Art, affect, and the production of pedagogy in newcomer language classrooms

Abstract

This article describes research exploring the potential of arts-based, affective pedagogy to enact the dual mandate of second language programs for adult newcomers to Canada: facilitating official language learning and social integration. Deleuze-Guattarian affect theory informs the study framing both research and pedagogical practices as effects of sociomaterial relations between bodies, human and non-human. Focusing on the concept of affect foregrounds the power of classroom objects to intervene in pedagogical events. Similarly, affect reorients the onto-epistemological underpinnings of research; it becomes an assemblage from which problems arise. This particular research assemblage, including classroom video-recorded data of an arts-based lesson and associated teacher interviews, resulted in the question How do classroom materials contribute to the production of pedagogy in newcomer language classrooms? Adult learners in two classes – one French and one English Second Language – read Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, a wordless narrative about migration. After reading, they created imaginary character profiles. The data suggest how the relational forces at work within classroom assemblages constituted by human bodies (teachers, students, researchers) and non-human bodies (curriculum, texts, digital devices, etc.) transform planned pedagogy into something unpredictable, but also creative and vibrant. The article concludes with some implications of arts-based, affective pedagogy for newcomer language education. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2020.1846554.