Identity Work as Ethical Self-Formation: The Case of Two Chinese English-as-Foreign-Language Teachers in the Context of Curriculum Reform

Curriculum reform urges teachers to constantly reflect on existing identities and develop probably whole new identities. Yet, in the wake of the poststructuralist view of identity as a complex matter of the social and the individual, of discourse and practice, and of agency and structure, teacher identity is a process of arguing for themselves and hence ethical and political in nature. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of ethical self-formation and its adoption by Clarke (2009a) “Diagram for Doing Identity Work” in teacher education research, this 2-year-long case study explores how two Chinese English-as-foreign-language (EFL) teachers engaged in identity work in a changing curricular landscape. The analysis of narrative frames and semistructured interviews reveals the relations between the relative stable and the evolving elements of teachers’ identity work, and the essential role of teachers’ ethical agency based on reflective and critical responsiveness to the contextual reality and the dynamic power relations during the reform. The findings argue for the importance of nourishing teachers’ reflective identity work and ethical agency during the turbulence of educational change.

Eating to become ‘good’ citizens: exploring the visceral biopolitics of eating in Singapore

This paper develops a more-than-representational approach to consumer agency in food biopolitics that is sensitive to people’s everyday eating experiences. In recent years, studies of food biopolitics have engaged with questions of agency by examining how socially constructed ideas of ‘good’ eating and citizenship are engaged on the ground. Yet, there remain opportunities to depart from the evaluative mind as a dominant site of ethical self-formation, and engage with the body as a site of political action and agency. In this paper, I argue that people’s sense of citizen selves has long been, and continue to be, organised across the interplay of material, discursive, and visceral spaces of eating. I develop this argument by drawing on a critical analysis of historical and contemporary news forums related to public eating in Singapore. For many consumers, their disdain for certain food—ranging from the erstwhile state-vaunted meal plans to leftover food on public dining tables—express an embodied agency in negotiating the technocratic designs of citizenship. In developing a visceral biopolitics of eating, this paper aims to expand understandings of consumers’ capacity in negotiating the ethical tensions between hegemonic imaginings of ‘good’ citizens and the everyday pleasures of eating. Approaching consumer agency this way orientates critical yet oft-overlooked attention to the body’s capacity to act, and possibly effect change, within the broader workings of dietary bio-power.

Learning Morality, Inequalities, and Faith

Christian and Muslim schools have become important target points in families and pupils' quests for new study opportunities and securing a 'good life' in Tanzania. These schools combine secular education with the moral (self-)formation of young people, triggering new realignments of the fields of education with interreligious co-existence and class formation in the country's urban centres. Hansjörg Dilger explores the emerging entanglements of faith, morality, and the educational market in Dar es Salaam, thereby shedding light on processes of religious institutionalisation and their individual and collective embodiment. By contextualising these dynamics through analysis of the politics of Christian-Muslim relations in postcolonial Tanzania, this book shows how the field of education has shaped the positions of these highly diverse religious communities in diverging ways. In doing so, Dilger suggests that students and teachers' religious experience and practice in faith-oriented schools are shaped by the search for socio-moral belonging as well as by the power relations and inequalities of an interconnected world.

Edith Stein's Contribution to Critical Phenomenology: On Self-Formation and Value-Modification

One defining claim that critical phenomenologists make of the critical phenomenological method is that description no longer simply plays the role of detailing the world around the describing phenomenologist, but rather has the potential to transform worlds and persons. The transformative potential of the critical phenomenological enterprise is motivated by aspirations of social and political transformation. Critical phenomenology accordingly takes, as its starting point, descriptions of the oppressive historical social structures and contexts that have shaped our experience and shows how these produce inequitable ways of being in the world (Guenther 2020, 12). For example, critical phenomenologists have provided rich descriptions of marginalized lived experience, particularly racialized experience (Ngo, 2017; Yancy, 2017), dis-abled experience and experiences of illness (Lajoie and Douglas, 2020; Toombs, 1993), gendered experience (Beauvoir, 2009; Salamon, 2010), and so forth. What is common across these accounts is the assumption that these descriptions provide means of enacting political change. First, they illuminate the existence of oppressive structures and their effects upon us, our possibilities, and our relations. Second, through increasing awareness they begin to denaturalize the oppressive historical structures that “privilege, naturalize, and normalize certain experiences of the world while marginalizing, pathologizing, and discrediting others” (Guenther 2020, 15). Third, through strategic responses (e.g., hesitation in Alia Al-Saji’s work), they produce new possibilities of action and experience, which initiates the process of creating different ways of being in the world (Al-Saji 2014).2

Selbst-Bildungen. The Tradition of Comedy and the Emancipation of German Jews in Carl Sternheim’s The Snob

The article explores the connection between enlightenment and comedy, as well as its importance for German Jewry. Following Hegel, whose thoughts on ancient drama as well as modern society have shaped the German discourse on comedy until today, this article demonstrates that questions of self-formation, emancipation, and historical self-location are central to comedy. In Carl Sternheim’s comedy The Snob, the idea of self-formation resonates with the historic concept of “civic improvement” through “Bildung”: Jewish emancipation in Germany stood at the end of an educational project that outlasted Jews’ achieving legal equality. The Snob is a comedy about Jewish acculturation and bourgeoisification and embodies Marx’s understanding of comedy as ambivalent: on the one hand, comedy helps people to part cheerfully from their past that was characterized by inequality, but, on the other, it indicates that a world-historic fact like Jewish emancipation may be prone to repeat itself as a farce. Sternheim’s comedy develops a poetic that embraces ambivalence, but also opens the genre of comedy to the question of therapy and healing. It depicts the struggle between autonomy and social formation – the dialectics of German “Bildung.”

“To Love the Rest of His Thoughts as Myself” – Translating Mendelssohn’s Singular Bildung

The conceptual history of Bildung, the German term for self-formation, encapsulates the ethical revolution of modern German thought, associated with the Kantian moment and its aftermath. Reshaped in modernity to respond to a post-Kantian, critical sensibility, the modern term emphasizes the reflexive, active process of self-formation, in contrast with the medieval theological sensibility which emphasized the receptive imprint of the image of God. In this article, I unpack Moses Mendelsohn’s idiosyncratic notion of Bildung. I show that what is unique, indeed, singular in Mendelssohn’s notion of Bildung is the way it merges the traditional, theological notion with the modern one. For Mendelssohn, to imitate God is to come to value one’s contingent being. The imitation of the ideal, the most perfect, is tantamount to embracing the perfectible, and the process of perfection or self-actualization. Jacobi, Mendelssohn, Bildung, Contingency, Pantheism affair, Moral Perfectionism

Precolonial Igbo Voices in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (2018): A Palimpsestic Search for “Home”

The present article examines how Freshwater (2018), the debut novel of the Nigerian writer Akwaeke Emezi, offers a layered portrayal of precolonial Igbo and western narratives. By recourse to the auto-fictional narrative mode, the fiction deploys a constant tug of war which suggests the culturally hybrid nature of discourses connected to spiritual belief, self-identity dynamics and gender. My analysis pivots around three main discussions. Firstly, I trace and exemplify the aesthetic and thematic imbrication between Igbo cosmology (and Animism) and Christianity. Secondly, I seek to evince the unconventional depiction of plural consciousnesses coexisting in an individual in an effort to contest long-established truisms of self formation. I also focus on the ensuing amalgam between western conceptions of mental illness, trauma and Igbo mystic interpretations of reality. Considering the peripheral Igbo stance the novel depicts, the fiction will be contextualised within the current literary meta- and trans-modernist axis. Thirdly, I refer to transgender issues mapped up and brought to the fore through the main character’s predicament; a search for existential answers commingling divergent paradigms. Thus, Freshwater offers a peculiar polyphony of numinous narratorial voices which strive to question extant (neo)postcolonial truths.

THE DIARY GENRE IN THE WORKS OF MARIA MATIOS: TYPOLOGY AND POETICS

The purpose of the publication is a systematic observation of the artistic assimilation of genre features of diarіstics in works Maria Matios “Diary of the Executed”, “Private Diary. ... Maidan. War...”, aimed at a special study of the variability of the interaction of documentary and artistic types of writing, the dominance of one or another of them and, accordingly, the formation of original poetics of narrative systems. Methods. For this purpose, aesthetic and historical-comparative research methods are used.Results. In the article for the first time the diary segment of the work of the modern Ukrainian writer, laureate of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine Maria Matios is thoroughly investigated. Conclusions. As a result of the analysis of the texts, it was concluded that the genre features of the diary are the construction of the text as a series of notes that date events from the life of the “I”-narrator, as well as their chronicity, discreteness, сontents and formal diversity, conceptual unprogrammability, subjectivity, etc. At the same time the artistic core of the works is acute conflicts of socio-psychological and civic and political type which model a plot, build a system of characters and gives the text more or less aesthetics.“The Diary of the Executed” is an artistic and epic work created on the model of fictionalized female diary; actually a novel in which the diary is both an artistic image, and an architectural principle, and a compositional and stylistic technique, which in a memoir-receptive way organizes disclosure of the topic (self-knowledge and self-formation of a woman’s personality through diary writing-reading). The work has a distinct melodramatic character, emphasizes private story on a gray background of general existence and through an essayistic mosaic of thoughts and states asserts the power of a woman’s consciousness over her subconscious.“The Private Diary. ...Maidan. The War...” is a typical literary diary, actually a diariush which testifies to the active presence of its author – writer, politician, cultural and public figure, woman (daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, colleague and friend), person – Maria Matios in stormy present of Ukraine. From a formal point of view it is a kind of documentary-artistic meta-genre – a novel-chronicle which fixes the events from 30 November 2013 to 5 July 2015 through the prism of personal perception and direct involvement of the narrator in them. The work has a powerful problematic and realistic background, expressive essayistic and reporting narrative; at the same time its aesthetics provides the artistry of speech, techniques of composition, poetic descriptions, etc.The development of the genre of diary in the creativity of M. Matios reflects her literary evolution.Key words: nonfiction, memoiristics, novel of the beginning of the 21st century, eseyistycs, meta-genre. Мета. Метою публікації є системні спостереження щодо мистецького засвоєння жанрових ознак діаристики в творах Марії Матіос «Щоденник страченої», «Приватний щоденник. ...Майдан. Війна...», спрямовані на спеціальне вивчення варіативності взаємодії документального та художнього типів письма, домінування того чи того з них і, відповідно, виформування оригінальних поетик оповідних систем.Методи. З цією метою використано естетичний та історико-порівняльний методи дослідження.Результати. У статті вперше цілісно досліджено щоденниковий сегмент доробку сучасної української письменниці, лауреатки Національної премії України імені Т.Г.Шевченка Марії Матіос.Висновки. Унаслідок аналізу текстів дійшли висновку, що жанровими ознаками щоденника є побудова тексту як низки нотаток, котрі датовано фіксують події із життя «Я»-наратора, як і їхня хронікальність, дискретність, змістова і формальна різноплановість, концептуальна незапрограмованість, суб’єктивованість тощо. Водночас художнє ядро творів – гострі конфлікти соціально-психологічного й громадянсько-політичного типу, які моделюють сюжетику, розбудовують систему персонажів, більшою або меншою мірою естетизують текст.«Щоденник страченої» – це художньо-епічний твір, створений за взірцем белетризованого жіночого діарія; власне роман, у якому щоденник – і художній образ, і архітектонічний принцип, і композиційно-стильовий прийом, котрий у мемуарно-рецептивному ключі організовує розгортання теми (самопізнання й особистісне становлення жінки через щоденникове письмо-читання). Твір має виразний мелодраматичний характер, акцентує приватну історію на сірому фоні загального буття, через есеїстичну мозаїку думок і станів утверджує владу свідомості жінки над її підсвідомим.«Приватний щоденник. ...Майдан. Війна...» – це типовий літературний щоденник, власне діаріуш, який засвідчує діяльну присутність його авторки – письменниці, політика, культурно-громадської діячки, жінки (доньки, сестри, дружини, матері, бабусі, колеги, подруги), людини – Марії Матіос у буремному сьогоденні України. Із формального погляду це різновид документально-художнього метажанру – роман-хроніка, який фіксує події Революції Гідності й початку російсько-української війни від 30.11.2013р. до 05.07.2015р. крізь призму особистого сприйняття й безпосередньої причетності до них нараторки. У творі потужне проблемно-реалістичне тло, виразна есеїстична та репортажна оповідальність; воднораз його естетичність забезпечують художнє мовлення, прийоми композиції, поетичність описів тощо.Розвиток жанру щоденника у творчості М.Матіос є одним із чинників, що відображають її письменницьку еволюцію.Ключові слова: документалістика, мемуаристика, роман початку ХХІ ст., есеїстика, метажанр.

Spelling and calligraphy and methods of teaching them

Educational goals, Determinants and Levels in the Educational Educational goals are the basis of the educational process, are the changes that are to be made in the behavior of learners as a result of the learning process, and to be a practical and systematic work and successful, must be directed towards achieving the goals and objectives are limited and acceptable, and undoubtedly everyone has a goal to seek To achieve in his life, and that any human behavior aimed at a certain goal or to achieve an end and goals as the starting point for each work, whether this work within the educational system or any other system, it is the leader of all actions directed. The objectives of education are to coordinate, organize and direct the work to achieve the great goals and to build a man integrated mentally, skillfully and spiritually in various fields. Educational objectives play a prominent role in the development of educational policy and guiding the educational work of any society and helps to identify educational goals in the implementation of good curricula in terms of organizing the party and methods of teaching and the organization and design of different methods and methods of evaluation, and the most important sources of educational goals in the philosophy of society and the nature of knowledge and education and needs and the nature of the age. The levels of educational goals are intended to determine the objectives according to the generalities and specificities, the nature of the stages of the study and the subject matter of the study, and the preparation of the textbook to reach the specific goals of the teacher when teaching, and educational goals have different levels start at the level of general or very wide and then take the narrow and specialization, At the community level, each society has its own goals that guarantee its survival, prosperity, progress and behavioral goals. It is a learning product that the learner seeks to achieve. It is measurable and the highest levels of behavioral goals. Comprehension, classification, analysis, composition, and evaluation). The emotional, emotional or emotional field includes reception, response, evaluation, organization, and self-formation Keywords (dictation, handwriting)

Acmeological factors of the professional formation of the employee of the in-ternal affairs

Analyzed are personal characteristics of the formation and achievement of a high level of professional competence of employees of internal affairs bodies. The authors note that the modern system of vocational education determines the formation of the development of an employee of the internal affairs bodies as a subject of culture, a subject of activity and takes into account self-formation, that is, the construction and implementation of one's own program for the formation of professionalism. A thorough study of the issues of the individual moral and psychological qualities of police officers with the involvement of related sciences will make it possible to turn the management of psychological and pedagogical support of professional development into a high-tech and effective process aimed ultimately at the high-quality performance of tasks in extreme conditions and, in general, at increasing the level of service and combat preparedness and readiness.