99. Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)
Paper
Describing and Explaining Literacy Practices in Diverse Contexts
Viknesh Subramaniam
National Institute of Education, Singapore
Presenting Author: Subramaniam, Viknesh
This presentation describes a descriptive study of literacy practices in Singapore and proposes utilising a similar model to examine and document the diverse ways families use and develop literacy in communities in international contexts. This would help educators align their own practices to meet their students’ varied ways of practicing literacy.
Literacy is most often understood to be a set of skills required for reading and writing (Keefe & Copeland, 2011). However, Knoblauch (1990) argued that literacy goes beyond reading and writing skills, and that defining it as such encodes sociocultural judgements. This is well demonstrated in Heath’s (1982) ethnographic study of the literacy practices of three communities– Middle-income white families, working-class white families, and working-class black families. Because the literacy practices of the working-class families differed from those in their mainstream schools, these children quickly fall behind in their grades with no way to keep up.
As such, Heath (1982) cautions against “a unilinear model of development in the acquisition of language structures” (p. 73) because when schools are not culturally responsive, they risk perpetuating socioeconomic inequalities. There are diverse ways of using and developing literacy, making it vital for educators to, firstly, understand the literacy practices of their communities and in their own sociocultural contexts, and, secondly, to align their own literacy practices with that of their communities’ to stem the reproduction of systemic disadvantages.
Singapore is perhaps best known worldwide for its economic prosperity and multi-ethnic population. These socioeconomic successes have been attributed to its meritocratic system that promises equality of opportunity. Consequently, educational achievement is highly sought after, with parents striving to give their children a head start through each stage of the educational system, from as early as preschool, to primary, secondary, and tertiary levels. Unfortunately, unequal socioeconomic and academic outcomes expose the systemic inequalities in Singapore, especially along ethnic and socioeconomic lines. This further emphasises the need for models of development to meet the needs of diverse contexts.
However, few studies have described literacy practices in the Singaporean context. Most of the reviewed studies have taken correlational approaches, examining the relationships between specific practices and literary outcomes. Fewer still have examined the complex interplay between ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and literacy practices. The literacy practices of the minority populations of Malays and Indians have received little to no research attention, while it remains unclear if literacy practices are ethnically (Dixon, 2011) or socioeconomically (Aman et al., 2009) determined. There is a need for more descriptive studies of literacy practices in the Singaporean context, especially in the ethnic minority populations.
The study presented sought to describe and explain the literacy practices of six low-income earning, ethnic minority families of preschool-aged children in Singapore. The questions that guided this study were:
- What are the literacy practices of low-income earning minority parents of preschool children in Singapore?
- Why do parents choose these literacy practices?
The study utilised the Social Theory of Literacy (Barton, 2007; Barton & Hamilton, 2000, 2012) as its theoretical framework. This theory defines literacy as a set of social practices, and exists simultaneously in the relationships between people and within individuals. Literacy practices, which include observable activities and intangible attitudes and values, are “the general cultural ways of utilizing literacy which people draw upon in a literacy event” (Barton, 2007, p. 37). These practices exist within domains, structured contexts, most common of which are homes and schools. Literacy practices are also shaped by cultural and historical factors.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe study used the descriptive phenomenological psychological method introduced by Giorgi (2012). It is a phenomenological approach that examines lived experiences and identifies essences. It is also human scientific in its use of empirical, scientific, data gathering and analysis through a theoretical framework. This method allowed the study to present its findings through rich descriptions, and to explain the literacy practices of the participants through an essential structure.
Participants were recruited through two preschools in Singapore. Low-income earning parents were identified by their qualification for financial assistance. A total of five Malay and five Indian parents who were legally married, 2-parent families, with both parents in the household being Singaporean by birth, and of Malay or Indian ethnicity were selected for the study. Participants provided informed consent and were assured that their confidentiality and anonymity would be protected. Data was collected through two semi-structured interviews, video recordings and a demographic questionnaire. The aim of the first interview was to gather participants’ descriptions of lived experienced of literacy events and the second interview aimed to gather detailed descriptions of participants’ experiences of a literacy event they were involved in with their child, which they had made a video recording of. The demographic questionnaire gathered information about the members of the participants’ households which provided context for their descriptions of their experiences and ensured holistic analysis.
Transcripts of the interviews were analysed by first putting aside theoretical knowledge, assumptions, and information not presented by the participants. Meaning units were transformed into generalised third person descriptions, and then into expressions that described the meanings of the participants’ experiences according to the Social Theory of Literacy. Finally these social descriptions were coded using descriptive phrases and grouped into themes that described their essences. Trustworthiness was ensured using five strategies - variation, bracketing, member checking, peer checking and thick descriptions.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsParticipants defined literacy as the ability to read, write and comprehend, positioning it as a necessary skill for formal education and future careers. Surprisingly, given the literatures differing description of the practices of each ethnic group, participants from both ethnicities in this study shared nearly identical literacy events and practices, differing only slightly in how they integrated other developmental domains into their literacy practices.
Participants’ literacy practices were largely shaped by personal experiences, their children’s preschool syllabus, and the constraints of their time, energy, and home environments. Fundamentally, their goals indicated a conflict between the demands of a competitive education system and personal values.
The similarities between the literacy practices of the Indian and Malay participants suggest that literacy practices in Singapore are not ethnically defined. Their literacy practices may be informed by common experiences of the Singaporean education system instead of their ethnic cultures. Their shared socioeconomic status may also explain the congruence, and further study is being conducted to explore how so literacy practices might compare across multiple income groups.
It would be useful to use the presented study as a model for examining the literacy practices of communities in different international contexts. It would provide practitioners with more current knowledge of the diversity of literacy events, practices, values, and attitudes in their communities, better allowing them to align their own practices.
ReferencesAman, N., Vaish, V., Bokhorst-Heng, W. D., Jamaludeen, A., Durgadevi, P., Feng, Y. Y., Khoo, B. S., Roslan, M., Appleyard, P., & Tan, T. K. (2009). The sociolinguistic survey of Singapore 2006 (Report No. CRP 22/04 AL). National Institute of Education (Singapore), Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice.
Barton, D. (2007). Literacy: An introduction to the ecology of written language (2nd ed.). Blackwell Publishing.
Barton, D., & Hamilton, M. (2000). Literacy practices. In D. Barton, M. Hamilton, & R. Ivanič (Eds.), Situated Literacies: Reading and Writing in Context (pp. 7-15). Routledge.
Barton, D., & Hamilton, M. (2012). Local literacies: Reading and writing in one community. Routledge.
Dixon, L. Q. (2011). Singaporean kindergartners' phonological awareness and English writing skills. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 32(3), 98-108. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2011.02.008
Giorgi, A. (2012). The descriptive phenomenological psychological method [Article]. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 43(1), 3-12. https://doi.org/10.1163/156916212X632934
Heath, S. B. (1982). What No Bedtime Story Means: Narrative Skills at Home and School. Language in Society, 11(1), 49-76. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4167291
Keefe, E. B., & Copeland, S. R. (2011). What Is literacy? The power of a definition [Article]. Research & Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities, 36(3-4), 92-99. https://doi.org/10.2511/027494811800824507
Knoblauch, C. H. (1990). Literacy and the politics of education. In A. A. Lumsford, H. Moglen, & J. Slevin (Eds.), The Right to Literacy (pp. 74-80). The Modern Language Association of America.
99. Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)
Paper
Up against Whiteness: The Intersectional Experiences of Chinese Women Teachers in the English Language Teaching Industry
Shuling Wang
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Presenting Author: Wang, Shuling
Research Questions
Race and racism remain largely unspeakable topics in China, partially due to the Chinese party-state’s denial of the existence of racism (Cheng, 2019). However, race plays a vital role in China’s education field, particularly in the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry. My study examines Chinese women teachers’ struggle to establish their legitimacy in the ELT industry where whiteness is the norm. The study finds that the ELT industry is more than a field of language teaching and learning. It is a field that commodifies whiteness, asserting a workplace racial hierarchy that affirms the racialised and gendered subordination of Chinese female teachers in relation to White male teachers. This study highlights a need to theorise race and English language education in China, given the growing role and impacts of European migrant teachers in China’s flourishing ELT industry. It also enables greater dialogue with the global English-language education community on the challenges and possibilities of diversity and inclusion.
The global spread of English as a lingua franca is historically associated with Western imperialism and colonialism (Phillipson, 1992) and shapes a ‘common sense’ that English is the property of white people (Jenks, 2017; Kubota & Lin, 2006; Rivers et al., 2013). Over the last two decades, China has become the world’s largest ELT market (Sohu, 2019). The intertwining of English and whiteness has translated into a massive demand for foreign teachers, particularly White people from Euro-American countries, to teach English in China, regardless of their professional backgrounds (Leonard, 2019). The industry accommodated over 400,000 foreign teachers in 2017, but two-thirds were reported unqualified who cashed in on their perceived closeness to White native English speakers (Pan, 2019). The racial hegemony in the ELT field formed by linguistic differences (Curtis & Romney, 2019; Von Esch et al., 2020) marginalises qualified teachers of color who are stereotyped as “inferior linguistically, economically and culturally due to their non‐white skin colour” (Author, 2019).
Race is not the industry’s only distinct category but also intersects with others, including gender and class, when constructing teachers’ subject positions. This study therefore explores Chinese women’s intersectional racialised experiences in China’s ELT industry. More specially, the study asks the following research questions:
1) How do Chinese women teachers describe and interpret their intersectional experiences in China’s ELT industry?
2) How do Chinese women teachers construct themselves in relation to other stakeholders in China’s ELT industry?
3) What are the affective dimensions of intersectional experiences on Chinese women in the ELT industry?
Theoretical Framework: Women of Colour Feminism
Following women of colour feminism (Hooks, 2000), this study develops theoretical concepts grounded in Chinese women teachers’ lived experiences. I employ intersectionality as a ‘sensitising concept’ (Blumer, 2017) to explore the complexity of interconnected identities and power relations that shape ELT teachers’ marginalisation and agency. I use interdisciplinary theoretical tools to place indigenous theoretical concepts, developed from teachers’ accounts, into academic conversation on affect theory, racial capitalism and possessive investment in whiteness. This allows for a greater insight into Chinese women teachers’ encounters with whiteness, revealing how race, gender class and the English language intersect to contribute to the inequalities present in ELT. For example, since intersectionality has been criticised for neglecting to consider factors that cannot be seen or heard (Falcón & Nash, 2015; Puar, 2020), this study uses affect theory along intersectionality. ‘Affect’ is not a personal emotion but a ‘felt’ power relationship (Pavlidis & Fullagar, 2013) involved in producing actions (Bogic, 2017; Puar, 2018), and this study use affect to understand what are the conditions that are producing certain emotions that reflect the ‘structure of being’ (Puar, 2018, p. 207) for Chinese women English-language teachers.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study adopted a women of colour feminist qualitative inquiry design (Freeman, 2019) to investigate the lived intersectional experiences among 18 Chinese women English-language teachers who have worked closely with foreign teachers in the ELT industry. A purposive sampling approach was adopted to select information-rich participants. The selected Chinese teachers met the following criteria:
1) Self-identified as a Chinese woman teacher or teaching assistant of the English language
2) Worked with foreign teachers for over one year in a private-school context
3) Willing to share their experiences of navigating problems and countering discrimination when working with foreign teachers in the ELT industry
The study employed a semi-structured interview method and followed a feminist interview approach to collect data on women teachers’ experiences. Each participant was interviewed twice in interviews lasting one-to-two hours. Informal conversations were conducted with participants to clarify ideas, expressions, themes and concepts emerging from interview narratives that informed the interpretation of the collected data. Apart from interviews, this study also used the innovative emotional map-making method to understand participants’ emotional world in relation to social conditions. A reflexive research diary was also used as a means of reflection on ‘self, process and presentation’ (Sultana, 2007).
This study adopted feminist grounded theory (Olesen, 2007) for its data analysis. As no one has foregrounded Chinese women teachers’ perspectives on their experiences in the ELT industry, the study described and interpreted how these teachers articulated their experiences, without imposing my own priorities. I therefore allowed themes and theories to emerge from my interviews with teachers by following an iterative process of multiple readings and by constantly comparing data at each stage of analysis to identify patterns and differences through coding and memo writing, attending to the complexities of the situation of inquiry. By following grounded theory methods to analyse interview data, I provided the empirical evidence and conceptual tools needed to understand Chinese women teachers’ experiences from ‘their lives, relations, actions and words’ (Mathison, 2005), as grounded in their own narratives. The study’s analysis detailed how Chinese women teacher participants made meanings from their experiences based on their social positions and how they understood diversity and inclusion in the industry.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsChinese women English-language teachers construct the mothers of their students as ‘braindead mama fans’ who idolise and invest in White male teachers and dismiss Chinese women teachers as nannies. These Chinese women English-language teachers have observed how schools commodify whiteness and use managerial violence to differentiate English-language teachers based on race, gender and nationality, as it frequently assigns overqualified Chinese women teachers to teaching assistants positions, making them feel, in the words of several teachers, like “second-class citizens”. Chinese women English-language teachers also liken their unqualified and unreliable White teaching colleagues to “time bombs” and managing these time bombs produces the shared feelings of fear, anger and exhaustion. These findings tell whiteness as power structure in the industry which conditions Chinese women teachers’ professional life. Up against whiteness, these women teachers seek different ways to resist intersectional racism in the ELT industry, including withdrawal from caring and emotional work, negotiation for better working conditions, and solidarity with teachers of colour.
The study situates the framework of intersectionality into the Chinese context to conceptualise the women teachers’ lived intersectional experiences in the ELT industry. It highlights an urgent need to theorise and disrupt intersectional racism in China’s English-language education systems and calls for diversifying teaching staff and fostering an equal collaborative relationship between Chinese teachers and European teachers, drawing policymakers’ attention to the sustainable growth of this industry. The study also contributes to broader academic discussion on education institutions’ commitment to social justice, diversity and inclusion when participating in the global English-language education sector.
ReferencesBlumer, H. (2017). What is wrong with social theory? In Sociological methods (pp. 84–96). Routledge.
Bogic, A. (2017). Theory in perpetual motion and translation: Assemblage and intersectionality in feminist studies. Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice, 38(1), 138–149.
Cheng, Y. (2019). “Call a Spade a Spade”. In Y. Cheng, Discourses of Race and Rising China (pp. 1–26). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05357-4_1
Curtis, A., & Romney, M. (2019). Color, race, and English language teaching: Shades of meaning. Routledge.
Falcón, S. M., & Nash, J. C. (2015). Shifting analytics and linking theories: A conversation about the “meaning-making” of intersectionality and transnational feminism. Women’s Studies International Forum, 50, 1–10.
Freeman, E. (2019). Feminist theory and its use in qualitative research in education. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.
Hooks, B. (2000). Feminist theory: From margin to center. Pluto Press.
Jenks, C. (2017). English for sale: Using race to create value in the Korean ELT market. Applied Linguistics Review, 10(4), 517–538. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2017-0090
Kubota, R., & Lin, A. (2006). Race and TESOL: Introduction to concepts and theories. TESOL Quarterly, 40(3), 471–493.
Leonard, P. (2019). ‘Devils’ or ‘Superstars’? Making English Language Teachers in China. In Destination China (pp. 147–172). Springer.
Olesen, V. L. (2007). Feminist qualitative research and grounded theory: Complexities, criticisms, and opportunities. The SAGE Handbook of Grounded Theory, 1, 417–435.
Pan, M. (2019, August 5). Action taken over illegally hired English teachers. China Daily. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/global/2019-08/05/content_37498627.htm
Pavlidis, A., & Fullagar, S. (2013). Narrating the multiplicity of ‘Derby Grrrl’: Exploring intersectionality and the dynamics of affect in roller derby. Leisure Sciences, 35(5), 422–437.
Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic imperialism. Oxford University Press.
Puar, J. K. (2018). Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times. Duke University Press.
Puar, J. K. (2020). “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”: Becoming-intersectional in assemblage theory. In Feminist Theory Reader (pp. 405–415). Routledge.
Rivers, D. J., Ross, A. S., Houghton, S. A., Furumura, Y., Lebedko, M., & Li, S. (2013). Uncovering stereotypes: Intersections of race and English native-speakerhood. Critical Cultural Awareness: Managing Stereotypes through Intercultural (Language) Education, 42–61.
Sohu (2019). 全中国超 4 亿人在学英语 [More than 400 million people in China are learning English]. Insight. https://www.sohu.com/a/344290251_120047227
Sultana, F. (2007). Reflexivity, positionality and participatory ethics: Negotiating fieldwork dilemmas in international research. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 6(3), 374–385.
Von Esch, K. S., Motha, S., & Kubota, R. (2020). Race and language teaching. Language Teaching, 53(4), 391–421. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444820000269
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