Conference Agenda

Recent research (Fukuyama, 2018; Shirley & Hargreaves, 2024) indicates that many of the crises of contemporary societies entail the mercurial and unstable nature of identities. While educators for years have been focused on raising student achievement results, the insistent and often contentious nature of current debates about identities promises to overturn long-standing orthodoxies about what matters most in education. The three papers in this symposium explore linguistic, curricular, and pedagogical dimensions of students’ identity formation, and invite the audience to consider their own enactments of identity in their schools and societies. The three papers in this symposium illustrate how the rapid dissemination and inventiveness of “World Englishes” (WE) in East and South Asia, curricular innovations in Norway, and pedagogical adaptations in Canada and Korea all open up new spaces for learning identities. Taken together, the papers ask: What can be learned across nations as educators encounter and find new ways that students are expressing their identities? This session presents new evidence on the ways that students’ identities are being addressed in education today.

Purpose: While much has been researched about the impact of English on East and South Asian societies, there is still much to discover, especially in the evolution of individual and national identities, and the new possibilities of expressing those identities through language. As such, there is a need to go beyond the current understanding of sociolinguistic realities of English in these two regions. These realities include standards and norms, issues of intelligibility, bi- and multi-lingualism, code- mixing, bilingual creativity, mutli-canonity, language planning and policy, power and politics of the English language in relation to other indigenous languages, to name a few.

Perspectives/theoretical framework, or context: The founding father of the World Englishes (WE) paradigm, Braj Kachru, through his Three Concentric Circles Model and his work on South Asian Englishes, has provided important insights about how Asian identities have emerged through the spread and use of the English language. New varieties of English have led to evolving hybridised identities and a cultural richness in the linguistic features used by bilingual and multilingual speakers who come from multicultural backgrounds. There is a need to devote attention to the English language in use in these new cultural contexts in order to make sense of the multi-modalities of expression and the multi-canonicity of these evolving varieties.

Approach to inquiry: This paper positions English in East and South Asia within existing theoretical Kachruvian and Post-Kachruvian paradigms. Through the voices of various scholars in the field, perspectives on English language policy, practice and use in the following countries are offered: Mainland China, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka.

Findings: Studies into East and South Asia regions reflect the complexity and uncertainty in terms of language education policy and practice, while the linguistic features reflect the innovations and creative impulses that have come about through the mega-forces of globalisation and digital ultra-connectivity. The studies also showed that the range and depth of English used in East and South Asia have led to different and unique expressions of individual and social identities.

Educational importance: The sociolinguistic realities of the varieties of English used have important educational policy and practice ramifications especially in relation to standards and norms in educational settings and the impact on the cultural identity of the users.

Connection to the conference theme: This paper addresses the need for educators and policymakers to understand how English is necessary for global competence and that the local realities of its use impact the cultural identity of its multilingual users. Striking the delicate balance between global competence and cultural identity is the challenge that policymakers and educators have to grapple with.

Purpose: This paper examines the link between identity and learning in educational leadership. Focus on identity issues is increasing globally and there has been heightened attention on the significance on cultural and religious identity in schools and societies. Concurrently, and especially post-COVID, there seem to be an accelerating trend of disturbance in Norwegian classrooms and schools.

Perspectives/theoretical framework, or context: Research shows that part of developing and consolidating self-identity can be a fear of loss (Giddens 1991). The creation of identity is accompanied of an equal potential for identity destruction. Processes of identity-making are paradoxically both promoting towards and scaffolding against learning, as it is only when a personality exists that there is such a thing that can be threatened or worse.

Control pertains to many dimensions of identity forming and may come out as a defense mechanism to the extent what is constructed, i.e., self-identity, is subjugated or diminished by others. schools Dewey (1938) famously argued that teachers deploy a variety of control devices to cover up the apparent need of obedience in classroom instruction. A more recent example, from the classroom management literature, is the so-called 'soft demander', a role played by the teacher as an authority who disciplines student behavior in an implicit manner. From the stance of ineptitude and powerlessness, deliberate classroom misbehavior might be a way for students regain control by opposing to external control from teachers. An interesting thesis is that they do so to protect their identities. When students are treated as objects, their personal voices signal their status as subjects and to preserve self-identity.

This is both a moral and pragmatic call for knowledge, and it is both at a social level and at an individual level. In the case of the former the important role for the moral dimension of self-identity is emphasized in the collective effort for a good society (Biesta, 2006).

Approach to inquiry: In fall 2023, we will undertake a preliminary study on the potential alignment between teachers’ knowledge of identity development and available research on the subject. This study includes pre surveys and a summary of document studies on students’ experience of support from teachers, and pre surveys on teachers’ knowledge of their students’ identity development. The surveys will be created based on focus group interviews with teachers in lower and upper secondary schools in Norway.

Findings: Prior findings suggest that teachers experienced a limitation in their autonomy in their teaching due to negative experience in earlier professional learning communities (PLCs). The teachers’ professional identities were influenced by their position in the PLC, and this correlation between experience, autonomy and professional identity suggests that identity could play a powerful role influencing the students’ learning.

Educational importance: This paper raises questions about the ways teachers manage and facilitate learning processes in the classroom and whether they pay enough attention to the students’ development of identity.

Connection to the conference theme: This paper addresses the role and impact of quality professional education in the context of school effectiveness and improvement.

Policy Focus: After decades focusing narrowly on students’ attainments in literacy, mathematics, and science, educational systems are now shifting their attention to address elements of human development that include students’ well-being. Yet how is well-being understood? Evidence from Ontario, Canada presented by Shirley and Hargreaves (2024) indicate that a policy focus on well-being from 2014-2018 produced pedagogical transformations that promoted identities of Indigenous, newcomer, and LGBTQ youth. Yet in roughly the same time period these particular kinds of identities received virtually no attention in the well-being policies enacted even by a progressive reform movement in South Korea. These findings indicate much more heterogeneity in how well-being is understood with regard to identities across systems than is frequently implied.

Focus of Inquiry: Everyone seems to be in favor of students’ well-being, but how this is conceptualized and implemented across systems deserves heightened attention.

Theoretical framework: This paper draws upon research (Blackstock, 2011; Li, 2012; Hargreaves & Shirley, 2023) encouraging greater cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity to all aspects of human development, including well-being.

Methods and Data Sources: The Ontario data is based upon interviews of school personnel in 10 districts conducted by one research team and the Korean data is drawn from interviews of educators in 16 schools in an innovative network based. (The author of this paper was a principal investigator on both of the teams.) Interpretations of the data for each of the teams began with open coding, then advanced to axial coding, and then proceeded to cross-case analyses.

Results: When Ontario’s educators were asked about their students’ well-being, they frequently made reference to students who were from marginalized or oppressed social groups and the importance of equity. When the Korean educators were asked about well-being, on the other hand, they made more universal comments about the need to reduce excessive pressure to do well on exams and to create a welcoming environment for all students. For the Korean educators, nation-building surfaced as a prominent theme in terms of students’ identities, especially with regard to islands in the Sea of Japan that are contested by both Japan and Korea, but this was advanced more as a political imperative and not as part of a well-being agenda.

Importance: In many countries, well-being is evolving from an individual psychological concern to a more sociological definition based on group identity. These contrasting cases invite us to look more closely at how well-being is defined by educators and accommodated or neglected in their pedagogies.

Connection to the Conference Theme: The professional education of teachers and school leaders should acknowledge cultural values and potential blind spots in promoting well-being and identity.