TESOL and TESD in Remote Aboriginal Australia: The “True” Story?

Abstract

It is widely recognised that teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) and teaching English as a second dialect (TESD) in remote Indigenous Australia have a history of repeated failure of both policy and practice. National language testing has been been forcefully attacked by TESOL specialists, producing strong debate amongst politicians and educators. Meanwhile, the teachers in these remote communities, usually female, non‐Indigenous outsiders, are not consulted and rarely remain in these teaching locations. This article tells the story of how we, as researchers, developed a narrative inquiry project to investigate the situated stories of three teachers. Most immediately we noted how the stories we heard were as shocking for their silences as for what they told us, and the “truth” they offered lay primarily in the magnetism of narrative itself through the vitality of the “self” that came to life within the teacher's story. Unpredictably, however, and of greater significance for our understanding, our project confronted us with our own complicity in the silencing technologies effected by both the methodological processes and textual products of narrative study. We came to conclude that there is an inherent paradox at the heart of narrative inquiry which must be addressed in all its complexity if its emancipatory and voice‐releasing goals are to be realised.

Toward identity‐oriented teacher education: Critical autoethnographic narrative

“…Defined as “stories of/about the self told through the lens of culture” (Adams, Holman Jones, & Ellis, , p. 2), autoethnography was originally adopted and theorized as a method of qualitative inquiry in educational research (Denzin & Lincoln, ); it is “an emerging genre” (Mahboob et al., , p. 52) and a “less‐treaded path” (Mirhosseini, ) of research methods in TESOL and the broader field of language studies. It has been used as a research tool to explore the stories of language learning and teaching that involves (re)negotiation and (re)authoring of identities (Cadman & Brown, ; Corah‐Hopkins, ; Pavlenko, ).…”

Conflict, Militarization, and Their After-Effects: Key Challenges for TESOL

“…There is clearly some concern about these issues across the TESOL community (some members of the international TESOL organization, for instance, have formed Interest Sections on refugee concerns and on social responsibility, with peace a core topic). In terms of research, existing studies of English language education in relation to conflict have shed light on important matters such as the uses of English in promoting propaganda and/or building solidarity (Karmani, 2005a(Karmani, , 2005bKramsch, 2005;Nasser, Berlin, & Wong, 2011); language policies and education practices in conflict-ridden areas (Appleby, 2010;Cadman & Brown, 2011;Woods, 2005); the challenges facing displaced learners and their teachers (Tshabangu-Soko & Caron, 2011;Wachob & Williams, 2010;Windle & Miller, 2012); and ways of teaching about language, war, and peace (Benesch, 2010;Morgan & Vandrick, 2009).…”

Narrative research: An alternative approach to study language teaching and learning

“…As argued by Cadman and Brown (2011), truth is always partial, constructed, contextual, contingent, possibly conflictual, morphing, and ever unfinished (p. 451). Consequently, establishing a difference between a life as lived, experienced, and told is crucial for narrative researchers, a distinction that has been made by Bruner and other researchers like Polkinghorne (2007) and Pavlenko (2007).…”

“…As stated by Cadman and Brown (2011), "in participants' narratives we can begin to hear their voices, hear how they construct themselves discursively, in imaginative interpretation of the lives they want to tell" (p. 451).…”