The mediating effects of teacher-student power relations in a blended English course for academic purposes

Guided by the theory of Language Socialization (LS), this study investigates the mediating effects of teacher-student power relations in an academic English course. To do so, several sets of data were collected: responses to a questionnaire survey, a series of semi-structured interviews, and the online interactions which took place on two teaching platforms (WeChat and QQ). Our results show that together with other factors, the power relations highlighted in this study influenced the participants’ academic performances. Besides, three types of teacher-student power relations were brought to the fore. Eventually, the power relations identified affected the construction of role identity in our study. The findings provide supporting evidence for the complicated power relations which exist between language learners and their community of practice.

Mobilizing BIPOC Student Power against Liberalism at Soka University of America: A Collection of Voices

We write as a collective of BIPOC undergraduate activist students/organizers and contingent/tenured professors dedicated to Black, Third World, and Indigenous liberation through a feminist analysis at Soka University of America (SUA). We focus our critique on liberalism as a dominant political paradigm that has solidified the reign of empire and it’s necropolitical grips on our communities within and without SUA, our SLAC. We highlight through a brief chronology of the epistemic and physical struggles against hegemonic power exercised by our university the ways in which liberalism acts as counterrevolutionary ideology and offer critical reflections/interventions on our struggles against white supremacy at our SLAC, as well as on how our university administration utilizes “liberalism” as a technology of imperialism. We come together to resist empire from where we stand. We believe in the pedagogical possibilities of resistance.

Adoption of non-Chinese Names as Identity Markers of Chinese International Students in Japan

This study explores naming practices among Chinese international students and their relation to personal identity during their sojourn in Japan. Although previous studies have reported that some Chinese international students in English-speaking countries adopt names of Western origin (Cotterill 2020; Diao 2014; Edwards 2006), participants in this study were found to exhibit different naming practices: either adopting names of Japanese or Western origin; or retaining both Western and Japanese names. Drawing on fifteen semi-structured interviews with Mainland Han Chinese students, this investigation examines their motivations for adopting non-Chinese names and determines how personal identities are presented through them. The qualitative analysis reveals that the practice of adopting non-Chinese names is influenced by teacher-student power relations, Chinese conventions for terms of address, pronunciation, and context- sensitivity of personal names. As will be shown in this article, through the respondents’ years of self-exploration, their self-adopted non-Chinese names gradually became internalized personal identity markers that allow the bearers to explore and exhibit personality traits, which might not have been as easily displayed via their Chinese given names.

“I Think I’m the Bridge”: Exploring Mentored Undergraduate Research Experiences in Critical Multicultural Education

Although mentored undergraduate research has been shown to deepen student engagement across various disciplines, this type of extended learning opportunity is not a prominent feature of research and practice in teacher education. Our article addresses this gap by analyzing the experiences and growth of a group of five preservice teachers engaged in a mentored undergraduate research experience in several sections of an introductory critical multicultural education course. Specifically, we examined how pre-service teachers’ personal, academic, and professional engagement with critical multicultural education is impacted when they are positioned as researchers and receive additional training outside the traditional class format. Our findings indicate that their involvement as student co-researchers fostered a new awareness, sensitivity, and emotional investment in issues of social justice beyond what they gained in their introductory multicultural education course. Pre-service teachers described navigating personal relationships with new awareness and sensitivity and adjusting future plans in accordance with their deeper understanding and commitment to educational equity. We argue that mentored research opportunities are an innovative way to address professor/student power differentials in teacher education research and offer a unique model of critical multicultural teacher education that promotes deep engagement with issues beyond the classroom setting.

Reflections on student power: An absurdist viewpoint

This exploration takes a look at how students in higher education are disempowered through regimes of social power that are always already extant and ubiquitous within educational regimes. Moreover, this exploration pays particular interest and attention to students in higher education because in many cases throughout relevant research, these student populations are conceived as being the most empowered students within a broad educational landscape, which this piece foundationally challenges. Fundamentally, this article uses a Camusian or Absurdist notion of power and social identity to make sense of how students in higher education take up space within seemingly disempowered educational spaces only to insistently and futilely call to themselves and other students as empowered, although such insistences are empty fallacies of specific social humanities hailing towards their only perceived means of ‘valuable’ social interaction defined by modern conceptions of humanity always already within power relations.

Partnership as Student Power: Democracy and Governance in a Neoliberal University

In the wake of Flinders University’s radical organisational restructure, we reflect on what guided the decisions and process, namely a neoliberal understanding and framing of higher education and corporal, top-down managerial systems. We explore this current climate of the neoliberal university and argue that student power is once again needed to shift the conception of university ‘success’ back into a democratic form of governance. However, rather than student power constituting of a traditional 1970s form of picketing protests, we argue that a model of working within current structures is prudent. Partnership with students initiatives provide unexpected hope for student participation in rebuilding the conception of the democratic university as a public good, but also highlight the relevance of student ‘activism’ in 2019.