Designing interpretive communities toward justice: indexicality in classroom discourse

Purpose This study aims to investigate how, through text-based classroom talk, youth collaboratively draw on and remix discourses and practices from multiple socially indexed traditions. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on data from a year-long social design experiment, this study uses qualitative coding and traces discoursal markers of indexicality. Findings The youth sustained, remixed and evaluated interpretive communities in their navigation across disciplinary and fandom discourses to construct a hybrid classroom interpretive community. Originality/value This research contributes to scholarship that supports using popular texts in classrooms as the focus of a scholarly inquiry by demonstrating how youth in one high school English classroom discursively index interpretive communities aligned with popular fandoms and literary scholarship. This study adds to understandings about the social nature of literary reading, interpretive whole-class text-based talk and literary literacies with multimodal texts in diverse, high school classrooms.

Culture teaching in EFL classes: Teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and classroom practices

It is inevitably believed that culture teaching is the pivotal feeling of integrating culture into the teaching of a language, including in the EFL setting. This study aims to explore the English teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and the reflection of their beliefs and attitudes on the teaching syllabi. The sequential explanatory mix-methods design was applied in junior high schools in Ngawi. The data were obtained from 144 English teachers’ answers to a questionnaire and interviews with six teachers. Then, the data were analysed by using descriptive statistics, the independent sample T-test, and the Mann-Whitney test. The results indicated that the majority of junior high school English teachers believed in the importance of incorporating culture into their teaching of the language taught and students’ learning process. Moreover, both state and private junior high school English teachers showed similar beliefs and attitudes related to culture teaching. When they taught English, the culture associated with that language had also been taught so that the misconception of learning the language can be minimized. The result of teachers’ practices strongly indicates that the English teachers in Ngawi had implemented the teaching of culture and inserted various cultural elements in the process of their teaching and learning in the EFL classes.

Reflections of Teaching Narratives

This narrative describes the experiences of a high school English teacher who uses innovative teaching methods to adapt to online teaching during the recent pandemic. Students relied on writing to reflect on their emotional health and found comfort in relating to works of literature. The creative projects and motivational strategies discussed can apply to anyone looking to cope with difficult times, find more motivation to achieve a goal, or practice self-compassion when confronted with unexpected events.

The Use of Scaffolding Theory in the Teaching of Writing

"English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School (2017)" puts forward higher requirements for the writing ability of students: students can use the language knowledge and cultural knowledge they have learned to create new texts according to different purposes and audiences. Writing is a difficult point. However, the current domestic English writing teaching effect is not satisfactory. English writing teaching has not been paid enough attention, and students lack the initiative to learn English writing. Scaffolding theory encourages teachers to follow the "student-centered" classroom teaching model and build scaffolds based on the students' recent development areas, so as to promote students' knowledge construction and meaningful learning, stimulate students' interest in English learning, and improve their English writing level. This article analyzes the teaching of English writing from the perspective of scaffolding theory. First, it introduces the research background, expounds "Zone of Proximal Development" and scaffolding theory, and discusses in detail the five steps of scaffolding theory applied in high school English writing classrooms. Finally, three teaching inspirations and suggestions are provided in order to improve the teaching effect of high school English writing.

A Narrative Case Study of Chinese Senior High School English Teachers’ Emotions: An Ecological Perspective

Teacher emotion research is of great significance to teachers’ teaching effectiveness, professional development, and physical and mental health. Taken from an ecological perspective, this narrative case study used purposeful sampling to select two Chinese senior high school English teachers as research participants. Various data collection methods were used, including narrative framework, teacher interview and teacher reflection log, to describe the emotional episodes of Chinese senior high school English teachers before and after collective lesson presentation, trial teaching, and formal teaching in a teaching improvement project. The purpose of this collection of data was to explore the dynamic emotional development process and characteristics of Chinese senior high school English teachers in the interaction with ecological systems and those ecological factors that may influence their emotional development. Results indicated that the two participants developed 68 emotions: 39 positive and 29 negative emotions. At exosystem, they developed the most emotions (28 emotions). Teacher emotion changed with time quite obviously. They evolved from positive to negative and, finally, predominantly positive. Personal antecedents, contextual antecedents, and teachers’ emotional capacity are the main ecological factors that may influence the development of teacher emotion. Based on the research findings, implications for teachers’ professional development and teacher education were also provided.