Readings for March 23

Hello all-
I just want to drop a line about the readings for next week.  After re-reading the introduction to Orientalism, I realized that it probably isn't necessary to read the entire chapter.  Be sure to read up to page 14 or 15 -- after that, he goes into detail about his research methodology.  While there are some interesting points in there, I don't think they are necessary for a general discussion on Orientalism.  So please feel free to skim or to skip the second half of the introduction.  If that saves you a little time, then the Willinsky chapter is well worth a close reading.

See you all next week.... and be sure to create your blogs and post the links.

English in Korea

Phlogiston or Oxygen

Sokal Hoax


Questions for the Jo & Shin pieces
How do these pieces differ in the ways they examine the concept of "world" or "international" Englishes?

To what epistemological positions do these writers subscribe?  Can you find evidence in the articles to support your answer?

How would these two authors answer the question....
     - What is the purpose of teaching English in Korea?



Linguistic Landscapes might offer some ideas for using the concept of World Englishes as a practical classroom project.  Here and here are a couple of links that discuss this possibility.



What is English mania?


Some questions that might support a critical reading

Who is speaking? / Who is this person?
What is this person claiming?
Who is the audience for this talk?
Who is the speaking talking about?
From where does this person's knowledge come? / What are the foundations of this knowledge?
What other perspectives are there on this topic?  Who might hold these perspectives?

Information on your Blog Assignments

Your Blog Project

In order to set up your blog, please sign up for a Google (or a gmail) account.  Once you have your account, visit blogger.com and sign in using your gmail account and password. 

Once you have signed in click on a link called “Create a blog”

You will be prompted to choose a title and a url address for your blog. 

During the next step you will have the opportunity to choose the background/ format. 

That should be it.  Nice and simple. 

The Project

Of course, I hope that you use your blog space in whatever way is most useful for you.  However, my purpose for assigning this is to give you a public space in which to respond to classroom readings and discussions.  Using this electronic format gives us a chance to see how each class participant is responding to our classroom material and should allow all of us to take discussion topics in new directions. 

In addition to simply responding to readings, you may use your blog in a number of other ways.  These include, but are not limited to, 1) keeping running reflections on a particular English class that you are teaching, 2) posting pictures, video clips, links to various web sources that address concerns we are discussing in our course, 3) sharing resources for teaching and learning English that implement critical perspectives.

I encourage you to use the blog in the way that best suits your interests, and I encourage you to be as creative as you wish—take risks.  

Week 2 Materials

"Modern Schooling" and the modern curriculum:

Humanist
Child-Centered
Scientific Management
Social Reconstructionist

Here is a link to a contemporary school in the social reconstructionist tradition

Welcome to the class!  Every Spring semester, I regularly post ideas, thoughts, reflections, and questions related to the Critical Pedagogies course.  I also post assignments and materials for students as well.  I hope this blog can serve as a means of supporting students' efforts to develop critical ELT practices and that it might be a means of promoting thoughtful discussions on English language education and our work as teachers.

Critical Pedagogies

Dankook University TESOL Graduate School

Spring 2013

Curtis Porter

Office #413 상경관 Sangkyungkwan Building

Office Hours:  Wednesday 11:00 – 1:00 / Friday 10:00 – 2:00 (or by appointment) 

As to those for whom to work in the midst of uncertainty and apprehension is tantamount to failure, all I can say is that clearly we are not from the same planet. - Michel Foucault

Overview

TESOL practitioners and researchers are increasingly focusing on the implications and consequences of the spread of English.  It is becoming clear that 21^st century TESOL faces important questions of how to develop effective, responsible, and ethical teaching practices.  This course seeks to engage with these trends in our field by exploring the potential of critical approaches to English education in Korea. 

Critical pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning that assumes all educational processes to be political in nature.  English education in Korea is certainly no exception.  We will take a broad approach to critical pedagogy and explore numerous social and educational theories which conceptualize the political nature of education in a variety of ways.  The course seeks to evoke questions of ideology, hegemony, and power with the ultimate goal of helping each of us develop teaching practices that confront such questions. 

While there will be extensive theoretical discussion, the course objectives are practical in nature.  The course will challenge participants to develop and implement lesson plans, reflect on teaching practices, critique teaching materials, and connect practical experiences in English education to larger political and social themes.  Classroom discussions, readings, and assignments will be designed to support critical inquiry and the development of critical practices. 

Course Activities

As the purpose of the course is to develop our own critical practices in English education, there is no summative project due at the end of the semester.  All assessment will be formative, meaning that I will assess your progress as we go through the course rather than rely on a single project at the end to determine your grade.  There are several activities that you will be responsible for completing:

Blog Project       (30)

I ask all class participants regularly post thoughts, reflections, and responses to a blog.  I will give explicit instructions for how to do so to anyone who chooses to remain enrolled in the course. 

I will also be keeping a blog that will contain resources and course materials as well as personal reflections on the course. http://criticalpedagogies.blogspot.com/

Lesson Plan       (10)

All participants will write at least one lesson plan which incorporates principles we discuss in our weekly readings.

Reflection on your Lesson Plan     (20)

In addition to writing a lesson plan, each class participant will be expected to teach their lesson (or a part of their lesson) in a real classroom setting and write a reflection on the lesson.  Your lessons and critiques will be presented to the class on the final day of the semester.  

Critique of an Educational Resource or Popular Media        (30)

Write a short critique of an English course book, learning material from the internet, or some popular media artifact.  You may do this on your blog. 

Regular Classroom Participation    (10)

Do the readings, come to class, participate in classroom activities and discussions, engage.... 

I will give you explicit directions and expectations for each project at the appropriate time.

Reading List

(This will probably change according to course needs/student interests/etc)

Rethinking the Curriculum

Week 2 -          Shannon- The Struggle to Continue (Intro)

                     Pennycook- The Concept of Method

English Education in a Global Context

Week 3-           Lee Seung-hwan- Continuity and Discontinuity

                     Willinsky- Where is Here?

Week 4 -          Jo- English Education and Teacher Education in South Korea

                      Shin- The Use of Freirian Pedagogy

                    

Week 5 -          Shin & Crookes- Indigenous Critical Traditions for TEFL?

                     Shin & Crookes- Exploring the Possibilities for EFL Critical Pedagogy

                     Thornbury- Dogme: Nothing if Not Critical

Some Theoretical Foundations of Critical Practice

Week 6 -          Storey- “The Frankfurt School”

                     Willinsky- Of Critical Theory and Critical Literacy

Week 7 -          Freire- Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Chapters 1 & 2)

Week 8 -          Gee- The Literacy Myth

                     Wilson- Why I Won’t Be Using Rubrics to Respond to Students’ Writing

                    

Situating Theory

Week 9 -          Sadeghi- Critical Pedagogy in an EFL Teaching Context

                     Hanauer- Meaningful literacy:  Writing Poetry in the Language Classroom

                     Thornbury- Grammar, Power, and Bottled Water

Week 10-          Moffatt & Norton- Popular Culture and the Reading Teacher

                     Alcoff- Cultural Feminism versus Poststructuralism

Week 11-          Duncum- Toward a Playful Pedagogy

Discipline, Bodies & Emotion

Week 12-          Gore- Disciplining Bodies: On the Continuity of Power Relations in Pedagogy

Week 13-          Kenway & Youdell- Emotional Geographies of Education

                     Cole & Yang- Affective Literacy

Rethinking Postmodernism

Week 14-          Foucault- Excerpt from Discipline and Punish

                     Deleuze- Postscript on Societies of Control

                     Berry- A Remarkable Man

Week 15-          NO ASSIGNED READING [Share Lesson Plans / Closing Thoughts]

Inclusion Statement

There is a possibility that sensitive topics will arise in our readings and our class conversations.  Indeed, one of the purposes of critical educational practice is to confront political tensions.  I request that all class participants respect all students and refrain from statements which discriminate on the basis of race, nationality, gender, sexuality, faith, physical ability or appearance.  If at any time you feel that you have experienced discrimination in our class please inform me immediately and I will do everything I can to address the situation responsibly.

A couple online resources for critically minded educators

i just wanted to post a few open access journals that i happened upon today:
Critical Education
Critical and Reflective Practice in Education
Critical Literacy
Journal of Classroom Research in Literacy

Both of these have free peer reviewed research that addresses 'critical' issues in education.
You can also have a look at the Directory of Open Access Journals, which is basically a search engine for all the open access journals on the net, or this list of open access journals in education.  There should be enough reading material there to satisfy even the geekiest among us.

If it's about racism, then let's make it about racism

I've been hesitant to share my thoughts on the recent MBC video on the “shocking reality” of relationships with foreigners because so many people have offered thoughtful commentary on this issue, and because I haven't felt that I have anything specific to offer in terms of effective action. But after a couple weeks of following the response, I can't shake the feeling that we are missing something important, and I think it's worth a few minutes to try and work out (if only for myself) what's bugging me.

One of my main sources of information on this has been the Facebook page “action against MBC”, so I'll limit my thoughts to what I have read there.  To some extent, this site has come to represent “the foreign response” to the MBC piece.  I feel somewhat of a connection to this group because many of the family photos that have been posted look a bit like my family. I'm a White guy married to a Korean woman, and we just had our first child earlier this year. I'm still not fluent in Korean, but I'm working at it and I'd like to think I'm getting a little better. In short, I'm in a pretty similar situation to many of the people who are speaking out.

So, what exactly are we saying? 

The main message seems to be that news stories like the MBC piece promote the misinformed view that Korea is a racially and culturally homogenous nation. This results in the positioning of non-Korean residents as outsiders and leads to further discrimination against these individuals and their families. I can say from experience that this kind of discrimination is frustrating and painful. So it's easy to understand why group members have chosen to make racism the centerpiece of their call to action. This seems right. Racism is one of the biggest social issues that we face in an increasingly multicultural world. I should add that I feel quite lucky that my perspective and my experiences are so well represented in the website. Unfortunately, I worry that there a lot of different perspectives and a lot of different stories that are missing.

In this light, it seems important to remember that an overwhelming majority of mixed-race marriages here are between working class Korean men and women from a variety of Southeast Asian countries.  These individuals and families no doubt have stories of discrimination to share which are very different from those we hear in the “action against MBC” group. Yet they have not been mentioned because we are not making explicit connections between the discrimination and racism that they might experience and the messages conveyed in the MBC piece.  

Let me try to explain why I believe this is important....

In a more recent story, a producer at MBC stated, “I don’t understand why foreigners get angry about the issue while they are living with their spouses and having no problem. Foreigner-Korean women couples are living happily, but why are they angry over an issue that has nothing to do with them?” Obviously this has everything to do with such couples. It promotes misinformation and public paranoia and potentially incites further discrimination towards anyone who resembles the people in the video. The producer was either unwilling or unable to make the connection between the specific people represented in the piece and the consequences for a much larger community. It is my hope that our community doesn't fall into the same trap.  To avoid this, we would do well to understand that combating racism in Korea (if this is really our goal) means that we are taking up a struggle that involves people who do not look like the photos on our website, and it means that a responsible and effective response to racism must involve much more than combating discrimination against those who look like us.

It is hard to imagine that we are prepared to construct a genuine and effective movement against racism in Korea because we remain steeped in the concerns, experiences, and perspectives of a small and relatively privileged demographic, and we are failing to make connections to a wider range of events.  To make my point, two months ago, Mrs. Jasmine Lee became the first naturalized Korean citizen elected to the national assembly. Both during and after her election she became the target of nationalist,xenophobic, and even racist attacks. As Mrs. Lee has made a career of supporting multicultural families (focusing primarily on spouses of Korean husbands), this seems to be an issue that is relevant to the anti-racism message in the “action against MBC” group. Yet I have to wonder: where was our outrage while Mrs. Lee experienced repeated attacks?  Why have her experiences and the experiences of thousands of those 'other' multicultural families not been addressed in our group? Why have we not reached out to them?

Please understand that I am in no way trying to suggest that the “action against MBC” community does not have a legitimate concern. Racism is painful to anyone victimized by it. But if we are serious about confronting racism in Korea, then it is not just about 'us'. We have a responsibility to reflect the reality of multicultural Korea. Of course, coming up with practical ways of doing this might be tricky, though contacting representative Jasmine Lee might be a start. In any case, it seems important that we practice the diversity that we purport to embrace. Until that happens, I fear that this will remain a fringe issue attributed to one small and somewhat privileged demographic in Korea.