Interpreting Deconstructed EFL Teacher Roles

AbstractThe assessment of pragmatic skills in a foreign or second language (L2) is usually investigated with regard to language learners, but rarely with regard to non-native language instructors, who are simultaneously teachers and (advanced) learners of the L2. With regard to English as the target language, this is a true research gap, as nonnative English-speaking teachers (non-NESTs) constitute the majority of English teachers world-wide (Kamhi-Stein 2016). Addressing this research gap, this paper presents a modified replication of Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) renowned study on grammatical vs. pragmatic awareness, carried out with non-NEST candidates. While the original study asked the participants for a global indication of (in)appropriateness/ (in)correctness and to rate its severity, the participants in the present study were asked to identify the nature of the violation and to suggest a repair. Inspired by Pfingsthorn and Flöck (2017), the data was analyzed by means of Signal Detection Theory with regard to Hits, Misses, False Alarms and Correct Rejections to gain more detailed insights into the participants’ metalinguistic perceptions. In addition, the study investigated the rate of successful repairs, showing that correct problem identification cannot necessarily be equated with adequate repair abilities. Implications for research, language teaching and language teacher education are derived.

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Becoming Child and Sustainability—The Kindergarten Teacher as Agency Mobiliser for Sustainability through Keeping the Concept of the Child in Play

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13105588 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (10) ◽

pp. 5588

Author(s):

Anita Tvedt Crisostomo ◽

Anne B. Reinertsen

Keyword(s):

Gilles Deleuze ◽

Kindergarten Teacher ◽

Felix Guattari ◽

Teacher Roles ◽

Educational Organization ◽

Nature And Culture ◽

And Function ◽

Opening Up ◽

Power Position

In this article, we seek to theorize the role of the kindergarten teacher as an agency mobiliser for sustainability through keeping the concept of the child in play, ultimately envisioning the child as a knowledgeable and connectable collective. This implies a non-dialectical politics of multiplicity ready to support and join a creative pluralism of educational organization and teacher roles for sustainability. Comprising friction zones between actual and virtual multiplicities that replace discursive productions of educational policies with enfoldedness, relations between bodies and becomings. This changes the power, position and function of language in and for agency and change. Not through making the child a constructivist change-agent through language but through opening up the possibilities for teachers to explore relations between language and matter, nature and culture and what might be produced collectively and individually. We go via the concepts of agencement expanding on the concept of agency, and conceptual personae directing the becoming of the kindergarten teacher. Both concepts informed by the transformational pragmatics of Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) and Félix Guattari (1930–1992). The overarching contribution of this article is therefore political and pragmatic and concerns the constitution of subjectivity and transformative citizenships for sustainability in inter- and intra-generational perspectives.

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