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Tracing contextual realities in TESOL
Full text linkEvery issue of TESOL in Context reflects the many places in which our field lives: classrooms, communities, policy environments, digital spaces, and the interpersonal worlds of learners and educators. As we worked through the contributions in this volume, we found ourselves repeatedly drawn to the idea of contextual realities, namely, the histories that shape current practice, the polices that structure opportunity, the instructional choices that influence learner development, and the culturally situated ways in which multilingual individuals communicate. Established research underscores that individual and contextual factors are inextricably intertwined in language learning and teaching (Al-Mahrooqi & Denman, 2022), and the current issue brings that insight into vivid relief.
To honour the coherence of these contributions, this editorial groups them into several thematic clusters. These are not fixed categories but points of resonance that help trace the dynamics of TESOL’s evolving landscape
The role of Humanitarian Studies in education and research for sector transformation
Full text linkThe international humanitarian aid sector is struggling to meet the increasing demands driven by displacement, protracted emergencies, new conflicts, and the climate crisis. Recent funding cuts make it even harder to respond to those needs, sparking renewed calls for a system transformation. Accompanying the humanitarian sectors’ expansion, growing complexity and ongoing reform process, has been the recent emergence of Humanitarian Studies as an academic field of scholarship. This is reflected in the proliferation of humanitarian-titled and focused degree programs, journals, and research initiatives, particularly visible in the Global North. This paper explores what Humanitarian Studies contribute to humanitarian aid and the sector - including its ongoing reform. Recently published research findings show that Humanitarian Studies play a key role in providing humanitarian education and generating humanitarian research relevant to humanitarian policy and practice. However, Humanitarian Studies could be much more inclusive, critical and interdisciplinary. Access to Humanitarian Studies degree programs needs to be expanded, and Humanitarian Studies education needs to be much more contextualised. In addition, Humanitarian Studies research outputs need to be more accessible and practical for humanitarian work
The Cyborgian Fairytale: Posthuman Hybridity in Young Adult Science Fiction
Full text linkA complex blend of both biological and mechanical parts, the cyborg stands as a symbol for posthumanist philosophies. Originally conceived by Donna Haraway in her essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” (1985), the cyborg offers a critique of the dualistic humanist power structure and marks a shift towards a new posthuman ontology. As such, texts for young adults have the potential to unsettle the boundaries between human and non-human. Marissa Meyer’s Cinder (2012), a retelling of the fairytale Cinderella, presents teen readers with a relatable cyborg protagonist, Cinder, whose narration highlights oppression within her own fictional world and consequently reveals current inequalities within our own society. However, Cinder’s representation of heteronormative gender roles reveals that even texts that feature posthuman cyborg protagonists may inadvertently perpetuate the traditional power imbalance between the fairytale prince and the damsel in distress.
Reflections on reflection: Supporting employability learning in the higher education context
Full text linkGraduate employability remains a key talking point in higher education despite the contested nature of the construct and the myriad of factors that influence an individual’s capacity to gain employment. Universities are still positioned to produce graduates who can contribute to society and the economy through work. Students are similarly responsible for developing the knowledge and capabilities that will meet employer expectations and assure a successful career. This development process often involves students engaging in reflective practice. This paper reports on the efficacy of a structured, written reflective process implemented across an Australian research-intensive institution to support students to learn from experiences to develop their employability. Our study found value in the use of a formalised, stepwise approach to reflective thinking that helps students make and express meaning from learning opportunities. The findings suggest, however, that attempting to shoehorn the untidy business of reflective thinking into a standard linear approach does present some challenges. Despite these challenges, our examination of a sample of reflections using our process showed evidence of reflective thought. We found alignment with the experiential learning theories that framed the creation of our reflective process in the students’ expressions of their meaning-making endeavours. Our findings strengthen our advocacy of an anchor for reflective thought in a personally meaningful experience and the use of prompts around effect and action to guide students learning
Making micro-credentials work: A student perspective: Provocation
No full textMicro-credentials, digital badges and industry-recognised certificates have been attracting considerable attention in recent years and with the disruption of many jobs due to the pandemic, interest in continuing education has grown. Micro-credentials represent an alternative approach to career and professional development (Ghasia, Machumu, & De Smet, 2019, p. 219; LaMagna, 2017, p. 207). These credentialed … industry aligned short units of learning’ are described by Wheelahan & Moodie (2021, p. 212) as an extension of ‘21st century skills’ and the discourse of employability in higher education. Graduate employability has become heavily integrated into modern higher education policy frameworks, but what does this actually mean from a student perspective
Profiling the Dynamics among Assessment, Curriculum, and Pedagogy Shaped by Language Tutor Identity and Language Assessment Literacy: A Reflexive Thematic Analysis of TESOL in Community Settings
Full text linkLanguage tutor identity and language assessment literacy shape teaching practice. Tutors’ roles are especially critical in informal, community-based contexts, where they assist learners in one-on-one settings without fixed curricular or assessments. While previous studies have examined tutor identity in these contexts from a sociocultural perspective, little attention has been given to their teaching practices from an assessment standpoint. Therefore, this research aims at exploring how language tutors’ identities and their language assessment literacy influence pedagogy through curriculum decisions emerging from unintended assessment practices. This qualitative study employed Kremmel and Harding’s (2020) language assessment literacy framework to guide the development of the interview schedule. Methodologically, Castillo-Montoya’s (2016) Interview Protocol Refinement framework was adhered to, ensuring reliability and validity of the semi-structured one-on-one interviews. Ten volunteer tutors from an adult English literacy programme in Australia participated in these interviews, which were analysed using ATLAS.ti following Braun and Clarke’s (2020) Reflexive Thematic Analysis. The analysis revealed three major themes: (1) ‘Interaction as Assessment’, (2) ‘Assessment as Curriculum’, (3) ‘Socratic Questioning as Pedagogy’. These findings underscore the importance of language tutor education informing purposeful use of assessment in teaching to cohesively link assessment with curriculum and pedagogy in TESOL in community settings
Affordances and limitations of 'the digital' for adult migrants with limited or interrupted formal education
Full text linkDigital technology has become essential for daily life, creating a complex challenge for adult migrants with limited or interrupted formal education who must simultaneously develop digital literacy, additional language, and basic literacy skills. This study examines how different groups of Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE) engage with digital tools, revealing a critical disconnect between digital access and genuine language acquisition. Through video-recorded classroom observations and interviews, three learner groups were identified: pre-literacy learners who rely heavily on speech-to-text features but struggle to develop independent skills; learners with some first language literacy who show more sophisticated tool use but often engage in what we term “translation without transformation”, and extended literacy learners who demonstrate strategic tool use but lack opportunities for authentic language production. Using van Lier’s (1996) concepts of awareness, autonomy, and authenticity, we analyse how the affordances of digital tools vary across these groups. While digital tools provide immediate solutions to communication challenges, their current use often bypasses rather than supports genuine language learning processes. Our findings point to the need for differentiated pedagogical approaches that build on learners’ existing digital practices, integrate linguistic and digital knowledge development, and create opportunities for authentic language use through principled teacher-learner interaction
‘Displacement by design’: From broadbanding to disbanding English as a Second language provision in Australian school education policy
Full text linkThe Commonwealth-funded school English as a Second language (ESL) program used to be seen by the ESL profession as an essential educational access and equity provision responding to Australia’s migrant and humanitarian intakes and its growing linguistically diverse population. In the decades before and after the turn of the century, however, Commonwealth education ‘reforms’ involving literacy, broadbanding, federal relations and school funding progressively displaced and dismantled ESL as a tied-funded, specific-purpose program. In the first of three articles examining Australian schools policy and its impacts on English as an additional language/dialect provision, this study draws on Kingdon’s policy streams and New Public Management frameworks to explain how national education policy agendas displacing ESL got up and got done. The article offers a selective historical account how and why successive Commonwealth Governments developed specific-purpose ESL provision in the 1980s, broadbanded it in the 1990s, and finally disbanded it in the noughties. In so doing, it aims to foster policy literacy among TESOL educators and researchers
Pre-service teachers’ experiences of learning grammar to support EAL/D learners
Full text linkIn South Australia, pre-service teachers require a sound knowledge of grammar to deploy the Learning English: Achievement and Proficiency (LEAP) Levels, an assessment, monitoring and reporting tool designed to inform programming and planning for English as an Additional Language and Dialect (EAL/D) students. However, research shows that many pre-service teachers do not have strong Metalinguistic Awareness (MA). In response, a series of five videos was produced to explicitly teach pre-service teachers the grammar needed to deploy LEAP, titled: A beginner’s guide to functional grammar. This article reports on the experiences of those pre-service teachers working with these instructional videos. Quantitative data were gleaned from pre- and post- quizzes that sought to test pre-service teachers’ (n=28) knowledge of grammar. Overall, the scores on the pre- and post-quiz results demonstrate a statistically significant difference, with a marked increase of five-point-five points on a 28-point scale following their engagement with the videos. Ultimately, this article reports on the success of teaching strategies used to increase pre-service teachers’ knowledge of certain areas of grammar, and points to future directions for working with and supporting EAL/D students through LEAP