The Complexity of Identity and Interaction in Language Education

Nathanael Rudolph, Ali Fuad Selvi, Bedrettin Yazan, Nathanael Rudolph, Ali Fuad Selvi, Bedrettin Yazan

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781788927413
• eBook ISBN:
  9781788927444
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book addresses two critical calls pertaining to language education. Firstly, for attention to be paid to the transdisciplinary nature and complexity of learner identity and interaction in the classroom and secondly, for the need to attend to conceptualizations of and approaches to manifestations of (in)equity in the sociohistorical contexts in which they occur. Collectively, the chapters envision classrooms and educational institutions as sites both shaping and shaped by larger (trans)communal negotiations of being and belonging, in which individuals affirm and/or problematize essentialized and idealized nativeness and community membership. The volume, comprised of chapters contributed by a diverse array of researcher-practitioners living, working and/or studying around the globe, is intended to inform, empower and inspire stakeholders in language education to explore, potentially reimagine, and ultimately critically and practically transform, the communities in which they live, work and/or study.

Part 1

Learners, Teachers, and the ‘Ares,’ ‘Cans’ and ‘Shoulds’ of Being and Becoming

1 The Monolingual Bias: A Critique of Idealization and Essentialization in ELT in Pakistan

Syed Abdul Manan, Maya Khemlani David, Liaquat Ali Channa and Francisco Perlas Dumanig

Introduction

Recent research problematizes the use of English medium policy in Pakistan, particularly in the under-resourced settings such as low-cost private schools and government schools (Coleman, 2010; Manan, 2018a; Manan et al., 2015a; Mustafa, 2011, 2016; Rahman, 2004). The aspects that make English medium policy in these settings problematic mainly include the under-resourced infrastructure, incompetent teachers and disjunction between students’ home and school languages. These studies also indicate that the use of English medium policy could only succeed in, and best suit, upscale elite schools for reasons including their highly resourced infrastructure, competent and qualified English teachers and students’ strong home-based English support system. So far, there is no evidence of a research study on the upscale elite schools in Pakistan, particularly a study that could bring forth the lived experiences and narratives of teachers to share their first-hand experiences and impressions as to how successfully and effectively English medium policy functions in such schools. Therefore, this study draws on interviews of teachers from the above category of schools in part of Pakistan to fill this apparent research gap. The study aims to explore and take a critical look at the way these apparently well-resourced schools manage and maintain their language policies and practices. The study particularly seeks to analyze how administrators’ theorization of an essentialized use of English-only policy in a diverse multilingual setting, and their idealization of a monolingual perspective suppresses the less proficient students from participating meaningfully, and from voicing their identities. In addition, the study also indicates how administrators’ exclusive emphasis on an English-only policy, their insensitivity towards the linguistic resources of students and their monolingual bias result in compromising students’ learning of the course contents, concept development, critical thinking and creative engagement in the educational processes. Towards the end, the study concludes that given the orthodox approaches of the administrators, and their obliviousness towards the local multilingual realities within the classrooms, the administrators need to be sensitized, informed and inspired towards the ‘Multilingual Turn’ (May, 2014), an academic enterprise, which promotes a critical perspective on monolingual biases and monolingual ideologies in the educational domains, particularly in the postcolonial multilingual contexts. The following research questions precisely anchor this study:

•What are policies, prescriptions and practices regarding the use of language (s) in the upscale English-medium schools?

•How do policies and perceptions impact teaching and learning practices in the concerned schools?

Theoretical/Conceptual Underpinnings

Theoretically, the study analyzes data, and discusses the emergent themes through the lens of a growing amount of scholarship that challenges the monolingual bias, and represents a ‘Multilingual Turn’ in Teaching English to the Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)/English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. Additionally, the study also critiques the methodological and instructional practices in these schools through the prism of the ‘Postmethod era’ or ‘Postmethod conditions’ (Kumaravadivelu, 2006), and envisions the possibilities of founding pedagogies on ‘glocal approaches towards English teaching’ (Kubota, 2011). May (2014) contends that despite the burgeoning of the ‘Multilingual Turn’ globally, the ‘mainstream applied linguistics’ in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and TESOL tends to stay indifferent, and continues to treat the acquisition of an additional language (most often, English) as an ideally hermetic process uncontaminated by the knowledge and use of one’s other languages. Scholars have variously described such an approach as monolingual bias (May, 2014), monolingual language ideology (Wiley, 2014), two-solitude assumption (Cummins, 2007) and Monoglossic beliefs (García & Baetens Beardsmore, 2009). Several other scholars describe the same kind of rigidly compartmentalized language policy orientations and practices as monolingual habitus (Benson, 2013), the English-vernacular divide (Ramanathan, 2005), the double divide (Mohanty, 2017) or ‘the nexus of idealization and essentialization’ (Selvi, 2018). Alternatively, scholars who draw on ‘Multilingual Turn’, raise their concerns against the rigid separation of languages, and expose the theoretical fallacies of those schools that continue to operate on the traditionalist monolingual and monoglossic lines. These scholars advocate fluid and dynamic pedagogies proposing a productive utilization of the multilingual repertoires of the learners by deploying the constructs of translanguaging or multilinguality (Agnihotri, 2010; Canagarajah, 2013; Creese & Blackledge, 2010; Cummins, 2016; García & Leiva, 2014; García & Wei, 2014; Hornberger & Link, 2012; Mahboob & Lin, 2018; Manan, 2016).

Background Sociolinguistic and Policy Setting

Pakistan is a multilingual and multiethnic country. According to Ethnologue (2019), there are 77 languages in Pakistan. Urdu is the national language, while English is the official language. English is used in the domains of power such as government, education, law, corporate sector, research and media. Language hierarchy is based on power in which English stands as the most powerful; Urdu occupies the second position, while the rest of the minor and major indigenous languages stand at the lowest rung in the language hierarchy ladder (Channa, 2017; Mustafa, 2011; Rahman, 2002). Urdu and English receive substantial institutional support in the domains of power, especially in education; however, the indigenous languages with the exception of the Sindhi and to negligible degree Pashto language remain excluded from all domains of power including education (Channa, 2014; Mustafa, 2011; Rahman, 1996, 2002; Rassool & Mansoor, 2007). The constitutional provision of the 1973 regarding language policy proclaims the official language policy in the following statements:

The National language of Pakistan is Urdu, and arrangements shall be made for it being used for official and other purposes within fifteen years from the commencing day (1973).

Subject to clause (1), the English language may be used for official purposes until arrangements are made for its replacement by Urdu.

Without prejudice to the status of the National language, a Provincial Assembly may by law prescribe measures for the teaching, promotion, and use of a provincial language in addition to the national language.

Scholars argue that the constitutional caveat (‘without prejudice’) denotes that no such effort should be attempted for the promotion of regional languages at the cost of the national language Urdu (Rahman, 1999). Urdu receives considerably greater state support vis-à-vis the rest of the local mother tongues. Government policies about the medium of instruction suffer from several limitations of which, the most important is ‘the great disconnect between policy and implementation’ (Mustafa, 2011: 120). Historically, language policy and planning in Pakistan is marked by consistent twists and turns. According to Mustafa (2011), ‘education authorities are shirking their responsibility of taking a categorical decision on this issue,’ and she proposes that the language policy needs to be ‘formulated clearly and pragmatically’ (Mustafa, 2011: 47). Although the policy statements, the real policy with regard to teaching mother tongues or one regional language has not been implemented nor has a uniform policy across provinces and urban and rural areas occurred yet. The English-medium education policy in most private schools is also outwardly different from broad policy outlines in the National policy (Manan et al., 2015b). There are still ‘tensions between policy and practice’(Canagarajah & Ashraf, 2013: 263).

The Study

Context and approach

The context of this research is upscale elite English medium private schools. These schools are small in number; however, they are very expensive, charging exorbitantly high tuition fees. Coleman (2010) writes that ‘The number of private elite English medium schools is very small. They are extremely expensive and provide education for the children of a small and powerful elite section of the population’ (2010: 10). Earlier, those elite English medium schools were patronized by the Christian missionaries, the convent schools established in all the major cities of Pakistan. The trends from convent schools gradually changed to other streams of elite private schools such as Beaconhouse, the City School systems and two other highly expensive English medium schools. These schools have affiliations with the Cambridge system of schooling in England and follow their examination system, curricula and O (now GCSE)/A levels. The exorbitantly high tuition fee, admission fee and the allied expenditure plainly shut the doors to children from the middle, lower-middle or working classes. Since the overarching purpose of this study was to make sense of the dynamics of policies, prescriptions and practices; therefore, we drew upon the qualitative paradigm of research to understand the administrators’ perspectives and explore their practices in the upscale elite English-medium private schools. In particular, we employed semi-structured interviews to collect our data. Likewise, we had an interview schedule for the interviews that we had developed after a couple of deliberations among us. We piloted and refined the interview guide before we finally used it for data collection purposes. We used convenient sampling strategy and recruited seven teachers who either taught or have been teaching in the elite English medium private schools. Ta...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction: The Complexity of Identity and Interaction in Language Education
• Part 1: Learners, Teachers, and the ‘Ares,’ ‘Cans’ and ‘Shoulds’ of Being and Becoming
• Part 2: Teacher Identity as/in/Beyond Practice
• Part 3: Learner Negotiations of Identity in and Beyond the Classroom
• Afterword
• Index