identity constructs than those that society prescribes for them. The creation of such identity texts through translanguaging as the key mode can challenge negative stereotypes and the coercive power relations within the larger system by empowering students to build ‘identities of competence’ (Manyak, 2004). Building on my initial understanding of transnational youths’ digital translanguaging, I ventured further into what translanguaging could afford for transnationals in the superdiverse context by extending the focus to the local community, including students and their families, within an after-school family literacy space. I entered the second phase of translanguaging research with an assumption that this local and physical context of a school-based family literacy project would not yield as many innovative and diverse translanguaging practices as the youth demonstrated with digital technology. This turned out to be a misconception. As a result of this research, my colleagues and I proposed an updated framework, phrased as community translanguaging (Kim & Song, 2019; Kim et al., 2021). To illustrate the features of community translanguaging, I should start by highlighting that superdiversity has reshaped our notion and scope of community. People in the transnational world claim membership in multiple communities or, more precisely, in varying networks, that are often formed based on shared interests or trajectories in the course of transnational moving and resettlement. In this regard, community is no longer confined to the local and physical location of one’s settlement. Community, especially one’s speech community, is polycentric across diverse locations, resources and associated identities. Repertoires for social relationships and communication in such fluid and dynamic networking are thus ‘records of mobility: of movement of people, language resources, social arenas, and technologies of learning and learning environments’ (Blommaert & Backus, 2013: 28). Communicative repertoires (Rymes, 2014) of individuals then integrate complex sets of linguistic and cultural resources from their trajectory of movement. The combined repertoires from interlocking transnational communities serve to build, sustain and expand social relationships and identities in the transnational ecology. In turn, examining an individual’s communicative repertoire is to follow up with the collective traces of varying social fields that the person has lived or traveled. Informed by the new notion of community and repertoires in the superdiverse world, I attended to the recent argument that languaging (the verb form of language) is a communicative interplay among people and across semiotics, shaped by the networked ecology and its inhabitants (García & Sylvan, 2011; Jørgensen, 2008). Put another way, languaging or translanguaging is not just an individual practice: it is inherently a collaborative endeavor within an increasingly complex ecology that affords multiple new connections and interactions of what each inhabitant – humans, artifacts, semiotic modes and spatiotemporal contexts – brings

136  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

into the space or what Canagarajah (2018) calls spatial repertoires. This collective community funds of knowledge, or what we call community repertoires, can be re-enacted as new assemblages of meaning through distributed agency (Pennycook, 2017) of all that participated in the shaping of the particular ecology – one example being our family storybook project. The family storybook project further expanded the notion of languaging as social, collaborative practice beyond individual competency and sign system (Kim et al., 2021). The project was a partnership work between a Midwestern university research team and a local Spanish immersion elementary school, with the goal of establishing a space in an urban school for families from diverse racial and linguistic backgrounds to create family storybooks. Initially, I was not even remotely aware of what we would find and build from the data. The research began with the overarching question of how educators can integrate families’ diverse ways of meaning-making in children’s literacy development. Five families and six children from multiple racial and linguistic backgrounds participated in a series of story-making workshops and created family storybooks over four months in 2017. The data gathered included interviews, field notes and audio recordings of book readings in classrooms at the Spanish immersion elementary school, along with one unpublished and four published family storybooks. Analysis of the project data resulted in a huge shift and expansion in my conceptualization of translanguaging from mostly as a competent bi/ multilingual individual’s practice to the collective and collaborative social acts among people even including monolinguals and less proficient bi/ multilinguals, and across diverse semiotic modes. Previously, I framed translanguaging as an individual’s practice drawing from one’s personal repertoire, automatically assuming that the person should be a bilingual with substantial knowledge of at least two named language systems and their contextual usages. With our prompt for the families to utilize multilingual resources either from their immigrant backgrounds or from the schooling experiences, I expected that family members who were more or less proficient bi/multilinguals would be in charge of the ‘multilingual’ feature of the book. However, the family storybook project demonstrated how and why the bi/multilingual status did not really matter for this multilingual project since the less proficient bilinguals and even monolinguals all conjoined in the story-making through collaborative community translanguaging. With the conceptualization of community translanguaging, I finally understood how humans with diverse linguistic repertoires, as well as non-human actors such as place, objects, semiotic resources (e.g. books, craft materials, music) and time, all intertwine and interact for each new assemblage of meaning (Canagarajah, 2018; Pennycook, 2017). Superdiversity played its role as well. In the networked semiotic ecology,

An Autoethnography of Trans-Perspective Development  137

participating family members, their biographies, resources from distant cultural places and times, and material supplies for bookmaking all collaborated, creating a unique translanguaging semiosis through distributed agency among these interactive ecological inhabitants of the moment. Even in such a local space as this after-school family literacy program, community repertories were built off of the members’ local, transnational and global experiences near and far as well as physical and digital. During the process, project participants collaborated within and beyond their immediate family (including school teachers, extended family members and others in the community) to brainstorm, develop and represent multilingual family storybooks, interacting with a larger set of communicative repertoires. People translanguaged together regardless of their bilingual or monolingual status. Adults and children collaborated with their diverse native and/or learned language resources, such as children leading the illustrations of their family books or trying initial translation of their story into Spanish, the language of instruction in their school. The multimodal spectrum ranged across verbal and gestural discussions, crafted and hand-drawn images and texts, digitally reproduced images and typed texts, internet-borrowed photos and the diverse languages of English, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian and Croatian. There were intergenerational exchanges of ideas, experiences, knowledge, resources and cultural identities. Metalinguistic awareness was heightened in the transduction (Newfield, 2014) process of putting ideas from one language into another or from words to images and crafts. Family storybooks, as the new entity through community translanguaging, featured the complexity of multimodal semiosis and transcultural identities. Examples include a Taiwanese immigrant mother’s childhood story written in Spanish, Mandarin and English alongside her children’s hand-drawn illustrations of their ethnic artifacts and traditions; an African American mother’s and her daughter’s parallel diaries about their participation in a women’s march, in English and Spanish with illustrations; and a White mother’s and her daughter’s portrait of their classmates and friends from all over the world with their own hand-written stories that featured a wide range of transcultural and translingual identities. Calling for a pedagogy of community translanguaging

While documenting and analyzing the family storybook project, I became convinced that translanguaging is indeed collaborative and reflective of the many trans-experiences in the increasingly mobile world in both the physical and digital sense. It manifests multimodally and transmodally, weaving diverse abilities, perspectives, resources and identities into creatively combined modes. After my research into individual and collective translanguaging in the youth group and family literacy project, both of which occurred in out-of-classroom spaces, I then wondered how

138  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

educators can implement translanguaging as pedagogy within their superdiverse classrooms, possibly building on the new understanding of collaborative agencing (Toohey, 2019) through interaction among all inhabitants of the expanded trans-ecology. Envisioned as a collaborative endeavor, community translanguaging does not require classroom members (namely teachers and students) to all be bilinguals – community translanguaging just needs a space that allows collaborative semiosis. Even a monolingual teacher can mobilize students’ diverse linguistic resources and activate as many multimodal tools as available for transduction of meaning across semiotic modalities. Since each mode has its own meaning-making potential and materiality (Kress, 2010), a translanguaging classroom can increase the comprehensible input and output of students’ learning and communication of challenging concepts that may not be accessed in the linguistic mode alone (Krashen, 1985; Swain, 1985). The teacher can bring in students’ families and communities into classroom learning, which automatically invites diverse trajectories of living, languaging and interacting. Such a classroom then becomes an ecological space that grants more equitable statuses among named languages, semiotic modalities and diverse cultural identities through, for example, classroom signs in multiple languages, cultural artifacts from different places and times, and creative translanguaging/transmodalising projects that students have created. Similar to the liberating moment of encountering translanguaging, this was another elevating moment as a teacher educator. I was constantly fighting with my long-held insecurity from the fear of being exposed as an incompetent and unsuitable teacher educator of English teachers with my exoticized ‘non-native accent’ and ‘incorrect’ grammatical performance here and there. Despite the celebratory discourse around bilingualism and bilingual education, I could not help but recognize that major literacy conferences were not populated with many minority scholars like me. The sense of being misplaced, however, was replaced with the realization that there is a place for scholars and teacher educators like myself because of our lived experiences in the trans-space and the potential resonance with students from transbordering backgrounds. In my teacher education courses, I became more confident, even with my perceived ‘accent’, in telling my mostly monolingual teachers not to equate their EL students’ English proficiency level with their cognitive ability and not to assume that a student’s home language would be a hindrance to English development and identity construction. I asked them to critically re-evaluate their assumptions and beliefs about one’s accent and English-only ideology, to be aware of varying Englishes and their implications for learning and identity, and to incorporate other communicative modes into the classroom space. This to-do and not-to-do list, which some might take as familiar clichés in educational discourses, started to take on a completely

An Autoethnography of Trans-Perspective Development  139

new significance to me once I shifted my framework around trans-identities and their implications for education. I became excited and hopeful about the new educational vision of translanguaging for classroom learning and interaction. However, I also started to see and hear conflicted voices from the field. For example, the in-service teachers in my course ‘Methods of teaching culturally and linguistically diverse students’ (Spring 2019) shared their perceived and experienced challenges in implementing translanguaging pedagogies. Despite the known benefits of translanguaging, they felt overwhelmed and unsupported for this new approach. Firstly, they found the current instructional resources on translanguaging are overly for bilingual education contexts, lacking context-appropriate resources for superdiverse classrooms like theirs. Secondly, teachers were limited by the district policy that mandates English-only instruction for ELs and the resulting lack of supporting staff and resources. Their own monolingual status also contributed to their fear of losing control over classroom management. Even bilingual teachers shared that they had not thought of translanguaging as pedagogy despite its natural appeal to them. It seems that the prevalent monolingual ideology had cemented its way to teachers’ beliefs and practices of classroom instruction. Some teachers conceptualized translanguaging just as a newer – and rather mechanical – teaching strategy through translating content and language objectives into five different languages or facilitating various group configurations based on students’ home language backgrounds, but not as a frame-shifting framework. Translanguaging is more than a strategy. It is a way of being, communicating and relating to the world. Translanguaging pedagogy aims to build connections with students’ identities, capacities and community repertoires. Thus, translanguaging classrooms can concomitantly join the efforts to shift language ideologies towards a more equitable educational landscape. It is an explicit acknowledgment of emerging bi/multilinguals’ translanguaging even when it is not visible. Only with such a deeper understanding of translanguaging pedagogy as teaching human beings not teaching strategies, teachers would be able to conceive superdiversity as resources instead of barriers for the translanguaging classroom. Pulling the Trans-Narrative towards a New Identity

I started this chapter with a personal moment of how translanguaging changed my identity frame. Then, with the expanded notion of community translanguaging, I showcased how translanguaging is inherently interactive and collaborative – beyond individuals and single sign systems – highlighting its ecological operation, particularly in the superdiverse context of our time. The new pedagogical – and identity – paradigm requires us to be collaborative with others, open to new experiences and

140  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

innovative in meaning-making, learning and relationship building. The multiple ecological contexts from diverse locations, cultures, named languages, semiotic means and personal identities that participants bring to the space entangle with each other, creating an assemblage of new meanings, identities and relationships. Personally, it has been a transformative experience to witness and participate in this newer collaboration that has allowed us to build a more equitable ground for learning, communication and identity work. It has also been a transdisciplinary journey of crossing and merging the porous boundaries across fields of TESOL, applied linguistics, new literacy studies, migration studies and developmental psychology in order to understand the intricate relationships of languaging, identity, superdiversity, teaching and learning. I concur with what Canagarajah (2012: 276) described about scholars and practitioners doing ‘boundary-crossing work’ as leading ‘the dominant paradigms’ to be ‘reconstructed in our profession’. Not only by brokering across differences but also, more importantly, by creating new ways of being, representing and interacting is what makes trans-identities meaningful in this new time. As my next step of scholarly development, I am looking into translanguaging pedagogy for its transformative potential in creating a more equitable and collaborative educational space. It is important to recognize, however, that structural change at the policy and program level will not occur overnight or with research and teacher advocacy alone. The abrasive ideology of one language for one nation, resistance to the shifting hierarchy from White monolingual speakers and monolingual orientations, the lack of shared pedagogical resources for superdiverse classrooms and the raciolinguistic alignment between racism and linguicism (Flores & Rosa, 2015) are some of the imminent and deeprooted hurdles ahead of us. I also note that, while translanguaging creates an empowering space for marginalized language users, it does not automatically remove the imbalanced hierarchy of power and status tied to the more structural issues of historical, socioeconomic and political nature (Cenoz & Gorter, 2017). For example, translanguaging for English–Spanish bilingual children in a US classroom is different from translanguaging to revitalize regional minority languages such as Māori and Hawaiian. Whereas the US context of translanguaging pedagogy aims to promote and build on students’ full linguistic repertoires and emerging bilingual capacities, the latter is more for the survival and preservation of a vulnerable regional language itself. Without more careful and purposeful translanguaging that creates the need for regional language use among members, translanguaging cannot serve as a sustainable approach to minority language revitalization. In other words, translanguaging should be embodied considering different local needs and contexts as well as structurally conditioned factors (Cenoz & Gorter, 2017).

An Autoethnography of Trans-Perspective Development  141

Despite these constraints and challenges, however, it is enlightening to see and experience transformation at the smaller scale, such as shifts in transnational individuals’ identity perception, collaborative literacy building and classroom teachers’ new awareness, which will eventually ripple through and change the larger ecological layers of societal discourse, practices and power hierarchy. Translanguaging scholarship and pedagogy involve imagining different ways of communication, learning and relationships, beyond boundaries and embracing liminal experiences. As an actionable framework, translanguaging builds a breathing space for languages that are marginalized, develops critical language awareness and counteracts the existing norms and hierarchy in language education (Cenoz & Gorter, 2017; Li, 2018). I will conclude my trans-narrative by sharing a personal interpretation of the trans-life style that is glocal, a coined word from global and local, and translocal. The request made by TedTalk speaker Taiye Selasi is valid when she said ‘Don’t ask where I am from, ask where I’m a local’ on behalf of multi-local people (Selasi, 2014). The new way of asking or not asking the root, origin of country or place, validates the complex sense of belonging to multiple places among transmigrants. It also acknowledges transmigrants’ attempts to create a new – whether temporary or lasting – life in their current locality. As such, transmigrating people’s glocal/ translocal adaptation is a localized version of their global and transnational life. The prevalent trans-experiences remind us that it has become almost impossible to live without moving, expanding and connecting to the outer world. The multiplied life trajectories of transmigrants, each with impactful traces from many places, allow us to imagine new lifestyles as a concrete reality of here and now, even with the pervasive uncertainty of ongoing mobility and change. The journey through the trans-space was once a curse, but has finally become my new home with new connections, collaborations and creations. References Anderson, L. (2006) Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35 (4), 373–395. Anzaldua, G. (1999) Borderlands: La Frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Austin, T. (2009) Linguicism and race in the United States: Impact on teacher education from past to present. In R. Kubota and A. Lin (eds) Race, Culture, and Identities in Second Language Education: Exploring Critically Engaged Practice (pp. 252–270). New York, NY: Routledge. Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Blackledge, A. (2008) Language ecology and language ideology. In A. Creese, P. Martin and N.H. Hornberger (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Volume 9: Ecology of Language (2nd edn) (pp. 27–40). New York, NY: Springer. Blommaert, J. (2013) Citizenship, language, and superdiversity: Towards complexity. Journal of Language, Identity and Education 12 (3), 193–196.

142  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Blommaert, J. and Backus, A. (2013) Superdiverse repertoires and individual. In I. de Saint-Georges and J. Weber (eds) Multilingualism and Multimodality: Current Challenges for Educational Studies (pp. 11–32). Rotterdam: Sense. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1993) The ecology of cognitive development: Research models and fugitive findings. In R.H. Wozniak and K.W. Fischer (eds) Development in Context: Acting and Thinking in Specific Environment (pp. 3–44). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Canagarajah, S. (2012) Teacher development in a global profession: An autoethnography. TESOL Quarterly 46 (2), 258–279. Canagarajah, S. (2018) Translingual practice as spatial repertoires: Expanding the paradigm beyond structuralist orientations. Applied Linguistics 39 (1), 31–54. Cenoz, J. and Gorter, D. (2017) Minority languages and sustainable translanguaging: threat or opportunity? Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 38 (10), 901–912. Cummins, J., Hu, S., Markus, P. and Kristiina Montero, M. (2015) Identity texts and academic achievement: Connecting the dots in multilingual school contexts. TESOL Quarterly 49 (3), 555–581. Flores, N. and Rosa, J. (2015) Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review 85 (2), 149–171. García, O. (2009) Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: Global Perspectives. Malden, MA: Blackwell. García, O. and Li, W. (2014) Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. García, O. and Sylvan, C.E. (2011) Pedagogies and practices in multilingual classrooms: Singularities in pluralities. Modern Language Journal 95 (3), 385–400. Gee, J.P. (2001) Identity as an analytic lens for research in education. Review of Research in Education 25, 99–125. Guerra, J.C. (2007) Out of the valley: Transcultural repositioning as a rhetorical practice in ethnographic research and other aspects of everyday life. In C. Lewis, P. Enciso and E.B. Moje (eds) Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power (pp. 137–162). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Hall, S. (1995) New cultures for old. In D. Massey and P. Jess (eds) A Place in the World? Places, Cultures, and Globalization. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hawkins, M.R. and Mori, J. (2018) Considering ‘trans-’ perspectives in language theories and practices. Applied Linguistics 39 (1), 1–8. Hornberger, N.H. (2003) Multilingual language policies and the continua of biliteracy: An ecological approach. In N.H. Hornberger (ed.) Continua of Biliteracy: An Ecological Framework for Educational Policy, Research, and Practice in Multilingual Settings (pp. 315–339). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hornberger, N.H. and Link, H. (2012) Translanguaging in today’s classrooms: A biliteracy lens. Theory into Practice 51 (4), 239–247. Jørgensen, J.N. (2008) Polylingual languaging around and among children and adolescents. International Journal of Multilingualism 5 (3), 161–176. Kim, S. (2018a) Migrant youth identity work in transnational mediascape: A case study of what it means to be Korean for migrant adolescents. Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 28 (2), 281–302. Kim, S. (2018b) ‘It was kind of a given that we were all multilingual’: Transnational youth identity work in digital translanguaging. Linguistics and Education 43, 39–52. Kim, S. and Dorner, L.M. (2014) ‘Everything is a spectrum:’ Korean migrant youth identity work in the transnational borderland. In S. Spyrou and M. Christou (eds) Children and Borders (pp. 277–294). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kim, S. and Song, K.H. (2019) Designing a community translanguaging space within a family literacy project. The Reading Teacher 73 (3), 267–279.

An Autoethnography of Trans-Perspective Development  143

Kim, S., Dorner, L.M. and Song, K.H. (2021) Conceptualizing community translanguaging through a family literacy project. International Multilingual Research Journal, doi:10.1080/19313152.2021.1889112. Kramsch, C. (2006) The multilingual subject. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 16 (1), 97–110. Krashen, S. (1985) The Input Hypothesis: Issues and Implications. London: Longman. Kress, G. (2000) Design and transformation: New theories of meaning. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds) Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures (pp. 153–161). London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2010) Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge. Lam, W.S.E. (2008) Second language literacy and the design of self. In J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear and D. Leu (eds) Handbook of Research on New Literacies (pp. 457–482). New York, NY: Routledge. Lam, W.S.E and Warriner, D.S. (2012) Transnationalism and literacy: Investigating the mobility of people, languages, texts, and practices in contexts of migration. Reading Research Quarterly 47 (2), 191–215. Levitt, P. and Glick-Schiller, N. (2004) Conceptualizing simultaneity: A transnational social field perspective on society. International Migration Review 38 (3), 1002–1039. Li, W. (2011) Moment analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics 43 (5), 1222–1235. Li, W. (2018) Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics 39 (1), 9–30. Manyak, P.C. (2004) ‘What did she say?’ Translation in a primary-grade English immersion class. Multicultural Perspectives 6, 12–18. Merchant, G. (2006) Identity, social networks and online communication. E-Learning 3 (2), 235–244. Newfield, D. (2014) Transformation, transduction and the transmodal moment. In C. Jewitt (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis (pp. 100–113). New York, NY: Routledge. Orellana, M.F. (2009) Translating Childhoods: Immigrant Youth, Language, and Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Orellana, M.F. (2017) Solidarity, transculturality, educational anthropology, and (the modest goal of) transforming the world. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 48 (3), 210–220. Pavlenko, A. (2002) We have room for but one language here: Language and national identity in the US at the turn of the 20th century. Multilingua – Journal of CrossCultural and Interlanguage Communication 21, 163–196. Pennycook, A. (2017) Translanguaging and semiotic assemblages. International Journal of Multilingualism 14 (3), 1–14. Rymes, B. (2014) Communicating Beyond Language: Everyday Encounters with Diversity. New York, NY: Routledge. Selasi, T. (2014) Don’t ask where I’m from, ask where I’m a local. See https://www.ted.com/ talks/taiye_selasi_don_t_ask_where_i_m_from_ask_where_i_m_a_local (accessed February 2020). Swain, M. (1985) Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. In S. Gass and C. Madden (eds) Input in Second Language Acquisition (pp. 235–253). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Toohey, K. (2019) The onto-epistemologies of new materialism: Implications for applied linguistics pedagogies and research. Applied Linguistics 40 (6), 937–956.

144  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

van Lier, L. (1997) Approaches to observation in classroom research: Observation from an ecological perspective. TESOL Quarterly 31 (4), 783–787. Vertovec, S. (2007) Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6), 1024–1054. Wiley, T.G. (2014) Diversity, super-diversity, and monolingual language ideology in the United States: Tolerance or intolerance? Review of Research in Education 38 (1), 1–32.

9 Ni de aquí, ni de allá: How Technology has Changed the Way We See Transnationalism Martha Sidury Christiansen

Research on US migration often explores notions of diaspora (Barnard & Spencer, 2002) and transnationalism (Levitt & Waters, 2006; Vertovec, 2004), acculturation/assimilation (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006) and communication with local and distant societies (Madianou & Miller, 2012; Mejia Estevez, 2007). However, a change in movement patterns, which includes reverse or third country migration, calls for closer attention. Additionally, the rapid growth in information and communication technologies has provided another way to study how societies move, how people construct new identities and notions of belonging and how they create new spaces that do not conform to the traditional binaries of sending/receiving communities or home/host paradigms that diaspora and transnationalism studies often purport (Gabriel, 2011; King & Christou, 2011). The purpose of this chapter is to challenge traditional notions of transnationalism and belonging, and show how individuals create their own unique ‘liminal spaces between communities, languages, and nations’ (Canagarajah, 2018: 41) to establish membership, construct identities and enact language ideologies. I synthesize my research on bilingual youth living in Mexico and in the USA and my own experience as a bicultural TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) practitioner and researcher. Because much of my research includes online social networks (e.g. Christiansen 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2017a, 2018a), I offer a perspective on how bicultural people make sense of their world, which is different from scholars who examine communities in non-digital spaces with implications for both pedagogy and research. I conclude this chapter by describing a series of changes I have made to my own teaching and teacher training, including creating more inclusive pedagogies that allow students with complex identities to fully explore what they want to do with the English language they are learning in our classrooms. 145

146  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Diaspora and Transnationalism

While the term ‘diaspora’ historically used to refer to communities removed from their historic homeland and their dispersion around the world (e.g. Safran, 1991) or exiled and expat communities, the term has now come to be used for different groups of people including expatriates, political refugees, immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities – in other words, any ‘group of people dispersed from their original place’ (Barnard & Spencer, 2002: 601). Diasporic communities are complex and also include second and third generations that have formed a ‘distinctive sense of themselves and their identity as oriented towards the cultural present, not some lost or “true” homeland’ (Gabriel, 2011: 342). In the case of Mexican-descent people living in the USA, under Safran’s (1991) original definition, they would not be considered a diaspora. This is largely because some are descendants of people who have always lived in the same territory and which used to belong to Mexico. That is, they were never dispersed. Also, many are descendants of Mexicans who chose to migrate to the USA in search of better economic opportunities. In both cases, Safran claims they usually assimilate at a steady pace, despite periodic discrimination. Many Mexican–American communities celebrate Mexican holidays and festivals and maintain contact with relatives in Mexico. Thus, in diverse fields they are called transnationals since they often travel back and forth and have personal and political ties in both countries (Schiller et al., 1995). One possible effect of such transnationality is the need to cultivate a ‘homeland myth’, which is characterized as longing for and idealizing a homeland. The current status of Mexican populations in the USA, specifically, is that the sending and receiving communities are now blurred as a result of people’s constant movement between the two countries. For example, US children of Mexican immigrants who move to Mexico are often referred to as ‘retornados’ or returnees, even though they were never from there in the first place. They are not making a physical return, but rather an ‘ethnic return’ (King & Christou, 2011). That is, they are returning to their parent’s homeland, the origin of their ethnic roots. However, both diaspora and transnational literature use the term retornados as a heuristic for all such cases, along with cases of repatriation, deportation and those that indeed are returning to their places of origin after being displaced (e.g. Palestinians and their descendants). What’s more, nowadays, places of origin and return, as well as the type of movement between the two locales, can be physical, virtual, imagined, forced, denied or desired (King & Christou, 2011). While most studies focus on corporeal interdependent mobility (Urry, 2007: 47), my research focuses on imaginative, virtual and communicative interdependent mobilities with links to the corporeal and material domains.

How Technology has Changed the Way We See Transnationalism  147

Thus, on the one hand, the traditional notion of diaspora does not account for societies that are not fully displaced nor those that move willingly to other places, albeit under economic or political distress. On the other, the literature on transnationalism often focuses on the immigration and assimilation patterns the community has in the new locale and how ties are maintained in the old one. There is little discussion about how the interactional practices of transnationals, or diaspora communities by the same token, in digital spaces further erode national boundaries and weaken the link that people have to a single nation-state. However, recent mobility trends have begun to question the primacy of the much assumed ‘sending and receiving’ (home vs. host) community, as well as the directionality of immigrants’ focus on place, which is often described as ‘looking back’ to a homeland (Gabriel, 2011; King & Christou, 2011). However, second and subsequent generations ‘look forward’ to their parents’ communities by ‘resurrecting’ some notion of homeland (in the USA). For example, they demonstrate indigenous pride in their popular culture, visit their parents’ homeland and, in the case of Mexico, some move to Mexico permanently, which makes them simultaneously immigrants and retornados to a supposed homeland (González Gutiérrez, 1999; King & Christou, 2011). In the following section, I synthesize my research to show how technology has further disrupted traditional notions of homeland and hostland. Transnationals use social networking sites to construct a ‘third land’ where they enact their ethnic identities, practice culture and maintain social ties. Here, I argue that as a result of digital spaces, immigrant communities, regardless of why they are ‘displaced’, belong to an imagined community tied to shared cultural practices and traditions (for a specific example, see Christiansen (2017a, 2019a)) rather than to a nation-state. Role of online social network sites

Not only do subsequent generations and reverse migration flows complicate notions of diaspora and transnationalism, so do the ways in which people now connect and communicate. Web 2.0 technologies have made it possible for people to stay in touch with both each other and with their homeland or ‘perceived place of origin’ (Helland, 2007). The internet serves as a largely de-territorialized space where people form new relationships, practice religious rituals, become virtual tourists, carry out philanthropic activities and create new forms of community not possible before (Appadurai, 1996; Bernal, 2006; Christiansen, 2017a; Helland, 2007). Rather than continue the narrative of refugee, struggling worker or disadvantaged minority ethnic group, online diasporas or transnational virtual spaces provide a venue for people to invent new forms of citizenship and community as well as interact with their perceived homeland (e.g. Androutsopoulos, 2006; Bernal, 2006; Christiansen, 2017a; Helland, 2007).

148  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Online social spaces make it possible for people to create new discursive communities that not only expand their existing physical social networks but also extend their sense of membership in different but significant ways (Helland, 2007). As Bernal (2006: 163) calls it, such virtual spaces are ‘zone[s] of multiple borders’ and ‘frontier[s] of modernity’. Such deterritorialized spaces (whether imagined or online) have been called many things, including third spaces (Bhabha, 1994), transnational social spaces (Lam, 2009), imagined communities (Anderson, 2006), diasporic public spheres (Appadurai, 1996), chronotopic social spaces (Christiansen, 2019a), among others. Additionally, the term ‘translanguaging space’ (Li, 2011) was coined to describe the space where ‘different identities, values and practices [do not] simply co-exist, but combine together to generate new identities, values and practices’ (Li, 2011: 1223). This scholarship brings to light the multilingual practices of diaspora/transnational community members which, according to Li (2011: 1223), have their ‘own transformative power’. Thus, the ways in which people interact with one another in digital spaces serve as catalysts for social and linguistic change. My research

My broader research agenda has been to focus on the understanding of how language use in digital spaces affects identity construction. More specifically, my research studies have explored and examined the language ideologies and literacy practices of multilingual and transnational populations by drawing on theories from linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics and digital literacies that examine groups of people in out-of-school settings and expand our understanding of their digital lives. The central focus of my research investigates how cultural and linguistic diversity and their changes contribute to the academic and social development of transnational and multilingual populations. Most of this research has employed a concurrent traditional and online ethnographic methodology (Christiansen, 2015a) and the analysis of discourse in online social media conversations (Androutsopoulos, 2006, 2008). The combination of methods elaborates the role of online practices and how they inform the physical world. Crucially, through concurrent online and traditional ethnography, one can access a fuller picture of participant realities. For instance, in one of my papers (Christiansen, 2015b), I provide a specific account of how findings differ based on analysis of solely online data and interviews (as online ethnographic methods call for) or solely interview data and observations (as traditional ethnographic methods dictate). For example, in the Facebook post from Linda (a pseudonym) shown in Figure 9.1, a casual reader may think that the participants are proud of their dark skin, which is associated with indigenous heritage because the caption reads ‘a beautiful dark ear of corn’. However, if we take a look the excerpt on the right-hand side of Figure 9.1,

How Technology has Changed the Way We See Transnationalism  149

Excerpt: Tizoc (The person who makes sacrifices) Linda: His name should be [says various indigenous names at the same time, indistinctively] … Female cousin: NO! [Interrupts] pero también va a sufrir con ESO [but he’ll also suffer with THAT] … Linda: A quién le decían Tizoc ustedes? A Chucho va? [Who did you used to call Tizoc? Chucho, right?] Male cousin: No le ves el pinche bigotillo que le sale así de – [Don’t you see the damn little mustache that grows like – ] Linda: [LAUGH] … todo prietito [all dark-skinned, endearing suffix]

Figure 9.1  Chulada

taken from a naturally occurring conversation where ‘Linda’ was talking about choosing a name for a relative’s new baby, she is making fun of indigenous physiognomy (a common practice among Mexican society). Had I only gathered online data, my analysis of the participants’ attitudes about their indigenous roots would have been skewed to portrait a purely positive opinion. Taken together, it is apparent that their relationship with their indigenous heritage is complex and ambivalent. Thus, the main argument here is that in a networked society, ethnographic methods need to expand by including what we know about online ethnographies and human interaction in the digital era. Another focus of my research has been the examination of social media and digital literacies as sites for understanding multilingual social groups from a linguistic anthropological perspective. More specifically, through digital literacies, people use linguistic ideologies to construct, assign and sanction identities, which allows me to observe the social network dynamics of transnational Mexicans in the US and Mexico. This vein of research has examined Facebook conversations using a framework of language ideologies and a theory of language as symbolic power. I argue that participants use language ideologies as tools to contest their identities and establish membership related to their Mexicanness. This work contributes to linguistic anthropological research by demonstrating that transnationals racialize their own use of language to form hierarchies in their social structure. My earlier work (Christiansen, 2015c) examined how young transnational Mexicans in Chicago construct their ethnic identity. This research showed that participants use four emic criteria (language, color, transnationality and display of culture) to measure,

150  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching Translation: Happy Carmen’s day! Happy Santo to me! Lol.

Figure 9.2  Carmen congratulating herself on her Saint’s day

Translation: Casmen [sic]! Happy saint’s day although you do not honor it [being a saint]! … 

Figure 9.3  Irene’s congratulations

Translation: Happy santo day! LOL [Since] I don’t have a santo [day], I don’t see why there is a need to celebrate this day. Anyway, I will be there [party or celebration]! Hahaha … jk. Congratulations Casmen [sic] …

Figure 9.4  Katia’s congratulations

challenge and construct different degrees of Mexicanness (see Figure 9.1 for an example of skin and hair color). Based on these findings, I argue that individuals reconstruct a social order based on a hierarchy that favors more bilingual and bicultural members over the traditional older/male hierarchy typical to Ranchero and Mexican societies. There are specific examples in Christiansen (2015c) from Facebook posts by Carmen, Irene and Katia – three participants (cousins) who grew up in Chicago and have studied in and visit Mexico regularly and often display their transnationality (see Figures 9.2, 9.3 and 9.4). One way they do this is to make a point of celebrating Mexican-origin holidays and rituals, including those not commonly celebrated even in Mexico. In this case, Carmen is congratulating herself and the other two

How Technology has Changed the Way We See Transnationalism  151

cousins are celebrating Carmen’s ‘saint’s day’. In post-colonial Mexico, people were often forced to be baptized or registered with Catholic names. The calendar includes a santoral, for which each day is dedicated to a saint, and often a person would be named after that saint. Nowadays, this practice is not very common and people just name their children after relatives; however, the celebration of a saint’s day used to be just as big as a birthday. In fact, the original lyrics of the popular Mexican birthday song Las Mañanitas read: ‘hoy por ser día de tu santo, te las cantamos a ti’ (‘since today is your saint’s day, we come here to congratulate you’). People have since adapted the lyrics to ‘hoy por ser tu cumpleaños’ (‘since today it’s your birthday’). Thus, in this example, we can observe that Carmen writes a Facebook update on her timeline congratulating herself for the occasion, and Irene and Katia also write on Carmen’s timeline, thus displaying their transnationality by congratulating their cousin, even if they themselves do not celebrate it (see Figure 9.4). Notice the use of multiple linguistic resources. By celebrating a holiday not so common in Mexico (the santo day), these three cousins display their transnationality indexed by their knowledge of Mexican culture. As I explain in the article (Christiansen, 2015c), they position themselves as more relevant and more Mexican than others in their social network. They also maintain ties to a Mexican culture and, although they are not physically connected to Mexico, Facebook allows them to ‘do’ transnationalism in an imagined space, ‘celebrating’ like any Mexican in Mexico would: by joking about using their santo day as a pretext for a drink or a celebration or to congratulate themselves or others. In response to changing hierarchies in social structure, I examine communication behavior and argue that it informs us about the makeup of both established and emergent social networks. I have explored how bilinguals use their multiple linguistic resources to create online imagined spaces where they assert their Mexicanness and ‘do’ transnationalism without necessarily traveling back and forth between countries. This work also brings directly into question the traditional scholarly notion of transnationalism. For instance, I argue that participants engage in the use of de-territorialized discourse to create chronotopes through which they recontextualize Facebook as a unique transnational social place (Christiansen, 2017a). There, they connect with friends and family ‘as if’ in the here and now, which bolsters cultural praxis. For instance, in the following excerpt (Christiansen, 2016: 367), two participants demonstrate their knowledge of cultural activities in Mexico to give suggestions to Cosme, who is visiting their rural village (rancho). Although one of the participants named Lola and a friend (Anon.) are in the US at the time, they still participate in the conversation because of their knowledge of their rancho. (In this excerpt the screenshot is not displayed to make reading and translating clearer.)

152  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Excerpt 1

Cosme’s post: ‘12 dias de puro fiesta aqui ando desvelado pero sigue las noches’

‘12 days of just parties here I am sleepless but nights go on’

2

6 people like this

3

Lola: Y al las fiestas!!

And to the parties!!

4

Cosme: en Tocumbo

in Tocumbo

5

Lola: A k horas se van??

What time do you leave??

6

Linda: you guys should have gone to la fiesta de la jabonera

Ustedes debieron haber ido a the party of la Jabonera

7

Anon: [anonymized due to racial slur] haha yu aint ready nigguuh

Ja no, tu no estás listo toda- vía nigguuh [esta palabra es un epíteto de racismo en Estados Unidos]

This conversation reads as if it happened in real time, face-to-face, with participants sharing the same location (for a more detailed analysis of this type of de-territorialized discourse, please refer to Christiansen (2017a)). As the study evidenced, the use of smartphones and social network platforms has made it easier (and cheaper) for members to maintain connections and has created a world in which they can ‘be present’ with one another while simultaneously in a different country, such as in this case. It also allows Mexican Americans in the US to display their knowledge of Mexican culture and local practices. Extending linguistic anthropology (which focuses on greater patterns found in discourse) and digital literacies to particular language uses (linguistic features), I have investigated how transnational Mexicans use a vernacular, rural variety of Mexican Spanish to communicate and construct an identity (see Christiansen, 2015a). In this study, I demonstrated that by using the stigmatized variety online, participants can reminisce about their Mexican agrarian pasts while simultaneously distancing themselves from the stigma of a rural background and aligning with a contemporary US Mexican culture. In Figure 9.5, the participant uses ranchero Spanish to wish everyone a ‘good night’ (she uses nochis instead of the standard form noches). My current work builds from the prior research and examines the specific use of linguistic resources and the multimodality of online posts to show how transnationals construct their social spaces and enact identities. I am now examining how, through language use and multimodal devices, people who share an ethnic identity construct social spaces to form ad hoc networks. In this vein, I explore how Mexican-origin individuals employ language and online participation in Twitter to co-create an imagined space that transcends geography and temporality. I show that individuals use Twitter to co-construct a single, joint, imagined experience (chronotope) where they perform or reject Mexicanness (Christiansen, 2019a). This article argues for more inclusive understandings of

How Technology has Changed the Way We See Transnationalism  153

Figure 9.5  Buenas nochis

transnationalism that account for the ways in which people use the affordances of social media to experience and practice their culture, keep in touch, forge ethnic identities and display their sense of belonging to a wider Mexican culture. As I discussed earlier, this evolving view on transnationality is important as communities are no longer seen simply as sending or receiving. De-territorialized communities are vibrant and their engagement with ‘places of origin’ often happens in online digital spaces. I aim to explore these traditionally conceived transnational populations and document how digital technologies make possible new ways to engage with distant family and friends and feel a cultural affinity. This work, examining how bilingual Mexican-origin individuals communicate in online social spaces, has led me to new projects among transnational populations that combine all my areas of research and explore what it means to the TESOL field. For example, I recently investigated practices of transnationals from the US who ‘return’ to Mexico and teach English there (Christiansen, 2018b). In this paper, I took a closer look at language ideologies that paradoxically give Mexican-origin individuals an edge when teaching English in Mexico, while simultaneously ‘otherizing’ them as American (that is, not Mexican other than in physiognomy). At the same time, my previous research shows that these same individuals are otherized in the US and, in this context, jockey to identify as more authentically Mexican as a way to assert their ethnic identities. How they grapple with their American identities in Mexico forms the basis of my current research. What is important is that while this jockeying does happen in online social spaces, it is different. Since it is de-territorialized, the hierarchies, criteria and language all tend to differ from traditional territorialized notions. How My Research Has Changed My Practice

An important claim in all my work is that online social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter serve as catalysts for language and social change. Because users regulate online social networks, language use becomes linguistic capital and the jockeying for cultural membership provides a

154  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching Translation: Happy birthday. May you have an incredible day today … many congratulations … Hippy [sic] Birthday!

Figure 9.6  Muchos thankyus

glimpse into the ways in which language use points to social relations outside such social network sites. Additionally, the traditional older-male hierarchies are contested by people who value bilingualism and biculturality over knowledge of a single culture and language. I provide evidence for these claims by focusing on language use in online spaces. For example, part of my research investigates language use in digital spaces to examine how linguistic variation in written form can be considered oral-like. One example is an article (Christiansen, 2017b) that examines a specific case of how orality influences writing in the digital spaces of a social network of Mexican bilinguals. Language used in digital communication has often erroneously been considered a simple extension of spoken language (for a discussion see Herring (2008)). My research provides evidence that, in fact, digital writing reshapes orthographies to construct identities and audiences. For example, in Figure 9.6, Irene responds to a friend’s birthday wishes that in a way that uses a play on words (notice ‘hippy’, instead of happy, for hippie – a common saying in Mexico and not a typo) with a translanguaging move (Li, 2011), combining the expressions ‘thank you very much’ and ‘muchas gracias’, resulting in the combined phrase ‘muchos thankyus’. Muchos is adapted to the gender of the borrowing (usually male) and then the phrase thank you is adapted to have number concordance (plural) and omitting the orthographic [o] in you resulting in ‘thankyus’. Although common in spoken language, the writing of muchos thankyus shows that transnationals may use all their linguistic resources to communicate in order to create banter, jokes and phrases that fulfill their communicative purposes. Likewise, with the help of other social– semiotic resources such as images, sounds and hyperlinks, digital writing creates new meanings and establishes the notion of multimodality as the norm of communication in digital spaces. I argue that, on the one hand, transnationals make sense of their cultural identities and social structures through language use, and that linguistic variation, on the other hand, whether lexical, phonological or grammatical, is tied to social categories and the values people assign each other. In this vein, I advocate for multimodality and digital literacy in the teaching of writing to speakers of another language. One specific example is the inclusion of tasks such as digital storytelling. Digital storytelling is ‘the process of creating a short, emotional, and compelling story through

How Technology has Changed the Way We See Transnationalism  155

Figure 9.7  Storyboard excerpt

the combination of different technological modes, such as images, music and sounds, video clips, text, and/or narration’ (Christiansen & Koezler, 2016: 3). Through digital storytelling, not only can teachers give students a platform to explore their own identities and languages, but they can do it following the writing process approach to prepare storyboards following the tenets of academic writing (cf. Christiansen, 2017b, 2017c; Christiansen & Koezler, 2016). Figure 9.7 is an example of part of the storyboard that some of my international students made to prepare for a video targeted to their classmates. In the storyboard shown in the figure, students chose to depict themselves as cartoon characters but kept their identities with their own voice. This rhetorical move could be interpreted as being strategically chosen to appeal to a larger audience by keeping one of the traits that many international students are often perceived as wanting to ‘reduce’ – what they think of as ‘a foreign accent’ – but also not showing themselves and instead using cartoons. One of the main ways I have changed my own practice is by avoiding being too prescriptive when asking students to talk about culture, whether their own or contrasting their experiences to an American experience. Just as with language, I no longer view cultures as separate entities, but as amalgam of different experiences. Assuming that a student will have one culture and that it will be inherently different from American culture is erroneous. Thus, through digital storytelling projects, I encourage students to tell me their cultural stories. I find that many students, for instance, grew up listening to English language music and watching Hollywood movies, both of which played a role in their identity formation (e.g. Christiansen, 2019b). Another change I have made is to become less prescriptive as far as language use and grammar are concerned and to instead help students focus on contexts, audiences and rhetorical uses of different varieties of language. Given that internet language is also culturally embedded (Christiansen, 2018c), students learn the conventions of use and syntax so they can follow in composing a tweet, an Instagram post or a blog, for example. I draw from my sociolinguistic background in my ELT training curriculum to teach students that there is more than one valid variety of

156  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

English, depending on context. In my most recent paper (Christiansen, 2020), I show that as a manner of asserting equality, female Mexican bilinguals use African American English (AAE) features in digital writing when interacting with males more than when interacting with females. I argue that bilinguals use ‘non-standard’ linguistic features to index specific identities not necessarily attached to the language variety itself. This study extends my previous research to encompass the digital writing practices of other Latino/Hispanic students and bridges the gap between their out-of-school practices and academic writing, both necessary outcomes to better design English composition courses and ensure student success. Many learners of English are attracted to AAE. However, very little is included in ESL/EFL curriculums about AAE, and notions of African American culture and language are often minimized and stereotyped into hip-hop language. Thus, it is important for ESL/EFL teachers to recognize the AAE variety and its multiple uses beyond music or negative portrayals of gangs in media to show that it is a vibrant variety of English used by all kinds of people in diverse settings. Finally, the biggest change I have experienced is a change in my own language ideologies. I began my real English language journey at the age of 17, when I enrolled in a private English language school with classes every Saturday from 7am to 3pm for one and a half years in my hometown in Mexico. I am a late bilingual who attended this private (and businessoriented) language school that ascribed to language separation, purism and standardization models. Therefore, as a language teacher my instinct was to use the same techniques I was given as a student. However, while using multiple languages in my speech or writing does not come naturally to me, the tasks and explanations I prepare for my students align with current notions of translanguaging (García, 2011). That is, I plan activities that allow students to explore their multiple linguistic resources in order to create meanings, deepen understanding and solve problems. What is more, in my own research I now look for instances of people constructing translanguaging spaces (Li, 2011), created when languages flow and serve all to find affinity in the classroom. This is where my teaching informs my research as well. My future projects include exploring how learners of English construct informal communities of practice via mobile device apps such as GroupMe or WhatsApp to practice their target language outside the classroom or a required online classroom group. That is, I plan to study how students are building translanguaging digital spaces that advance their language learning. Conclusion

In this chapter, I have synthesized my past and current research for two purposes: (1) to show how digital technologies are changing the way

How Technology has Changed the Way We See Transnationalism  157

people connect to one another and their cultures and (2) to show how my research has informed my teaching of English (and my teacher training). My hope is that, as we continue to study different populations, we will acknowledge the different ways in which communicating online has changed how we view ourselves and language. I am not proposing that we are all part of a globalized world in which national borders are erased or irrelevant; on the contrary, I am suggesting that locality is evolving as a result of our global engagement and other forms of locality are, oxymoronically, becoming de-territorialized. That is, although our identities have been understood as fluid, our perception of belonging is now becoming more diverse, which has rendered some of our identities more visible and not tied to a territory or single nation-state. They are still rooted in particular, albeit imagined, places. Additionally, people’s identities and languages cannot be viewed as discrete, but instead are fluid, pluricultural and complex. The methods, techniques and materials of English teaching need to reflect this modern reality and to include, in lesson planning, different varieties of English and different cultures found in English-speaking countries. Digital literacies are excellent places to start making this change. References Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York, NY: Verso. Androutsopoulos, J. (2006) Multilingualism, diaspora, and the Internet: Codes and identities on German-based diaspora websites. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10 (4), 520– 547, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9841.2006.00291.x. Androutsopoulos, J. (2008) Potentials and limitations of discourse-centred online ethnography. See http://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2008/1610 (accessed March 2021). Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Barnard, D.A. and Spencer, J. (eds) (2002) Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology (1st edn). London: Routledge. Bernal, V. (2006) Diaspora, cyberspace and political imagination: The Eritrean diaspora online. Global Networks 6 (2), 161–179, doi:10.1111/j.1471-0374.2006.00139.x. Bhabha, H.K. (1994) The Location of Culture (2nd edn). New York, NY: Routledge. Canagarajah, S. (2018) Transnationalism and translingualism: How they are connected. In X. You (ed.) Transnational Writing Education: Theory, History, and Practice (pp. 57–76). New York, NY: Routledge. Christiansen, M.S. (2015a) ‘A ondi queras’: Ranchero identity construction by U.S. born Mexicans on Facebook. Journal of Sociolinguistics 19 (5), 688–702, doi:10.1111/ josl.12155. Christiansen, M.S. (2015b) Appearances can be deceiving: Risks interpreting data in online ethnographic research. In M. Lengeling and I. Mora Pablo (eds) Perspectives on Qualitative Research (pp. 437–456). Guanajuato: Universidad de Guanajuato Press. Christiansen, M.S. (2015c) Mexicanness and social order in digital spaces: Contention among members of a multigenerational transnational network. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 37 (1), 3–22, doi:10.1177/0739986314565974.

158  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Christiansen, M.S. (2016) Maintaining transnationalism: The role of digital communication among US-born Mexicans (pp. 353–376). In J. Olvera García and N. Baca Tavira (eds) Continuidades y Cambios en las Migraciones de México a Estados Unidos. Toluca, México: Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México. Christiansen, M.S. (2017a) Creating a unique transnational place: Deterritorialized discourse and the blending of time and space in online social media. Written Communication 135–164, doi:10.1177/0741088317693996. Christiansen, M.S. (2017b) Language use in social network sites: The influence of orality in the digital writing of Mexican bilinguals. Writing & Pedagogy 9 (2), 369–392, doi:10.1558/wap.30281. Christiansen, M.S. (2017c) Multimodal L2 composition: EAP in the digital era. International Journal of Language Studies 11 (3), 53–72. Christiansen, M.S. (2018a) ‘¡Hable bien m’ijo o gringo o mx!’: Language ideologies in the digital communication practices of transnational Mexican bilinguals. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 4 (21), 439–450, doi:10.1080/13670 050.2016.1181603. Christiansen, M.S. (2018b) ‘You know English, so why don’t you teach?’ Language ideologies and returnees becoming English language teachers in Mexico. International Multilingual Research Journal 12 (2), 80–95, doi:10.1080/19313152.2017.1401446. Christiansen, M.S. (2018c) Cultural influences in texting. In J.I. Liontas (ed.) The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Christiansen, M.S. (2019a) ‘Listisimo para los #XVdeRubi:’ Constructing a chronotope as an imagined experience in Twitter to enact Mexicannes outside of Mexico. Lingua Journal, 225, 1–15. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2019.05.002. Christiansen, M.S. (2019b) Creating multimodal texts in the L2 writing classroom: A remediation activity. In E. Domínguez Romero, J. Bobkina and S. Stefanova (eds) Teaching Literature and Language Through Multimodal Texts (pp. 172–190). IGI Global. http://doi:10.4018/978-1-5225-5796-8.ch010 Christiansen, M.S. (2020) Identity and empowerment: Vernacular English features used by bilingual Mexicans online. Language@Internet, 18, article 2. https://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2020/christiansen Christiansen, M.S. and Koelzer, M.-L. (2016) Digital storytelling: Using different technologies for EFL. MEXTESOL Journal 40, 1–14. Retrieved from http://www.mextesol.net/journal/index.php?page=journal&id_article=1338 Christiansen, M.S. and Koezler, M. (2016) Digital storytelling: Using different technologies for EFL. MEXTESOL Journal 40 (1). Gabriel, S.P. (2011) ‘It ain’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re born’: Re-theorizing diaspora and homeland in postcolonial Malaysia. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 12 (3), 341–357, doi:10.1080/14649373.2011.578791. García, O. (2011) Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective (1st edn). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. González Gutiérrez, C. (1999) The Mexican diaspora in the United States. The Journal of American History 86 (2), 545–567, doi:10.2307/2567045. Herring, S.C. (2001) Computer-mediated discourse. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen and H. Hamilton (eds) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 612–634). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~herring/cmd.pdf Helland, C. (2007) Diaspora on the electronic frontier: Developing virtual connections with sacred homelands. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 12 (3), 956–976, doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00358.x. King, R. and Christou, A. (2011) Of counter-diaspora and reverse transnationalism: Return mobilities to and from the ancestral homeland. Mobilities 6 (4), 451–466, doi:10.1080/17450101.2011.603941.

How Technology has Changed the Way We See Transnationalism  159

Lam, W.S.E. (2009) Multiliteracies on instant messaging in negotiating local, translocal, and transnational affiliations: A case of an adolescent immigrant. Reading Research Quarterly 44 (4), 377–397. Levitt, P. and Waters, M.C. (eds) (2006) The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Li, W. (2011) Moment analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics 43 (5), 1222–1235, doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.07.035. Madianou, M. and Miller, D. (2012) Migration and New Media: Transnational Families and Polymedia. New York, NY: Routledge. Mejia Estevez, S. (2007) Just a click away from home: Ecuadorian migration, nostalgia and new technologies in transnational times. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland. Portes, A. and Rumbaut, R.G. (2006) Immigrant America: A Portrait (3rd edn). Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Safran, W. (1991) Diasporas in modern societies: Myths of homeland and return. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1 (1), 83–99, doi:10.1353/dsp.1991.0004. Schiller, N.G., Basch, L. and Blanc, C.S. (1995) From immigrant to transmigrant: Theorizing transnational migration. Anthropological Quarterly 68 (1), 48–63, doi:10.2307/3317464. Urry, J. (2007) Mobilities (1st edn). Cambridge: Polity Press. Vertovec, S. (2004) Migrant transnationalism and modes of transformation. International Migration Review 38 (3), 970–1001, doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2004.tb00226.x.

10 Shifting Roles and Negotiating Returns in Transnational TESOL Research Brooke R. Schreiber

Doing transnational research requires what Nero (2015) has called a ‘discursive dance’ of identities, as researchers work to establish their positioning in the community through each individual research interaction, moving in and out of alignment with various interlocutors, institutions, and ideologies. This dance is complex and fraught with difficulties, but it also opens up one of the most hopeful of transnational research’s possibilities: challenging and transforming the simple binaries of insider and ­outsider, researcher and participant, novice and expert. As researchers (and participants) move across borders, they build relationships and affiliations that are not confined to individual nation-states but exist ‘between and beyond boundaries’ as ‘ties of liminality’ (Canagarajah, 2018: 42). These new social networks exist in what has been called a transnational social space or transnational social field, where actors create ‘multilayered and multisited identifications’: new understandings of themselves and the spaces they occupy (Fraiberg et al., 2017: 10). It is this aspect of transnational research – these multiple identifications in liminal spaces – that creates the possibility for defying traditional binaries. In this chapter I examine the experience of returning to a research site in Serbia where I had previously been a visiting lecturer, and consider how these border-crossings demanded the negotiation of the complex and overlapping roles of friend and colleague, researcher and participant, cultural insider and cultural outsider. I describe my efforts to balance my privilege as an ‘exported’ (Donahue, 2009) center-based expert with my desire to position local instructors as experts, and how that dynamic played out in my interviews with Sara, a British citizen and longtime instructor in Serbia who, like me, occupied a deeply transnational space and regularly drew on an essentialized ‘native English speaker’ (NES) identity as a professional strategy. I suggest that ongoing critical 160

Shifting Roles and Negotiating Returns in Transnational TESOL Research  161

reflections on the multiple and contradictory positions transnational teachers and scholars occupy, modeled on the precedent set in feminist ethnography, will help cultivate researchers’ transnational positioning: a desire to ‘seek more expansive practices of communication and identity’, to embrace an ‘ongoing quest’ for newer, less stable and territorialized identities and language use, and to find comfort and growth in difference (Canagarajah, 2018: 44–45). Ultimately, by adopting this positioning researchers can build more equitable and ethical relationships with ­participants and themselves. Arriving

During the 2010–2011 school year, I taught at Southern Serbia University (a pseudonym, henceforth referred to as SSU) as an English Language Fellow (ELF) as part of a US Department of State (US DoS) fellowship program designed to promote diplomacy and facilitate language teaching. I worked as a visiting lecturer, teaching several courses in the English department, primarily second- and third-year essay writing. According to the US DoS, the goal of an ELF is to ‘[promote] English language learning and [enhance] English teaching capacity abroad’ (US DoS, 2021). Thus, before I arrived, I was already explicitly positioned by the US DoS as a language teaching expert and sent to this community to ‘model and demonstrate up-to-date TEFL classroom practices’ (US DoS, 2021). As an American, it was assumed I had access to the most ‘up-todate’, best teaching practices; the faculty I was there to support, it was assumed, did not. This expert positioning echoes the long-standing and highly problematic ideology within the field of English language teaching (ELT) known as native-speakerism or the native-speaker fallacy. Under this pervasive set of beliefs, those considered ‘NESs’ are seen as automatically superior teachers, and pedagogy from the traditionally English-dominant countries of the ‘inner circle’ is seen as automatically more authentic (Holliday, 2006; Widdowson, 1994). The term ‘native speaker’ in ELT has been widely critiqued and deconstructed, not only because it serves to reinforce a hierarchy within the field that privileges English-dominant countries, but also because it represents a false binary between ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ speakers, rather than the reality of global multilingualism. This distinction, based in traditional Chomskian notions of a monolingual ‘ideal speaker–listener’ who is the most authoritative judge of grammaticality (Chomsky, 1965) serves to marginalize and minoritize those labeled ‘non-native English speaking teachers’ (see Jain, 2018; Yazan & Rudolph, 2018). In this chapter, I use the term ‘NES’ to highlight the language ideologies circulating in my research context, though my analysis works toward deconstructing the binary the term represents.

162  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

At the beginning of my time in Serbia, as a novice researcher fresh from a master’s in a teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) program, I was naively unaware of the complex history of native-speakerism and linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 1992) that informs even well-intentioned teacher exchange programs, or of the privilege with which I moved through the ELT field by virtue of my perceived ‘NES’ and ‘inner circle’ status. I simply felt excited to be chosen, confident that I could accomplish the ELF mission and eager to share the wisdom I believed (and the US DoS told me) I brought with me. When I actually arrived at SSU, however, it rapidly became apparent that, while my hosts were welcoming and kind, and glad for the helping hand in the writing classroom, they were far from needing my ‘modeling’ to stay ‘up-to-date’. Instead, it was my own imported pedagogy that had to be negotiated within their educational system. During the year, I not only taught courses on my own but also co-taught in and out of the university with local faculty, constantly discussing pedagogy in formal and informal settings, with the result that I learned a tremendous amount from my dedicated colleagues. Recognizing how my ‘expertise’ failed to translate in this context was in part what pushed me to apply to PhD programs to study the interplay of local and international pedagogy in English as a foreign language writing instruction – and opened up the possibility of a transnational positioning for me. Returning

In the fall of 2014, I returned to SSU as a fourth-year doctoral student conducting field work for my dissertation, an ethnographic case study of English as a foreign language writing instruction. I spent three months in the city, observing classes, conducting interviews with teachers and students, and attending other school-related events. During this time, I was constantly (re)negotiating my complex professional positioning within the small and tight-knit community of the university’s English department. My positioning as a former ELF (an ‘expert’ teacher from the US and as a ‘NES’, with the perceived linguistic and cultural authority that implied) lingered and, as a PhD student, I now academically ‘outranked’ some of the faculty participants, including many of the colleagues who had generously and compassionately mentored me during my first stay. I wanted to position myself explicitly and primarily as a researcher, using the props of informed consent forms and recording equipment and talking constantly about my research goals; as I will discuss later, part of my researcher positioning was a strong desire to treat my participants as expert informants, complicated as that positioning was by other status markers. My social roles were also dynamic and overlapping: for so many of my participants, I was not only a former colleague, but also a close friend.

Shifting Roles and Negotiating Returns in Transnational TESOL Research  163

Given my limited Serbian fluency, I depended on my participants for help navigating life in Serbia as well as for enjoying a social life; I was living in an apartment owned by one of the faculty members who was also a research participant, and spent many happy social evenings with her and her family. For the former students I interviewed, I was a teacher and mentor, albeit one not much older than they were; for the current students and the new faculty I was introduced to, I was a stranger, though one who came with local connections. Each of these relationships demanded their own complex balancing acts, raising key issues of insider and outsider positioning, the privileges of those perceived as ‘NESs’ and the ethical responsibilities of the transnational researcher. Positioning and Research Ethics

In ethnographic research, researchers’ positioning in the host community necessarily shifts during the course of study: outside researchers must immerse themselves in the host culture and inside researchers must distance themselves from it, as a fundamental part of the process of making meaning in research (Labaree, 2002). Conducting research from insider positioning has profound benefits: beyond intimate knowledge of the context, an insider status can entail greater levels of trust, intimacy, and openness from participants. However, the insider status also carries with it expectations from the community under study, such as that of representing the community sympathetically, which can be limiting (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009). As a result, it may be both necessary and inevitable for ethnographers to move strategically between insider and outsider identities – a practice that can create both ethical and methodological dilemmas for researchers. Drawing on work theorizing the negotiation of subject positioning in interaction (e.g. Bucholtz & Hall, 2004, 2008; Davies & Harré, 1990), Nero (2015) examined her own positioning during her research in Jamaica around Creole language practices. She concludes that the tidy dichotomy between insider and outsider simply does not exist – that, instead, qualitative researchers construct an identity within and through the process of research and, as a result, insider status is ‘always subject to negotiation’ (Nero, 2015: 364). The identities of researchers and participants in interviews should thus be understood in a post-structuralist sense as evolving in and through interaction, as ‘social actors claim, contest, and negotiate power and authority’ (Bucholtz & Hall, 2008: 154; qtd. in Nero, 2015). Kirsch and Ritchie (1995) argue that, as researchers, it is not sufficient to simply make space to state our identities within our writing; instead, we must engage in ‘rigorously reflexive examination’ (Kirsch & Ritchie, 1995: 9). Though it is not possible for us to ever fully recognize our own perspectives, we can do the work of ‘noticing the multiple and contradictory positions researchers and participants occupy, complicating and politicizing

164  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

our investigation, [and] valuing the individual and the local’ (Kirsch & Ritchie, 1995: 10). In transnational research, this can mean attending to those ‘multisited and multilayered identifications’ we both draw on and create, and acknowledging the material effects of the power relations in transnational spaces – a crucial one being the native/non-native English speaker (NES/NNES) hierarchies that permeate the field of ELT. Like Nero, my role as a researcher in Serbia had elements of both insider and outsider status. As described earlier, I was a former colleague of my research participants and I had lived in the city and had spent considerable time socializing with my colleagues, developing deep friendships. This level of access to and good faith with the participants based on limited insider status (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009), together with familiarity with the context, was in no small part what led me to select this research site; I was able to build on the affiliations I had created in this transnational social field. However, these elements of emic-ness were, in many ways, at odds with my decidedly ‘foreign’ status both in my initial teaching experience and in my return as a researcher, and I regularly used this aspect of my identity as a bargaining chip to gain access to spaces and informants. My entrance into the community was sponsored originally by the US DoS, as part of a tradition of temporary foreign teachers informed by nativespeakerist assumptions. My research was conducted in English, and while recruiting student participants I drew on a strategically essentialized and idealized ‘NES’ identity (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018) by promoting my research interviews as a chance to spend time practicing English by conversing informally with an NES. I leaned further into idealized nativeness and the role of an American cultural informant by offering participants homemade brownies (seen in Serbia as a distinctly American dessert). In addition, through my interactions with the local English teachers’ association, I was connected to the community of secondary English teachers, which enabled my observations at secondary schools. As part of building these relationships, I visited several high schools as a guest speaker, which mostly consisted of answering students’ questions about myself and life in the USA. These experiences enabled me to interact with students and teachers outside of my more formal researcher role, to build goodwill with my participants and to gain greater access to the secondary school teachers’ professional lives (for example, spending time in teachers’ lounges and seeing their hectic schedules). As the ‘guest speaker from America’, I was both accepting and trading on a visibly othered positioning – one that gave me a significant advantage in the research process. This markedly foreign/outsider status raised ethical issues, however, that I needed to negotiate constantly during the course of my study. In the course of conducting my field work and, more intensely, in the analysis and writing process, I became aware of the power hierarchies within ELT, including that of the ‘center–periphery divide’, which shape the

Shifting Roles and Negotiating Returns in Transnational TESOL Research  165

transnational social field in which my research was both embedded and, in some ways, complicit. Traditionally, the geopolitical terms ‘center’ and ‘periphery’ have been used to describe the relationship between the economically and politically powerful ‘inner circle’ nations (primarily the USA and UK) and the less powerful nations labeled the ‘outer and expanding circles’ (Canagarajah, 1999). Although these terms have been deeply contested as simplistic and outdated, they provide a way of naming and acknowledging a power hierarchy that still permeates the field of ELT and deeply affects the lived experiences of teachers and students. To complicate this binary, Bennett (2014) has suggested that a third category exists: that of the ‘semi-periphery’, located between the center and the periphery, with characteristics of both, which acts as ‘conduits for knowledge flows emanating from the centre’ (Bennett, 2014: 3) and ‘contact zone[s] where different attitudes, ­discourses, and practices meet and merge’ (Bennett, 2014: 7). While Serbia may not be considered semi-periphery in all spheres, the term neatly describes the positioning of those working within the Serbian academy, especially in the field of ELT. As with any TESOL research project in which a privileged researcher crosses borders, especially from the center outwards, there was a strong potential for my work to be imperialist: interpreting and speaking for ‘natives’ (Canagarajah, 1996). The specific power dynamics of the field of ELT, entrenched in native-speakerism and tending to bestow authenticity and authority on people like me (White, American, middle class), exacerbate this potential. However, in my specific research context in Serbia, foreign lecturers are given sharply defined roles to play in universities’ English departments, ones predicated on their limitations as well as their strengths; examining these roles thus provides as opportunity to see the complexities of ‘idealized nativeness’ (Yazan & Rudolph, 2018) in action. The Role of ‘NESs’/Foreign Lecturers in Serbia

Foreign instructors have long been a consistent presence in ELT in the Serbian university system, and include both independent teachers who take up long-term residence in Serbia and temporary sojourners sponsored by governmental programs, such as the British Council and the ELF Program. These foreign instructors are typically assigned to teach writing classes, an arrangement that is far from unusual in English as a foreign language writing pedagogy (i.e. Reichelt, 2011), as the result of a combination of factors, including the perceptions of the skills of foreign instructors and the university’s hierarchical system. Foreign instructors without PhDs are positioned within the university system as ‘lektors’ or lecturers, and there is little opportunity to move beyond this status, for example to hold administrative positions. As one American ex-pat participant put it, ‘we won’t move up the ladder’ (Kate, 24 November 2014). Within English

166  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

departments in Serbia, this means foreign lecturers can teach ‘practicals’, smaller sections, taught by adjuncts, that accompany lecture courses. Among the three practical courses – grammar, translation, and writing – foreign instructors are seen as best suited to the writing classes. Another participant, a longtime lecturer at SSU, explained it as follows. It’s very difficult to engage … a foreign teacher teaching grammar for example, because grammar … should be a conscious [knowledge] about rules and everything and the native speaker just picks the rules up and [does] not really bother about that … another course within the English language exams is translation which also cannot be done by a foreigner  …  so that’s how only essay writing is left (laughs). (Lana, 21 November 2014)

The perception of ‘NES’ teachers is that their knowledge of grammar is primarily intuitive rather than explicit (Lowe & Kiczkowiak, 2016), and that they are therefore less qualified to teach grammar courses than locally-trained teachers, who all hold degrees in English language and linguistics and have themselves learned English grammar explicitly. ‘Foreign’ teachers (usually conflated with ‘NESs’) are identified as informal, fluent, communicative and less focused on exam preparation, in contrast to NNESTs, who are instead perceived as being in touch with students’ needs, able to make useful contrasts between first and second languages (L1 and L2) and having a more theoretical understanding of the L2 (Braine, 2005; see also Lowe & Kiczkowiak, 2016). As Yazan and Rudolph (2018) point out, this artificial binary is a strategy for dealing with idealized nativeness: juxtaposing idealized nativeness with idealized non-nativeness and valuing the abilities of each as a way of appropriating power. In my research context, these idealized NES/NNES roles held as powerful tropes, regardless of teachers’ actual language proficiencies or cultural experiences, which were frequently much more complex. All of the native Serbian speaking lecturers I interacted with were highly fluent in English and many had spent time living and working in Englishdominant settings. Likewise, many of the long-term foreign instructors I met were fluent speakers of Serbian who frequently did paid translation work as freelancers (a common way of supplementing income for any bilingual faculty member). However, none of the long-term foreign instructors I met had been asked to teach translation courses and their positioning remained that of cultural informants for their countries of origin, despite their long residence in Serbia (in some cases, far longer than they had lived in their ‘home’ countries). These prescribed roles for foreign versus local instructors challenge (perhaps even flip) the automatic associations of native-speaker status and pedagogical superiority based in native-speakerism. However, by ignoring both groups’

Shifting Roles and Negotiating Returns in Transnational TESOL Research  167

multilingual and multicultural experiences in favor of maintaining idealized native and non-nativeness, these positionings leave the NES/NNES binary mostly intact or, as Yazan and Rudolph (2018: 4) put it, ‘undertheorized and unpacked’. My own identity in this context at times reinforced and at times disrupted this binary. I was experienced in teaching university-level composition courses and comfortable being placed in the writing classroom, serving to reinforce the positioning of foreign/NES teachers as best suited to teaching writing. My knowledge of Serbian was initially nonexistent and never better than rudimentary, which again supported the image of foreign NES teachers as unqualified for translation. My MA degree in TESOL and my teaching experience did put me closer in terms of credentials to my native Serbian speaking colleagues, but my short sojourn meant that my role remained similar to other foreign lecturers in the Serbian system. Dividing the labor along these idealized NES/NNES lines – that is, maintaining the traditional binary – is in some ways to the advantage of both groups of teachers. For local teachers, it preserves their authority (and job security), which becomes vested in their formal, explicit language knowledge, their knowledge of their students and their insider familiarity with local educational practices. For foreign lecturers, while this division of labor circumscribes the acceptable roles they can play in the university, it also legitimizes the hiring of foreign instructors without specific linguistic training (as they are perceived to be largely relying on their intuition and cultural knowledge anyway), and this is advantageous for those who want to find a way to remain in Serbia long-term. While the strong recognition of NESs’ limitations did not ultimately contest the hegemonic NES/NNES binary or demand rethinking of the ownership of English for me and my Serbian colleagues, it did create a space in which status and identity could be negotiated. More specifically, the grounding of local instructors’ authority in their knowledge of the context and their students, in their own language learning experiences and their professional qualifications aided my efforts to place local informants in the role of expert. There was one participant, however, with whom I had to overtly and actively negotiate positionings of expert and novice, and insider and outside status, in ways that shaped my research outcomes – a fellow ‘NES’ named Sara. Sara’s Transnational Social Space

Born and raised in England, Sara had, at the time of my data collection, lived and taught in Serbia for over 15 years. She was deeply integrated into the Serbian community: she had married a Serbian man, had two children in the Serbian school system (at the time they were in elementary school and junior high) and, together with her husband, had founded a small church. However, she maintained strong ties to England as well;

168  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

she retained her British citizenship, made regular trips to visit her family there and frequently hosted family and other guests from England. Sara’s life thus exemplifies the ‘multilayered and multisited identifications’ (Fraiberg et al., 2017) and new forms of belonging (Canagarajah, 2018) that transnational social spaces entail. As a long-time resident, a fluent speaker of Serbian, mother and wife, she identified as a ‘local’ but, as a British citizen, she identified as a ‘foreigner’, occupying a liminal space that challenges distinct insider/outsider binaries. For Sara, as for me, shifting among these identities was a strategic choice, particularly in her professional life. As I had in playing the ‘guest speaker from America’, Sara deliberately drew on an essentialized English-ness intertwined with idealized ‘nativeness’ as a strategy for creating a space for herself at the university: I think that because I’m English … what I can offer them really is kind of an experiential language, and I think that’s how I’ve played it all the way through really … (Sara, 21 October 2014, emphasis added)

This strategy was crucial for Sara in particular, given that she had arrived in Serbia with a bachelor’s in K-12 special education and very little ­u niversity-level or language teaching experience. Like many foreign instructors I interviewed in Serbia, Sara could not rely on her academic credentials for status. Sara often felt insecure in her position at the university, particularly as waves of Bologna Process reforms swept across Europe, enforcing stricter regulations on the qualifications of faculty. In that context of insecurity, Sara’s ‘foreignness’ in this space became more salient as a lifeline for her professional identity (even as she herself became less ‘foreign’ over time), and deeply shaped the interactions she and I had during my field work. Negotiating positioning

Over the course of the five interviews I conducted with Sara, she and I constantly negotiated our insider and outsider statuses. In order to document the culture (Labaree, 2002), I had designed my research interview questions to cover aspects of the teaching context I already knew. These questions pushed Sara into the role of insider informant, which Sara strongly resisted, working instead to re-establish alignment with me as a friend and former colleague (we had even co-taught one semester of the third-year writing course). For example, when I asked Sara to talk about her early experiences of teaching at SSU, she described her lack of resources in the following way: My first semester I didn’t even have a computer … I had nothing, apart from some old books in the library, you know what the library’s like (Sara, 28 November 2014)

Shifting Roles and Negotiating Returns in Transnational TESOL Research  169

Here, Sara positioned me as a colleague – a fellow insider – with shared experience in the context, a person who has been to the library and is familiar with its dated resources, without needing further explanation. Throughout the interviews, I attempted to position myself in what I saw as a neutral or detached researcher role as Sara resisted. In the following excerpt, Sara had made a comment about the Serbian communication style and, in my researcher role, mindful of the practices of the semistructured interview protocol (Spradley, 1979), I quickly asked her to expand on the comment: Sara: they’re totally Serbian in their mentality and then they ask too directly, so we’re trying to find stylistically that middle tone that is absolutely suitable for a formal letter … Brooke: so just before we go on, you said the Serbian mentality is kind of too direct in asking for things? Sara: it’s not too direct for Serbia but it’s too direct for a letter to [someone] in England, yeah you know that (laughs) (7 November 2014, emphasis added)

Here, Sara’s laughing response again called on our shared experience. The assignment she had been describing, the ‘formal letter’, is one we had taught together, and we had discussed these exact issues before as coinstructors. When I asked Sara to clarify what she said, I positioned myself as an uninformed outsider and Sara as the expert informant about the community. From Sara’s perspective, my researcher positioning was a false distancing from my own experiences in the university context. Her amused ‘you know that’ worked to re-position me as a former colleague – a fellow insider. In other moments, Sara positioned me both as a colleague (a fellow insider) and as a person with shared NES status (a fellow outsider). In the following excerpt, Sara talked about the Serbian writing style: it’s so Serbian to – I mean you’ve seen this haven’t you? you just put everything on the paper and it’s this kind of beautiful sprawling kind of (laughs) discussion of everything all in one big paragraph … we just don’t think like that, do we? we don’t organize our thoughts or our ideas like that (Sara, 21 October 2014)

Here, she first identified me as a colleague with shared experience with these students – the ‘you’ who has seen this style of writing before. She then created a ‘we’, which seems to include speakers of English from the USA and UK, people who share a culturally-based writing and thinking style that is set up in opposition to a ‘Serbian’ style. Here, Sara is drawing on an ideology which might be identified as a sort of informal contrastive rhetoric (Kaplan, 1966), widely circulating in Serbia, and similarly common in other EFL writing contexts (Reichelt, 2011). The premise is

170  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

that there is a sharp distinction between English-language writing, seen as argumentative, linear, concise and highly structured, and the Serbian style, seen as literary, meandering, lyrical and loosely organized. Invoking this binary, essentially an overgeneralization of a ‘NES’ writing style, serves to reinforce our idealized nativeness and to create a shared, essentialized NES identity for us both, using what Bucholtz and Hall (2004) call a ‘tactic of intersubjectivity’. More specifically, this is a moment of adequation or ‘the pursuit of socially recognized sameness’ (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004: 383), a way of establishing similarity between us that is salient to the situation and topic. Sara used it here to serve her interpersonal goals of bringing us into alignment and establishing a unifying perspective on the work we have done together. In the transnational space we both occupied, as we were negotiating these multiple, shifting, contested roles of insider and outsider, researcher and informant, Sara was attempting to create stability through shared experience (two teachers who have encountered the ‘Serbian style’ of writing) and shared culture (two ‘NESs’ who have a common way of thinking). In a later interview, I again attempted to push Sara towards the expert informant positioning, placing myself into the position as the outside researcher. As Sara was explaining her decision to teach a curriculum vitae (CV) as one of the major assignments in the third-year writing class, she explicitly asked for my approval of her decision, positioning me as both a fellow ‘NES’ with knowledge of how the English-speaking world functions and as an expert writing teacher who could validate her pedagogical choices. In response, flustered, I changed the subject slightly to the Serbian education system more broadly and attempted to re-position her explicitly as the expert insider in the community: Sara: one of our ex students … now she’s got a job in a British company … and she had to give them her CV and it has to be good doesn’t it … they have to be ready for these things, yeah? do you agree? Brooke: yeah, absolutely I mean that’s what I see is that this – this kind of writing doesn’t – and you know more about this than I do – it doesn’t seem to be part of their education it’s certainly not at the university, maybe in high school but Sara: they certainly do one in the high school in Serbian (7 November 2014, emphasis added)

When I directly invoke my lack of knowledge about Serbian education beyond the university, Sara finally settles into an expert positioning, answering my implied question with emphatic confidence: ‘they certainly do’. I was clearly an insider of the university community, but had spent very little time in primary or secondary schools, and this gave us a new footing that sidestepped the thorny issue of expertise within the university

Shifting Roles and Negotiating Returns in Transnational TESOL Research  171

writing classroom. With this key shift, the tension in the interview begins to lessen. When Sara described the typical pedagogy in Serbian schools, she drew on knowledge gained from being the mother of two children in the Serbian educational system, a role in which she was inarguably far more experienced. I seized on this moment as an opportunity to explain myself and the etic positioning I’d taken up, by explicitly invoking my own lack of knowledge: Sara: [the students are] programmed to [memorize] yeah. they are, seriously. my kids have done it right from the first grade yeah Brooke: See ok the reason that I’m like pushing you to talk about that kind of stuff is because that’s the exact thing that I don’t know right? because I don’t have the long experience with their education system. So this is – it’s really helpful for me Sara: Right from the first grade, Brooke, they don’t just copy things from the board but they answer a question from the teacher, they have to get up and write on the board …

In this moment, Sara quickly and confidently assumed the role of informant about the specific practices of primary education. That is, after much negotiation, she finally accepted expert positioning, but it was grounded in her personal rather than professional life – her role as a mother, not as a teacher. This left me still uncomfortably in the role of ‘exported’ expert (Donahue, 2009) in regards to university writing instruction, something Sara had been doing for many more years in this context than I had. This negotiated positioning allowed the interview to move forward smoothly, but I felt that I was still not fully honoring Sara’s pedagogical knowledge in this context. Throughout these interviews, the biggest tension was between my conception of the researcher as outsider and the participant/informant as expert teacher, and Sara’s conception of me as both insider and expert teacher. My deliberate efforts to play at being an outsider, in order to push Sara into the insider informant role, created primarily confusion, manifested in long pauses and other disfluencies on the recordings. Ultimately, as a longtime resident of Serbia and as a mother with children in the Serbian school system, Sara positioned herself as an informant on Serbian education beyond the university. For me, the etic positioning as a researcher functioned as a safer, more neutral role – a way to escape her positioning of me as an expert teacher. Moving Towards Transnational Positioning

My negotiations with Sara are only one example of how my competing and overlapping roles in this transnational space shaped my data collection. I used my essentialized ‘NES’ and ‘foreigner’ status throughout my

172  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

fieldwork to gain entrance into research spaces and as a way of eliciting descriptions of Serbian writing practices, educational culture and institutional policy. Like Nero (2015), I engaged in a discursive dance in which I played deliberately on both my local connections and my status as a ‘foreigner’. For Sara, I occupied a shared transnational identity – part of the ‘we’ who ‘don’t think like that’ and yet also part of the ‘we’ who ‘know how it is here’. While I do not have space to address my relationship with other participants fully here, I can say that with other instructors, highschool teachers and current and former students, I strategically took up varied positionings as a newcomer, a former teacher and a cultural informant, as the participants and I negotiated our identities in interaction (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004). With all my participants, I aimed to be a sounding board for their thoughts on language and writing pedagogy, so that my research interactions could create a space to articulate their own understandings and to uncover patterns, contradictions and points of interest. I knew that as an American researcher crossing borders, I could take up a position as an embodiment of the global center, allowing participants to verbalize their beliefs about teaching English, including how they viewed the contrasts between different writing styles and the practices exported to them, and my academic knowledge about the teaching of writing across contexts could be used as a resource for making meaning. At the time of my data collection, this is as far as my transnational positioning went – using my ‘foreign’ identity as a resource. It is only through reflection now that I see how returning to a context in which I had been an instructor entailed negotiating the ‘multisited and multilayered identifications’ (Kirsch & Ritchie, 1995) of a transnational social field: the emic roles of colleague and friend and the etic role of researcher, which manifested as negotiating the roles of insider and outsider in the community. My desire to accord the position of expert teacher and expert informant to my research participants often created tension with their desire to re-establish our friendly relationships and identification with each as colleagues, as well as to position me as the expert in writing pedagogy. While these identifications may play out differently in different settings, this ethnographic inquiry suggests that engaging in transnational research itself entails the constant negotiation of overlapping, contradictory and deeply intertwined roles, which opens up the possibility of more critical, less bounded relationships and understandings of ourselves, our language use, our national identities and our positionings as ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ speakers. Likewise, as language teachers, we can view ourselves and our students as constantly shifting among a range of available identities in transnational social fields; keeping in mind the strength of social pressure to align with interlocutors, we can pay critical attention to the ways we, as authority figures, position students as insiders or outsiders to our shared spaces.

Shifting Roles and Negotiating Returns in Transnational TESOL Research  173

Kirsch and Ritchie (1995: 10) argue that a crucial part of carrying out ethical research is a deep attention to our own ‘multiple and contradictory positions’ as researchers, which enables us to move beyond simplistic binaries and see the political nature of our research activities. They encourage us, even as we seek universal patterns in the process of making knowledge, to ‘[value] the individual and the local’ (Kirsch & Ritchie, 1995: 10). For me, efforts to recognize the competing roles I assumed in my own research processes have helped me to cultivate a more authentic transnational positioning by finding and honoring the spaces between communities, languages and nations. References Bennett, K. (2014) Introduction: The political and economic infrastructure of academic practice: The ‘semiperiphery’ as a category for social and linguistic analysis. In K. Bennett (ed.) The Semiperiphery of Academic Writing (pp. 1–9). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Braine, G. (2005) A history of research on non-native speaker English teachers. In E. Lludra (ed.) Non-Native Language Teachers: Perceptions, Challenges, and Contributions to the Profession (pp. 13–23). New York, NY: Springer. Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K. (2004) Language and identity. In A. Duranti (ed.) A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 369–394). Oxford: Blackwell. Bucholtz, M. and Hall, K. (2008) Finding identity: Theory and data. Multilingua 27, 151-163. Canagarajah, A.S. (1996) Review of Appropriate Methodology and Social Context. ELT Journal 50 (1), 80–82. Canagarajah, A.S. (1999) Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Canagarajah, A.S. (2018) Transnationalism and translingualism: How they are connected. In X You (ed.) Transnational Writing Education: Theory, History, and Practice (pp. 57–76). New York, NY: Routledge. Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Davies, B. and Harré, R. (1990) Positioning: The discursive production of selves. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20 (1), 43–63. Donahue, C. (2009) ‘Internationalization’ and composition studies: Reorienting the discourse. College Composition and Communication 61 (2), 212–243. Dwyer, S.C. and Buckle, J.L. (2009) The space between: On being an insider-outsider in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 8 (1), 54–63. Fraiberg, S., Wang, X. and You, X. (2017) Inventing the World Grant University: Chinese International Students’ Mobilities, Literacies, and Identities. Boulder, CO: Utah State University Press. Jain, R. (2018) Alternative terms for NNESTs. In J.I. Liontas (ed) The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching (pp. 1–5). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Kaplan, R.B. (1966) Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education. Language Learning 16, 1–20. Holliday, A. (2006) Native-speakerism. ELT Journal 60 (4), 385–387. Kirsch, G.E. and Ritchie, J. (1995) Beyond the personal: Theorizing a politics of location in composition research. College Composition and Communication 46 (1), 7–29. Labaree, R.V. (2002) The risk of ‘going observationalist’: negotiating the hidden dilemmas of being an insider participant observer. Qualitative Research 2 (1), 97–122.

174  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Lowe, R.J. and Kiczkowiak, M. (2016) Native-speakerism and the complexity of personal experience: A duoethnographic study. Cogent Education 3 (1), 126–171. Nero, S. (2015) Language, identity, and insider/outsider positionality in Caribbean Creole English research. Applied Linguistics Review 6 (3), 341–368. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reichelt, M. (2011) Foreign language writing: An overview. In T. Cimasko and M. Reichelt (eds) Foreign Language Writing Instruction Principles and Practices (pp. 3–21). Anderson, SC: Parlor Press. Spradley, J.P. (1979) The Ethnographic Interview. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. US DoS (US Department of State) (2021) English language fellow program. See http:// exchanges.state.gov/us/program/english-language-fellow-program (accessed March 2021). Widdowson, H.G. (1994) The ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly 28 (2), 377–389. Yazan, B. and Rudolph, N. (2018) Introduction: Apprehending identity, experience, and (in)equity through and beyond binaries. In B. Yazan and N. Rudolph (eds) Criticality, Teacher Identity, and (In)equity in English Language Teaching (pp. 1–19). New York, NY: Springer.

11 Globalized Writing Instruction: The Multilingual Composition Section as a Fluid Pedagogical Space Ahmad A. Alharthi

In the ‘Statement on globalization in writing studies pedagogy and research’, issued in November 2017, the Committee on Globalization of Postsecondary Writing and Research at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) calls our attention to the importance of the notion of globalization, defining it as ‘both a worldwide force and an everyday local phenomenon’ and describing it as ‘tied to questions of (im)migration, (dis)location, (trans)nationalism, and trans- or multilingualism’ (CCCC and NCTE, 2017). Separate from (but coordinating with) the Transnational Composition and the International Research Consortium Standing Groups at CCCC, the Committee is interested in issues of writing studies as they apply both to the US context and beyond. It holds that globalization entails some level of ‘meshing of cultures, languages, and nationalities’, which, in turn, has some influence on higher education generally and writing studies specifically. That influence – the statement continues – requires that we adopt new teaching approaches, select alternative educational materials and attempt innovative pedagogical strategies so that we can successfully meet the complexity of the phenomenon in question. This chapter is based on my own composition course, where I set out to answer the call above by adopting pedagogies with the effects of globalization in mind (one of which concerns English being a global language). When designing my course, I started by incorporating insights from both the translingualism and the English as a lingua franca (henceforth ELF) scholarships. My readings in both areas have led me to another relevant area: intercultural rhetoric (Connor, 2011). Engaging with ideas 175

176  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Globalized Writing Instruction

Pedagogy of Shuttling

Epistemic Translingualism

English as a Lingua Franca

Pedagogy of Settling

Humanistic Translingualism

Intercultural Rhetoric

Figure 11.1  Possible components for globalized writing instruction

from these three approaches had caused me to rethink what I knew about translingualism in terms of what it means to hold a ‘fluid’ view of language and what pedagogical possibilities in the classroom that view can entail. As such, this chapter starts by giving a brief background to the notion of globalization, since it is usually used to justify the importance of a translingual pedagogy. I then discuss two approaches under what Canagarajah (2006a) calls a pedagogy of ‘shuttling’: translingualism and ELF. Specifically, I discuss one side of translingualism, which I refer to as the epistemic side of translingualism, where the focus is placed on the prefix ‘-trans’ or the act of code-meshing and linguistic border-crossing. Next, I make the argument that the pedagogy of ‘shuttling’ needs another pedagogy to complement it, which I call the pedagogy of settling (see Figure 11.1). Under this pedagogy, I discuss the humanistic side of translingualism – where there is no ‘trans-ing’ per se – as well as the approach of intercultural rhetoric. I take this point a step further and contend that while the pedagogy of shuttling can be useful and illuminating, it cannot be generalized to explain how language functions in all social and linguistic contexts. Payne (2012) mentions three different spaces where the notion of globalization can feature in writing studies: the first one in terms of theory (i.e. scholarship or scholarly engagement), the second one in terms of pedagogy (i.e. teaching or classroom practices) and the third one in terms of administration (i.e. program management or programmatic work). Of these options, I am interested specifically in the second – teaching or classroom practices – especially as it pertains to the multilingual context of a writing classroom. I focus my discussion on two pedagogical areas: curriculum design (i.e. reading selections) and assignment design (i.e. writing

Globalized Writing Instruction  177

tasks). However, I first differentiate between three types of classrooms for second-language writing in terms of students’ language backgrounds. (1) All students are multilingual and they speak the same languages. In many ways, this is similar to an English as a foreign language/English as a second language (EFL/ESL situation), where, for example, English writing is taught at college level. Examples of this scenario include the works of You (2016) and Kim (2010). (2) All students are multilingual, but they don’t speak the same language. In composition studies, a situation like this is usually given the label ‘multilingual section’ – as discussed by Canagarajah (2014). (3) Not all students are multilingual and some students know English only. Miller-Cochran (2012) calls this situation a ‘cross-cultural composition course’, where multilingual students are not isolated based on their first language. My composition course falls within the scope of the third type in the sense that the multilingual section that I teach at my institution does not have any requirements on the part of the students and is open to whoever would like to sign up for the course. Here, I would like to make the simple argument that what might be good pedagogy for one context might not hold true for the other two. To illustrate, in both the first and second scenarios, translation can be used in assignment design (see Kim, 2010), where students are asked to use another language that they know during one stage of the assignment (e.g. the reflection). This makes the process of trans-ing possible for developing literacy while achieving inclusivity. But the same thing cannot be said about the third scenario, which, though a healthy situation in terms of the student grouping and make-up, is still restrictive for the teacher, since some students might only know English. Globalization and Higher Education

The importance of globalization in writing studies marks the ‘global turn’ (Hesford, 2006) – also identified in the literature as the ‘cosmopolitan turn’ (You, 2016) or the ‘transnational turn’ (You, 2018) – whereby we are asked to engage in a form of ‘remapping’ the agenda of our discipline (Payne & Desser, 2012) or in an act of revisioning our old assumptions, ideas, values and beliefs about such constructs as language, literacy, learning and teaching, so that we may better attend to our international obligations and help in ‘cultivating global citizens’ by ‘develop[ing] ethical approaches [and] pursuing justice for every user of English, as well as for users of all languages’ (You, 2016: 16, 19). This is in keeping with current developments in higher education, where the process of internationalization has become an apparent feature, with both positive and negative impacts on education as we traditionally know it and on the population that are now part of it.

178  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Within the literature of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), a term that has not caught on more widely is the socalled ‘English as a library language’ – where English is used primarily for reading and writing purposes rather than listening and speaking (McDonough & Shaw, 1993). With the internationalization process explained earlier, the term in question has now morphed into what can be described as ‘English as a language of higher education’ (Breeze, 2012) or ‘English as a lingua franca in academic setting’ (Jenkins, 2014), affecting both ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ countries (Phillipson, 1992) equally well. The situation is such that North American higher education in particular has become the model to follow since the 20th century, with ‘centripetal pull in academic writing’ (Bennett, 2014a: 240) causing a form of ‘academic imperialism’ (Alatas, 2003) – or what Canagarajah (2012) calls ‘educational imperialism’ – between the two groups (core and periphery) in the domains of knowledge creation and transfer. Let me pause for a moment to borrow the metaphor of ‘writing as a game’, developed by Casanave (2002) to describe the type of socialization we have to go through in every academic stage if we are to write successfully in the academy, starting from being an undergraduate student all the way until one becomes a faculty member. While Casanave does not paint a bleak picture about this situation, to others these games are significantly partial, if not entirely rigged, with English in its standard form being the cause for this unfairness. To illustrate, as undergraduates, students are expected to produce assignments using ‘Standard Written English [which] is deeply rooted in white upper/middle-class culture’ (Pattanayak, 2017: 83). Likewise, at the doctoral level, non-native English-speaking scholars – both in the USA and especially beyond – find themselves at a disadvantage with regard to academic publishing, since this is mostly required and valued when done in the English language (Huang, 2010). And, as faculty members in the periphery, scholars are repeatedly confronted with ‘the bias of the gatekeepers of scholarly publications’ (Braine, 2005: 707), whereby the contributions of Western scholars are given preference over the contributions of their non-Western colleagues.1 Along those lines, Canagarajah (2012: 236) equates the enterprise of academic publishing with capitalism, arguing that ‘the knowledge of periphery scholars on their own communities is marginalized’ – a situation that leads to the works of scholars like Robert Phillipson or Alastair Pennycook on issues such as ‘linguistic imperialism’ being known more widely than those of periphery scholars working on the same issue. What is more, the publishing conventions of core journals are almost entirely oblivious to the material conditions and non-discursive challenges that are part of the geographical locations of periphery ­scholars. Similarly, the writing traditions associated with the periphery (e.g. oral communication, emotional argument, expressive tone,

Globalized Writing Instruction  179

personal voice etc.) are judged less rational than the values used in the Western tradition (Canagarajah, 2001). Finally, while the word ‘international’ is allegedly thought of to refer to works done by scholars in the periphery, the word is still conflated with ‘English-medium’, which is a requirement expected of any publication to be considered of ‘high quality’ (Lillis & Curry, 2010: 6). One such way to remedy the situation at hand is to engage in an act of ‘democratizing’ scholarly communication, academic publication and knowledge creation (Canagarajah, 2012: 267). Concretely, this can be done by having major journals publish special issues that give more consideration to periphery scholars (Braine, 2005). Alternatively, these same journals could establish a ‘mentoring service’ (Braine, 2005: 714) to offer support to scholars who are in need of that service. In part, the argument here stems from the idea that, given the fact that English has long transcended internal, national borders and exceeded external, natural boundaries in a way that has never been done by any other language before, no one nation or entity can claim ownership over it (Pennycook, 2007). As such, this linguistic system should be susceptible to change and be flexible enough to accept contributions from all speakers using it. By the same token, given the fact that ‘academic discourse’ is something that we all have to learn by training rather than acquiring it naturally, it cannot be considered anyone’s first language (Tang, 2012). Consequently, we should be able to control it rather than the other way around, lest we be accused of ascribing greater values to ‘the cultures and identities of academia’ than the people of the academy themselves (Pattanayak, 2017: 83). According to Canagarajah (2012: 284), the democratization of scholarly communication ‘should start in schools’. As such, several approaches have been developed for that purpose, among which are translingualism and ELF. Both approaches have humanistic grounds, aiming to give agency and voice to more users of English in academy. Similarly, both go beyond the humanistic argument to claim a status of English that is fluid rather than static, representing the various backgrounds of its users around the world and their constant movement. Pennycook (2007: 5–6), for example, notes that ‘English is closely tied to processes of globalization … [which makes it] a translocal language, a language of fluidity and fixity that moves across, while becoming embedded in, the materiality of localities and social relations’. He goes on to make the point that ‘English is bound up with transcultural flows, a language of imagined communities and refashioning identities’ (Pennycook, 2007: 5–6). Thus, both translingualism and ELF promote intermediary concepts that, in principle, help us better navigate different spaces simultaneously and advocate for a ‘contact zone’ perspective and a pedagogy of traveling, or what Canagarajah (2006a) calls a pedagogy of ‘shuttling’.

180  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Pedagogy of Shuttling

In the context of critical theory, a number of concepts and frameworks have been developed to problematize the normative and habitual. Among the widely cited ones are, for example, ‘heterotopia’ (Foucault, 1986), which draws our attention to a space that is considered neither utopia nor dystopia but rather one that is simply different, such as a ship in a sea. In the same vein, Bhabha (2004) talks about the notion of the ‘third space’, where he tries to theorize a new platform representing the interaction between one’s first culture and second culture. Similarly, Warner (2002) explains the notion of ‘counterpublic’ to mean a sphere that is located somewhere between the private and the public. In writing studies, similar models have been developed, including the ‘life in the neither/nor’ (Guerra, 2016a), which is defined as a continuous process of fluidity that is concerned with growth and development rather than with start and finish lines. Likewise, Paudel (2015) suggests the term ‘mesodiscursivity’ to refer to a language approach with a position toward language difference that is betwixt and between. And finally, in an attempt to disturb the old distinction between center/periphery (or North/South), Bennett (2014b) offers the notion of ‘semiperiphery’, which refers to geographic locations (mostly European countries) that belong neither completely to the center nor to the periphery. The strength of these terms lies in the fact that they have the potential to resist hegemony – in this case of (standard) English. Both approaches – translingualism in its epistemic sense and ELF – try to capture the meaning explained in those frameworks by viewing language as a matter of social practice that is continually changing and evolving. In the next section, I discuss those two approaches in more detail. Translingualism in its Epistemic Sense

Established in several other disciplines, including applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, comparative literature and translation studies, translingualism is relatively recent in composition studies. It started to gain popularity in the West after it was introduced in the journal College English for the first time by Horner et al. (2011). Prior to that, the dominant terms included forms of ‘code-switching’ or ‘code-mixing’, in which other languages/varieties would be limited to low-stakes writing tasks and assignments that do not factor into final grades. Allowing code-switching came partly as a response to a statement issued by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in 1974, titled ‘Students’ Right to Their Own Language’ (or the ‘Students’ Right’ document for short), which attempts to highlight the inevitability of linguistic variation among student population in composition classes and ‘affirm[s] the students’ right to their own patterns and varieties of language’. In that sense,

Globalized Writing Instruction  181

the philosophy informing code-switching (and then later code-meshing) can be thought of as a reactionary position to previous pedagogies such as the ‘current–traditional rhetoric’, which focused on grammatical accuracy and correctness of form, thus giving students little agency or control. Against this background, Zamel (1997) advocates for a model that tries to build bridges between home language and school language, capitalizing on the differences each language has to offer and capturing the dynamic interaction between the two languages, where the process should be viewed as generative and transformative rather than discrete and oppositional. Following Pratt (1991), she calls this model a ‘model of transculturation’, which replaces ‘reductive ideas about assimilation or acculturation’ (Zamel, 1997: 350), giving students an active role in their learning and helping them discover their ‘written voice’ (Zamel, 1997: 346). We can, therefore, historicize the origin of translingualism a little further and discuss it in relation to previous approaches, which would give us the following taxonomy: • monolingualism as dominant • multilingualism as residual • translingualism as emergent (Bou Ayash, 2016). These approaches correspond to what have been referred to, respectively, as • the ‘inference’ model, the ‘correlationist’ model and the ‘negotiation’ model (Canagarajah, 2006b) • code-segregation, code-switching and code-meshing (Guerra, 2016a) • ‘life in the either/or’, ‘life in the both/and’ and ‘life in the neither/nor’ (Guerra, 2016a). The three approaches differ considerably in dealing with linguistic and cultural differences of multilingual writers. Specifically, they view difference as, respectively, a deficit, an estrangement and as a resource (Canagarajah, 2002: 13). Drawing on traditional contrastive rhetoric, the first model attributes all errors made by multilingual writers to their first language. The second model, while an improvement over the first, acknowledges the existence of difference, but does not engage with it critically enough, thus stopping short of crediting agency to the writing choices made by those writers. The third model treats writers ‘as agentive, shuttling creatively between discourses to achieve their communicative objectives’ (Canagarajah, 2006b: 591). What this means is that translingualism assumes that languages are dynamic and interactive rather than static and discrete and, as such, the presence of language differences is considered not only normal, but also desirable. For example, citing Min-Zhan Lu, Canagarajah (2006a) discusses the phrase can able to and Jain (2014) talks about the usage in the bus, with both pointing out that while these phrases could be perceived as

182  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

being grammatically inaccurate by a target audience, they serve a communicative purpose that is linked to linguistic and cultural contexts that are beyond the scope of standard English and, as such, they should not be judged hastily as ‘errors’. Supporting this position, Brantner et al. (2016: 151) note that translingualism is becoming ‘the communicative reality of global citizens and, as such, is essential to the investigative and pedagogical choices of composition scholars’. However, a few scholars have expressed uneasiness about translingualism, dismissing this orientation to language as merely a passing trend that is meant to idealize novelty and glamorize diversity (Matsuda, 2014). Others are taking somewhat of a middle ground on the issue, urging us to try and move past what looks like the old debate between pragmatism and critical thinking (Benesch, 2001) by adopting such notions as ‘rhetorical sensibility’ (Guerra, 2016b) or ‘rhetorical sensitivity’ (Canagarajah, 2014), where we are asked to include a rhetorical component to our discussion of translingualism, accounting for factors that are necessary for the meaning-making process, including audience, purpose, context and so on, which would not only give our students the opportunity to ‘shuttle’ between different codes, but to do so with good reasons. English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)2

In her account, Jenkins (2014) divides approaches used to teaching English writing into two broad categories – one is what she calls ‘conforming approaches’ to the understanding that English is a monolithic entity and the other is ‘challenging approaches’ to that understanding. Under the former, she lists general EAP (English for academic purposes), genre approaches and corpus studies. Under the latter, she lists critical EAP, intercultural rhetoric and academic literacies. Given that academia is ‘international in character’ (Jenkins, 2014: 62), she argues that we need an approach that not only challenges standard English, but also speaks to the various identities and backgrounds of the people belonging to that diverse community. In that respect, proficiency, according to Jenkins, should be judged against intelligibility to international readership rather than against communication with ‘native speakers’ or based on its agreement with standard norms. This is especially true when we realize that the notion of the ‘idealized native speaker’ who will conform to specific linguistic norms is considered a ‘myth’ – and one that might have negative consequences on the part of language learners (Levis et al., 2016). Similarities between translingualism and ELF have been noted by several scholars (e.g. Kimura & Canagarajah, 2018). At their core, both promote some form of linguistic activism, sharing a non-deficit orientation to students’ use of language, with the former relying on the ‘students’ right to their own language’ and the latter talking about the ‘speakers’ right to

Globalized Writing Instruction  183

linguistic peculiarities’ (Ammon, 2000: 111). Both give grammar mastery and standard form secondary importance in favor of communicative competence and international communication. Both adopt what You (2016) calls a ‘transliteracy pedagogy’ and allow for ‘transliterate creativity’, which ‘emphasize[s] the fluid, unstable, and blurred boundaries between languages, between dialects, and between cultures’ (You, 2016: 89). Both advocate for a pedagogy of traveling, thus sharing Pennycook’s view that ‘students are in the flow [and as such] pedagogy needs to go with the flow’ (Pennycook, 2007: 158). Indeed, both are rich in terms of theory but lack enough pedagogical applications (Jenkins, 2014). In terms of differences, while the linguistic domain of translingualism includes English and other languages (e.g. English versus Spanish), the domain of ELF is solely within English itself (e.g. standard English versus Indian English). To put it differently, while translingualism is an approach explaining language use in general, ELF is an approach explaining the use of English around the world. Finally, it might be useful to draw a parallel in writing instruction between first-year composition courses, which are taught in the context of North America, versus courses that are described as English for academic purposes (EAP) and English for specific purposes (ESP), which are taught around the world, beyond North America. While a translingual approach has been suggested for the former (Canagarajah, 2013), an ELF approach to teaching English writing has been suggested for the latter (Gonerko-Frej, 2014). Pedagogy of Settling

While there are clear benefits in adopting a pedagogy of shuttling, which represents fluidity and mobility, I believe that we need another complementing pedagogy that can help us imagine a more realistic vision of the nature of our movements. Rather than being in a state of ‘always moving’, we are in a state of ‘moving somewhere’ and then settling for a while, regardless of how temporary that settling might be. I am calling this pedagogy ‘the pedagogy of settling’ and explain possible components of this pedagogy below. But first, I would like to make it clear that this is not a call back for the notion of ‘fixity’, nor is it a complete rejection of theories of traveling. In other words, I do not see this pedagogy as represented by a complete state of inertia but rather as an active act of ‘inhabitance’3 (Reynolds, 2004). This pedagogy is similar to what Reynolds calls the notion of ‘dwelling’, which she explains to refer to our earliest experiences, which are contradictory in nature and are capable of providing us with opportunities for both racism and ignorance on the one hand, and resistance and crossing on the other. She goes on to say that ‘dwelling makes travel possible just as travel is meaningless without forms of dwelling’ (Reynolds, 2004: 141), making the argument that we pay far too much attention to movement at the expense of inhibiting.

184  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Now, what might this settling pedagogy look like? Besides the humanistic side of translingualism and intercultural rhetoric, which I discuss next in more detail, a pedagogy of settling can include anything that we usually describe as traditional academic skills from, among other things, teaching grammar and standard English (when needed) to learning about integrating quotes and citation styles (when necessary). As I tried to explain earlier in this chapter, I consider those aspects to be part of the settling pedagogy in the sense that there is no code ‘bending’ involved (Kubota, 2015), whether across languages (as in the case with epistemic translingualism) or within the one language (as in the case with ELF). Translingualism in its Humanistic Sense

Humanistic translingualism can best be understood by contrasting it with epistemic translingualism. Like the notion of ‘dwelling’ in relation to movement, the former is somewhat neglected to the advantage of the latter. Canagarajah (2006a), for example, argues that in adopting codemeshing (and, by extension, translingualism) we should move away from what he calls a ‘policy of tolerance’ to a ‘policy of promotion’. In other words, instead of social or linguistic justice being the drive behind adopting a translingual approach, we need to ‘conceptualize a linguistics of xenoglossic becoming, transidiomatic mixing and communicative recombinations’ (Jacquemet, 2005: 274). To put it differently – as explained by Makoni and Pennycook (2007) – we need to move away from the whole literature on language rights (e.g. linguistic imperialism, linguicism etc.) and focus more on alternating discourse styles, genres and language resources. The authors maintain that unless we engage in a project of ‘reconstruction’ rather than critique (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007: 3) and unless we start examining our view of the notion of ‘language’ itself, we would be reinforcing the same ideas about language that we are trying to combat. They added that they ‘part company with those fighting for language rights and multilingualism, since the struggle [addressed by the latter] is all too often conducted on a terrain on which the existence of languages as real entities is left unquestioned’ (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007: 21). However, in various publications, Kubota levels a critique against what she calls ‘pluralist paradigms’ including what I am referring to in this chapter as ‘epistemic translingualism’. She makes the point that while those approaches have helped enrichen our understanding about language use and language relations, they fall short in addressing issues related to group struggle, xenophobia and discrimination in general. According to her, while diversity (and indeed individuality) can be celebrated under those approaches, power relations and hierarchal structure remain potentially invisible in the analysis. This situation creates a disconnect between theoretical explorations about language versus everyday struggles lived

Globalized Writing Instruction  185

through language. To Kubota, our focus should, therefore, shift from ‘transgressing linguistic boundaries’ (Kubota, 2015: 33) to highlighting conditions that led to cases of inequalities and injustices in the first place, especially as they relate to language – a sentiment that I find myself in agreement with. As I see it, humanistic translingualism can entail teaching about core concepts that are key to the discussion of justice in the context of language. These include, on the one hand, terms that indicate cases of injustice and oppression, such as ‘linguicism’ (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2015) and ‘linguistic imperialism’ (Phillipson, 1992). On the other hand, they include terms that point to equity and resistance such as ‘linguistic justice’ (Van Parijs, 2011). Of these, the latter – linguistic justice – is especially relevant: it refers to an emerging subfield of political philosophy and to the title of several publications that attempt to lay out the essential components of a theory with the same title concerning language policy and planning. The fact that this theory is not sufficiently discussed in language-related scholarships is rather curious; it seemingly supports Kubota’s point that pluralist paradigms can have the effect of ‘divert[ing] our attention from inequalities between nations or between social groups and pervasive and prejudice and symbolic violence’ (Kubota, 2015: 33). Intercultural Rhetoric

In light of the statement on globalization mentioned earlier in the chapter, translingualism and ELF represent only two possibilities of other alternative approaches. Among these alternatives is intercultural rhetoric, which is the evolved version of the traditional contrastive rhetoric, with a view toward cultures that is positively dynamic. According to McIntosh et al. (2017), if we are to establish connections between writing instruction in North America (as it relates to translingualism) versus around the world (as it relates to ELF), then intercultural rhetoric might just be the area to help us achieve that goal. Ideas from intercultural rhetoric are needed especially given the fact that while there is a huge literature on both translingualism and ELF in terms of theory, there is not enough pedagogical content that can easily be ‘structured into curricula’ or adopted in the classroom (Jenkins, 2014: 70). Intercultural rhetoric is also another way to enact ‘linguistic justice’ (Van Parijs, 2011) and apply ‘greater power-sharing between English and other languages’ (Phillipson, 1992: 22), thus acknowledging the ‘writing and culture nexus’ (Phan, 2011) and making students aware and proud of their incoming abilities and resources so that they can capitalize on them and learn how to use them strategically. In practice, this can be done by explicitly teaching cultural patterns and values of different parts of the world, drawing meaningful comparisons between those patterns versus

186  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

those associated with the Western tradition of writing. An example of a textbook that can be used in a composition class for this purpose is Writing Around the World: A Guide to Writing Across Cultures (McCool, 2009), which broadly divides approaches to writing into what Hinds (1987) calls ‘reader-responsible’ cultures and ‘writer-responsible’ cultures, with each having different cultural expectations, value systems, learning styles and standardized norms. While classifying approaches to writing into those categories might put us at the risk of essentializing them, there is still a positive side to that exercise in that it will provide us with an explanatory power that would help us navigate the difficult task of ‘writing for another culture’ (McCool, 2009: xvii). Phan (2011) argues that so long as we do not blame culture for the challenges faced by students, there might be some benefit in recognizing the impact of culture on the way we write, or – as pointed out by Breeze (2012) – on the way we teach writing. A couple of examples illustrate this point. Use of the pronoun ‘I’ (as opposed to ‘we’) in an academic work that is single-authored is considered arrogant in the context of Europe, which is opposite to the situation in the USA, where the ‘editorial we’ (also knowns as the ‘royal we’) is less preferred (Swales, 2015). In terms of teaching, while the five-paragraph essay – which is sometimes thought to have originated as part of the current–traditional rhetoric – is taught in the USA, a similar yet different model is taught in China, known as the ‘eight-legged’ essay. No doubt, norms of writing are always evolving (McCool, 2009) because cultures themselves are dynamic and fluid4 (Pennycook, 2007). And yet, teaching the connective links between writing and culture might prove useful, especially if we do it from a rhetorical standpoint, promoting the idea of appropriateness rather than correctness or quality (i.e. ‘better’ and ‘worse’), thereby refraining from casting cultural aspects in any negative light. Pedagogical Applications in My Own Classroom

The course on which this chapter is based is part of a larger study, in the form of an action–research project that is still ongoing. In the study, I set out to investigate the Multilingual Learners section of the first-year composition course offered at my own institution. This section is capped at 18 students and is marked in the online time schedule as accepting ‘multilingual students only’. However, there is no mechanism to check that information and anyone is allowed to sign up for those classes, regardless of whether or not they identify as a multilingual student. In fact, when I teach a Multilingual Learners section, I make it an explicit point in my syllabus that ‘students from all backgrounds are more than welcome to enroll in this section’ and that ‘I personally think that that will help create even a more enriching environment’.

Globalized Writing Instruction  187

The primary object of my inquiry is the course design itself. When designing the course, I kept wondering as to what would qualify as an effective course design for this section in terms of reading selections and writing assignments. Given the student make-up of my class, the question that informed my thinking was how to engage with the notion of difference in a manner that is inclusive, useful and practical. By ‘inclusive’, I was hoping to design a class that has something for everyone, whether the respective student identifies as monolingual or multilingual, and whether they identify as international or not. By ‘useful’, I was hoping that this class would result in a positive change of attitude about language use in general and, by extension, lead to ‘education for respectful communication across differences’ (Kubota, 2015: 37). By ‘practical’, I mean that it can actually be implemented (not just theorized), especially within the institutional constraints of my course, where students are required to produce a certain number of words by the end of the quarter. While both sides of translingualism (humanistic and epistemic) are useful in their own way, I felt that, given the student make-up of my class, the humanistic side would be more appropriate since it would help me develop an inclusive pedagogy, not leaving any student feeling excluded. So, in terms of assignment design, students produced typical academic essays, using standard English and doing various tasks ranging from writing a summary and reviewing a documentary to reflecting on their own literacy narrative and language experiences – an assignment inspired by Canagarajah (2014). Because I believe that the literature on language rights is extremely valuable in raising students’ critical awareness about language generally and English specifically (both at the local and international level), the topics that the students wrote about included, among others, the English-only versus English-plus debate and the phenomenon of EFL. The reading selections included the two concepts of linguicism and linguistic imperialism by, respectively, Skutnabb-Kangas (2015) and Phillipson (1992). To exemplify what those concepts exactly mean and how they can actually be realized in real life, I also had students read, respectively, ‘Mother Tongue’ by Amy Tan (1990) and an excerpt from Decolonizing the Mind by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986). Finally, I assigned the article written by Horner et al. (2011) on translingualism itself and used both the chapter ‘How to tame a wild tongue’ by Gloria Anzaldúa (1987: 53–64) and the poetic piece ‘Dis Poem’ by Jamaican poet Mutabaruka (Donnell & Welsh, 1996: 371–372) to show how translingualism (in its epistemic sense) can be done, respectively, at the language level and at the dialect level. In many ways, my syllabus is similar to (and is largely influenced by) the work of Canagarajah (2014). The salient difference, however, is that I felt it necessary to introduce theoretical frameworks (e.g. linguicism) to make some of the readings more meaningful. In other words, I am quite

188  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

explicit about my reading selections being an attempt to achieve some form of linguistic equality rather than reflecting some kind of alleged linguistic reality of language as used in the real world. So, in the sense that students are not required to engage in any form of code-meshing, I feel that that the difference between the epistemic and humanistic sides of translingualism merits the latter a separate category that is slightly different from (though markedly related to) the former. Conclusion

I do not want the takeaway of this chapter to be that epistemic translingualism (or the pedagogy of shuttling) is not useful or has no applications in real life. On the contrary, theories of traveling and metaphors of movement are extremely valuable and powerful in explaining situations (linguistic or otherwise) in certain but limited contexts. Among them is the case of port cities (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015), which are cities located on the spice routes, such as Malacca in Malaysia or Cape Town in South Africa. Another context where translingualism might be readily available is in highly multicultural cities, including Toronto in Canada (with 200 languages used on a regular basis), Sydney in Australia (250 languages), London in the UK (300 languages) and New York in the USA (800 languages). All of these examples and cases, however, are the exceptions, not the norm. So, to make the claim that they represent the default setting of our everyday functioning is not only unrealistic, but it might risk losing a huge part of the strength of those theories. In a globalized world, both the pedagogies of shuttling and settling are needed and are complementary to each other. Notes (1) However, see Hyland (2016), who dismisses any claim about linguistic injustice in relation to academic publishing as simply a ‘myth’. He notes, ‘writing as an L1 English scholar does not guarantee a successful publishing career any more than working as an isolated, off-network EIL author condemns one to failure’ (Hyland, 2016: 66). (2) ELF in an academic setting (ELFA) is a subtype of ELF. ELFA is essentially an academic ELF. To me, the difference barely carries any significance in my course, since – as Jenkins (2014) points out – the majority of ELFA research (at least until the time she published her book) is done on the spoken discourse as used in, for example, academic conferences. Besides, since perspectives from ELF are more general, they can apply to writing pedagogy as well. Jenkins maintains that ‘many of the implications of spoken ELF research, and the concepts in which it is grounded, apply to ELF use in general, and therefore have useful things to say about writing too’ (Jenkins, 2014: 30). (3) This is best explained through the language used to theorize the notion of genre, which is defined as a social process that is always changing, but still ‘stable for now’. (4) The notion of ‘stable for-now-ness’ referred to above allows for some level of engagement with the respective object at hand, while still acknowledging its dynamicity. For example, when studying cultural patterns, we realize that those patterns are eventually going to change, but this should not stop us from ‘bring[ing] stillness into the motion’

Globalized Writing Instruction  189

(Iyer, 2014) and studying them at that given moment. A similar attitude can be found in the field of descriptive linguistics, which, while holding the element of language change as one of its foundational tenets, does not refrain from taking a synchronic view of language and studying its usage and functions at that given moment.

References Alatas, S.F. (2003) Academic dependency and the global division of labour in the social sciences. Current Sociology 51 (6), 599–613. Ammon, U. (2000) Towards more fairness in international English: Linguistic rights of non-native speakers? In R. Phillipson (ed.) Rights to Language: Equity, Power, and Education. Celebrating the 60th Birthday of Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (pp. 111–116). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Anzaldúa, G. (1987) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestizo. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Benesch, S. (2001) Critical pragmatism: A politics of L2 composition. In T. Silva and P.M. Matsuda (eds) On Second Language Writing (pp. 161–172). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bennett, K. (2014a) Conclusion: Combating the centripetal pull in academic writing. In K. Bennett (ed.) The Semiperiphery of Academic Writing: Discourses, Communities and Practices (pp. 240–246). New York, NY: Palgrave. Bennett, K. (ed.) (2014b) The Semiperiphery of Academic Writing: Discourses, Communities and Practices. New York, NY: Palgrave. Bhabha, H.K. (2004) The Location of Culture. New York, NY: Routledge. Bou Ayash, N. (2016) Conditions of (im)possibility: Postmonolingual language representations in academic literacies. College English 78 (6), 555–577. Braine, G. (2005) The challenge of academic publishing: A Hong Kong perspective. TESOL Quarterly 39, 707–716. Brantner, M., Frost, A. and Malley, S.B. (2016) The translanguaging conversation: A dialogic review. Composition Studies 44 (1), 151–159. Breeze, R. (2012) Rethinking Academic Writing Pedagogy for the European University. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Canagarajah, A.S. (2001) The fortunate traveler: Shuttling between communities and literacies by economy class. In D. Belcher and U. Connor (eds) Reflections on Multiliterate Lives (pp. 23–37). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Canagarajah, A.S. (2002) Critical Academic Writing and Multilingual Students. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Canagarajah, A.S. (2006a) The place of world Englishes in composition: Pluralization continued. College Composition and Communication 57 (4), 586–619. Canagarajah, A.S. (2006b) Toward a writing pedagogy of shuttling between languages: Learning from multilingual writers. College English 68 (6), 589–604. Canagarajah, A.S. (2012) A Geopolitics of Academic Writing. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Canagarajah, A.S. (2013) Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. New York, NY: Routledge. Canagarajah, A.S. (2014) ESL composition as a literate art of the contact zone. In D. Coxwell Teague and R. Lunsford (eds) First-year Composition: From Theory to Practice (pp. 27–48). Anderson, SC: Parlor Press. Casanave, C.P. (2002) Writing Games: Multicultural Case Studies of Academic Literacy Practices in Higher Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. CCCC and NCTE (Conference on College Composition and Communication and National Council of Teachers of English (1974) Students’ right to their own language. See https://cdn.ncte.org/nctefiles/groups/cccc/newsrtol.pdf.

190  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

CCCC and NCTE (Conference on College Composition and Communication and National Council of Teachers of English (2017) Statement on globalization in writing studies pedagogy and research. See http://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/globalization (accessed March 2021). Donnell, A. and Welsh, S.L. (1996) The Routledge Reader in Caribbean Literature. Routledge. Connor, U. (2011) Intercultural Rhetoric in the Writing Classroom. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Foucault, M. (1986) Of other spaces, heterotopias. Diacritics 16 (1), 22–27. Gonerko-Frej, A. (2014) Teaching academic writing for the global world in Poland: The ELF perspective. In K. Bennett (ed.) The Semiperiphery of Academic Writing: Discourses, Communities and Practices (pp. 75–90). New York, NY: Palgrave. Guerra, J.C. (2016a) Language, Culture, Identity and Citizenship in College Classrooms and Communities. New York, NY: Routledge. Guerra, J.C. (2016b) Cultivating a rhetorical sensibility in the translingual writing classroom. College English 78 (3), 228–233. Hesford, W.S. (2006) Global turns and cautions in rhetoric and composition studies. PMLA 121 (3), 787–801. Hinds, J. (1987) Reader versus writer responsibility: A new typology. In U. Connor and R.B. Kaplan (eds) Writing Across Languages: Analysis of L2 Text (pp. 141–152). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Horner, B., Lu, M., Royster, J.J. and Trimur, J. (2011) Language difference in writing: Toward translingual approach. College English 37 (3), 303–321. Huang, J.C. (2010) Publishing and learning writing for publication in English: Perspectives of NNE (non-native English speakers) PhD students in science. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 9 (1), 33–44. Hyland, K. (2016) Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing 31, 58–69. Iyer, P. (2014) The art of stillness. See https://www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_the_art_of_ stillness?language=en (accessed May 2019). Jacquemet, M. (2005) Transidiomatic practices: Language and power in the age of globalization. Language & Communication 25, 257–277. Jain, R. (2014) Global Englishes, translinguistic identities, and translingual practices in a community college ESL classroom: A practitioner researcher reports. TESOL Journal 5 (3), 490–522. Jenkins, J. (2014) English as a Lingua Franca in the International University: The Politics of Academic English Language Policy. London: Routledge. Kim, E. (2010) Using translation exercises in the communicative EFL writing classroom. ELT Journal 65 (2), 154–160. Kimura, D. and Canagarajah, A.S. (2018) Translingual practice and ELF. In J. Jenkins, W. Baker and M. Dewey (eds) The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca (pp. 295–308). New York, NY: Routledge. Kubota, R. (2015) Inequalities of Englishes, English speakers, and languages: A critical perspective on pluralist approaches to English. In R. Tupas (ed.) Unequal Englishes: The Politics of English Today (pp. 21–41). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Levis, J.M., Sonsaat, S., Link, S. and Barriuso, T.A. (2016) Native and nonnative teachers of L2 pronunciation: Effects on learner performance. TESOL Quarterly 50 (4), 894–931. Lillis, T. and Curry, M.J. (2010) Academic Writing in a Global Context: The Politics and Practices of Publishing in English. London: Routledge. Makoni, S. and Pennycook, A. (2007) Disinventing and reconstituting languages. In S. Makoni and A. Pennycook (eds) Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages (pp. 1–41). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Matsuda, P.K. (2014) The lure of translingual writing. PMLA 129 (3), 478–483.

Globalized Writing Instruction  191

McCool, M. (2009) Writing Around the World: A Guide to Writing Across Cultures. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. McDonough, J. and Shaw, C. (1993) Materials and Methods in ELT: A Teacher’s Guide. Oxford: Blackwell. McIntosh, K., Connor, U. and Gokpinar-Shelton, E. (2017) What intercultural rhetoric can bring to EAP/ESP writing studies in an English as a lingua franca world. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 29, 12–20. Miller-Cochran, S. (2012) Beyond ‘ESL writing’: Teaching cross-cultural composition at a community college. Teaching English in the Two-Year College 40 (1), 20–30. Pattanayak, A. (2017) There is one correct way of writing and speaking. In C.E. Ball and D.M. Loewe (eds) Bad Ideas About Writing (pp. 82–87). Morgantown, WV: Digital Publishing Institute. Paudel, H. (2015) Globalization and language difference. In D.S. Martins (ed.) Transnational Writing Program Administration (pp. 202–225). Logan, UT: Utah State University Press. Payne, D. (2012) Pedagogy of the globalized: Education as a practice of intervention. In D. Payne and D. Desser (eds) Teaching Writing in Globalization: Remapping Disciplinary Work (pp. 1–16). Boulder, CO: Lexington Books. Payne, D. and Desser, D. (eds) (2012) Teaching Writing in Globalization: Remapping Disciplinary Work. Boulder, CO: Lexington Books. Pennycook, A. (2007) Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows. London: Routledge. Pennycook, A. and Otsuji, E. (2015) Metrolingualism: Language in the City. New York, NY: Routledge. Phan, L.H. (2011) The writing and culture nexus: Writers’ comparisons of Vietnamese and English academic writing. In L.H. Phan and B. Baurain (eds) Voices, Identities, Negotiations, and Conflicts: Writing Academic English Across Cultures (pp. 23–40). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pratt, M.L. (1991) Arts of the contact zone. Profession 91, 33–40. Reynolds, N. (2004) Geographies of Writing: Inhabiting Places and Encountering Difference. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. (2015) Linguicism. In C.A. Chapelle (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (pp. 1–6). Chichester: Wiley. Swales, J.M. (2015) Book review [The Semiperiphery of Academic Writing: Discourses, Communities and Practices, edited by K. Bennett]. English for Specific Purposes 39, 80–82. Tan, A. (1990) Mother tongue. The Threepenny Review 43, 7–8. Tang, R. (2012) The issues and challenges facing academic writers from ESL/EFL contexts: An overview. In R. Tang (ed.) Academic Writing in a Second or Foreign Language: Issues and Challenges Facing ESL/EFL Academic Writers in Higher Education Contexts (pp. 1–18). London: Continuum. Van Parijs, P. (2011) Linguistic Justice for Europe & for the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Warner, W. (2002) Publics and Counterpublics. New York, NY: Zone Books wa Thiong’o, N. (1986) Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Currey. You, X. (2016) Cosmopolitan English and Transliteracy. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. You, X. (2018) Introduction: Making a transnational turn in writing education. In X. You (ed.) Transnational Writing Education (pp. 1–17). New York, NY: Routledge. Zamel, V. (1997) Toward a model of transculturation. TESOL Quarterly 31 (2), 341–352.

12 ‘It’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’: My Navajo Students’ and my Co-Existing Translingual Identities Yi-Wen Huang

As a Taiwanese academic teaching at a small two-year branch campus of a larger public research university in the American Southwest, where the majority of my students are from the Native American tribe Navajo, I see myself as a transnational practitioner teaching mostly students who may also identify themselves as transnationals. I have lived in diverse cultures and speak multiple languages, including the Taiwanese dialect Min Nan, Mandarin Chinese and English. I am a mixture of these cultures and languages and move freely among and across them. I draw upon my nuanced linguistic and cultural identities in my own pedagogy. At the beginning of each English Composition or Developmental English class, I introduce myself as originally from Taiwan, with an education that spans Taiwan and the USA, and I share with the students the facts that Mandarin is my first language, English is my second language and that I also speak Min Nan. In my Linguistics 101 class, especially during the discussions on second language acquisition, I often inform my students of the fact that I began learning English as an additional language in junior high school around the age of 12. Jain (2014: 494) stated that ‘by acknowledging our [own] translinguistic identities, we as teachers can strategically position ourselves to use our identities as pedagogical resources’. I realize that when I share with my students my own complex background and journey crossing linguistic, cultural and national borders, I open up the floor to make my students feel at ease to write and talk about themselves regarding their transnational 192

‘It’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’  193

cultures and languages. For instance, when I instruct a topic within a chapter on language and regional variation on dialects, I share with my students my experience with Min Nan, the Taiwanese dialect I acquired from my maternal grandmother when I was a child. In response, my Navajo students also participate by sharing how they acquired the Navajo language from their grandparents, especially their grandmothers. Further, the Navajo students enrolled in my English Composition or Developmental English classes sometimes express their own struggle with reading in English because Navajo is their native language. Giving my own example, I suggest that ‘like me, they can achieve the required levels of academic English proficiency to function successfully in U.S. academic and professional settings’ (Jain, 2014: 504), while being aware that this proficiency may come at a cost. When I first started my journey as a new language instructor at the two-year college I realized that I lacked a familiarity with my Navajo students’ backgrounds. By being in a learning environment with my Navajo students, I have gradually become aware of their cultural backgrounds, language, communication patterns and learning styles, as well as the history of the region around the Navajo reservation. I read my students’ assignments, observe them talking in class and on-campus regarding both class content and their personal lives, and listen to colleagues’ and local community members’ discussions about events related to the region. The more I learn about my students’ backgrounds, the more I try to adapt my teaching pedagogies to help them learn better. The majority of my Native American students who identify themselves as Navajo come from the Navajo Nation, a sovereign territory which has its own governance and which overlaps the states of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. Specifically, the two-year branch campus where I teach is located in New Mexico, but borders Arizona and also lies at the edge of the Navajo reservation. Many of the Navajo students live on or near the reservation in New Mexico and drive to campus, but there are also many Navajo students who live on or near the reservation in Arizona and commute to campus. In this sense, my students are transnationals who ‘cross borders’ on a daily basis. As evidenced in their writing and classroom discussions, the students acknowledge and care about the Navajo Nation, which is consistent with past research that has suggested that Navajo students often hold a stronger ethnic identity than students from other ethnic backgrounds (see McNeil et al., 1999). For instance, many of my students have written about a historical event relevant to Navajos, the Long Walk, which took place from 1864 to 1868, when the American government forced Navajo men, women and children to leave their homes during the winter and walk more than 300 miles to the Bosque Redondo Reservation where they were guarded by the American military (CCAC, 2014). During the Long Walk, 200 Navajos died from starvation (CCAC, 2014). My students also often

194  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

write about their feelings of pride toward the Navajo code talkers who helped the USA military defeat the Japanese in World War II. During the war, the US Marines developed a code for radio transmission based on the Navajo language, and Navajo servicemen were recruited to man the radios utilizing the code based on their mother tongue. Their efficiency and accuracy decoding messages was extremely high – the code talkers could send and decode a message in two minutes, as compared to four hours using a decoding machine – and many times Navajo marines actively island-hopped on the front lines of the Pacific theater (Gilbert, 2008: 33). In addition to taking pride in their shared history, my students often state that they practice many cultural ceremonies. However, these days, the students seem to exist more in a continual fluid space between Navajo traditions and mainstream US culture. The Navajo language, especially, does not seem to be the primary language of everyday use. In that sense, while the Navajo students seem to own both the identities of Navajo and American, they also seem to experience some inherent contradictions in terms of their linguistic identities. Jain (2014: 512) wrote that ‘it is imperative for teachers to know about their students’ prior experiences and backgrounds, in order to be able to draw upon those experiences as resources in the classroom’. I learned a lot about my students through the natural course of teaching them, but when I searched for relevant literature in the field, there seemed to be no studies specifically examining how transnational teachers may draw upon Navajo students’ complex linguistic backgrounds. I thus wished to engage in a more systematic inquiry into, specifically, my Navajo students’ seemingly contradictory linguistic identities and to also examine the ways in which I drew upon my own transnational background in my instruction. As an East Asian academic coming from a Confucian culture and educated in Taiwan and the USA, I initially brought a mixture of these two cultures into the classroom unconsciously. Then, over the years, I read scholarship available on Navajo culture in order to understand my Navajo students’ learning styles and adjusted my instruction in the hope of enhancing my students’ learning and helping them better achieve student learning outcomes. By this process, I found common ground between them and myself. Partly to address the gap in literature, in this chapter, I report on one such inquiry and reflect on my experience as a transnational practitioner teaching mostly Navajo students from the perspectives of Navajo students’ complex language use. Methodology

I have regularly reflected on my experience teaching Navajo students for the past ten years, as reflection ‘involves looking back at past thoughts or practices and evaluating their effectiveness’ (Chien, 2019: 516). I am also aware that I have adapted my teaching techniques several times in order to help my students learn better and feel more comfortable in the

‘It’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’  195

classroom. However, Stepanek (2003) wrote that teachers can also be researchers in their own classrooms by investigating, observing and reflecting on their teaching approaches, and then verifying which practices work best for their students. Therefore, for this inquiry, I took on the role of researcher in addition to that of teacher and focused specifically on one semester of teaching multiple courses. I also looked back on the experience of my journey as an outsider and a transnational practitioner and examined how I adapted my teaching techniques in order to help my students succeed in my classes. After obtaining students’ consent, I collected data from observation and students’ in-class writing activities related to demographic information from three courses in 2019: Developmental English, English Composition I and Linguistics 101. In addition, I also journaled my memories and observations over the past decade teaching Navajo students as part of my reflection during the research process. The observations were unstructured and based on natural interactions among students themselves and between students and myself in class. Bailey (2007: 83) wrote that ‘[u]nstructured observations do not preclude focused attention on particular facets of a setting’. In unstructured observation, as Bailey (2007: 83) has pointed out, ‘researchers are less likely to have an observation guide, concentrating instead on what is deemed relevant as events unfold’. Hodder (2003: 153) stated that ‘[t]exts can be used alongside other forms of evidence’, so particular biases can be recognized. Also, the collection of the texts can help participants reveal what they really intend to say transcribed to writing and researchers collect and code the data (Hodder, 2003: 157). To reflect on and analyze my interactions with students and among students themselves, I took descriptive and reflexive notes (Creswell & Creswell, 2018: 190), making notes on relevant themes in the process. I thus collected and analyzed the data simultaneously, drawing upon their conceptualization of a ‘[d]ata analysis in qualitative research [that] proceeds hand-in-hand with other parts of developing the qualitative study, namely, the data collection and the write-up of findings’ (Creswell & Creswell, 2018: 192). While the larger inquiry examined students’ cultural backgrounds and learning styles, due to space limitations and the specific focus on language here, this chapter is limited specifically to my students’ and my own complex linguistic identities. In the next section, I discuss two key themes that emerged from the data in terms of my students’ language use in response to my bringing in my own layered linguistic background. Translinguistic Identities in the Classroom: My Students and I Losing Min Nan/Navajo and acquiring English

During a decade of teaching my students, I noticed that there seemed to be a gradual loss of the Navajo language among them even as they

196  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

seemed to acquire academic English. This intrigued me as I compared it with my own experiences acquiring first both Min Nan and Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan and then English in both Taiwan and the US. I remember acquiring Taiwanese (Min Nan) by talking to my maternal grandmother who only spoke Taiwanese. She possibly spoke Japanese, too. Growing up under Japanese colonization, she was not taught Mandarin Chinese. She would sometimes sing Japanese songs in front of me. There was a period of time when I was raised by my maternal grandmother and therefore I acquired Min Nan from her as the only language she spoke to me. I also learned most of what I know about traditional Taiwanese culture during this time. My grandmother regularly took me to local temples, watched traditional Taiwanese TV shows in Min Nan with me every day and performed traditional religious rituals following the Chinese lunar calendar while I was present. Later, during almost my entire time as a student in Taiwan, I took the public bus to commute to school and the bus drivers always played Min Nan pop songs on the radio. I became familiar with many Min Nan pop songs during those years! My mother, on the other hand, never spoke Taiwanese to my sister and me. She was bilingual in Min Nan and Mandarin Chinese, and she told me that she would speak Min Nan to us when we were very little but was prohibited to do so by my father who ordered her to only speak Mandarin to my sister and me. My father also only speaks Mandarin to me, even though he is bilingual and a fluent speaker of Min Nan. My parents did not take me to visit my paternal great grandparents or paternal grandparents very often when I was a child. We usually only visited them once a year during Chinese New Year or if there was a death in the family. I remember the first couple of times meeting my paternal great grandparents and grandparents who lived on a farm near a fishing port. The strong accent of their Min Nan struck me and as a little girl I quietly listened to them speaking a language that I was not familiar with, especially with their strong, strange accents. The Min Nan accent of my mother, maternal grandmother and my mother’s side of the family was very different from that of my paternal great grandparents and grandparents because my mother and all of her family were from the city and my father’s family was from the country. Min Nan was always around me growing up because my mother talked to my grandmother and her siblings in person or on the phone in Min Nan on a daily basis. My mother and maternal grandmother and all my uncles and aunts from my mother’s side of the family lived very close to one another in the same city. As a child, I was taken by my mother to visit them all the time. My mother spoke Min Nan as her mother tongue. However, because she never spoke to my sister and me in Min Nan after my father forbade her to do so, and only spoke to us in Mandarin thereon, I grew up speaking only Mandarin to her in turn.

‘It’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’  197

The longer I stay in the USA, the more I lose Min Nan. The language is never spoken in the rural area I reside, except by one Taiwanese acquaintance who works in a Chinese restaurant and chats with me in Min Nan when I visit. Both my mother and maternal grandmother passed away several years ago. I do not have any opportunities to hear my mother speak to my maternal grandmother or my aunts and uncles in Min Nan on a daily basis any more. In addition, I do not have the opportunity to speak with my late maternal grandmother who only spoke Min Nan to me. I used to speak Min Nan with one security guard at my apartment building in Taiwan because that is the only language he spoke. All my cousins, aunts, uncles and friends in Taiwan only speak Mandarin to me. I remember that my homeroom teacher punished us for speaking Min Nan in class during first grade in elementary school. She provided the class a jar and we were punished for speaking Min Nan by paying a fine – $1 NT for one spoken word of Min Nan. This is an example of how Mandarin Chinese was enforced as the official language of instruction in the educational setting in Taiwan, with the result that the majority of Taiwanese people, especially the younger generation, have gradually lost Min Nan. Because of this, Min Nan language began to be taught at universities in Taiwan when I was there as a student. I began learning English at a cram school the summer before I entered junior high school at approximately 12 years of age. English language classes are mandatory from junior to senior high school in the Taiwanese educational system. Having resided in the USA for 18 years, Min Nan is a language that I am hardly exposed to, so it is difficult to preserve my fluency in the language. I watch Taiwanese TV shows on a daily basis to keep my Chinese/Taiwanese culture and Mandarin alive, and sometimes I hear Taiwanese singers singing Min Nan songs on TV. This brings me back to my childhood and my life as a student in Taiwan. English is the only language to communicate with people where I live and work in the USA. Keeping these languages of my heritage, Mandarin Chinese and Min Nan, alive is not an easy task. I remember when I came back to Taiwan approximately ten years ago, the taxi driver spoke Min Nan to me. I understood what he said completely, but when I tried to respond in Min Nan, English came out instead. I then realized that I was losing my heritage languages, especially Min Nan. I later subscribed to a Taiwanese TV package, which assisted me in keeping my Min Nan and Mandarin Chinese alive and staying current with the languages. My experiences acquiring my language of heritage, Min Nan, are very similar to those of my Navajo students. Many of my Navajo students shared with me or wrote in their papers that they acquired the Navajo language from their grandmothers. Some of my students’ parents who speak fluent Navajo only speak English to them, similar to my own experiences with Min Nan. Also, several of them shared with me and the class that the Navajo radio station is useful for them to learn or re-learn the

198  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Navajo language. I can relate to many of my Navajo students in other ways as well. One of my students, whose mother tongue is Navajo and of which she is a fluent speaker, stated that she has no one who speaks Navajo to communicate with because she chose not to speak Navajo to her daughter and granddaughter. Several of my students pointed out their grandmothers taught them how to conduct the Navajo ceremonies to keep their tradition alive through the Navajo language, Diné Bizaad, which is similar to my experience. Some of my Navajo students who are close to my age wrote in their papers or shared in class that they lost their language of heritage because Navajo language was not permitted in school. The students shared with me and the class that they were punished for speaking Navajo at boarding school by washing their mouth out with soap. I can relate to them as well because of my own experience at elementary school in Taiwan when Min Nan was forbidden at educational settings and the use of Min Nan resulted in punishment. I examined the data collected from the study to explore the possible reasons for my students’ loss of Navajo as a heritage language as it came up in the classroom discussions. As it emerged from the analysis, there seemed to be several reasons for the loss of Navajo language. Some of my Navajo students shared that they were not taught to speak Navajo at all, which is consistent with prior research findings (see House, 2002). Others stated that they spoke mostly in English once they entered preschool or public school and therefore lost any fluency in Navajo language that they had acquired in their early years. While explaining why English replaced Navajo in many cases, some students stated that their parents thought the Navajo language had no future and their parents wanted them to learn English instead of Navajo in order to get ahead in mainstream America. Another student indicated that entering boarding schools caused the younger Navajos not to be able to speak their language anymore because it disrupted the language learning process. Finally, many of the Navajo students lost fluency in Navajo because the elders were eventually not around anymore. House (2002) indicated that some Navajos claimed not to have had time to learn the language, while others were never spoken to in the language growing up. Many Navajos also claimed that Navajo children were very often unwilling to learn or speak the language, and their parents were helpless because the children wanted Western/mainstream media such as pop music, anime and Netflix. The majority of students have social media accounts and are on them constantly. The parents came to the conclusion that the children did not wish to be spoken to in Navajo. However, many of my students indicated they wished they had been taught the Navajo language when they were young. Some even stated that they were embarrassed that they could only speak a few words in Navajo but were not able to speak in complete sentences. Several of my students conveyed that they were scolded or laughed at by

‘It’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’  199

elders (e.g. grandparents) due to their lack of spoken ability in the Navajo language. House (2002) has pointed out that the most fluent Navajo speakers were the ones who were most unwilling to bear or work with the young Navajo language learners because the youths’ level of Navajo language was not high enough to reach their expectations. This seemed consistent with the classroom data: one of my Navajo students shared that she was judged for not being able to speak Navajo fluently because the Navajo people thought she pretended not to be able to speak the language. House (2002) mentioned that elders perhaps did not understand the necessity of teaching Navajo because they took the Navajo language and culture for granted, assuming that the language and culture would consistently stay with them. However, as my data indicated, once the students entered the school system, English became the primary language of instruction and socialization with classmates. Combined with the fact that, for the majority of my students, they were neither taught nor spoken to in the Navajo language at home, this resulted in almost a total loss of the Navajo language on their part. Despite this trend, a majority of my Navajo students wrote in their papers and claimed in class presentations on language acquisition that they were eager and hoping to learn or re-learn the language of their heritage. I shared with my students my language acquisition experiences, especially Min Nan and Mandarin Chinese. Several of my students in my English Composition class responded by saying ‘it’s good’, ‘it’s interesting and cool!’ and ‘it’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’. Another Navajo student stated that ‘this makes me want to know other cultures’. Yet another student conveyed that her mother gave up speaking Navajo in order to pursue career options that she believed would not be available otherwise and my shared experience made her ‘want to learn [her] grandparents’ language’. One student revealed that, in spite of learning the language her entire life in Navajo language classes, it is very frustrating that she still cannot respond in Navajo. What is more frustrating is that she cannot respond to her grandmother who only speaks the language. One Navajo student shared with the class that, because her father’s native language is Navajo, he speaks broken English. She stated that ‘he would speak English backwards, in sentences’. She conveyed that when she was little, she learned Navajo from her father who always spoke Navajo to her, but he is hardly around these days to speak to her and her siblings in Navajo. Her maternal grandparents who speak Navajo are also rarely around and her paternal grandparents who also spoke Navajo passed away before she was born. Her mother primarily speaks English to her even though she understands Navajo. All her classmates and teachers speak English at school, so she only speaks English throughout the day except for 45 minutes in the Navajo language class. In another instance,

200  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

one student shared with the class that her mother refers to the Navajo language as ‘the language no one speaks’, so she was never taught. In my Linguistics 101 class, one Navajo student shared with the class ‘I cannot speak Navajo because my grandmother passed away’. Another student stated that ‘knowledge of the clan system is very important in Navajo culture, and your personal experience makes me curious about whether or not there is a clan system in Taiwanese culture and whether or not you learned the Taiwanese culture from your grandmother’. Another Navajo student shared with the following with the class: I can relate to your experience. My grandparents and parents all speak Navajo fluently but only speak English to me. I often hear them speak Navajo to one another, but I can only understand some of what they say. The only time I spoke Navajo was when I talked to my great grandparents who only spoke Navajo.

On the other hand, some of my students who were never spoken to by their parents in Navajo conveyed that their parents speak Navajo language as their ‘secret language’ to withhold something ‘bad’ from them. A few students stated that it is fine not being able to speak Navajo nowadays because the majority of the students do not speak it, and that they do not plan to learn the language. One Navajo student stated that she knows the language is dying out because not that many people want to learn it, and that includes herself. She never needs to use the language, so she does not want to learn it even though she has been offered many opportunities to learn it. She stated that she felt left out at family gatherings and her relatives were a little bit disappointed in her, conveying that her relatives look at her like she should understand what they are saying in Navajo, but she does not. Another Navajo student also stated ‘my father thinks the language has no future’, so he never taught him the language. He shared with the class that he experienced difficulties learning Navajo at school, so he is currently taking a Spanish class instead. Many students who do not speak Navajo or are not fluent speakers in the language disclosed that, at family gatherings or with their elders, they feel left out, disconnected, awkward, odd, embarrassed or ashamed due to their inarticulation of the Navajo language. One student conveyed that she only hears the language at home and there is no need to use the language anywhere else, so she is not fluent in speaking Navajo. Similarly, another student conveyed that it is hard to re-learn the language because there are not many people who speak the language anymore. One student (who, in her fifties, is older than the other students) revealed that she was not taught the Navajo language because it was not allowed at school. Another Navajo student conveyed that she knows the language is dying because in chapter meetings held in the community, she noticed that only the elders speak the Navajo language and members of the young

‘It’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’  201

generation do not. Another revealed that she knows that they are losing the Navajo language because the young teenagers do not want to learn it due to laziness or they find the language very difficult to learn. One Navajo student stated that he was raised in the Navajo culture, with which he can identify, but not speaking the language is associated with him pursuing academic success and a better life. Another Navajo student revealed that his parents wanted him to speak English well and pursue his education and forget the Navajo culture and language so that he could ‘succeed in society’ and do things they could never do. However, he said he sometimes feels like a stranger at home and distanced from his tribal members even though he lives in the Navajo Nation. Some expressed that they only sometimes speak the language to their family members and grandparents, causing them to not be fluent speakers of Navajo. The majority of the Navajo students wrote in their papers that they hope to learn or re-learn their language of heritage and preserve the Navajo traditions; however, they find learning the language frustrating and challenging. Most of the students also wrote in their assignments that they plan to learn or re-learn their ‘sacred’ language by asking parents and relatives to teach them the language, so they can pass down the language to their own children. One student, who was not taught the Navajo language, revealed that he had asked his grandparents to teach him for two years, but the pronunciation was too difficult. Another student stated that some Navajo people accused her of probably being ashamed of speaking Diné Bizaad (Navajo), but actually she was more ashamed of the fact that she has been losing her language as compared with her fluency as a child. She hopes to re-learn it and re-gain fluency in the language because being able to speak the language is the ‘proudest thing’. Moreover, the majority expressed that the Navajo language is their language and identity, which contains Navajo history. The language helped win World War II because of the Navajo code talkers. They want to connect to and help their elders in the communities by being able to speak the language with them. Some of them stated that their language is sacred and important to them, pertaining to where they come from and the traditions including origin stories and ceremonies. One Navajo student whose native language is English indicated that he wished he was taught his ancestors’ language because it is a hard language to learn without acquiring it at a young age. He then conveyed that the elders tried to blame the English language for the gradual loss of the Navajo language. However, the elders are also to blame because they did not think that it was important to teach the younger generation the language or were too lazy to do so. Several of them acknowledged that they observed that they are losing their language because the younger generation no longer speaks the language and do not care about their culture.

202  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

A Navajo student who is trying to learn his native language by taking classes disclosed that the only time he sees his family speak Navajo is at birthday parties, holidays or if there is a death in the family. In those situations, he feels frustrated because he cannot communicate with his grandparents who try to talk to him in Navajo. His parents do not ever really speak the Navajo language to him. He stated that when they do, it is just basic commands and he only needs to respond by saying yes or no in Navajo, so he cannot speak the language in complete sentences. Another Navajo student revealed that she does not force herself to learn the language. However, when she brings food to her great grandmother, she does not understand what she says in Navajo. She therefore calls her mother or grandmother to translate for her great grandmother and herself. One of the older Navajo students conveyed that she lost her native tongue after her parents sent her to a nearby boarding school at the age of five or six. She learned how to speak and write in English there, and English became her daily language. Her native language, Navajo, became her second language. She then was sent by her mother to another school in Albuquerque. Navajo was forbidden at school by the government at that time, and English was the only language spoken at school. So, her language of heritage slipped away. After high school, she stated that her mother sent her away again to a college in Durango where everyone spoke English. At that point, she lost her language of heritage. She stated that after she moved back to her motherland, she was judged by her tribal members who thought she was faking not being able to speak the language. Not until she met her husband and her husband’s family, who are fluent Navajo speakers, did she begin to re-learn her language of heritage. She conveyed that she did not teach her children the language because: I don’t want my children to have the same problem that I went through, and I know they won’t use the language as they grow older because it is going to be a forgotten language. It is sad but that is the reality now that it is not going to be around that much longer.

Similarly, another student conveyed that she was babysat by English-only babysitters, so she learned English as her second language. At the age of six or seven, she was sent to a boarding school where none of her friends spoke Navajo, so she lost her language of heritage. Another student revealed that her Navajo language began to fade away after she went to middle school in a local town because she mostly spoke English to her teachers and friends in and out of school. When her grandmother and relatives visited, her mother would speak entirely in the Navajo language to socialize with them, but she herself would have trouble comprehending what her grandmother or relatives said in Navajo and

‘It’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’  203

would not be able to respond. She then would get scolded by her grandmother for not being able to speak the language. Her grandmother would always tell her ‘You are Navajo. You need to speak Navajo!’. She would sometimes quiz her on Navajo and yell at her ‘You know this. How do you say it?’. She would answer a word in Navajo which was something ­completely different, and her grandmother would laugh at her, causing her to feel embarrassed and leave the room. Her grandmother would always tell her and all of the relatives present how important their language is and how important it is for them to speak it and pass it down to future generations. When I go over a chapter on second language acquisition in my Linguistics 101 class, I often share with my students my own English language learning journey and the fact that I began learning English the summer before I entered junior high school. I then ask students to think about how they learned their second language such as Navajo or other languages since almost all of the students took or are taking foreign language classes in public school or at the college. I then tap into the teaching methods that their and my instructors used to teach them or me the languages, which apply to the content in the chapter. Many of my Navajo students have conveyed that they learned Navajo in Navajo language and culture classes in middle or junior high school, and they are also taking Navajo language classes at the college. Several of my students also commented that it is challenging and frustrating to learn Navajo, especially how to pronounce the words. The majority of them stated that in these classes they learned the basics such as colors, numbers, the clan system and how to introduce themselves in Navajo. As part of the data analysis, I noticed that when I shared my language learning experiences, the majority of my students became more involved in the class materials and more engaged with me in learning, which increased class participation. The majority of the students conveyed that their fluency in Navajo is low. Many of the students expressed that they learned Navajo from their grandparents who only spoke Navajo. These students conveyed that after they were enrolled in public school, all of their friends and teachers spoke English, so they lost proficiency in speaking Navajo. Besides, they revealed that they were only exposed to English in the communities outside of school. Therefore, they gradually lost their proficiency in Navajo. Moreover, many of the Navajo students stated that the only times they need to speak the Navajo language are during family gatherings or when they are with their elders. Some of the students disclosed that they were never spoken to in Navajo by their parents. The majority of them stated that the Navajo language is difficult to learn even though many of them have taken the Navajo language class in public school. However, the majority of the students conveyed that they hope to learn and re-learn their language of heritage.

204  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Using Navlish

In my teaching, I also draw upon my multilingual Asian background to generate discussions around translingual practices among multilinguals. During the discussion of a chapter on second language acquisition in a Linguistics 101 class, I showed my students a film about how Hong Kongers of different age groups code-mix and code-switch English and Cantonese of conversation. In response, my students brought up their use of Navajo English, Navlish, Englajo, code-mixing, code-switching or rez [reservation] accent. The majority of my Navajo students seem to speak English as their native language, but at the same time they have learned some Navajo language simply by listening to their family members speaking the language despite the often lack of support from elders in their own Navajo acquisition. Interestingly, my students also claimed that they speak Navajo English, Englajo, or they have rez accents when speaking English – a practice that has been perceived negatively by both outsiders and the Navajo people (Webster, 2015: 21). Webster (2015: 22) specifically talked about the ‘linguistic anxiety’ that most Navajos possess when using the Navajo English or Navlish due to the critiques the Navajos received from the Navajos themselves and outsiders. On the other hand, the Navajo speak Navajo English and Navlish to relate to their tribal members and to create social bond or ‘social intimacy’ (Webster, 2015: 22). What my Navajo students mean by Englajo is similar to language transfer by transferring some features of one language to another (i.e. code-mixing, code-switching or rez accent). The majority of them primarily or only speak English on a daily basis; however, many of them can code-mix by mixing Navajo words in English sentences since they grew up listening to their parents or grandparents speak some Navajo. Some of the students who are moderately fluent in Navajo can code-switch by switching between Navajo sentences to English sentences in conversations. Several students shared with me that they speak English with a ‘rez’ or ‘rezzy’ accent. My students provided me and the class examples of their rez accents or how they use English. For example, they stated that they would articulate the d sound for th sound in English, so they say ‘over der’ with both of their lips pointing up, meaning over there. Navajo students indicated that they use lips to point instead of using hand gestures. Another example they shared with me would be ‘dis’ which means this and ‘okay then’ becomes okay den. The other example they shared was ‘staaap iit’ for stop it with longer [ɑ] sound for the word stop and longer [ɪ] sound for the word it. Some students shared with the classmates and me that they say ‘is zziit?’ with longer [z] and [ɪ] sounds, which means is it? or really? Several other Navajo students also shared with the class that they would say ‘skoden’ to mean let’s go then because Navajos are fast

‘It’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’  205

speakers. Also, they would say aayy or nay at the end of sentence to mean just joking. A few Navajo students mentioned that they switch accents from a rez accent with friends on the reservation to standard English, which they refer to as ‘proper English’ at college. I also shared with my students that I also speak Mandarin with a Min Nan accent, which marks where I come from. For example, New Yorkers can speak English with New York accents, Pittsburghers can also possess Pittsburghese accents and Texans can speak English with Texas accents. Our accents map our identities, which encompass where we grow up, where we have resided or moved to, our experiences of living and the people whom we are close to or are surrounding us. This seemed to be borne out in the classroom discussions when, during the discussion of a chapter on second language acquisition in a Linguistics 101 class, after watching the film mentioned earlier, my students shared what they found pertinent to their usage of multiple languages with me and the class after a small group discussion. The Navajo students all agreed that they code-mix or code-switch during everyday conversations by either mixing Navajo words in English conversations or inserting English words in Navajo conversations. This also meant that they have developed ‘translingual competence’ (Jain, 2014: 506) by demonstrating that they were using English and another language (i.e. Navajo) simultaneously in their linguistic communities as translingual users. Furthermore, by utilizing a film from an Asian country, I as their ­instructor from Asia, attempted to broaden and develop my students’ ‘transnational awareness’ (Gu & Canagarajah, 2018: 732). Besides watching the film, I shared with the class that Taiwanese people also code-mix Min Nan words in Mandarin conversations or codeswitch between Min Nan and Mandarin Chinese. Several of my Navajo students in my class provided examples of code-mixing. They mentioned that if there is no such word in Navajo or they do not know the word in Navajo, they would describe the meaning in English and mix the English words with Navajo sentences. Another student mentioned that when she talks to her grandparents in Navajo, she sometimes uses English when she does not know the Navajo words, so she describes them in English. The other example which was provided by a Navajo student is that she would say ‘We have to go to a Kinaaldá’ – a traditional Navajo puberty ceremony for girls transitioning to womanhood – and ‘Yá’át’ééh, how are you?’ Yá’át’ééh is translated to hello in English. Another example would be ‘aayy’. Another student shared with the class and me that she often heard her mother code-mix English words in Navajo sentences on the phone. Another student conveyed that when she was a toddler, her mother code-mixed English words in Navajo sentences when she talked to her. Some of my students have observed or listened to their parents, grandparents or family members use languages. One Navajo student provided an example of code-switching from her own personal experience of

206  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

observation. Her aunt, who is bilingual, would speak English to her niece and Navajo to her grandmother. To her, her aunt acts as a translator between her grandmother who only speaks Navajo and her niece who only speaks English. A couple of the students who are medium fluent speakers of Navajo told me that they can speak full sentences in Navajo and switch to English and then switch back to Navajo, which is also an example of code-switching. In another period of the same class, after a small group discussion, my Navajo students talked about dialects they used locally in Gallup, New Mexico. In a chapter on language and regional variation, they shared with me that they insert the Navajo word aoo' which means yes, in English conversations locally. One Navajo student shared with the class that he would say ‘aayy’ which means I’m just kidding in his daily conversations in English, which is the same as the other student who indicated she speaks Navajo English with a rez accent. Another Navajo student conveyed that her mother always says ‘Your cheii is coming!’ when she sees a policeman coming into their neighborhood; cheii is a Navajo word which means grandpa. Furthermore, my Navajo students talked about the specific words they used to refer to a sandwich, in response to which I told them ‘hero’ is what I learned to refer to a sandwich when I was a student in Long Island and ‘hoagie’ is what Pennsylvanians use for sandwiches, as I witnessed when I was a student there. The Navajo students then shared with me and the classmates that they say sandwich for a short sandwich and sub sandwich for a long sandwich. As for carbonated drinks, several Navajo students confirmed that they say ‘soda’ to refer to them in Gallup. I shared with them that when I was a student in Pittsburgh, the word ‘pop’ was used to refer to them there. My students offered several other fascinating examples after their small group discussions. Oder with both lips pointing means over there, which is similar to over der, an example of Navajo English provided by another student in a different period. Glonnie is a word used to mean a drunk, intoxicated or homeless person. Paddy wagon is used to refer to the truck used to pick up the glonnies. Is Zziit? is also used in Gallup to mean really? or is it?. Yáadi lá in Navajo is a word to mean Oh my god!, or when you are annoyed or do not understand something. Ala in Spanish is used to mean holy moly! or Oh my god!. Béeso means money, similar to peso in Spanish. Chitty, pronounced chidi by the Navajo, is used to mean all cars including pickup trucks. Tį’ in Navajo, spelled tin and pronounced as tian by the students, is used to mean let’s go. Da’ohsą́ in Navajo, which was pronounced as dun sun by a Navajo student in class, is used to mean come here and eat. Shiyázhí in Navajo is used to mean Oh, my baby! or Oh, my son! Dooda in Navajo is used to mean stop. All of the examples my students provided show that they utilize all the languages (English, Navajo and Spanish) common to their locale. As their instructor, I always strive to better my teaching approaches by engaging my students through learning their language usages; at the same

‘It’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’  207

time, I ‘legitimize my students’ identities as users of English in their home contexts’ (Jain, 2014: 500). Furthermore, I stress to them that ‘learning is more meaningful in actual contexts of language use and practice’ (Canagarajah, 2007: 933) and ‘various language forms and varieties are embedded in diverse environments, perfectly adequate in their own way for functions at hand’ (2007: 934). Conclusion

As a Taiwanese academic educated in both Taiwan and the USA teaching mostly Navajo college students, adapting my practice of teaching pedagogies based on my students’ cultures, languages, learning styles and communicational attributes has been both necessary and rewarding. Because of my background learning English as a teenager and growing up in a culture different from the mainstream culture in the USA, I can step into my students’ shoes to understand the different worldviews/cultures between their own and mainstream USA and the realities they are encountering, as transnational students/citizens, in an educational setting based on the mainstream educational structure. By sharing my own transnational languages, cultures and identities, I validate my Navajo students’ transcultural, translingual and transnational identities and demonstrate ‘how migrant teachers’ tacit knowledge and transnational dispositions can be transformed into resources for local students and schools’ (Gu & Canagarajah, 2018: 738). By engaging with their transnational identities through sharing mine, I demonstrate to them that we both co-exist in a blend of cultures and languages as transnationals. As my inquiry suggests, educators must make use of students’ cultures and languages to make curricula relevant to students’ lives (Little Soldier, 1989: 162). One important obstacle for Native American students’ school success is low self-confidence and apathy toward their ethnic culture (Little Soldier, 1989: 162). When I included aspects of the Navajo culture and language into course content and activities, I found the majority of my Navajo students became more aware of the value of their own culture and language. In fact, they engaged more with me during my lecture if I integrated their culture and language into instruction and course materials. Even though the majority of my Navajo students speak English, as instructors we cannot assume that they have not inherited the Navajo culture because they speak English or they are already well-accustomed to the structure and expected communicational patterns of Western education. Calsoyas (2005: 304–305) stated that ‘[i]n Native education, a high level of importance is placed on the individual achieving harmony with the universe and acceptance of one’s place as a part of Nature’. GrayRosendale et al. (2003: 95) emphasized that this cultural value of ‘staying in one’s proper place’ still exists. This belief is in contrast with that of

208  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

universities or mainstream society, which encourages students to be successful economically (Gray-Rosendale et al., 2003: 95). Nonetheless, the immense influence of technology and social media on the young Navajo generation cannot be ignored. Being economically comfortable is a goal for them as well: Canagarajah (2008: 165) conveyed that ‘parents wanted their children to learn the languages that were economically more advantageous for them’ ‘in a context of need and survival’. Unfortunately, more and more Navajos do not speak the Navajo language anymore or they only speak a few words in Navajo. Some of my students shared with me and the class that once the elders were not around and after they entered public school, they no longer spoke the Navajo language fluently. Educators and administrators should encourage Navajo parents or grandparents to speak Navajo to their children and grandchildren – ­otherwise this sacred language, which helped win World War II, will become extinct. There is a tremendous urgency for language revitalization in this region within and around the Navajo Nation. References Bailey, C.A. (2007) A Guide to Qualitative Field Research (2nd edn). Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge. Calsoyas, K. (2005) Considerations in the educational process relative to Native Americans. Cambridge Journal of Education 35 (3), 301–310. Canagarajah, S. (2007) Lingua franca English, multilingual communities, and language acquisition. Modern Language Journal 91 (5), 923–939. Canagarajah, A.S. (2008) Language shift and the family: Questions from the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12 (2), 143–176. CCAC (Crow Canyon Archaeological Center) (2014) Peoples of the Mesa Verde region: The long walk. See https://www.crowcanyon.org/educationproducts/peoples_mesa_ verde/historic_long_walk.asp (accessed March 2021). Chien, C.-W. (2019) Influence of training on Taiwanese elementary school English teachers’ professional identity construction. Research Papers in Education 34 (4), 499–520. Creswell, J.W. and Creswell, J.D. (2018) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (5th edn). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gray-Rosendale, L., Bird, L.K. and Bullock, J.F. (2003) Rethinking the basic writing frontier: Native American students’ challenge to our histories. Journal of Basic Writing 22 (1), 71–106. Gilbert, E. (2008) Native American Code Talker in World War II. Oxford: Osprey. Gu, M.M. and Canagarajah, S. (2018) Harnessing the professional value of a transnational disposition: Perceptions of migrant English language teachers in Hong Kong. Applied Linguistics 39 (5), 718–740. Hodder, I. (2003) The interpretation of documents and material culture. In N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln (eds) Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials (pp. 155– 175). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. House, D. (2002) Language Shift Among the Navajos. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

‘It’s crazy that we are from very different countries, but we are similar’  209

Jain, R. (2014) Global Englishes, translinguistic identities, and translingual practices in a community college ESL classroom: A practitioner research reports. TESOL Journal 5 (3), 490–522. Little Soldier, L. (1989) Cooperative learning and the Native American student. The Phi Delta Kappan 71 (2), 161–163. McNeil, D., Kee, M. and Zvolensky, M. (1999) Culturally related anxiety and ethnic ­identity in Navajo college students. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology 5 (1), 56–64. Stepanek, J. (2003) Researchers in every classroom. Northwest Teacher 4, 2–5. Webster, A.K. (2015) Intimate Grammars: An Ethnography of Navajo Poetry. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona.

13 The Inclusion of Culture and Shift Toward Translingualism in my TESOL Classes Rasha S. Mohamed

The mainstream literature on teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) is replete with narratives of practitioners from the ‘center’ teaching in the ‘center’ and even of those from the ‘peripheries’ teaching in the ‘center’. However, there is a dearth of stories of teachers from ‘non-center’ contexts teaching in both ‘center’ and ‘non-center’ contexts. To address this gap, I share here my own journey as a transnational teacher across different countries and English language teaching (ELT) contexts. Being a transnational teacher has influenced my pedagogy, made intercultural communication an integral part of my classes and encouraged me to start embracing translingualism (Canagarajah, 2012) in the classroom. In this chapter, I use a narrative and an autoethnographic approach to explore my experiences and delineate my journey. In the first part, I recount my experiences as a language teacher across Egypt, the USA, Morocco and Ecuador. In the second part, I focus specifically on my current pedagogical practices and how they continue to evolve in terms of culture teaching and translingualism. Part 1: My Transnational Journey First steps in Egypt

My first teaching experience was in Egypt after obtaining a BA in English language and literature from the School of Languages, Al-Alsun, at Ain Shams University – a prestigious school that only admits top achieving students in high school. However, my teacher preparation was focused on linguistics: grammar, phonetics and syntax, among other linguistics courses, and on literature: poetry, novels and drama. Hence, when I started teaching, I dealt with language in the rigid sense of the word – the 210

The Inclusion of Culture and Shift Toward Translingualism in my TESOL Classes  211

four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing – instead of treating language as vivid, changing and inclusive of culture and identity. In addition, my exposure was limited to the Egyptian context as all family, friends and acquaintances were Egyptian, and my students were no exception to this. Thus, my classes were focused on teaching the linguistic features of the English language and I did not see cross-cultural awareness as the fifth skill students need to be introduced to and acquire (Castro et al., 2004; Luk, 2012; Nault, 2006). In addition, my classes were completely void of any use or reference to first language (L1), Arabic, which I shared with my students as I preferred class time to be solely dedicated to the English language and its practice. As a result, after the course was over and I talked with my students in Egyptian colloquial Arabic (ECA), they gasped and expressed their surprise at my speaking in Arabic. Later on, when I started an MA in TESOL at the American University in Cairo, I began to learn more about teaching and applied linguistics. I attended Methods I and II classes, which discussed some teaching theories and approaches such as the communicative approach, and gave me the opportunity to apply what I learned in the practicum part. Second language (L2) acquisition was also very informative, like Krashen’s theories and language transfer. As for the applied linguistics part, courses like language and identity and sociolinguistics were eye-opening and showed me how language is vivid and continuously changing. Then, one year into my twoyear MA program, I was accepted into a Fulbright fellowship program. I thus traveled to the USA, which further contributed to deepening my understanding of language teaching as complex and layered. Fulbright experience in Texas, USA

My approach to teaching changed dramatically after my Fulbright fellowship where I spent the academic year of 2013–2014 at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) teaching my mother tongue, Arabic, and attending courses related to my career, such as L2 acquisition, and to American culture. This experience was eye-opening both personally and professionally. On the personal level, the Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) fellowship was awarded to fellows from many different countries, so I had the opportunity to meet fellows from other Arab countries, as well as from countries in Asia and Europe, which was the first time in my life of being among immensely diverse nationalities. This interaction changed my world. First, I learned about the history, monuments, attractions and customs of other nations from colleagues who shared stories about their homelands’ famous people, places and habits. Second, I learned about the sensitivities or even animosities that exist between some countries, which gave me a clearer picture of the world. Third, since I now had a friend in almost every continent, I started to see the news in a different way because it did not seem as distant as before.

212  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

In other words, my interests expanded from local to global – this crosscultural communication helped me see religion, traditions and habits, among other things, from a new perspective. I saw for myself how all human beings share more than they realize: regardless of race or belief, almost all people seek to be safe, healthy, happy, successful and accepted. As my understanding grew, the idea of ‘the other’ being essentially distant started to diminish. At the same time, I realized that the same concept or reality has different nuances. Islam, for instance, is not the same in Egypt, Indonesia and Tunisia as each country has added its social norms to its religious practice. Linguistically, it was enlightening to discover that several Arabic words that would be used daily in ECA, such as sheikha ‫‘ شيخة‬a religious woman’ and ingez ‫‘ انجز‬hurry up’, were considered taboo in Moroccan Darija for having sexual connotations. Through daily interactions and conversations, it became clear that cultural practices vary a lot, and right or wrong are both relative and highly dependent on context. These evolving perspectives became useful in the classroom as I eagerly shared them with my students. My Arabic language class at UT Austin was no less diverse than the FLTA program. While my classroom back in Egypt consisted of only Egyptian students, at UT Austin I was amazed to have American students with diverse origins: Brazilian, Ethiopian, Indian, Pakistani and Palestinian. Besides teaching my language, I was an ambassador of the Middle Eastern world, and Egypt in particular. Once I returned to Egypt, it felt natural to do the same and include culture in my language teaching, that is enlightening my Egyptian students about American society while teaching them English (which I explore in more detail in the next section), in keeping with one of the main goals of the Fulbright program – creating understanding between Egyptian and American cultures. This inclusion of cultures thus became present in my choices of reading texts, topics for discussion, videos and examples of a grammatical point. During the fellowship program, I was also exposed to new pedagogical practices. For instance, teachers applied flipped learning in their classrooms, which meant that class time was fully dedicated to practice, class activities and constructive feedback, while mechanical exercises and students’ preparation of material were done at home before coming to class (Cockrum, 2013; Tucker, 2012) – somewhat like reading the text in graduate school before going to class with questions for discussion, but in a more monitored way. These class activities included games, role-plays, skits, discussions and projects, so students enjoyed practicing the language in an atmosphere that was entertaining, communicative and as authentic as possible. In addition, the book we used, Al-Kitaab ‫( الكتاب‬which literally means ‘The Book’), was designed for flipped classrooms since the instructions and headings for activities indicated which should be done at home and which should be in class, so the students already knew that some exercises would be discussed in class and others would be completed at their own pace and in the convenience of their homes.

The Inclusion of Culture and Shift Toward Translingualism in my TESOL Classes  213

This book was important since there was not enough online material in Arabic, yet what was crucial was the way of running the class activities. Each class had a teacher assistant (TA), and both the TA and the teacher monitored group work closely. During pair or group work, teachers were there among the groups providing encouragement, motivation and correction. There was also focus on accuracy – not only fluency – and I learned to give my students some time to correct a mistake by themselves or seek assistance from their peers. Another important element that contributed to the success of these Arabic language classes was lowering the affective filter by consistently allowing students time to compare, negotiate and discuss their answers together in pairs or groups before answering in front of the whole class. Thus, as I came to understand it, flipped learning as used in the classroom was far more than simply doing homework in class (Bergmann & Sams, 2012), and the instructor’s role in monitoring a group activity was as essential as the students’ roles in it or else it could turn into an aimless chat and the benefit would be lost. Returning to Egypt

After completing my Fulbright fellowship, I came back to Egypt and finished the second year of my MA. In Egypt, I found it interesting to put what I had learned in the USA into action while teaching my English classes. I tried to apply flipped learning along with focusing more on culture by including international news and American culture, but this was not an easy task because there was no ready-made material for home exercises that was different from the ones used for class. It thus became necessary to create questions, activities or exercises based on the readings or videos assigned for home in order to guarantee that students did their part and understood the material. I did my best to implement this teaching methodology in most of my classes. At the end of the semester, students commented positively on the new technique in the teacher evaluation forms. As shown in Figure 13.1, students appreciated the teamwork and feedback (comments 2 and 9); they were aware of the autonomy and responsibility they were given as learners, and it seemed they enjoyed the leadership and ability to make decisions (comments 3 and 6); a student liked the increased talk time and speaking activities (comment 5). Comment 8 in particular is of interest as the student appreciated listening ‘at home’ and not just in class. A volunteer in Morocco

Although the inclusion of international news and American culture in my language class was a big step, looking back, I see it was also a limited view of culture teaching. At that time, my experience in culture teaching was teaching my own culture in the Arabic classes I gave in the USA. I thus

214  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Figure 13.1  Students’ evaluation of my course in 2014

assumed at the time that, going back to Egypt, American culture was the perfect match for my English language classes. In other words, to me, teaching culture meant teaching the culture of the target language. However, my subsequent voluntary teaching experience in Morocco made me broaden my view of culture teaching. In the summer of 2015, I went to Casablanca, Morocco, to teach English to high-school students. My Moroccan students were interested in the Egyptian culture and we discussed similarities and differences between both countries. The students searched for information about Egypt and gave oral presentations about different aspects, such as touristic places, costumes and food. Figure 13.2 shows an example of a class discussion about Egypt: the goal of this discussion was not to paint an idealistic picture, but to be representative of reality as much as possible, so certain negative elements were included, such as the huge population in Egypt. This was important to give learners an insight into how to be objective, think critically and be realistic. In spite of being from another Middle Eastern country, my students had their distinct lifestyles, and both the students and I were interested in cultural exchange. Therefore, the students were encouraged to share their

The Inclusion of Culture and Shift Toward Translingualism in my TESOL Classes  215

Figure 13.2  Class discussion about Egypt in Morocco

own culture, and there was a genuine need for this as I was a ‘tourist’ spending only two months in Casablanca. In addition, whenever I gave examples to students, I used Moroccan names, places and kinds of food, which students found interesting and relevant to their daily life. Figure 13.3 provides an example of an activity where the lesson was based on my Moroccan students’ culture, specifically their city of Casablanca. The branches of the mind map included costumes, food, shopping, attractions and safety. A mix of cultures in Ecuador

From 2017 to 2019, I taught in Ecuador, South America, and I continued to use my appreciation of culture in English language teaching. I asked my students there to present their culture to me and, in the process, they learned more about the different regions of their own country. My Ecuadorian students came from different cities all over Ecuador, so there was an abundance of information that could be new for everyone in class, not only for me, their foreign teacher. Additionally, I encouraged students to present about countries they found interesting and hoped to visit in the future. This coped with my broader understanding of culture in the English as a second language (ESL) classroom. Students also asked questions about the different countries I had lived in: Egypt, the USA, Morocco and even their own country, Ecuador, to understand my impressions.

216  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Figure 13.3  A mind map of Casablanca

As much as I like informing students about my country, I believe students need to hear from and communicate with other people as well. They also need to do some research and find out information on their own. As a result, in fall 2018, the first module’s topic in the English language program at the university was culture, and I assigned students to work on pair presentations. Instead of having my students do some research about Egypt and then present, I started an online cultural exchange between my former students in Egypt and my students in Ecuador at that time. The first step was to ask for volunteers on my Facebook page, where I got a good number of volunteers, not only from previous students but also a few friends and even another English language teacher. Then I shared a Google sheet that included different aspects of culture with students: art, costumes, food, movies, music, religion, superstitions, teens’ life, traditions and weddings. In this way, students could choose the angle they were more curious about, and we covered different cultural topics, whether internal ones such as beliefs (Hall & Hall, 1990) or more tangible aspects like food. After that, I matched them with some Egyptian volunteers to have a speaking practice about culture for at least 30 minutes. The final step was for each two students to give a class presentation to summarize the results of this online exchange. As much as I found this online cultural exchange a good opportunity for students to explore the world, make new friends and practice speaking

The Inclusion of Culture and Shift Toward Translingualism in my TESOL Classes  217

in an authentic context, there were some challenges during this experience. The first one was the time difference between Ecuador and Egypt as the majority of volunteers were residing in Egypt and only two lived in the USA. Another one was punctuality, although this was an issue with only two volunteers. One of the volunteers who lived in the USA commented on how laid-back students seemed, and maybe not so punctual even though this was their class assignment and not hers. This caused a little confusion and I needed to mediate between them, but this in itself was a teaching moment that demonstrated the difference between life tempo in the USA and Ecuador, in other words between the sequential culture in the USA and the synchronic one in Ecuador. The last challenge was the number of volunteers, which was less than expected; with 32 students and only seven volunteers, I overcame this shortcoming by assigning two pairs of Ecuadorian students the same volunteer. In spite of these issues, the exchange was a unique experience that was worth the time and effort invested. Part 2: From Culture to Language Culture teaching: To teach or not teach, is it still the question?

Based on my experience, teaching students’ own culture while teaching a target language has multiple benefits. First, the teacher leads by example. It would be awkward to lecture about the importance of being culturally aware while the teacher does not show any knowledge or interest in learning about the culture of her/his students or of the countries where s/he has lived. Second, it builds a bond between the teacher and learners as they feel the teacher’s genuine interest in their lives. It is also an opportunity for students to act as cultural ambassadors for their countries, and this is a way to build their self-esteem. Third, it is an authentic context for practicing language since the teacher is not testing students’ knowledge, but is really in need of more information about the students’ habitat and even their advice. In response, the students’ sense of importance is likely to become stronger as they provide guidance and assistance to their teacher. Likewise, teaching the teacher’s culture can be engaging to students as they may have curiosity about the teacher’s life. Martin and Nakayama (2001) see culture as a dynamic set of values shared by the same group. Scollon and Scollon (1995) define culture as what brings a group of people together, such as their views, geographical space and language. Nelson and Carson (2006) define culture as how a group of people sees and reacts to the world. However, it is important to note that this does not mean that the whole group is homogeneous – one should be careful not to turn the cultural aspects that unite a group of people into stereotyping. There is no fixed definition of culture since it can be inclusive of deep concepts such as belief systems and habits, as well as

218  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

None: no culture teaching

Limited: American culture

Expanded: American and Egypan

Broad: A mix of cultures

Figure 13.4  Development of my culture teaching

costumes or food, among other things (Lavrenteva & Orland-Barak, 2015; Moran & Lu, 2001). Based on the previously mentioned experiences I have had in some countries, I am a strong advocate of culture teaching. I see it as a beneficial practice for building students’ characters and also an enriching teaching practice. To elaborate, in today’s transnational world, it is crucial to have world citizens who are open to diversity, tolerance and acceptance (Chavez, 2005; Özüorçun, 2014; Singh, 2013). By learning about the world, students become eager to explore it; by learning about more than one culture, they become open-minded in the true sense of the word, which is not to expect others to follow one’s own path or lifestyle. Developing cultural sensitivity is no more a luxury, but a dire need in a world full of immigrants, refugees and nomads (Sun, 2013). As for teaching, cultural activities are not only engaging, authentic and motivating in learning a target language, but they also serve the communicative language teaching approach as student talk time increases (Chahak & Basirizadeh, 2012; Chamberlin-Quinlisk, 2012; Sun, 2013). In Figure 13.4, I summarize the shift of my view of inclusion of cultures in my classes to date. It is fair, however, to refer to some of the opposing viewpoints to the teaching of culture. Refusal to teach culture may simply be due to tight schedules and long curricula, which leads to a view of culture as peripheral, as explained by Lavrenteva and Orland-Barak (2015). Apart from educational reasons, both Scollon (2004) and Stone (2014) discuss how culture teaching could be deemed a negative practice for various reasons: hegemony and cultural invasion; general resistance to new things, the other or difference; and, as suggested by Alrikabi (2013), impact on young learners’ identities. Scollon (2004) mentioned that, after 9/11, US Air Force personnel were encouraged to learn a language and culture of other nations, which changed the nature of war to be ‘interaction based on

The Inclusion of Culture and Shift Toward Translingualism in my TESOL Classes  219

language’ (Scollon, 2004: 271). To prove this point, Scollon questioned why Arabic teaching programs are mostly funded by the Department of Defense, not the Department of Education, and called for transparency. Similarly, culture teaching also has overlaps with missionary work historically. Culture teaching can thus be very sensitive for political, educational, historical and even religious reasons. These concerns are plausible, yet I believe that the benefits outweigh the potential negative impacts and that teaching culture in the broad inclusive sense helps to address hegemony or fear of identity loss as students are encouraged to share their culture as well. In fact, one of the interesting effects of globalization is that it sometimes leads to a deeper understanding and attachment to what makes the local unique (Singh, 2013). Thus, some recommendations for culture teaching are to: explain our goals to students, but still expect some disagreement (Chavez, 2005); give students the freedom to choose some topics; be careful of stereotypes or generalizations; and set the example by being open to diverse cultures. Addressing language and identity in culture teaching

While I have seen that the inclusion of cultural exchange is as interesting and as useful as sharing the culture of the language I was teaching (English), I also came to realize the need to expand my own understanding of the complex past and present of the English language in teaching about cultures and engaging in cultural exchanges. Therefore, I started reading about English as a lingua franca (Canagarajah, 2018; Henry, 2016; Hincks, 2010) and how globalization and the vast spread of English has resulted in it being used in contexts where the aim is not to communicate with ‘native English speakers’, but to simply have negotiations or do business with other nations (Singh, 2013). For example, Chinese and Indian business people discussing projects and cooperation between their two companies do not necessarily need to reach a high level of English language proficiency, nor do they need to learn about American culture. As Harumi (2002: 36) puts it, ‘Today’s English is no longer an inviolable property of English-speaking people’. Cultural awareness in this globalized world means to read about various cultures in the world, not only one culture, or else this becomes not an exchange but a hegemony (Mitsikopoulou, 2002; Scollon, 2004). I have thus developed concurrence with Nault’s view that ‘English teaching professionals should discard the notion that the US and Great Britain represent the sole “target cultures” of the English language’ (Nault, 2006: 314). As Gloria Anzaldúa puts it, ‘So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language’ (Anzaldúa, 1987: 33). Even in my earlier teaching, when I avoided the use of L1 in my classroom, I always showed respect, admiration and even willingness to learn my students’ mother

220  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

tongue. Later, in Morocco and Ecuador, I narrated to my students some of my adventures in learning their dialects or languages, the Moroccan dialect (Darija) and Spanish, and they found this very engaging. In Egypt, it was normal to speak the L1 of my students (ECA), so to demonstrate my pride in our mother tongue, I showed my students how I had mastered standard Arabic, which is not the case for everyone since we mainly speak ECA. Several studies concur that the relationship between language and identity is a strong one (Bassiouney, 2014). Canagarajah (2013) quoted one of his students who agreed that learners need to follow the rules of writing in L2, yet the student’s view of identity was: ESL students should never isolate their writing in English from their cultural beliefs … they should stick to their identities and be proud to express themselves freely even if their culture is completely the opposite. (Canagarajah, 2013: 51)

I recall one of my Egyptian students playfully claiming that he did not speak English in class as a matter of preserving his identity. My reply was that mastering several languages and then choosing your mother tongue over all of them is pride in your roots, but if you are still learning the language or are monolingual, I would not consider it taking pride in your own mother tongue since in reality you have no other choice. The student found this convincing and started practicing his English more in class. A shift toward translingualism

Most educators would thus agree on respecting the learner’s language, yet is this the case with the teacher’s own L1? Zheng (2017) examined translingual identity-as-pedagogy (Motha et  al., 2012) by analyzing two case studies of international teaching assistants (ITAs) of English in the USA. ITAs are grateful for the opportunity provided by host institutions, yet they may feel the urge to prove themselves as competent. Examining these feelings of challenge and bias, Zheng was relieved to see that his experience was not unique to him. While the first participant (Ming), whose L1 was Chinese, separated L1 and L2 completely in the ELT classroom, the second participant (Sara) included her L1 (Arabic) to facilitate the target language material for students who shared the same L1. Zheng attributed Ming’s attitude to the pressure put on ITAs to be native-like in order to be seen as proficient English language teachers. She was preoccupied by this idea to the extent of sending her CV to her students before the beginning of classes in order to minimize the number of students who could be shocked or reluctant to find out that their teacher was not a ‘native English speaker’. Contrary to Ming, Sara made use of translingual pedagogy in her English language

The Inclusion of Culture and Shift Toward Translingualism in my TESOL Classes  221

classes; she included identity as the theme of her course. She started with herself and told students how she was bilingual in Arabic and English. She also assigned students a reflection paper where they examined their own translingual practices. In conclusion, Zheng (2017) suggested some solutions for the bias and self-doubt some ITAs may feel. These solutions included training courses that discuss the native speaker fallacy and encourage employing identity as part of pedagogy. A set of workshops for undergraduates could also be useful to raise their awareness and decrease resentment towards ITAs. Building on this interesting study, I revisit some concepts mentioned earlier in the chapter because I deem that identity is closely related to globalization, lingua franca and world Englishes. If there is a high level of understanding of the changes the world has been going through, there will be no need to aspire to an idealized native English speaker level. Similarly, there is no need for the pretense that being monolingual is the norm when the majority of people are bilingual or multilingual (Jain, 2014). Hopefully, the day will come when society shares the views of Dr Deena Boraei, past president (2012–2015) of the TESOL International Association, whom I heard in Nile TESOL and TESOL Arabia conferences arguing against native speakerism to the extent of calling it ‘the N word’ that should be shameful to say. It would be fairer and more realistic to use the term multilingual teachers rather than the term non-native, with all its negative connotations. I also find it strange to hear American or British colleagues tell a student that this word or that pronunciation is erroneous simply because it is not their accent! This gives a sense of entitlement and superiority for one accent over the other, but what is this based on? Whether this is due to ignorance of how other English-speaking nations use the language differently or it is out of bias towards one’s own dialect or accent, it is simply an indication that a ‘native English speaking teacher’ (NEST) is not necessarily the best option since that teacher may provide false information and portray an incomplete picture to students –this does not reflect reality as these students stand a high chance of studying in different parts of the world or simply communicating with speakers of different varieties of English all over the world. It is not only a problem of lack of exposure to different world Englishes, but it is also an issue of the inability of many native speakers of English to explain the grammatical rules of their L1 since they may not have had to study these rules themselves in their own English language acquisition process. Moreover, not many native speakers of English may know the L1 of their students, while recent studies support its use in ESL classrooms (Lee & Levine, 2020; Mitsikopoulou, 2002; Zhang, 2018). Such change is not easy because of the social beliefs of parents or students themselves and economic benefits: NESTs command higher salaries and sometimes get jobs that non-native teachers are not even interviewed for (Mahboob, 2003; Moussu, 2010; Phothongsunan & Suwanarak, 2008). However, some efforts are being made (Sun, 2010) through

222  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

websites and blogs that call for equity in the ESL field (e.g. https://teflequityadvocates.com/). Continuing to share stories that reveal how preference for NESTs is based on fallacies could be the starting point to change the status quo and raise awareness about this injustice and unjustified linguistic racism. It is also promising to see many research papers about English as a Lingua Franca, native speakerism and teacher identity, as this research opens the door for change to take place. Moving toward translingualism in the classroom

There is a need for a shift beyond multilingualism to translingualism. The difference between multilingualism and translingualism is key, as explained by Canagarajah: While the term multilingual perceives the relationship between languages in an additive manner (i.e. combination of separate languages), translingual addresses the synergy, treating languages as always in contact and mutually influencing each other, with emergent meanings and grammars. (Canagarajah, 2013: 41)

Translingualism is a more adequate term for the 21st century reality as it mirrors the diverse nature of today’s world interactions and leaves behind the binary terms of native/non-native and mono/multi (Jain, 2014). I see translingualism further as the freedom of movement between linguistic codes and the ability to build bridges between them that enhance the learning process. It makes languages more vivid as they seem to be in constant change and interaction with each other, and also allows students to relate to their heritage and be themselves. However, as Canagarajah (2014) has indicated, it can also be nerve wrecking for some teachers to explore translingualism in their teaching as it contradicts what they may have been practicing for years. However, with continuous learning and development, teachers can put themselves in their students’ shoes. Being a learner of languages myself, I set the example for my students of how essential and interesting learning languages can be, and this enables me to refer to different languages in the classroom. At the beginning of my teaching journey, I would not be exaggerating if I say that L1 was considered taboo in my classes. The overt reason for the initial L1 ban in my class was to allow students to be immersed in the target language, to gain more practice time and offer a simulation of a foreign country context. On a subconscious level, it may also have been due to a desire to prove my high proficiency level as a speaker of the target language (Zheng, 2017). Nowadays, I claim that my view of L1 use in the classroom is evolving. It is true that I still do not encourage long conversations in a language other than English in order to maximize students’ talk time in English, yet I make references to my or

The Inclusion of Culture and Shift Toward Translingualism in my TESOL Classes  223

the students’ native language every now and then to draw on some similarities or highlight some differences whether in grammar, syntax, phonetics or semantics. For instance, I build on the many cognates between Spanish and English or stress the difference in sentence structure, as in the adjective–noun order in English ‘tall girl’ that is noun–adjective in Spanish ‘chica alta’. Canagarajah (2014: 772) outlines his translinguistic practice in his writing classroom in the following three main topics: language awareness, rhetorical sensitivity and negotiation strategies. The first is to make sure that students are aware of the existence of various dialects and to discuss grammar in a more descriptive way; the second is to focus on genre and adequacy of language used for context; and the third is how students find their way to effective communication whether through repetition, simplification or paraphrase. In light of this clear explanation of the application of translingualism, I believe I have applied it in speaking more than writing. As far as language awareness is concerned, in class I highlight the fact that the same word can have multiple correct pronunciations, which students find shocking most of the time. However, by the end of the semester, when I ask if a word is pronounced this way or that, they respond that both are correct. Moreover, I draw students’ attention to the fact that grammatical rules are not strictly followed in daily conversation, such as the use of double negative or reported speech. In terms of rhetorical sensitivity, I explain to students that spoken English is not the same as written English – while the first is more flexible and bound to changes from one society to another, the second is more formal and follows prescriptive rules. Bearing the audience in mind when giving a presentation is essential and I clarify this point by showing two different ads for a multinational company, in the USA and the Middle East, and how they were different to cater for people’s interests and cultures. Finally, to improve students’ ability to negotiate, I usually do this during role-plays. Students are used to preparing what they want to say before performing, but I may surprise them by adding a new role they did not expect or a new statement to see how students react to this sudden change. With the passage of time and after self-reflection and experimenting with new techniques, L1 has found its way in my classroom. Negotiation, as explained by Canagarajah (2013), may have an impact on my future teaching style since it can be an empowering tool for students to have more ownership of the language. Daily life conversations are not rigid or controlled by form; rather, interlocutors have the willingness to negotiate meaning until they all reach common ground. The same applies to writing since texts are not fixed and readers do not take the role of passive recipients, but they add to the meaning (Canagarajah, 2013). This is an implication to make use of the available linguistic repertoire in the classroom, whether it is the various backgrounds of the students or the multilingual teacher.

224  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Conclusion

One of the most fulfilling feelings is to have an impact on people’s lives and to feel you are developing with time and experience. Teaching is a field that is rich in both areas. I enjoy meeting other people and adapting material, pace and style to the uniqueness of each context, and this makes my job more interesting. Having lived and taught in Egypt, the USA, Morocco and Ecuador, I have had the chance for self-discovery and development, both as an individual and as a teacher. To be an Egyptian Fulbright teaching fellow in the USA meant having students from various backgrounds. For the first time, I started to ponder concepts such as identity, globalization and cultural diversity. Since this experience was enlightening, I felt the urge to continue learning about people and the world. Thus, after my return from the USA, I volunteered to teach English in a public school in Morocco, which was also very enriching. Witnessing Moroccan students’ eagerness to know more about the Egyptian culture aroused my curiosity on the topic of English as a lingua franca and which culture to teach when teaching English in today’s globalized world (Nault, 2006). After obtaining my TESOL MA, I was determined to resume this cultural exchange, on a wider scale, by searching for a teaching job in another country. So I began teaching English to university students in Ecuador. Through the teaching materials and class activities, I encouraged students to present their culture to me and I presented to them the cultures I am familiar with – Egyptian, Moroccan and American. I also made references to the available linguistic repertoire and the similarities between my mother tongue (Arabic), the language I am teaching (English) and the students’ native language (Spanish). In addition, I conducted an online intercultural exchange project between my Ecuadorian learners and previous Egyptian students with the aim of creating bridges of understanding between two distant worlds through the common goal of practicing English. Each of the classes I have taught and every workplace I have worked at have helped in shaping my teaching practice. Now, I see culture and identity as integral parts in the ESL classroom and have started to employ a translinguistic approach in my teaching as well. I hope to continue reflecting on my work, adopting different techniques, learning new things and improving. By being a continuous learner, I hope to continue my journey of being a good teacher. References Alrikabi, A. (2013) How not to solve a problem by creating another. See http://www. arabnews.com/how-not-solve-problem-creating-another (accessed March 2021). Anzaldúa, G. (1987) How to tame a wild tongue. In Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestizo (pp. 33–45) San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Bassiouney, R. (2014) Language and Identity in Modern Egypt. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

The Inclusion of Culture and Shift Toward Translingualism in my TESOL Classes  225

Bergmann, J. and Sams, A. (2012) Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day. Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education. Canagarajah, S. (2012) Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. New York, NY: Routledge. Canagarajah, A.S. (2013) Negotiating translingual literacy: An enactment. Research in the Teaching of English 48 (1), 40–67. Canagarajah, S. (2014) In search of a new paradigm for teaching English as an international language. Tesol Journal 5 (4), 767–785. Canagarajah, S. (2018) The unit and focus of analysis in lingua franca English interactions: in search of a method.  International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 21 (7), 805–824. Castro, P., Sercu, L. and Méndez García, M.D.C. (2004) Integrating language‐and‐­ culture teaching: An investigation of Spanish teachers’ perceptions of the objectives of foreign language education. Intercultural Education 15 (1), 91–104. Chahak, S.M. and Basirizadeh, F.S. (2012) The study of culture on foreign language teaching. International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 2 (6), 522–524. Chamberlin-Quinlisk, C. (2012) Teaching language and culture in a digital age. i-Manager’s Journal of Educational Technology 9 (1), 6–14. Chavez, M. (2005) Variation in the beliefs of college students of German about the teaching of culture. Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German 38 (1), 31–43. Cockrum, T. (2013) Flipping Your English Class to Reach All Learners: Strategies and Lesson Plans. New York, NY: Routledge. Hall, E.T. and Hall, M.R. (1990) Understanding Cultural Differences: Germans, French and Americans. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press. Harumi, I. (2002) A new framework of culture teaching for teaching English as a global language. RELC Journal 33 (2), 36–57. Henry, A. (2016) Enablements and constraints: Inventorying affordances associated with lingua franca English. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 19 (5), 488–510. Hincks, R. (2010) Speaking rate and information content in English lingua franca oral presentations. English for Specific Purposes 29 (1), 4–18. Jain, R. (2014) Global Englishes, translinguistic identities, and translingual practices in a community college ESL classroom: A practitioner researcher reports. TESOL Journal 5 (3), 490–522. Lavrenteva, E. and Orland-Barak, L. (2015) The treatment of culture in the foreign language curriculum: An analysis of national curriculum documents. Journal of Curriculum Studies 47 (5), 653–684. Lee, J.H. and Levine, G.S. (2020) The effects of instructor language choice on second language vocabulary learning and listening comprehension.  Language Teaching Research 24 (2), 250–272. Luk, J. (2012) Teachers’ ambivalence in integrating culture with EFL teaching in Hong Kong. Language, Culture and Curriculum 25 (3), 249–264. Mahboob, A. (2003) Status of non-native English-speaking teachers in the United States. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Indiana University. Martin, J.N. and Nakayama, T.K. (2001) Experiencing Intercultural Communication: An Introduction. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Mitsikopoulou, B. (2002) Resisting linguistic imperialism in English teaching. A. S. Canagarajah. ELT Journal 56 (3), 330–333. Moran, P.R. and Lu, Z. (2001) Teaching Culture: Perspectives in Practice. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Motha, S., Jain, R. and Tecle, T. (2012) Translinguistic identity-as-pedagogy: Implications for teacher education. International Journal of Innovation in English Language Teaching and Research 1 (1), 13–27.

226  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Moussu, L. (2010) Influence of teacher-contact time and other variables on ESL students’ attitudes towards native-and nonnative-English-speaking teachers. TESOL Quarterly 44 (4), 746–768. Nault, D. (2006) Going global: Rethinking culture teaching in ELT contexts. Language, Culture and Curriculum 19 (3), 314–328. Nelson, G. and Carson, J. (2006) Cultural issues in peer response: Revisiting “culture”. In K. Hyland and F. Hyland (eds) Feedback in Second Language Writing: Contexts and Issues (pp. 42–59). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Özüorçun, F. (2014) Teaching culture as a fifth language skill. Journal of International Social Research 7 (29), 680–685. Phothongsunan, S. and Suwanarak, K. (2008) Native and non-native dichotomy: Distinctive stances of Thai teachers of English. Abac Journal 28 (2), 10–30. Scollon, R. (2004) Teaching language and culture as hegemonic practice. The Modern Language Journal 88 (2), 271–274. Scollon, R. and Scollon, S.W. (1995) Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach. Oxford: Blackwell. Singh, N.K. (2013) Multilingual Trends in a Globalised World: Prospects and Challenges. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Stone, C. (2014) Teaching Arabic in the US after 9/11. See http://www.jadaliyya.com/ pages/index/17286/teaching-arabic-in-the-us-after-9-11 (accessed February 2016). Sun, L. (2013) Culture teaching in foreign language teaching. Theory and Practice in Language Studies 3 (2), 371–375. Sun, Y. (2010) Standards, equity, and advocacy: Employment conditions of ESOL teachers in adult basic education and literacy systems. TESOL Journal 1 (1), 142–158. Tucker, B. (2012) The flipped classroom: Online instruction at home frees class time for learning. Education Next 12 (1), 82–83. Zhang, M. (2018) Collaborative writing in the EFL classroom: The effects of L1 and L2 use. System 76, 1–12. Zheng, X. (2017) Translingual identity as pedagogy: International teaching assistants of English in college composition classrooms. The Modern Language Journal 101 (S1), 29–44.

14 Negotiating Boundaries while becoming a TESOL Practitioner in Southern Thailand Kristof Savski

The world we live and work in today is, in many ways, defined by boundaries of different sorts. In many cases, these boundaries relate to geographically-defined spaces, such as nation-states, whose borders have been also loosened by the transnational flows of labour, products, information and capital associated with globalisation (Appadurai, 1990). Such intense global exchange is part-and-parcel of the neoliberal economic order and can thus be expected to remain unquestioned for the foreseeable future, in spite of political opposition to certain types of migration and other tempering forces (in particular the global Covid-19 pandemic at the time of writing). As the focus of this volume demonstrates, teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) has not been immune to such processes, with transnational mobility becoming a defining characteristic of the learning and working lives of both teachers and students. Yet, geographic boundaries are not the only ones we face when becoming transnational TESOL practitioners. Often, we cross borders of a more conceptual and decidedly fuzzier nature than those that separate nationstates, such as those between different cultures and those between different professional fields. Given that no one (to my knowledge, at least) is born as a TESOL practitioner, the latter boundary is particular significant since the nature of our socialisation into English teaching and learning as a field shapes our habitus (Bourdieu, 2013), in turn influencing our professional identities, determining our beliefs and guiding our actions. The purpose of this chapter is to explore how the crossing of such boundaries has impacted my own professional habitus as I have become a TESOL practitioner at the tertiary level in Thailand. My entry into this part of the field can be seen as somewhat atypical – while numerous TESOL practitioners have attained postgraduate research degrees after a period of teaching professionally, my first engagement with TESOL came 227

228  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

only after obtaining my PhD. My degrees are all also only tangentially related to TESOL: I completed an undergraduate degree in translation in Slovenia (University of Ljubljana) before moving to the UK (Lancaster University) where I received an MA in Discourse Studies and wrote a PhD thesis that focused on examining the discourse surrounding the development and implementation of language policy in Slovenia. My entry into TESOL in Thailand was not only somewhat unorthodox but also largely incidental, as the motivation behind my move there was less professional than it was personal – I had met my partner (now wife) in Lancaster and was following her back to her home country. I arrived in Thailand after completing my PhD in 2016 and immediately started work as a lecturer in English at my current university. Since then, I have taught several courses, with the diverse nature of my work reflecting the many responsibilities of my department. The most notable among these responsibilities is the provision of compulsory English classes to all students at our university, a not insignificant task given the numbers involved – the 2018 enrolment totalled more than 4000 freshmen across all the majors offered at our campus. The courses offered include both those focusing on basic English skills (unavoidable as many arrive at university with little more than elementary ability in English) as well as more advanced English for specific purposes classes, aimed at particular specialisations. Additionally, my department offers an undergraduate programme in English and MA and PhD degrees in TESOL. These many responsibilities contribute to creating a highly diverse array of sites of engagement with TESOL and, for those involved in teaching at all these different levels, a considerable challenge given the continuous need for adaptation. I have, for instance, taught content classes in sociolinguistics, intercultural communication and research methodology to English majors and advised graduate students in TESOL; to the same students, I have also taught classes in academic reading and writing. At different points in my time in Thailand, I have balanced this with more traditional TESOL work, such as teaching in a content-based English course on world cultures, where my classes included a mix of students from several different majors, as well as teaching in a more specialised four-skills course for students majoring in medicine. All this teaching has thus allowed me to engage in TESOL in a variety of different ways, including teaching of content, of content-based courses and of more traditional language-focused classes, with students of varying majors and levels of English proficiency in groups of varying sizes, ranging from around 10 in graduate classes up to 50 in some general English classes. A Note on Method

The focus of this chapter is on three types of boundaries I have encountered in the process of becoming a TESOL practitioner in the Thai

Negotiating Boundaries while becoming a TESOL Practitioner in Thailand  229

context. These boundaries are products of different kinds of macro-level social categorisations of the world and the people in it – into cultures (e.g. Western versus Eastern), fields (e.g. disciplines like sociolinguistics and TESOL) and spheres of power (e.g. centre and periphery in academia) – and thus appear to be an unavoidable part of our social awareness (Kroskrity, 1999). Indeed, membership in different bounded communities (spanning nations, professional fields, communities of practice etc.) is a key part of what defines our individual identities (Kroskrity, 1999). Yet, it is also worth reminding ourselves that such social conceptualisations of space are much more fluid than they appear, with even such seemingly foundational categories as ‘nation’ rendered open to continuous renegotiation through the broadening and narrowing of their borders (e.g. Anderson, 2006). The approach I take to investigating my own crossing of perceived boundaries in this chapter can be characterised as one completed along the lines of an analytical autoethnography, in that I sought ‘to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno)’ (Ellis et al., 2010). The key aim in such a process is to combine the documentation of personal experiences, particularly those appearing to represent salient moments, with critical analysis grounded in existing theory and empirical research (Ellis et al., 2010). My choice of such an approach is an acknowledgment of the fact that while the types of boundaries I am discussing here are related to macro-social concepts like culture and field, one’s experiences of encountering and indeed crossing such boundaries are very much subjective, rooted in the dispositions that make up one’s habitus (Bourdieu, 2013). When examining my experience in the following section, I am thus not making claims to the general applicability of any of the issues I describe, but merely to their relevance to my perception of becoming a TESOL practitioner. Negotiating Boundaries in My Professional Life Culture

Culture should, according to popular lore, be key in a transnational trajectory like mine, which has involved not only crossing boundaries between nations but between continents as well. Such an assumed centrality of culture, or rather of cultural difference, has long been a building block of much popular and academic discourse (Breidenbach & Nyiri, 2009; Dervin & Machart, 2015), and we today continue to assume that transnational mobility will inevitably involve crossing cultural boundaries. This is, of course, true in the sense that being mobile will put one in contact with a variety of different discourse communities, but it is also worth noting that such interdiscursive communication happens routinely

230  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

and does not necessarily involve contact between traditionally (i.e. geographically) defined ‘cultures’ (Scollon et al., 2012). Yet, the essentialised ‘geographic’ conception of culture remains a commonplace point of reference in the discussion of cultural difference. Often, culture is used in this sense to support other means of dividing the world into discrete categories, particularly into national communities such as ‘Slovenes’ and ‘Thais’, assuming that those umbrella terms describe an innate essence of their members, almost presuming in this way the existence of a shared Bourdieusian habitus among them (Anderson, 2006). In parallel, we operate in even broader terms, assigning shared cultural characteristics to entire areas of the world (Holliday, 1999), with the East–West dichotomy playing a particularly prominent role in such discourse (Said, 1978; see also Clark & Grieve, 2006; Comprendio & Savski, 2020). The existence and importance of an East–West dichotomy in TESOL has been a matter of debate for some years. In their discussion of TESOL practices in Chinese classrooms, Cortazzi and Jin (1996) argued that these reflected the existence of a distinct culture of learning, by which they refer to the fact that: … much behaviour in language classrooms is set within taken-for-granted frameworks of expectations, attitudes, values and beliefs about what constitutes good learning, about how to teach or learn, whether and how to ask questions, what textbooks are for, and how language teaching relates to broader issues of the nature and purpose of education. (Cortazzi & Jin, 1996: 169)

In their examination of TESOL practice at different levels, Cortazzi and Jin (1996) highlight particular features of the Chinese culture of learning, most notably the teacher-centredness of most classroom activities, the stress placed on students’ ability to memorise text and students’ perceived reticence in the classroom. Much literature has covered these features, typically generalised to all ‘Asian’ learners (Cheng, 2000), yet, as pointed out by Clark and Grieve (2006), academic discourse on this topic has often failed to overcome deeply embedded stereotypes or to critically reflect on the a priori negative evaluation of ‘Chinese’/‘Asian’ learning strategies that such stereotypes promote. My own experiences seem to agree with the view that while such different cultures of learning do exist, they are often overgeneralised in ways that do not reflect the complexity found in real-life learning situations. Rather, they are examples of what Holliday (1999) refers to as ‘small cultures’ – localised formations of practices that are, despite their apparent stability, open to renegotiation and transformation. Thus, while it is true that my students in Thailand, like those in China, are ostensibly members of a cultural community in which learning is seen to consist of largely passive acquisition of pre-existing knowledge (Rhea, 1995) and

Negotiating Boundaries while becoming a TESOL Practitioner in Thailand  231

sometimes hesitate to spontaneously participate in class by asking questions or expressing their views, any suggestion that they do not engage in critical thinking or that they do not seek to apply knowledge is untrue in my experience. I have held debates in my classes on a variety of social issues (e.g. Donald Trump, social class, racism, depression, suicide etc.) and have seen students genuinely engage with such topics, form their own positions and discuss them with others. While supervising group research projects conducted by English majors, I have observed numerous students display creativity and critical thinking in devising research questions and methodologies and in their analyses. However, what is also painfully clear in my experience is that opportunities for such genuine and critical engagement are not an inherent part of TESOL classes but may rather depend on the individual teacher’s ability to craft them when possible. In his critique of communicative language teaching (CLT) more than two decades ago, Pennycook (1994) highlighted the rather mundane and even childish nature of the contents typically relied on in English classes. Even today, commercial textbooks, reflecting their publishers’ quest for universal acceptability and applicability (Gray, 2010), continue to be full of largely generic content, with little new information for students and few genuinely controversial topics that might be used to start a discussion. At a time when even students in developing contexts like Thailand participate in global cultural flows by consuming a high volume of information on social media, such continued ‘triviality’ is a particular issue for TESOL practitioners. It is here that my experience has led me to fully agree with one aspect of the cultures of learning literature: Cortazzi and Jin (1996) report a case in which a student who had completed a communicative English course was disappointed not to have learned anything of substance – the course having focused merely on skills, not knowledge. I have heard similar comments from Thai students – they enjoy CLT classes but do not feel that they have learned much from them. In contrast, classes where content perceived as valuable is being discussed tend to motivate students to engage more. This creates a paradoxical situation where traditional grammar–translation classes are preferred to more contemporary CLT instruction simply because they are seen to be more valuable. This may explain why successive educational reforms in Thailand have largely failed to force CLT through to the grassroots, with many teachers continuing to focus on grammar knowledge (Prapaisit de Segovia & Hardison, 2009) – including most of those teaching at private tutoring schools, a huge industry in Thailand. While it is possible to create such windows of opportunity for students’ active engagement as part of a local culture of learning, there are also significant practical challenges in doing so. One major difficulty is the size of many classes, with fewer than 30 students in a section being the exception rather than the rule at my institution, and around 40 being common. This makes it quite difficult to foster genuine interaction, since

232  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

it tends to place any student who does try to participate in the role of a performer on a stage – particularly in large rooms where microphones need to be used. Groups of that size also present a major issue for teachers due to the difficulties involved in managing classroom activities, not to mention the effort required to engage with individual students by, for instance, entering in a discussion with them or giving feedback on written assignments. Many a time I have found myself exhausted after a 90-minute class in which I assigned students to discuss a particular issue in groups of three or four, with my role being to rotate among the resultant eight or nine groups and attempt to engage with the ideas brought up by each. In other cases, I have spent days on end trying to get through 75 essays and give meaningful feedback to each individual student in time for them to be able to digest the feedback and apply it in their next assignment. Teaching large classes also adds other kinds of pressures. In courses taught by several teachers, where lesson plans are often created to ensure all activities are completed by certain dates, taking time to allow more students to participate could potentially lead to falling behind the schedule. Because extra classes are often difficult to organise, the risk of such delays can lead teachers to try and minimise participation: a senior colleague once complained to me over lunch that she had fallen behind and as a result ended up telling her students to ‘be quiet and just listen to me so we can cover everything’. Discipline

While my professional trajectory is transnational in that it has involved crossing boundaries between geographic areas and cultures of learning, it is also transdisciplinary in that it has involved crossing the boundaries of different academic and professional fields. Like territories that have, throughout history, acquired sovereignty and become states associated with ‘their’ cultures, fields in time develop a certain level of autonomy (Maton, 2005) and, with it, a particular set of characteristics that may be seen as constitutive of ‘culture’. In particular, fields are associated with specific types of human activities and with the practices that can be observed around those activities. As they are essentially the constitutive forces underlying a field, practices can take the form of structural constraints on those acting in that particular field (Bourdieu, 1993). Indeed, a key part of one’s socialisation into a field is the recognition and adoption of local practices or the development of strategies that allow one to temporarily deal with the demands of a new field (Lamaison & Bourdieu, 1986: 111). Fields also come with conventions regarding the subject positions that may be taken up by those acting within them and regarding the forms of symbolic capital that govern power relations between them (Bourdieu, 1986). If we take these characteristics of fields to be constitutive of its own ‘culture’, fluid and interrelated with that of other fields yet also stable and

Negotiating Boundaries while becoming a TESOL Practitioner in Thailand  233

distinctive within a particular arena, it becomes interesting to consider how our beliefs and actions result from our socialisation into particular fields. It is especially interesting to consider how we resolve differences between fields, since there are often great contrasts between the practices we and others are expected to engage in, the subject positions we and others are afforded, and the forms of capital that determine our status in particular fields. It is these contrasts that I have found particularly challenging on my path to becoming a TESOL participant, since I have had to negotiate and reconcile often opposite views and practices. To illustrate these contrasts, I provide an example below of a note I received from a group of students who had requested to conduct an interview with me.1 I had agreed to participate but was then unable to keep the appointment due to an urgent personal issue and, as a result, found the following note (originally handwritten, here reproduced in print but otherwise unaltered) pinned to my door: Hello, Dr. Kristof Savski We are student of faculty of management sciences. Today we are come to your room, we aren’t found you. Yesterday we appointed you about interview “Travel”. So, Would it be convenient for you if I call on you at 4 p.m. on Monday (19 November)? Thank you so much.

In sociolinguistics, the broad academic field into which I was socialised during my undergraduate and graduate study and which I continue to primarily identify with, this note could be examined from a variety of perspectives. It is an example of using English as a lingua franca for written communication between second language (L2) speakers, and thus exhibits some departures from standard English, yet appears to follow a relatively conventional structure. From a discourse–analytic perspective, it consists of a series of relatively clearly discernible moves and is thus, on the whole, coherent. The vocabulary (e.g. ‘call on you’) and grammatical features (switch from first-person ‘we’ to ‘I’) of the last sentence in the body suggest that the writers may have drawn on a template while writing it, a common occurrence in L2 (and presumably also L1) writing even at higher levels of complexity (see e.g. Canagarajah, 2018a), where writers draw on a variety of sources to supplement and expand their own spatial repertoire (Canagarajah, 2018b). The key cornerstone of such an analysis is the subject position assigned to the writers of this note – they are treated as legitimate L2 users drawing on a variety of different resources while engaging in real-life communication – and the subject position the analyst takes – primarily that of a (participant) observer. In my experience as a TESOL practitioner, particularly in the more form-focused instantiations of TESOL practice I have come in contact

234  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

with, these subject positions are substantially different. In my practice, I have often not felt encouraged to see the writers as L2 users but rather as L2 learners, perpetually located somewhere along the imagined cline of L2 acquisition (Mauranen, 2018). My own subject position, as the reader, also changes under such a regime, turning from one of (participant) observation to one in which evaluation plays a key part, since the goal is to identify ‘errors’ and intervene to try and correct them. In this example, this may shift the focus toward various morpho-syntactic issues such as the lack of singular–plural distinction (‘we are student’) or the incorrectly constructed verb phrases (‘we are come’, ‘we aren’t found you’), as well as the phraseological shortcomings (‘we are appointed you’) or use of unconventional elements in a formal letter (‘Hello’ and ‘Thank you so much’) and the non-standard uses of capitalisation and punctuation. These subject positions carry with them an inevitable power imbalance, since the reader/teacher in effect acts as a gatekeeper, controlling access to the ‘correct English’ that the learner is required to acquire. Such a gatekeeping role is particularly powerful given the often-idealised nature of the learning objective at the top of the cline of second language acquisition – a monolingual L1 speaker/writer of the target standard language (Bhatt, 2014). I have, in my professional practice, often struggled with these two contrasting sets of subject positions, particularly when encountering the same students in language and content classes, as my objective in the latter (to maximise students’ learning and grant their voices legitimacy in the process) is quite different from that expected of me in the former (to help them approach the idealised target). I recognise that I am here potentially creating a false dichotomy, as there are now numerous voices in TESOL that aim to preserve students’ legitimacy as participants in discourse – just as there are prescriptive voices in some types of sociolinguistics. I am, in the spirit of this volume, attempting to describe my experience, which is without doubt a product of the ways in which I have been socialised into the two fields: much of my research in sociolinguistics has evolved from a deep-rooted discomfort with the prescriptive practices of linguists in the Slovene context (see e.g. Savski, 2018), and I have found it difficult to reconcile my critique of those practices with what I am expected to do as a TESOL practitioner (i.e. uphold an idealised standard). I have, on occasion, found opportunity to try and address this opposition collaboratively with students, for instance while teaching a sociolinguistics class on the topic of Thai English to a group I had previously also taught academic writing. One of the activities in this class involved discussing a list of features of Thai English and evaluating their suitability for inclusion in a ‘Thai standard English’, with the purpose of encouraging students to reflect on the relationship between the aim to express local identity and the need for global (or regional) intelligibility in such a standard. The features included, for instance, lack of subject–verb accord, no present–past marking, lack of distinction between particular word classes

Negotiating Boundaries while becoming a TESOL Practitioner in Thailand  235

(e.g. categorise versus categorisation), code-switching and code-mixing, among others. As we discussed them, we inevitably also touched upon whether I, as their writing teacher, had considered this when giving feedback on their work. This forced me to look at my own practices in teaching writing: if the students and I both agreed that the lack of subject–verb accord did not hamper intelligibility and could even be considered a marker of the ‘Thai-ness’ of their English, was it reasonable of me to mark it as an error in their writing in the name of a ‘standard’ English? Centrality–peripherality in academia

The issue of my split or hybrid TESOL–sociolinguistic identity brings me to the third and final type of boundary that I wish to explore, which is the one separating the centre and periphery in contemporary academia. There are several reasons to discuss the boundary – or perhaps gulf – that separates the ‘in’ and ‘out’ spheres in research in an autoethnographic account focusing on my work in TESOL. Of course, my crossing of this boundary coincided with me moving to Thailand and becoming a TESOL practitioner here. However, there are also deeper reasons. The first is the fact that, in my life as a TESOL practitioner, teaching English and doing research are closely interrelated, since part of my responsibility is to teach academic reading and writing skills to undergraduate and postgraduate levels while, at the same time, I am responsible for overseeing two finalyear modules in which English major students conduct group research projects and am also involved with supervising graduate students. The second reason for engaging with this topic is more personal – I consider research to be as much a part of my professional identity as teaching, with a balance between the two being essential, as for most academics. Thus, it would be difficult for me to discuss one without mentioning the other. The disparities that exist in academia between the ‘centre’ (represented by developed Western nations, particularly those where English is the dominant language) and the ‘periphery’ (which primarily covers nonWestern nations but also includes less developed nations in Europe) have been well documented (see e.g. Canagarajah, 1996) and remain of concern today, though in a different form. The changes in the nature of centre– periphery disparities have come primarily from how technological development, especially the appearance of the internet, has transformed the nature of academic work, particularly academic writing. In the age described by Canagarajah (1996), peripheral scholars’ work was disrupted by, among other issues, their difficulty in accessing fundamental intellectual resources, particularly books and journals, with the pricing structure imposed by major publishers often well beyond what peripheral institutions could regularly afford to spend on supplementing their libraries. This, in turn, put scholars working at those institutions at a major disadvantage, since they were perpetually unaware of recent developments

236  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

in their field and thus faced significant obstacles in getting their work published in centre journals. The widespread accessibility of the internet has, to an extent, mitigated such disparities, as much academic literature is now available online for free, on repositories such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate, and on institutional or personal websites, or can be accessed through the use of illegal paywall-bypassing sites. Despite this mitigating factor, however, significant disparities continue to exist between academic writing in the centre and periphery (Curry & Lillis, 2018; Hyland, 2016). As indicated by their continued absence from the top echelons of global university rankings, such as that produced by Times Higher Education (THE, 2019), researchers at peripheral institutions tend to publish significantly fewer articles in highly-ranked journals. This appears to be particularly dramatic in the humanities and social sciences, since most recent ranking data finds significantly lower proportions of publications in journals indexed by Scopus2 when comparing scholars active in those fields in central and peripheral institutions (THE, 2019). Indeed, a casual look through manuscripts published in major journals reveals few publications by (local or non-local) scholars based at institutions in peripheral countries such as Thailand – though one finds publications dealing with peripheral contexts, often written by scholars originating from those contexts but now based in the centre. This suggests that, in spite of how the internet has changed the ways in which we access academic literature, the problems encountered by scholars based at peripheral institutions continue to lead to their exclusion from prestigious journals, just as they did in the time frame described by Canagarajah (1996). The rather fast-paced development of new theories in some fields, which in TESOL has, for instance, led to the problematisation of previously mainstream concepts such as ‘native speaker’ or ‘code-switching’ (see e.g. Dewaele, 2017; García & Kleifgen, 2020), has in particular placed more pressure on scholars to keep up with new ideas. My experience of being a researcher at a Thai institution and training others to conduct research and write research reports is that the relative lack of publications in top-tier journals tells only part of the story with regard to the differences between the centre and the periphery in academia. Indeed, the most significant change I have had to adapt to after starting work here is the often completely different way academic publishing is structured as a field, the practices within it and the subject positions available. Perhaps the most obvious difference from the practices I was socialised into in the UK is the fact that all postgraduate students at my institution (and many others in Asia, based on my observations) are required to publish in order to receive their degrees. What this means in practice is that, in addition to writing up a master’s dissertation or a PhD thesis and passing an oral defence, students must also write a set number of manuscripts (at my institution, typically one for master’s and two for PhD students), submit them to an approved journal and produce letters of

Negotiating Boundaries while becoming a TESOL Practitioner in Thailand  237

acceptance in order to complete their study. The precise requirements vary according to institution and the existence of funding contracts, with some students only needing to publish in the proceedings of a domestic conference and others needing to achieve the substantially more ambitious goal of publishing in a journal indexed by the Web of Science. The existence of such a publication requirement substantially shifts the practices and subject positions in the field of academic publishing. As is clear to anyone who has ever undergone peer review, it significantly alters the timeline, as empirical work must be completed much sooner in order to allow sufficient time for a manuscript to be written, submitted, reviewed, revised and accepted within the period allotted to complete the degree. This can lead to important stages in the research being ignored, particularly the seemingly aimless but extremely valuable reading and brainstorming that students usually go through early on in their graduate study. Instead, there is often pressure from the very early stages of a student’s journey to identify a ‘publishable’ topic, develop a ‘safe’ methodology and come up with the kind of clear-cut results that can be written up quickly. The subject position afforded to advisors under such a publish-tograduate policy is also highly specific. Advisors are often forced to take up an active role, since students often lack a sufficiently broad awareness of the literature in their field at the beginning of their study to identify genuinely innovative topics. Given students’ lack of experience in the publishing process, writing becomes a similarly collaborative process, with advisors often contributing significantly to the manuscripts that come out of their students’ empirical work. But this also creates issues: given the amount of work that one, as an advisor, can end up investing in a particular piece of writing, it is unsurprising that many advisors end up feeling a sense of ownership over some proportion of their students’ work. As with all advisor–advisee co-authoring, this creates a potential conflict of interest that is not easy to resolve. Indeed, a look into the CVs of many academics working under this policy shows that, for many supervisors, such co-authored manuscripts over time become the predominant type of research output. A further issue is that since such publications come from research that is generally produced under time pressure by novice scholars and is thus often far from perfect, they are much less likely to be accepted in highly-ranked journals, creating a vicious cycle that is potentially difficult to break. A Personal Reflection

Perhaps inevitably, given the approach I have taken, this chapter has more often than not had quite an academic and analytical slant. However, as is the case with all autoethnographic accounts, I would be remiss not to acknowledge that the professional journey I have analysed here has also

238  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

been an emotional one. Aside from one or two low points (usually related to dealing with bureaucracy rather than teaching in itself), I have experienced great enjoyment in my work, primarily because of the many ­wonderful teachers and students I have encountered while working in Thailand. In the world of constant transnational comparisons in education, it is perhaps easy to (implicitly) dismiss those ‘stuck’ in ­‘low-performing’ systems as less able to achieve success. I am grateful to the many people who have showed me and continue to show me how false such assumptions are. Notes (1

This kind of interview, which must be conducted with a non-Thai, is a common assignment in English classes in Thailand as it forces students to use the language to communicate outside the classroom. (2) This is not to suggest that all journals indexed in Scopus are of high quality nor that all those not indexed there are of low quality. I simply use Scopus as a point of reference here because inclusion in this index is a widely accepted recognition of quality.

References Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Appadurai, A. (1990) Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. In M. Featherstone (ed.) Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity (pp. 295–310). London: Sage. Bhatt, R.M. (2014) World Englishes and language ideologies. In M. Filppula, J. Klemola and D. Sharma (eds) The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes (pp. 291–311). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986) The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241–258). New York, NY: Greenwood. Bourdieu, P. (1993) The Field of Cultural Production. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Bourdieu, P. (2013) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Breidenbach, J. and Nyiri, P. (2009) Seeing Culture Everywhere: From Genocide to Consumer Habits. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Canagarajah, S. (1996) ‘Nondiscursive’ requirements in academic publishing, material resources of periphery scholars, and the politics of knowledge production. Written Communication 13 (4), 435–472. Canagarajah, S. (2018a) Materializing ‘competence’: Perspectives from international STEM scholars. The Modern Language Journal 102 (2), 268–291. Canagarajah, S. (2018b) Translingual practice as spatial repertoires: Expanding the paradigm beyond structuralist orientations. Applied Linguistics 39 (1), 31–54. Cheng, X. (2000) Asian students’ reticence revisited. System 28 (3), 435–446. Clark, R. and Gieve, S.N. (2006) On the discursive construction of ‘the Chinese learner’. Language, Culture and Curriculum 19 (1), 54–73. Comprendio, L. and Savski, K. (2020) ‘Asians’ and ‘Westerners’: examining the perception of (non-)native migrant teachers of English in Thailand. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 41 (8), 673–685.

Negotiating Boundaries while becoming a TESOL Practitioner in Thailand  239

Cortazzi, M. and Jin, L. (1996) Cultures of learning: Language classrooms in China. In H. Coleman (ed.) Society and the Language Classroom (pp. 169–206). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Curry, M.J. and Lillis, T. (eds) (2018) Global Academic Publishing: Policies, Perspectives and Pedagogies. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Dervin, F. and Machart, R. (eds) (2015) Cultural Essentialism in Intercultural Relations. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dewaele, J.M. (2017) Why the dichotomy ‘L1 versus LX user’ is better than ‘native versus non-native speaker’. Applied Linguistics 39 (2), 236–240. Ellis, C., Adams, T. and Bochner, A. (2010) Autoethnography: An overview. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 12 (1), doi:10.17169/ fqs-12.1.1589. García, O. and Kleifgen, J.A. (2020) Translanguaging and literacies. Reading Research Quarterly 55 (4), 553–571. Gray, J. (2010) The Construction of English: Culture, Consumerism and Promotion in the ELT Coursebook. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Holliday, A. (1999) Small cultures. Applied Linguistics 20 (2), 237–264. Hyland, K. (2016) Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing 31, 58–69. Kroskrity, P.V. (1999) Identity. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9 (1–2), 111–114. Lamaison, P. and Bourdieu, P. (1986) From rules to strategies: An interview with Pierre Bourdieu. Cultural Anthropology 1 (1), 110–120. Maton, K. (2005) A question of autonomy: Bourdieu’s field approach and higher education policy. Journal of Education Policy 20 (6), 687–704. Mauranen, A. (2018) Second language acquisition, world Englishes, and English as a lingua franca (ELF). World Englishes 37 (1), 106–119. Pennycook, A. (1994) The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. New York, NY: Longman. Prapaisit de Segovia, L. and Hardison, D.M. (2009) Implementing education reform: EFL teachers’ perspectives. ELT Journal 63 (2), 154–162. Rhea, Z.M. (1995) Changing manifestations of wisdom and knowledge in Thailand. Prospects 25 (4), 669–682. Said, E. (1978) Orientalism. New York, NY: Pantheon. Savski, K. (2018) Monolingualism and prescriptivism: The ecology of Slovene in the ­twentieth century. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 39 (2), 124–136. Scollon, R., Wong Scollon, S. and Jones, R.H. (2012) Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach. Maiden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. THE (Times Higher Education) (2019) World university rankings. See https://www. timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2019/world-ranking (accessed May 2019).

15 A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner’s Multiple Subjectivities and Critical Classroom Negotiations in the Indonesian University Context Ribut Wahyudi

My transnational journey has spanned many academic and professional contexts – from Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand to back to Indonesia. During this journey, my pedagogy has become more critical, especially in terms of the post-structural, post-colonial and interdisciplinary studies that I was exposed to during my doctoral studies. Over the years, I have been greatly influenced by critical counter-discourses to the mainstream English language teaching (ELT) scholarship, discourses that interrogate Western-dominant knowledge (see Wahyudi, 2016a, 2016b). However, in addition to teaching English, my current responsibilities also require me to promote Islamic values as mandated by our institution (PMA, 2018) and to promote the collective sociocultural values stemming from my Indonesian context. The research conducted by Siregar (2019) at this Islamic university suggests that the integration between science and Islam at the university has been documented since 2004. Furthermore, my teaching aims to show our critical and strategic positioning toward Western discourses (Wahyudi, 2018a). My teaching is therefore embedded in my transnational and professional training, personal histories and institutional rules, and reflects the complex training, histories and institutional culture, which have also become part of my professional and personal identities. Varghese et al. (2005: 22) argued that understanding teachers is prerequisite to understanding teaching and learning and that, in order to understand teachers, we need to know who they are, including their 240

A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner’s Multiple Subjectivities  241

‘cultural, political, and individual identities’. In line with this ‘need’, I explore in this chapter how my identities have shaped my instruction. Specifically, I first focus on my experience as a transnational practitioner teaching English as glocalised communication (TEGCOM), then on my own multiple subjectivities as a lecturer and, finally, on the ways I engage in critical classroom negotiations with my students in one specific course. As I explore these different threads, I weave in previous scholarship that, to some extent, is relevant to my current study. Briefly, Lin et al. (2002) have argued that glocalising teaching – through code-switching, translation and other forms of appropriation of English in local contexts – suggests agency and ownership. Morgan (2004) showed that a teacher’s identity could become a pedagogical resource for bilingual and second language teacher education through a story about the author’s imaginary lover (Gong Li) to challenge group assumptions around culture, gender and family roles in a community in Toronto where Chinese seniors were dominantly served in an adult ESL programme. Motha et al. (2012) showed that teachers’ identities, including race, life history and ideology, are important sources of pedagogy. Jain (2014) argued that translingual identities and practices can be used to teach the target variety and build students’ translingual competence. Barnawi and Phan (2015) revealed that Western-trained TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) teachers have a strong sense of agency and cannot be assumed to be receivers of the training. Wahyudi (2016b) has shown how Western materials can be contextualised for local purposes through the TEGCOM lens. Zheng (2018) argued that imagining oneself as translingual and adopting translingual identities is not an automatic password for translingual pedagogy; only understanding, awareness and the critical link between identity and pedagogy, it was argued, would help. Contextualising my chapter within this body of literature, I endeavour to demonstrate, through autoethnographic writing, how my transnational study experience, cultural geography, ideologies and institutional culture continue to shape my teaching in different ways. My Hybrid Approach to Research: An Autoethnography and a Classroom-based Study

This chapter is a combination of a critical and analytical autoethnography and a classroom-based study. Canagarajah (2012) argues that the most appropriate way to understand autoethnography is to understand its three terms: auto, ethno and graphy. For Canagarajah, auto suggests the self as represented by one’s rich exposures of experiences, ethno is the way in which cultures and the personal may shape each other and graphy is writing through creative resources. Kuby (2013) further explains that autoethnography is an appropriate tool to unpack the personal–professional life histories, ideologies and experiences that shape pedagogical decisions.

242  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Inspired by these theorisations, I employ autoethnography in this chapter as both process and product (Ellis et al., 2011). As process or method, autoethnography integrates the element of autobiography and ethnography. Autobiography is writing selected past experiences and ethnography is exploring cultures, include shared values, beliefs and experiences (MASO, 2001; Ellis et al., 2011). As a product, the writing of this chapter follows storytelling conventions (Ellis & Ellingson, 2000; Ellis et al., 2011). The use of the first person ‘I’, for instance, projects the personalised story (Caulley, 2008; Wahyudi, 2016a, 2016b). Inspired by Pennycook (2010) in his use of critical applied linguistics, I have further added the word critical to my autoethnography to explore post-structural components such as politics, identity, ideology and discourse embedded in my analysis. Similarly, Yazan (2018a: 1) argues that critical autoethnographic narrative requires ‘ongoing engagement’ to coursework and internship by deconstructing dominant discourses. In my teaching practice, I strive to include the deconstruction of the dominant TESOL discourses that do not provide adequate space for EFL teachers’ and students’ voices from developing countries such as Indonesia (see Wahyudi, 2018a, 2018b). Along with critical, I make use of the word ­analytical to capture the fact that I, the researcher, was also a member of the group under study (Anderson, 2006) and the writing itself contains analytical elements as seen in the discussions. In a classroom based-study, Storch (1998) explained that students worked in small groups of two to five people. The students were audiorecorded and verbal data from the small group works were then analysed. This is similar to what I did with my students, though not the same in its entirety: I analysed the transcribed data from audio-recorded students’ group interviews. My Position as a Practitioner–Researcher

In this study, I was also both a practitioner and a researcher. As a practitioner–researcher (see Jain, 2013), I examined what I encountered in my day-to-day teaching experience (see Campbell, 2013) from the lens of a researcher. In her dissertation research, Jain (2013: ii) integrated teaching and research in that she made use of ‘teaching tools to do research, and research tools to teach’. I employed a similar methodology by using critical reading materials I encountered and the research skills gained during my PhD studies to teach the course, and I used my teaching experiences as the data sources for this research study. Data collection

As part of this critical and analytical autoethnography, I first collected data by looking at specific course materials, which included the course

A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner’s Multiple Subjectivities  243

outline, the notes I made on the core book used, the questions used in middle and final tests, the files of the given materials, my former published book chapter (Wahyudi, 2018a) (which briefly discussed my doctoral experience and its effects on the selection of materials and my teaching in the classroom), my PhD dissertation (Wahyudi, 2018b) and real-life examples relevant to the course. These data were also helpful in recalling pertinent discussions in the classroom along with other relevant memories – a common practice in autoethnographic works (Choi, 2013). Next, I conducted a focus group interview with three of my supervisee students enrolled in the Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction (henceforth PS&D) course, which was followed by follow up email-based conversations. Before the interview, I sent the students the course outline to remind them about the objectives of the course and the reading lists given. I also asked the students to look at their course notes briefly. In the interview, I asked the students to respond to three areas: (1) their opinions about the course in general, (2) the selection of the given materials and (3) the extent to which the course might have had an effect on their lives and their self-positioning towards linguistics and the use of English. The follow-up emails elicited students’ comments on my critical classroom negotiations. To help the students remember events, I sent six-page examples of how I engaged in critical negotiations in the classroom. I asked the students to read the examples carefully and provide comment(s) in the Indonesian language in order that they could express what they wanted to say easily (see Wahyudi, 2018b). I thus used multiple data sources to enhance trustworthiness in my autoethnographic writing (Chang, 2007). Data analysis

Mostly, the data analysis was not clear cut as in the traditional sense because the data themselves interlinked with my own teaching experience and memories. Choi (2013: 51) states that autoethnographic research deals ‘with the presence of a flood of experiences, desires social and political conditions and discourses located in certain times and spaces’. She found an ‘appropriate’ way of analysing such data is through ‘critical reflexive narrative account’. Similarly, my analysis involved critical reflexivity and storytelling (narrative account), which relies heavily on memories (Choi, 2013). As mentioned earlier, I use critical in reference to politics, ideology, identity and relations of power (Pennycook, 2010), while reflexivity comprises ‘an awareness of the self in the situation of action and of the role of the self in constructing that situation’ (Bloor & Wood, 2006: 145). Collectively, critical reflexivity encompasses a way to challenge and contest truth claims constructed by the dominant paradigms that involve power relations (Morley, 2015) while, as a narrative account, my chapter represents ‘knowledge and experiences in embodied, contextualised and concrete ways’, which also cover ‘perceptions’ and ‘emotions’ (Canagarajah, 2019: 24).

244  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner

My professional training history started from my undergraduate programme at the University of Jember, Indonesia, where I majored in English Language and Literature Studies. My journey as a transnational practitioner began with my master’s degree in TESOL from the University of Sydney, Australia, and continued with my doctoral degree from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. My present English teaching in an Islamic University has been, in nature, teaching required glocalised practices (e.g. in terms of course content and Islamic values) and is theoretically supported by, among others, TEGCOM (Lin et al., 2002, 2005). TEGCOM signifies a more democratic space for teaching English in a multilingual context such as Indonesia as TEGCOM classroom spaces constitute global and local negotiations (Yazan, 2018b) rather than, say, TESOL, which implies ‘othering’ local languages (Shin, 2006). TEGCOM is based on the following three tenets. • Social, cultural, historical and institutional perspectives in doing research on ELT, curriculum development and teacher education in a variety of contexts; foregrounding the social, cultural and historical situatedness of human communication and activities. • De-centring the production of the discipline’s knowledge and discourse from Anglo-speaking countries to a diversity of sociocultural contexts in the world. • Drawing on anthropological research methods and interpretive sociological methods, including narrative analysis, discourse analysis, cultural studies, critical ethnography and autobiographic studies (Lin et al., 2005: 197–222). My Multiple Subjectivities

My personal and professional histories and cultural geography have shaped my subjectivities (Wahyudi, 2018b). I borrow Manathunga’s (2015) term ‘cultural geography’ to describe the trajectory of my study from Indonesia to Australia and New Zealand. I encountered the term during my PhD studies and, upon completion, my scholarship and pedagogy have become more post-structural and post-colonial (Wahyudi, 2016a, 2016c, 2018b). Foucault defined subjectivity as the product of discourses produced through institution or schooling (Danaher et al., 2000). This subjectivity can be partly shaped by personal histories, such as family, and from professional histories, such as education training and the pursuit of postgraduate study overseas (Wahyudi, 2018b). In addition to post-structural and post-colonial subjectivity, my exposure to Nahdlatul ‘Ulama (NU) and my formal affiliation with this moderate Islamic organisation and my interaction with the Sufi community in the

A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner’s Multiple Subjectivities  245

past (see Wahyudi, 2018b) have constructed my hybrid understanding and thus also my identities. As the largest moderate Islamic organisation in Indonesia, NU promotes that the practices of Islam can go hand in hand with local cultural contexts as long these do not contradict with the key principles of Islam (Wahid, 2015). In addition to this, NU consistently supports and promotes Pancasila as the state ideology of Indonesia (Ghani, 2018), a country with multicultural and multireligious bearers. The Sufi community that I have interacted with tends to promote harmonious life with others. These hybrid understandings have shaped my subjectivities, including when teaching English courses at Universitas Islam Negeri (UIN) Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang–Indonesia. This was partly because the teaching at our university needs to be integrated with Islamic values (PMA, 2018). Furthermore, as UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang is under state regulation, we need to teach Islamic values that are in harmony with Pancasila as the state ideology. However, the harmony between Islamic values and Pancasila has become my own principle, not just because it is mandated. Therefore, the way I teach the courses, including PS&D, needs to be seen from these different intersecting factors. In teaching PS&D, I contextualised and appropriated Western materials into local and national needs in that I taught the materials as they were, as long as they did not contradict with Islamic and local cultural values. In this way, my teaching can be categorised as dialectic and dialogic (see Wahyudi, 2018a). The three key things I emphasise in the classroom, in addition to the contents of the course, are: Ke-Islaman (Islamic values), Ke-Indonesiaan (Indonesianness) and Kebangsaan (nation-state). My subjectivities are, among others, reflected in the construction of the course outline, selections of classroom materials, the critical classroom negotiations section, quizzes and middle and final test questions. Setting the Context for the Course

PS&D is an elective course in the seventh semester for students in the English department. It is an introductory course on PS&D and its possible benefits in linguistics studies. PS&D studies aim at criticising the dominant assumptions constructed by structuralists, starting from Enlightenment in the 1960s (Grbich, 2004; Lewis, 2002). Structuralists see reality as something structured, meaning as stable, and truth as singular (Grbich, 2004; Lewis, 2002). PS&D studies emphasise political and social power along with geography, and are therefore dynamic and political. While the description of the course directly relates to PS&D per se, the course learning outcomes cover political and intellectual, religious and institutional responsibilities. As Gandana and Parr (2013) argue, teachers’ teaching practices are shaped by hierarchical institutional culture. The learning outcomes, in addition to making the students knowledgeable about PS&D, therefore function to encourage students to be critical

246  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

scholars who are responsible for promoting their own cultures, as well as keeping Islamic values in line with Pennycook’s (2000) post-colonial performativity. The student population on the PS&D course tends to comprise primarily those majoring in Linguistics and Literature but, in practice, nearly 70% (out of 80 students) on my course are Linguistics majors. When this course was first offered to students, I was the sole lecturer teaching three classes. I designed the objectives and the outline of the course. My PhD studies, informed by post-structural and post-colonial scholarship, were among the key considerations of my appointment in the course. The course ran from the third week of August to the second week of December 2018 and was held over 16 meetings, including one meeting for the middle test and another meeting for the final test. Prior to enrolling on the course, students passed a course on Cultural Studies in the sixth semester. Between Idealism and Realities

From the beginning, I had a strong commitment to provide students with enlightening materials for post-structuralism, the selected materials that I learned from my PhD. For example, how EFL learners’ views of English can be located in the different categories of global position of English (Pennycook, 2000) and how people from the East were constructed as ‘backward’ (Said, 1985). At the same time, given the course instruction really spanned only 14 meetings, there were not many poststructural scholars that I could teach about in the classroom. I knew from the secretary of the department that the types of materials I needed to teach in the classroom had to be introductory ones, in that I needed to teach the very basics, which translated into my selection of reading materials described in the next section. Reading Materials for Students

To start the class, in the first two meetings, I presented the students with the key principles of both structuralism and post-structuralism using Grbich’s (2003) presentation. Grbich (2003) outlines the key principles of structuralism, which include an emphasis on forms, structures and the construction and transmission of meaning rather than content, whereas the key principles of post-structuralism accordingly reject the existence of deep structure or form, believe that there is no absolute truth, hold that meaning is fluid and reality is fragmented and so forth. I chose this presentation because it provides quite a clear initial understanding. In the third meeting, I discussed Lewis’ chapter on ‘From structuralism to post-structuralism’ (Lewis, 2002: 145). This chapter covers the ideas of different thinkers, such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. When explaining deconstruction,

A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner’s Multiple Subjectivities  247

I referred to Barker’s (2003: 99) explanation of Derrida’s deconstruction as ‘to take apart, to undo, in order to seek out and to display the assumptions of a text’ and ‘to expose the blind-spot of texts’ and ‘unacknowledged assumptions’. Deconstruction accordingly rejects the hierarchical binary opposition, such as speech versus writing, because it excludes and devalues the ‘inferior’ part of the binary. For Derrida, it is merely the convention of Western culture. The example of deconstruction in our class is given in the section on critical classroom negotiations. Being aware that most of the students were pursuing a Linguistic major, I gave students linguistic materials that employed post-structural principles, as now discussed. I introduced critical applied linguistics through Pennycook’s (2000) global positioning of English. Pennycook argues that people’s use of English can be categorised into colonial celebration, characterised by the imitation of British and or American English discourses, up to post-­ colonial performativity (hybrid/glocalised teaching practices), suggesting a continuum with the uncritical use of English serving as an extension of British and/or American English as part of a colonial celebration at one end of the continuum and post-colonial performativity, where the teaching of English suggests the accommodation of localities, at the other. I endeavoured to make the students aware that they may have aligned themselves somewhere along this continuum. The article proved to be thoughtprovoking for some students; upon completing the course, three students used this article as part of the major theoretical framework in their theses under my supervision. To enrich the critical materials and to foreground glocalised teaching constructs, I also added Morgan (2007), McNamara (2012), Norton Peirce (1989) and Sung (2014) to the reading list. Morgan’s (2007) chapter on poststructuralism and applied linguistics discusses that the concept of identity can be multiple, dynamic and fluid, and may appear to be contradictive. In assigning this article, I wanted to stress that both teachers and students can have these multiple identities, which may shift from one context to another due to different contingency and needs. McNamara’s (2012) article on post-structuralism introduces thoughts relevant to linguistics, such as awareness about social and political engagement, as well as the question of justice. McNamara’s article also questions the stable truth and linguistic structure as they are constructed post-structurally and therefore are not stable and may change. Furthermore, he rejects the idea of ‘progress’. To contextualise this to the students, I made an example of action research. This research approach tends to assume that, after being treated in particular ways, students in a classroom make progress (Tripp, 2005). This appears to neglect the space where treatment may have no effect for some students.

248  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Norton Peirce’s (1989) article discusses the ways in which dominant TESOL principles can be reconstructed. I gave the students this article because it proposes a post-structural approach to ELT, which covers the political nature of ELT, the meaning of language competence appropriated to South African need and the emphasis of process and consultation in the learning process. These principles were made to teach Black Africans who were oppressed by apartheid. In addition to the political nature of ELT, I provided students one-to-one consultations especially to discuss potential topics for their take-home assignments and research questions. I asked the students to have a mini-research project as one of the requirements of the PS&D course. The students could extend the proposals and use them for their final thesis projects. In consideration of the resonance of Sung’s (2014) article on second language learners’ local, glocal and global identities with post-structural paradigm and the students’ contexts, I set this article as one of materials for discussion. Sung (2014) suggests that students at a Hong Kong University were categorised into three different degrees of affiliations: local, global and glocal (hybrid) identities. I highlighted to the students that it was possible that an EFL/ESL learner has complex and multiple identities at the same time that may also be contradictory (cf. Morgan, 2007). Using Sung’s (2014) article as an analytical framework, one student completed their thesis on EFL learners’ identities. All of these materials were given before the middle test. After the middle test, I extended the materials to post-structural works, including Walshaw’s (2007) Working with Foucault in Education, which among others, discusses the concepts of discourses, archaeology and genealogy, Alatas’ (2003) paper on ‘Academic dependency and the global division of labour in the social sciences’, Said’s (1985) ‘Orientalism reconsidered’, Bhambra’s (2007) Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and Sociological Imagination and Mahboob’s (2009) paper on ‘English as an Islamic Language: A case study of Pakistani English’. I deliberately chose a variety of materials from multiple scholars across the globe to avoid Eurocentric or Western dominance. I wanted the students to be critical and not subjugated to Western scholarship only. Due to space constraints, only some of the above works are discussed in the next section. Critical Classroom Negotiations

I use the term ‘critical classroom negotiations’ to capture the fact that I did not merely adopt Western materials but contextualised or appropriated them into the Indonesian and Islamic university context. The contextualisation and the appropriation of the Western materials consisted of two aspects: (1) the course content, which reflected general critical thoughts, and (2) the adoption of post-structural and deconstructive thoughts in the applied linguistics areas, both of which are now described in more detail.

A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner’s Multiple Subjectivities  249

In the course, I highlighted that the teaching of English needs to be used to promote Islamic values and to promote local cultural values. This resonates with Pennycook’s (2000) post-colonial performativity because the teaching of English is grounded in local and institutional needs. However, in writing their theses, I encouraged the students to use ‘standard’ English. This is because theses are academic works and ‘standard’ English has become a disciplinary practice and knowledge in the field (see Wahyudi, 2018b). In addition, standard English is the rule in the department and faculty. I also asked the students about their possible positioning against dominant knowledges from the West and their responsibility as intellectuals toward local knowledges by using postcolonial and post-structural frameworks. I also explained to the students that we needed to proportionally position Western knowledge in that we should not take for granted Western knowledge – we may adopt components of the knowledge that suit our own contexts and leave others that are not compatible (see Manathunga, 2017; O’Farrell, 2005; Wahyudi, 2018b). I next discussed in the classroom the ideas of progress and modernity as associated with English (Bunce et al., 2016), and I tried to deconstruct these ideas in that they are not always right. In the classroom, I explored Kubota’s (2011) discussion of successful Japanese workers do not always have ‘good’ English. Many of them in fact cannot speak English. To expand the discussion, I changed the symbol of modernity from English to Western branded products, especially clothes. I did this because I noted a female student in the classroom wearing a GUCCI T-shirt. While this may have become a mundane phenomenon, I explained this Western branded product may have constructed students’ desires as they symbolise modernity. I then discussed criticism of the concept of modernity as posited by Bhambra (2007), who argued that the existing concept of modernity was Eurocentric in that the metric is European and that modernity needs to be positioned in a dialectical relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. Bhambra (2007) provides an example where British colonisers once learned a particular technology while colonising India. The coloniser then copied this particular technology, produced it massively in the UK and claimed it as their own. This is an example where the blind claim that modernity should be measured using a European ‘standard’ is not always justifiable. An interesting parallel is the modern Chinese rather liberal attitude toward intellectual property rights (IPR). Alford (2006) describes that many Chinese see IPR (possessed individually) as introduced by the West, often via threats, to protect Western economic interests. The concept is thus considered a foreign imposition. Brander et al. (2017) explain that, based on cultural traditions, the Chinese favour ‘collective over individual rights’ whereas, on the contrary, the USA argues that China ‘turns a “blind eye” to the theft of intellectual property from US …’ (Brander et al., 2017: 908).

250  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Further, I set Canagarajah’s (1999) article on the ‘native speaker fallacy’ a source of a test question: ‘Why do you think Canagarajah’s article can be categorised as a post-structural work?’. This question challenged the former superiority of the ‘native speaker’ and suggests that the ‘native speaker’ is not always the desirable model for teaching English just because of grammaticality judgement and given the possible lack of pedagogical training (see Canagarajah, 1999). Implied in the question is that the student, as a multilingual speaker, can gain legitimacy as an EFL teacher. I also discussed Coleman’s (2016) article on English as Naga in Indonesia, which describes how English in Indonesia has dominated Indonesian and local languages – Naga is the icon of ‘a mythical serpent’ (snake) with a regal appearance but ‘threatening’: the English naga is the largest naga which is ‘devouring’ the middle naga (Indonesian language) and this middle naga at the same time is ‘devouring’ many smallest naga (local languages) (Coleman, 2016: 59–60). I encouraged the students to be proud of their local languages and encouraged them to pass their local languages down to their future children. I also highlighted the fact that many parents will be proud if their children are fluent in English but are not so of fluency in local languages. I suspect that the construction of English as the symbol of modernity and progress (Bunce et al., 2016) seems to have been successful. I encouraged the students to be proud to be multilingual English speakers rather than focus on themselves as ‘non-native speakers’: the label of non-native speaker tends to put students at a disadvantage whereas the label multilingual English speaker indicates a speaker of more than one language. This positioning suggests that such students have more advantages than ‘native speakers’ who sometimes speak only English (see Wahyudi, 2018a). In this case, I constructed teaching as a political act and as a means to construct students’ agency. In addition, I emphasised that gender as repeated acts, as defined by (Butler, 1990; Morgan, 2007), was not compatible with the understanding of gender in Islamic values and in the university. In Butler’s logic, the division of gender is not a given but is a performance. Thus, in her logic, male or female may transgress the given gender. Therefore, what Butler understands about gender needs to be filtered in Islamic institutions or contexts, which believe gender as a given. As already mentioned, I also introduced the students to Said’s work on the reconsideration of Orientalism (Said, 1985). Said explains that the East is constructed as backward and lazy (see also Danaher et al., 2000). These constructions need to be deconstructed through writing counterdiscourses if possible or through acting otherwise if not possible. I told my students of my own experience while studying for my master’s degree at the University of Sydney. I deconstructed the construction of Asian students in some literatures as uncritical and passive (Dobinson, 2020; Tavakol & Dennick, 2010) through action. In the classroom, I always

A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner’s Multiple Subjectivities  251

contributed to classroom talk, either asking questions or answering the lecturer’s questions, despite the fact that I did not have any prior knowledge about deconstruction. My desire to deconstruct Asian students’ stereotypes was also due to my feeling of responsibility as an awardee of an Australian Development Scholarship and my former exposure to debate competitions during my undergraduate degree. Finally, I also discussed Alatas’ (2003) work on academic dependency in the social sciences, which explains that Asian social sciences are dependent on the West for references. With regard to ‘academic dependency’, I explained that the selections of theories used in students’ theses usually use Western scholars. I made a contextual example to raise students’ awareness that, in their field, Western scholars remain dominant. To decrease this dependency, I encouraged students to adopt theories written by Asian scholars and/or to use theories from Western scholars in a critical manner – for example, to encourage students to think to what extent Western theories worked and did not work in our context. Students’ Comments on my Critical Classroom Negotiations

While gauging the impact of my teaching on students collectively is beyond the scope of this chapter, I now present data from three students who represented a shift in students’ positioning toward English in response to the course materials and discussions. In this section, I present answers from three female students (NVN, DAN and FAN) on whether or not the PS&D course made an impact on the way they see English or Applied Linguistics. NVN said that the course has made her more relaxed when speaking in English. I used to have the ambition to follow British accent after I got the reading materials from Post-[Structuralism and Deconstruction course], I am relaxed to use my own accent. Toh [Even] I had the experience to speak with native speakers, I used my own accent, and they understood. Finally, I am relaxed. (Group interview, 29 July 2019)

This answer suggests that the course helped NVN abandon her ambition to have a British accent after reading the course materials, in turn suggesting that the reading materials may have functioned as discourses (Foucault, 2010), which had the capacity to shift NVN’s position from ‘colonial celebration’ (characterised as having a British accent) to ‘postcolonial performativity’ (the state of being relaxed with one’s own accent (see Pennycook, 2000), which was not an obstacle for intelligibility). DAN expressed a similar new subject position towards ‘native speaker’. In the past, if there was a ‘native speaker’ there was a temptation to speak with him/her yo wes lah [now no], the ‘native speaker’ wants to have a holiday  …  becoming more relaxed, Sir, in chatting becoming more

252  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

relaxed, mixing [accent] … I am aware that my accent is ‘good’ with ph ph features [explosive sound] [‘My question: If there are someone who speaks English with Javanese or Madurese accent?’ yo gak popolah [no problem] … (Group interview, 29 July 2019)

The above quote suggests that speaking to a native speaker used to be a part of DAN’s desire – as reflected in the word ‘temptation’ to speak with a native speaker. This past desire further suggests that DAN was influenced by the hegemonic discourse of native-speakerism in her personal and professional histories. Implicit in that statement, she used to act as ‘colonial celebration’ (Pennycook, 2000). DAN’s new positioning to be more relaxed and mixing accents deliberately suggests that she became a ‘playful creator’ (Gao, 2014) when speaking and that she has control over English language use. However, there is a ‘discursive trace’ (Foucault, 2010) in that she still could not totally escape from the dominance of ‘inner circle’ English when saying that she was aware that her English was ‘good’, as characterised by explosive sounds. Yet, the fact that DAN became relaxed with people speaking English with Javanese or Madurese accents suggests that she accepted that the spread of English is shaped by local social and cultural context, thus leading to localised variety (Kachru, 1986; Kachru & Nelson, 2006) or, in other words, DAN accepted the ‘postcolonial performativity’ (Pennycook, 2000) function of the language. The students also provided comments on my critical classroom negotiations during the course in response to my prompt that they read carefully the examples I had previously sent them. I sent the examples by email (on 11 September 2019) and asked them to use the Indonesian language when providing comments so that they would not be constrained by English. The following are FAN’s critical and thoughtful responses (translated to English while keeping the tone of the response). With regard to the critical materials you had given and taught in the Post class; they opened my view toward the Western world, such as (1) the material about ‘academic dependency’ (Alatas, 2003). Prior to learning Post, I was not aware that Western countries have been so dominant in our lives, and we are not aware of it. Even more in education, we are highly dependent on thoughts and Western theories. However, after learning Post, I became aware of it and strived to challenge academic dependency by learning theories by Eastern scholars such as Mahboob, Canagarajah, etc. In that regard, we can decrease academic dependency. Also, learning Eastern scholars’ theories resonate better with us such as the real portrayal about English because of similar contexts. For example, Ahmar Mahboob (1999) with the background of Islam, provided us insights into English as not a colonizing language anymore but as a tool to promote culture and religion [Islam]. (2) About ‘native speaker fallacy’ Canagarajah (1999). In the past, I thought that a ‘native speaker’ has a better quality. However, after receiving that material, we do not need to judge quality based on ‘native’ or ‘non-native speaker’. We as

A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner’s Multiple Subjectivities  253

multilingual speakers should have the same rights, and the quality of the teacher needs to be seen from his/her competence.

FAN’s answers in points (1) and (2) appear to show that the assigned critical reading materials such as Alatas (2003), Mahboob (1999), Canagarajah (1999) and other Eastern scholars’ works have been powerful not only in helping her see the dominance of Western theories over ‘us’ but also to deconstruct her former understanding on, for example, the notion of ‘native speaker’ and its privileged status. She also seemed to have been more agentic and critical positioning toward the West, as shown in her statement to challenge and decrease ‘academic dependency’ from the West by learning Eastern scholars’ works. FAN’s critical views resonate with the objective of the course outline of the PS&D course, my critical classroom negotiations and the exposure of my feedback on her thesis. Similar to FAN, NVN seemed to have been able to deconstruct her view toward English and the West and to have critical positioning. She wrote the following. (1) After I was enrolled in the Post class in semester 7, I think that this course has changed my understanding of English, including my subjectivity which favoured British English. When discussing Pennycook (2000), I realised that I was in the ‘colonial celebration’ category. From that, I am aware that I need to be more critical when viewing English. (2) Then, the reading material by Bunce et al. (2016), which discusses progress and modernity, Formerly, I was a fan of overseas branded products such as H&M, Pull and Bear, Tory Burch and many others. I saw that those brandings were a form of modern life and very fashionable because the branding has been globalised. After reading Bunce et al. (2016), now I prefer local and national branding as I think bahan [material] and the quality is not worse than overseas products. The local and national products are indeed more creative and unique, and the prices are not as high as the overseas brandings.

NVN’s statements (1) and (2) strongly suggest that critical readings from the course and my classroom explanations (and the feedback on thesis writing that she is completing under my supervision) have had significant impacts on her understanding of British English and its category and the need to be more critical toward English. Furthermore, the reading(s) appeared to influence her lifestyle – from being a fan of Western branding to a consumer of local products. She has appeared to become more ‘rational’ in considering products by considering the quality, affordability and the more creative aspects of the local products. She changed her subject position (Walshaw, 2007) from an uncritical to a critical user of English and from a fan of Western to local brandings. She thus revealed her agency. Furthermore, the reading material from Coleman (2016), perhaps my classroom explanations as summarised above and ongoing feedback on

254  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

their theses appeared to have made both FAN and NVN aware that preserving local languages is critical as these languages represent identities [FAN] and the asset of being a multilingual speaker [NVN]. FAN wrote the following. This reading material has opened my horizon that English has been so dominant and has become a threat to Indonesian and local languages. So we need to preserve local languages as our identities. The research by Coleman also shows that there are many Indonesian products that use English labels such as ‘sunlight’. So it is better to use Indonesian/local products. A product with an Indonesian name can also be known overseas, such as Indomie, so the English language is not always a determining factor of a successful product.

NVN contextualised the reading material into her use of the politest form of the local language as well as her status as a multilingual speaker. Then, my love for Indonesian and local cultures grows more after reading Coleman (2016) on English Naga. Formerly I did not care much when I could not speak Jawa Kromo Inggril [Javanese most polite form of language] and preferred to use English first rather than Javanese. However, this most polite form of Javanese can only be used by a limited number of people. Furthermore, many teenagers now cannot speak this Javanese most polite form even at its basic level, the irony of which is that they are Javanese. These teenagers can speak English better. From that point, my awareness to preserve local culture grows by practising the most polite form of Javanese to older people. Up to the point where I am proud to be able to speak Kromo Inggil quite successfully because I feel that I am ‘richer’ in terms of language if compared to a ‘native’ [speaker] who is often seen as having ‘better’ language than us, as reflected in Wahyudi’s (2018a) article on multilingual speakers.

The article by Coleman (2016) on English as Naga in Indonesia might have made both FAN and NVN come to the similar understanding that local languages need to be preserved for different reasons. For FAN, it represents identity, while for NVN it is a growing symbol of awareness and pride (of being able to practice Javanese Kromo Inggil) and as an asset of being multilingual. This understanding resonates with my explanation of Coleman’s (2016) work. I also emphasised to students that it is the responsibility of us all, as intellectuals, to preserve our local languages. This explanation may also have reconstructed students’ subjectivities. NVN’s mention of my former work which, among others, discusses my encouragement to students to shift their subject position from non-native speaker to multilingual speaker as the latter provides more advantage than the former due to the tendency that non-native speaker is constructed to be ‘deficit’ when compared with native speaker (Wahyudi, 2018a). Both FAN and NVN seemed to find their agency through, among other things,

A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner’s Multiple Subjectivities  255

the reading materials of the PS&D course, my explanations of Western constructions through critical classroom negotiations and feedback on their theses. The students’ thoughtful comments on my critical classroom negotiations suggest that they appeared to have been able to deconstruct their prior understanding toward English and Western dominance in education and knowledge, and to be proud of their own cultures and products as well as to be agentic learners. More importantly, the students appeared to be able to strategically position themselves toward Western discourses and choose a way that represents their voices and identities through localised Englishes (Kachru, 1986; Kachru & Nelson, 2006). Conclusion

As demonstrated in this autoethnographic enquiry, my teaching suggests a form of agency and ownership (Barnawi & Phan, 2015; Lin et al., 2002). It also adds to previous scholarship that teachers’ identities (including ideologies) are sources of pedagogy and shape pedagogical decisions (Kuby, 2013; Morgan, 2004; Motha et al., 2012). My enquiry also agrees with Canagarajah’s (2012) argument that the best way to understand autoethnography is to understand its three terms: auto, ethno and graphy. This view takes ground as my teaching is a rich exposure of my experiences: I have been shaped by different cultures and have informed them in turn. My writing is also a form of creative resource. The writing of this chapter developed my former discussions of TEGCOM in the Discourse Analysis class (Wahyudi, 2016b) to be more critical and political, thus extending previous studies by looking at how classroom teaching is shaped by transnational study experiences, post-structural and post-colonial works, and interdisciplinary studies. In addition, my multiple subjectivities as characterised by cultural geography in a transnational context, faith, ideology and institutional values also contribute to the way I teach in the classroom. Last but not the least, my current teaching is a form of critical negotiation towards Western knowledge and is geared by the desire to represent all voices and identities in the field. References Alatas, S.F. (2003) Academic dependency and the global division of labour in the social sciences. Current Sociology 51 (6), 599–613. Alford, W.P. (2006) Understanding Chinese attitude toward Intellectual property rights. See https://www.cio.com/article/2444480/understanding-chinese-attitudes-towardsintellectual-property--ip--rights.html (accessed March 2021). Anderson, L. (2006) Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35, 373–395. Barker, C. (2003) Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. London: Sage.

256  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Barnawi, O.Z. and Phan, L.H. (2015) From western TESOL classrooms to home practice: A case study with two ‘privileged’ Saudi teachers. Critical Studies in Education 56 (2), 259–276. Bhambra, G.K. (2007) Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and Sociological Imagination. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bloor, M. and Wood, F. (2006) Keywords in Qualitative Methods. London: Sage. Brander, J.A., Cui, V. and Vertinsky, I. (2017) China and intellectual property rights: A challenge to the rule of law. Journal of International Business Studies 48, 908–921. Bunce, P., Phillipson, R., Rapatahana, V. and Tupas, R. (2016) Introduction. In P. Bunce, R. Phillipson, V. Rapatahana and R. Tupas (eds) Why English? Confronting the Hydra (pp. 1–20). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Campbell, K.H. (2013) A call to action: Why we need more practitioner research. Democracy and Education 21 (2), 1–8. Canagarajah, S. (1999) Interrogating the ‘native speaker fallacy’: Non-linguistics roots, non-pedagogical results. In G. Braine (ed.) Non-Native Educators in English Language Teaching (pp. 77–92). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Canagarajah, A.S. (2012) Teacher development in a global profession: An autoethnography. TESOL Quarterly 46 (2), 258–279. Canagarajah, S. (2019) Transnational Literacy Autobiographies as Translingual Writing. New York, NY: Routledge. Caulley, D.N. (2008) Making qualitative research reports less boring: The techniques of writing creative nonfiction. Qualitative Inquiry 14 (3), 424–449. Chang, H.W. (2007) Autoethnography: Raising cultural consciousness of self and others. In G. Walford (ed.) Methodological Developments in Ethnography: Studies in Educational Ethnography (pp. 207–221). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Choi, J. (2013) Constructing a multivocal self: A critical-auto ethnography. PhD thesis, University of Technology Sydney. See https://www.uts.edu.au/ Coleman, H. (2016) The English language as Naga in Indonesia. In P. Bunce, R. Phillipson, V. Rapatahana and R. Tupas (eds) Why English? Confronting the Hydra (pp. 59–71). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Danaher, G., Schirato, T. and Webb, J. (2000) Understanding Foucault. St Leonards, NSW: Unwin & Allen. Dobinson, T.J. (2020) Asian students’ perceptions of how they are seen in the West: A case study at an Australian University. Australian Journal of Teacher Education 45 (4), 64–75. Ellis, C. and Ellingson, L. (2000) Qualitative methods. In E. Borgatta and R. Montgomery (eds) Encyclopedia of Sociology (pp. 2287–2296). New York: Macmillan. Ellis, C., Adam, T.E. and Bochner, A.P. (2011) Autoethnography: An overview. Forum: Qualitative Social Research 12 (1), 10. See https://www.qualitative-research.net/ index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095 Foucault, M. (2010) Archaeology of Knowledge. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Gandana, I. and Parr, G. (2013) Professional identity, curriculum and teaching intercultural communication: An Indonesian case study. Language, Culture and Curriculum 26 (3), 229–246. Gao, Y. (2014) Faithful imitator, legitimate speaker, playful creator and dialogical communicator: Shift in English learners’ identity prototype. Language & Intercultural Communication 14 (1), 59–75. Ghani, A.A.M. (2018) PBNU: NU konsisten jaga NKRI. See http://www.nu.or.id/post/ read/99845/pbnu-nu-konsisten-jaga-nkri- (accessed August 2019). Grbich, C. (2003) Qualitative Data Analysis (Presentation). Accessed from: https://slideplayer.com/slide/7896919/ Grbich, C. (2004) New Approaches in Social Research. London: Sage.

A Transnational TEGCOM Practitioner’s Multiple Subjectivities  257

Jain, R. (2013) Practitioner research as dissertation: Exploring the continuities between practice and research in a community college ESL classroom. PhD thesis, University of Maryland. Jain, R. (2014) Global Englishes, translinguistic identities, and translingual practices in a community college ESL classroom: A practitioner researcher reports. TESOL Journal 5 (3), 490–522. Kachru, B.B. (1986) The Alchemy of English. New York, NY: Pergamon Press. Kachru, Y. and Nelson, C.L. (2006) World Englishes in Asian Context. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kubota, R. (2011) Questioning linguistic instrumentalism: English, neoliberalism, and language tests in Japan. Language and Education 22, 248–260. Kuby, C.R. (2013) Personal histories and pedagogical decisions: Using autoethnographic methods to unpack ideologies and experiences. Teaching & Learning 27 (1), 3–18. Lewis, J. (2002) Cultural Studies: The Basics. London: Sage. Lin, A., Wang, W., Akamatsu, N. and Riazi, A.M. (2002) Appropriating English, expanding identities, and re-visioning the field: From TESOL to teaching English for glocalised communication (TEGCOM). Journal of Language Identity and Education 1 (4), 295–316. Lin, A., Wang, W., Akamatsu, N. and Riazi, M. (2005) Transnational TESOL professionals and teaching English for glocalised communication (TEGCOM). In A.S. Canagarajah (ed.) Reclaiming the Locals in Language Policy and Practice (pp. 197– 222). New York, NY: Routledge. Mahboob, A. (2009) English as an Islamic language: A case study of Pakistani English. World Englishes 28 (2), 175–189. Manathunga, C. (2015) Transcultural and postcolonial explorations: Unsettling education. The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives 14 (2), 10–21. Manathunga, C. (2017) A critical turn in knowledge construction in intercultural doctoral pedagogy and communication. In M. Dasli and A.R. Diaz (eds) The Critical Turn in Language and Intercultural Communication Pedagogy: Theory, Research and Practice (pp. 109–125). New York, NY: Routledge. Maso, I. (2001) Phenomenology and ethnography. In P. Atkinson, A. Coffey, S. Delamont, J. Lofland and L. Lofland (eds) Handbook of Ethnography (pp. 136–144). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. McNamara, T. (2012) Poststructuralism and its challenges for Applied Linguistics. Applied Linguistics 33 (5), 473–482. Morgan, B. (2004) Teacher identity as pedagogy: Towards a field-internal conceptualisation in bilingual and second language education. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 7 (2–3), 172–188. Morgan, B. (2007) Post-structuralism and applied linguistics: Complementary approaches to culture and identity in ELT. In J. Cummins and C. Davison (eds) International Handbook of English Language Teaching (pp. 1033–1052). New York, NY: Springer. Morley, C. (2015) Critical reflexivity and social work practice In J.D. Wright (ed.) International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd edn) (pp. 281– 286). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Motha, S., Jain, R. and Tecle, T. (2012) Translinguistic identity-as-pedagogy: Implications for language teacher education. International Journal of Innovation in English Language Teaching and Research 1 (1), 1–28. Norton Peirce, B. (1989) Towards a pedagogy of possibility of teaching English internationally: People’s English in South Africa. TESOL Quarterly 23 (3), 401–420. O’Farrell, C. (2005) Michel Foucault. London: Sage. Pennycook, A. (2000) English, politics and ideology: From colonial celebration to postcolonial performativity. In T. Ricento (ed.) Ideologies, Politics and Language Policies: Focus on English (pp. 107–119). Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing. Pennycook, A. (2010) Critical and alternative directions in applied linguistics. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 16, 1–16.

258  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

PMA (Peraturan Menteri Agama) (2018) Republik Indonesia No 40, 2018 tentang Perubahan atas PMA No 15, 2017 tentang Statuta UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang (The Regulation of the Minister of Religious Affairs of the Republic Indonesia No 40, 2018 on the Changes of PMA No 15, 2017 about the Statute of UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang). See http://itjen.kemenag.go.id/sirandang/ peraturan/5834-40-peraturan-menteri-agama-republik-indonesia-nomor-40-tahun2018tentang-perubahan-atas-peratur Said, E.W. (1985) Orientalism reconsidered. Cultural Critique 1, 89–107. Shin, H. (2006) Rethinking TESOL from a SOL’s perspective: Indigenous epistemology and decolonizing praxis in TESOL. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 3 (2–3), 147–167. Siregar, I.S. (2019) Integrasi kampus dan pesantren di UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang. See https://moraref.kemenag.go.id/posts/announcement/98077985952879350 (accessed March 2021). Storch, N. (1998) A classroom-based study: Insights from a collaborative text reconstruction task. ELT Journal 52 (4), 291–300. Sung, C.C.M. (2014) Global, local or glocal? Identities of L2 learners in English as a lingua franca communication. Language, Culture and Curriculum 27 (1), 43–57. Tavakol, M. and Dennick, R. (2010) Are Asian international medical students just rote learners? Advances in Health Science Education 15, 369–377. Tripp, D. (2005) Action research: A methodological introduction. Educação e Pesquisa 31 (3). See http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=s1517-97022005000300009&script=sci_ arttext&tlng=en Varghese, M., Morgan, B., Johnston, B. and Johnson, K.A. (2005) Theorizing language teacher identity: Three perspectives and beyond. Journal of Language, Identity and Education 4 (1), 21–44. Wahid, A. (2015) Pribumisasi Islam. In D.A. Sahal and M. Aziz (eds) Islam Nusantara: Dari Ushul Fiqh hingga Paham Kebangsaan (pp. 33–48). Bandung: Mizan. Wahyudi, R. (2016a) Intercultural competence: Multi-dynamic, intersubjective, critical and interdisciplinary approaches. In F. Dervin and Z. Gross (eds) Intercultural Competence in Education: Alternative Approaches for Different Times (pp. 143– 166). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wahyudi, R. (2016b) Teaching English as a glocalised communication (TEGCOM): Some empirical examples. Journal of Creative Practices in Language Learning and Teaching 4 (2), 14–31. Wahyudi, R. (2016c) Becoming an empowered EFL teacher: A critical self-reflection of professional development. ELTED 20, 83–96. Wahyudi, R. (2018a) Pengalaman studi doktoral di New Zealand: Antara idealisme akademis, tantangan, keuntungan dan dialektika keilmuan [The experience of doctoral study in New Zealand: Between academic idealism, challenges, advantages and the dialectic of sciences]. In A. Ghozi (ed.) Mendialogkan Peradadaban: Sebuah Kajian Interdisipliner [Dialoging Civilizations: An Interdisciplinary Study] (pp. 112–126). Malang: UIN Maliki Press. Wahyudi, R. (2018b) Situating English language teaching in Indonesia within a critical, global dialogue of theories: A case study of teaching argumentative writing and crosscultural understanding courses. PhD thesis, Victoria University of Wellington. Walshaw, M. (2007) Working with Foucault in Education. Rotterdam: Sense. Yazan, B. (2018a) Toward identity-oriented teacher education: Critical auto ethnographic narrative. TESOL Journal 10 (1), 1–15. Yazan, B. (2018b) Contexts of English language teaching as glocal spaces. In A.F. Selvi and N. Rudolph (eds) Conceptual Shifts and Contextualised Practices in Education for Glocal Interaction (pp. 219–233). Singapore: Springer. Zheng, X. (2018) Translingual identity as pedagogy: International teaching assistants of English in college composition classrooms. The Modern Language Journal 17, 29–44.

Subject Index

academia 4–5, 56, 66, 72, 179, 182, 235 migrant mothers in 57 center and periphery in 236 academic community 3–4 agency 16, 53, 181, 241, 255 critical transnational 7, 14–15, 24 distributed 136–137 transformative 109 transnational 26, 28, 30, 32, 33 applied linguistics 248 critical 242, 247 nation-conscious 27 appropriation 24, 114, 241 African American English 156 antiracism 17 antiracist agenda 14, 33 arts-based research assignments 52–53 Asian 15–17, 20, 82, 132, 204, 230, 251 Asian American 18, 20 autobiography 242 multimodal linguistic 107 transnational literacy 2 autoethnography 2, 39, 58, 127, 129, 229, 241–242 analytical 130–131, 229, 241 critical 241

boundaries 5, 14, 20, 94, 140, 227, 229 blurred 183 boundary-crossing 9, 140 Brasil 115, 118–119 British English 253 Burma 15–16, 19 case study 114–115 center 1, 3, 9, 165, 180, 210 center-periphery 1, 3, 164–165, 180, 210, 235–236 China 39–41 classroom-based study 241 communities of practice 4–5 community college 3–5 community translanguaging 8, 135–138 core and periphery countries 178 critical praxis 71–73, 76–77, 83, 85–89 criticality 73, 76, 86 cultural geography 244 culture 63, 155, 180, 186, 207, 214–215, 217, 229–230 culture of learning 230–232 dialect 183, 192, 220 dialectic 245 dialogic 76, 245 dialoguing 55, 58, 69 self-study 55 digital storytelling 154–155 deconstruction 243, 247 diaspora 145–147 digital literacies 80, 132, 149 discursive dance 160, 172 discursive communities 148 discursive space 52 duoautoethnography 39, 52 evocative 39, 52

belonging 8, 114, 116, 119, 122, 127, 141, 145, 168 ways of 114 sense of 24, 114, 119, 122, 127, 141, 151 bicultural 56, 145 bicultural identities 114 bidialectal 80, 88 bilingual 106, 120, 136, 138, 145, 221 emergent 109 late 156 Black 18 259

260  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

ecological approach 129 English as a foreign language (EFL) 162, 165 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) 175–180, 182–185, 188 English for academic purposes (EAP) 182 English as glocalised communication 241 English Language Learners (ELLs) 87 English Learners (ELs) 128 Englishes 138, 221, 255 epistemic translingualism 184, 188 epistemologies 19, 31 ethnography 242 critical 244 feminist 161 online 148

Indian English 183 inquiry community 93, 99 interconnectedness 15, 19, 25, 28, 31, 108 intercultural communication 9, 20, 210, 228 intercultural rhetoric 175–176, 182, 185 intersectional identities 8, 57, 66–67 intersectional practices 6 intersectional privilege 19 intersectionality 15–17, 19, 57, 66, 86 transnational 7, 15, 19, 23, 33 intertextuality 15, 26 inverse language partners 55

feminism 17 fluidity 25–26, 101, 179–180, 183 fluid identities 82, 134 fluid meaning-making 93 foreign-born 8, 113

landscape of practice 1, 3, 5, 94 language acquisition 199 language teacher education 55, 89, 241 critical approaches to 71 language teacher educators 55, 71 languaging 135 Latina 112, 116–117 LatinX 18, 81, 123 language ideologies 8, 149, 161 liminality 27 liminal spaces 1, 10, 20, 145, 160 linguicism 132, 185, 187 linguistic imperialism 162 lírico 100–101

globalization 175–177, 179, 185 glocal 141, 248 habitus 227–229 hybridity 15, 129 identity 4, 21, 73, 76, 83, 88, 109, 114, 128, 132, 139, 152, 211, 220, 247 axes of 17 teacher 52, 73 transcultural 137 translingual-multiliterate 87 transnational 114, 172 transnational pracademic 6 transnational intersectional 17, 19 identity-as-pedagogy 75 identity politics 132–133 identity theft 24 identity texts 84, 89, 134–135 immigrant 18, 58, 117, 132, 133, 146 immigrant youth 128, 131, 132 Indigenous 24, 28 Indonesia 250, 254 in-betweenness 62 India 3, 113–114, 249

juntos 93, 107–108 Korean 78, 132

marginalization 81 marginalized 17–19, 23, 82–83 membership 4, 114, 132, 142, 229 Mexico 100, 146, 151, 154 migration studies 2, 140 Min Nan 192–193, 196–197, 205 Moldova 56, 63 monolingual ideologies 93, 104, 107 monolingualism 103–104, 181 multilingual English speaker 250 multilingual identities 101 disrupting 98, 104 multilingual practices 148 multilingual teachers 221 multilingualism 129, 161, 181, 222 multiliterate 72 multimodality 154

Subject Index  261

narrative account 243 narrative approaches 74 narrative inquiry 53, 74 Native American 18, 192 Native English Speaker (NES) 7, 160–161, 219 idealized 221 native speakerism 103, 161–162, 221 native-speaker fallacy 161 nativeness essentialized 160, 167–168 idealized 160, 167–168 Navajo 192–194, 198–208 Navlish 204 Non-native English speaker (NNES) 7 Non-native English-speaking Teachers (NNESTs) 38, 221 ontologies 27, 31–32 otherness 39 pedagogy of shuttling 176, 179, 180, 183, 188 peripheral participation 5 periphery 3, 165, 178, 229, 235–236 personal-professional trajectory 9 pleasure-pain axis 52 poetic inquiry 53 Portuguese 117, 120 positioning theory 8, 114, 117 post-colonial performativity 246–247, 249, 252 poststructuralism 243, 247 pracademic 2, 86 transnational 5, 7, 10 practitioner-researcher 242 privilege 17, 81, 103 racial subjectivities 24 raciolinguistic 25 raciolinguistic practices 28 reflexivity 17–18, 243 analytic 131 critical 243 researcher-teacher identities 79 retornados 146–147 Romanian 55, 60, 68 second language acquisition 192, 234 self-positioning 5, 115 transnational 114

self-study 55, 71 collaborative 71, 73 collective 93, 95, 110 semi-periphery 165, 180 semiotic modalities 138 semiotic repertoires 94, 130, 134 simultaneity 57, 127, 131 social justice 93 social media 149, 198, 208, 231 social network 147–148, 160 sociocultural in-betweenness 74 sociolinguistics 233–234 Spanish 61, 137, 152, 206, 223 Sri Lanka 3, 23–24 subjectivity 240, 244 superdiversity 130, 132 Taiwan 3, 9, 192, 196–197 target language 214, 217 teacher identity as pedagogy 75 teacher-scholar 114–117, 122, 124 TEGCOM 241, 244 TESOL 92, 93, 95–96, 104–107, 110, 210, 211, 221, 224–226 TESOL practitioners 14, 89, 123, 227, 231 Thailand 228, 231 third space 129, 148, 180 trajectory 3–4, 6, 242 boundary 5 inbound 4 insider 5 paradigmatic 4 peripheral 4–5 professional 232 research 131 transnational 229 trajectories 2, 4–5, 141 trans-narrative 139, 141 trans-perspective 127 trans-space 128, 130–131, 138 trans-trajectories 131 transcultural 127 awareness 52 brokers 128 flows 179 identities 137, 207 positioning 128 repositioning 128 transgression 15–16, 22, 24, 28–29 translanguaging 93–94, 96–99, 101–104, 107–110, 127

262  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

translanguaging stance 107–108 translingual 204–205, 207, 222 approach 9, 75, 183–184 awareness 94, 100 capacity 128 competence 22, 205, 241 contact zone 8, 94–95 disposition 108 identities 74, 101, 137, 207, 241 identity development 79 orientation 20 pedagogy 176, 220, 241 practices 2, 74, 204, 221 literacies translingual-multiliterate identities 71, 73, 77, 85–86, 88–89 translingualism 175, 176, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 210, 220–223, 225, 226 translinguality 2 trasnlinguistic-identity-as-pedagogy 8, 20, 76 translocal 125, 141, 179 transnational 93, 101–103, 108, 205, 207, 210, 218 communities 56, 135 families 59, 131, 134 identity 133 mobility 16, 21, 227, 229

positioning 113–117, 121, 123 practices 3, 6, 79, 112 practitioners 1, 7, 11, 123 social field 160 trajectories 6 transnationalism 72, 74, 147, 241, 243 individual 56 transnationalize 21 transnationals 14, 55, 65, 112, 131, 146–147, 192 Transnetworking for TESOL Teachers (TTT) 93 transracialization 7, 15–18, 24–25, 27–28 Turkey 3, 77, 79, 83 USA 2, 16, 18–19, 28–29, 56, 77, 113, 132–133, 145–146, 186, 194, 197, 211, 217 UK 165, 188, 228, 249 vulnerability 38, 67, 109 White 18, 26, 67, 83, 140 White-adjacentness 17 Whiteness 17–18, 20, 26, 29–30 White supremacy 25, 33 world Englishes 221

Author Index

Alim, S. 16–18 Anzaldùa, G. 219, 224 Anderson, B. 148, 229, 230 Anderson, L. 130 Androutsopoulos, J. 147–148

Jarowsky, B.N. 112 Jenkins, J. 178, 182, 183, 185, 188 Johnson, S.I. 93, 94, 107, 110 Kiczkowiak, M. 166 Kim, J. 67 Kim, K.J. 67 Kim, S. 135–136 Kirsch, G.E. 163 Kubota, R. 25, 72, 88, 89

Barnawi, O.Z. 241 Bennett, K. 165 Bhabha, H.K. 1, 129 Bourdieu, P. 227, 229 Brown, B. 38, 39, 52

Lam, W.S.E. 148 Leavy, P. 53 Levitt, P. 2, 112, 114, 115, 122 Li, W. 127 Liew, W. 52 Little Soldier, L. 207 Loh, C. 52 Lowe, R.J. 166

Canagarajah, S. 94, 95, 97, 99, 100, 101, 104, 108, 110, 111, 160, 168, 176, 179, 181, 184, 187, 205, 207, 208, 210, 219, 220, 222, 223, 225, 235–236 Chang, H.W. 243 Connor, U. 175, 185 Crenshaw, K. 16–17

Manathunga, C. 244 McIntosh, K. 185 Miller, E. 52 Miller, E.R. 72, 88, 89 Mori, J. 127 Motha, S. 71, 73, 74, 75, 76

Danaher, G. 244 Davies, B. 114, 117 Dorner, L.M. 135–136 Earl, K. 39 Garcia, O. 93, 94, 107, 110, 127 Gebhard, M. 71, 73, 87 Gkonou, C. 52 Glick Schiller, N. 114, 115, 122 Gokpinar-Shelton, E. 185 Guarnizo, L.E. 114, 115

Nero, S. 160, 163 Pennycook, A. 24, 136, 231, 242, 247 Phan, L.H. 256 Pratt, M.L. 94, 97, 99, 103, 111

Harré, R. 114, 117 Hawkins, M.R. 127 House, D. 198–199

Rinehart, R.E. 39 Ritchie, J. 163 Rudolph, N. 72, 73, 74, 76, 79, 83, 86, 88, 164

Jain, R. 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 86, 192–195, 205, 207, 221, 222, 225, 242

Seltzer, K. 93, 94, 107, 110 Smith, M.P. 114, 115 263

264  Transnational Identities and Practices in English Language Teaching

Sommerville, K. 113, 114 Song, K.H. 135–136 Tecle, T. 71, 73, 74, 75, 76 van Lier, L. 129 Webster, A.K. 204 Wee, S. 67

Wenger, E. 4–5, 94 Wenger-Trayner, E. 5–6, 94 Wenger-Trayner, E. 5–6, 94 Willett, J. 71, 73, 87 Yazan, B. 72, 73, 74, 76, 79, 83, 86, 88, 164 You, X. 3, 33, 177, 183 Zheng, X. 220–222, 226