Focal Participant Research Articles

Affording pragmatics-focused training for language teachers: The case of L2 Mandarin Chinese

This study reported the design and implementation of a 16-week graduate seminar on second language (L2) pragmatics offered for 14 graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) who were teaching various target languages as teachers of record at a US public university. Grounded in the explicit awareness-raising approach, the seminar was designed to increase the GTAs' pragmatic knowledge, promote their cross-cultural pragmatic awareness, and facilitate their teaching and researching of pragmatics. Specifically, the training comprised four modules: key concepts in pragmatics, cross-cultural pragmatics, L2 pragmatics, and instructional pragmatics. With the recent advances in technology, the guidelines and practices for effectively designing web-based pragmatic materials were also incorporated. One of the GTAs, who was a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese and taught the language in the program, was observed as a focal participant to track the development of her pragmatic knowledge and application. Overall, the participants' positive evaluation ratings and comments on the seminar, as well as the focal Chinese GTA's demonstrated knowledge and application in pragmatics over time, suggest that the pragmatics-focused training is beneficial to cultivate the GTAs' professional knowledge and qualities in delivering pragmatics instruction.

L2 interactional competence in a short-term service-learning and study abroad program

Abstract This case study explores one Spanish L2 learner’s interactional competence (IC) during a short-term study abroad program that featured service-learning (SL). The goal of the study is to describe the learner’s IC in interactions in the SL context. Data for analysis derive primarily from dialogues between the focal participant and interlocutors from her SL network and are analyzed qualitatively using Young’s (2019) categories of identity, linguistic, and interactional resources. Key findings include: (a) the participant co-constructed identities as an American and a teacher with her interlocutors; (b) use of linguistic resources suggests accommodation to Peninsular Spanish, possibly heightened by increased contact with native speakers in SL; and (c) SL afforded a space where the learner felt confident trying out linguistic and interactional features. Findings describe the participant’s IC and suggest the value of the SL context for meaningful interaction in short-term study abroad programs.

“Always Trying to Dig Deeper”: The Enactment of Teaching Expertise as an Emotion-Laden Continual Learning Process

Background or Context: Amid a backdrop of increasing deprofessionalization of teaching and teacher education, education researchers and reformers continue to highlight the complexity and expertise of these professions. Expertise-as-process (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993) is a conception of expertise that eschews the traditional focus on accumulated knowledge, emphasizing instead expertise as a process of identifying new challenges and using challenges to continue learning. Although this conception has been used to inform thinking regarding expertise more broadly, it has rarely been applied in empirical studies of teaching and teacher education. Purpose, Objective, Research Question, or Focus of Study: Using expertise-as-process as a framework for analysis, this instrumental case study focuses on one expert literacy teacher/teacher educator who enacted expertise as a continual learning process. Research Design: The case study draws from 18 months of data collection to examine the lived enactment of expertise-as-process through praxis. The study focuses on the focal participant’s planning, teaching, professional learning, collaborative discussions, and recollections of her 20+-year career as a high school English teacher and teacher educator. Conclusions or Recommendations: The focal participant enacted progressive problem-solving by engaging in complex thinking about teaching and students, actively seeking opportunities to improve her teaching, and involving collaborators in these pursuits. This approach to teaching was accompanied by diverse emotions: passion, care, anxiety, and dissatisfaction. This case study provides a detailed picture of an expert teacher’s practice across domains through a theoretical lens rarely used to understand expertise in the teaching profession, and adds a needed emotional dimension to the research on teacher expertise and on expertise more broadly.

Tracking motivational changes in self-initiated professional development in ELT: a single-case analysis

ABSTRACT While motivation has been recognized as a key catalyst for the uptake of self-initiated professional development (PD), motivational changes that occur in the course of self-initiated PD practices remain unexplored in English Language Teaching (ELT) contexts and beyond. Yet this research area warrants closer attention since motivation is a dynamic construct displaying nonlinear trajectories over multiple timescales. The exploratory single-case study reported here aims to tackle changes in motivation and the sources of these changes as reported by an English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teacher trainee who engaged in ELT assistantship in a real classroom as a self-driven PD activity over four months in Turkey. Drawing on data from self-ratings of perceived motivational intensity, journal entries, and semi-structured interviews, the analyses showed that the focal participant’s motivational development manifested a constantly evolving pattern with temporal ups and downs, fluctuating in response to a complex array of individual and contextual factors such as shifting self-efficacy beliefs, display of coping efforts, perceived success/failure of the lessons, and group dynamics in the classroom. Implications for facilitating (trainee) teachers’ sustainable engagement in self-directed learning are discussed.

“This Is Your Safe Space”: The Intersections of Rurality, Ethnicity, and LGBTQIA+ Language Educator Identity in the Southeastern U.S.

AbstractIn the contexts of the Southeastern U.S. and globally, the ascendance of parental rights bills has sought to limit what can be discussed in the classroom related to gender and sexuality as well as limiting access to healthcare for transgender, gender non‐conforming, and non‐binary individuals (HRC, 2023). In language education, scholastic and pedagogical pursuits related to the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ students in classrooms and educators have emphasized consideration of the interconnectedness between language teachers' identities, pedagogical decisions, and place (Coda, 2021; Fogle & Moser, 2017). In rural spaces, language educators can experience increased emotional labor and marginalization (Acheson et al., 2016; Moser & Wei, 2021); however, there is limited attention to rural LGBTQIA+ language educators in contexts such as the Southeastern U.S. Drawing from a larger mixed methods study of LGBTQIA+ rural language educators in the Southeastern U.S., this study centers on one focal participant, Mariana, a cisgender, pansexual ESL educator. Utilizing Butler's (1990) theory of gender performativity and Crenshaw's (1989) intersectionality, findings draw attention to the intersections between Mariana's gender and sexual identities, rurality, and ethnicity, highlighting the tensions and contradictions related to identity performance, pedagogy decisions, and allyship efforts.

Beyond “dangers” and “hardships”: an asset-based exploration of a resettled refugee student’s interest and experience in science

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to use an asset-based approach to explore a resettled refugee student’s interests and experiences at home after her family had resettled in a U.S. city. The qualitative data collected from the focal participant included field notes from home visits, video recordings of family conversations, drawings and texts created by the participant, and informal conversations. Although the focal participant’s family members had experienced hardships during their refugee journey and before their resettlement, the findings focused on how the participant’s present experiences related to her interests and how different forms of Yosso’s community cultural wealth capital were represented in her narratives. Recommendations for children’s literature and the education of resettled refugee children are also discussed.

An Investigation into EFL Students’ Perceptions towards the Integration of Technology in L2 Writing Classrooms: A Case Study

Despite the widespread attention on applying technology in language writing classrooms, little is known about students’ perceptions towards the integration of technology in language writing instruction, learning and assessment. To fill this gap, the current study investigated students’ perceptions towards such integration. Three tools, namely, Tencent Docs, iWrite and COCA, were introduced to students. Data was gathered from classroom observation and an interview with one focal participant. The results revealed that the participant was positive towards such integration while acknowledging its limitations. The participant reported changes towards the functions of these tools, indicating their effectiveness and affordances in L2 writing classrooms. The implications for further research and teaching of L2 writing are discussed.

Development of interactional practices for initiating and extending small talk in service encounters

Research indicates the importance of small talk in achieving professional goals and promoting social relationships in workplaces, and yet second-language (L2) users often face challenges in participating in small talk. As such, the need for teaching small talk has been emphasized; however, the understanding of how L2 interactional practices for small talk develop remains limited. This study aims to demonstrate the change in L2 English practices used for initiating and extending small talk that occurred during service encounters over a thirty-month period. The data were gathered from 74 h of audiovisual recordings of service encounters at a small convenience store in Hawai'i. The focal participant is the service provider, a Korean adult with limited L2 English proficiency, who had emigrated from South Korea a year before the start of the data collection. By employing multimodal conversation analysis (CA) and the Pearson's chi-square test, the results of the study demonstrated three aspects of change in the service provider's practices for small talk: increasing the frequency of initiations, emerging new methods for initiation, and developing expansion techniques for small-talk sequences. The study advances the understanding of the development of multimodal L2 interactional practices for small talk in service encounters.

A transnational multilingual language learning journey

Abstract This study presents the case of a multilingual refugee (Maji) of Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English, from Burundi living in the U.S., and examines the language ideologies and identities embedded in his transnational narratives. We analyze our focal participant’s multi-layered transnational experiences using Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment that foregrounds the intersection of ideology, capital, and identity. Specifically, we center on dominant ideologies in Maji’s discourse and how he negotiated his ethnic, social class, and gendered identities. Our findings revealed that Maji, who adhered to discourses that promoted the English superiority, the prestige of dialectal forms of Swahili, Spanish, and English, and English as a global commodity displayed his awareness of language hierarchies and dominance. Yet, Maji, who drew on French for meaning-making, displayed contradictory ideas by framing French as a useless language in the U.S. as compared to English. Our study sheds light on the complexity of multilinguals’ identity construction and discusses pedagogical implications on how to support language minority students’ multilingualism.

Developing practices for first-time encounters: Pursuing mutual understanding and relational achievement in conversations-for-learning

A first-time encounter is an important opportunity for creating social networks, as participants routinely conduct self-presentations during this occasion. Second-language (L2) users, however, face particular difficulties engaging in first-time encounters; but no studies have examined how L2 users’ self-presentational practices develop over time. To fill this gap, this study investigates how an L2 English user calibrates her interactional practices to conduct self-presentations during first-time encounters. The participants were a senior Thai student attending a Thai college and six English instructors whom she met for the first time in a series of dyadic conversations-for-learning over a two-month period. Conversation analysis revealed how the focal participant displayed her orientations toward intersubjective and relational issues, resulting in better recognition of the initiating action. She then accordingly calibrated her response designs over time to resolve repeated intersubjective issues and ensure relational achievement during self-presentational sequences. The results suggest pedagogical implications for learning self-introduction practices.

Pre-Primary English Teacher Education in Macau: Investigating a Teacher Educator’s Beliefs and Practices

This qualitative case study explores a language teacher educator’s beliefs and practices regarding pre-primary English teacher education in Macau. The focal participant was an experienced English language teacher (20 years) and teacher educator who is a native speaker of American English. The data were collected over five years, and include written reflections, classroom observations, course syllabi, and interviews. The findings reveal that the teacher educator held six main beliefs regarding various aspects of language teacher education for the pre-primary level, namely, beliefs about (1) the purpose of pre-primary English teacher education, (2) being a teacher educator, (3) the nature of the teaching methodology course, (4) the students, (5) pre-school learners and learning, and (6) the development of the teaching methodology course. The educator’s beliefs were largely reflected in practice, as revealed in the course design, material selection, teaching, and the design of student assignments and other forms of assessment. The educator adjusted his/her practice over time in response to students’ needs, self-awareness, and the university policies. The teacher educator’s beliefs and practices were shown to be mutually informing.

Real-Time Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Dyadic Neurofeedback for Emotion Regulation: A Proof-of-Concept Study.

Real-time fMRI (rt-fMRI) neurofeedback can be used to non-invasively modulate brain activity and has shown initial effectiveness in symptom reduction for psychiatric disorders. Neurofeedback paradigms often target the neurocircuitry underlying emotion regulation, as difficulties with emotion regulation are common across many psychiatric conditions. Adolescence is a key period for the development of emotion regulation, with the parent-adolescent relationship providing an important context for learning how to modulate one’s emotions. Here, we present evidence for a novel extension of rt-fMRI neurofeedback wherein a second person (the parent) views neurofeedback from the focal participant (adolescent) and attempts to regulate the other person’s brain activity. In this proof-of-concept study, mother-adolescent dyads (n = 6; all female) participated in a dyadic neurofeedback protocol, during which they communicated via active noise-canceling microphones and headphones. During the scan, adolescents described current emotionally upsetting situations in their lives, and their mothers responded while viewing neurofeedback from the adolescent’s right anterior insular cortex (aIC)—a key hub for emotion-related processing. The mother was instructed to supportively respond to her daughter’s negative emotions and attempt to downregulate the aIC activity. Mean right aIC activation during each run was calculated for each adolescent participant, and results revealed a downward trend across the session (β = −0.17, SEβ = 0.19, Cohen’s f2 = 0.03). Results of this proof-of-concept study support further research using dyadic neurofeedback to target emotion-related processing. Future applications may include therapist-client dyads and continued research with parents and children.Clinical Trial Registration[www.ClinicalTrials.gov], identifier [NCT03929263].

Threshold Genres: A 10-Year Exploration of a Medical Writer’s Development and Social Apprenticeship Through the Patient SOAP Note

While writing is a critical part of the medical profession, longitudinal studies exploring the social apprenticeship and genre knowledge development of medical practitioners are almost nonexistent. Through interviews and writing samples, this article traces a 10-year journey of one writer’s engagement with the Patient SOAP note, following his experiences from the first year of his undergraduate education to the end of medical school. Drawing upon theories of social apprenticeship and the RIME framework (reporter, interpreter, mediator, educator) from the field of medicine, we offer an in-depth case study of our focal participant’s growing medical expertise as he masters the Patient SOAP note. Through this in-depth analysis, we argue that the SOAP note functions as a “threshold genre” to assist entry into the medical profession. We conclude by offering additional evidence about the role that key threshold genres play in the development of professional expertise and offer implications for genre theory.

Bilingual Literacy of an Indonesian Third Grader in Transnational Context

Bilingual literacy practices within the power hegemony of English-only classroom are increasingly being challenged in this century. However, there remains a dearth of research on Indonesian children navigating their language and literacy learning in transnational contexts. This article examines evidences of an Indonesian – U.S. transnational third grader honing her literacy skills in the new social and schooling system. Using a case method with interviews and observations, the focal participant’s reading and writing ability was documented. Findings show that the focal participant had demonstrated emergent awareness and knowledge of English language as she engaged in print-based activities and conversations about prints. Through translanguaging, the focal participant was able to tap into a variety of linguistic and communicative resources to make sense of texts. Implications from this study highlight meaningful learning experiences for transnational students’ literacy development and how literacy learning in such contexts can be reconceptualized.

Bangla and the identity of the heritage language teacher

Abstract Research on language teacher identity in the field of heritage language (HL) teaching has received little attention, although identity is a central concern in HL education. Our research seeks to address this gap in the research on language teacher identity. Drawing on the Darvin and Norton’s (2015) conceptual framework of identity and investment, we investigate the extent to which Bangla HL teachers are invested in teaching Bangla, and how their investment provides insight into their identity as heritage language teachers. The study was conducted at the community-based Vancouver Bangla School, and the data, which focuses on our focal participant, Mili, were drawn from a year-long qualitative case study. Data sources include participant classroom observations, field notes, interview transcripts, a questionnaire, and educational resources used in the class, which were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings indicate that Mili’s investment in teaching Bangla was deeply rooted in her ideological belief in the importance of HL maintenance for cultural continuity. However, she was also interested in the transcultural relationship between Bangla and English, and between Bangladeshi culture and Canadian culture. Her investment in teaching Bangla as a heritage language suggests that an HL teacher may serve as a cultural mentor, collaborator, innovator, and active community member. As a member of both the Canadian and Bangladeshi cultural community, she valued students’ Canadian cultural practices and helped students in negotiating their new transcultural identities as Bangladeshi-Canadians. Our study suggests that the identity of the HL teacher could be expressed as a transcultural identity that resists binaries and embraces hybridity.

When language teacher emotions and language policy intersect: A critical perspective

This case study investigates how one community college instructor in California navigated a set of rules regarding how teachers should feel – feeling rules (Zembylas, 2006) – at the workplace, imposed by a new language policy to accrue emotional capital, embodied emotions developed over time through power structures and daily interaction with students and faculty. A post-structurally oriented emotion and emotional capital framework was adopted to highlight the unequal power relations between the institution and teachers. Our study, which drew on data from a questionnaire, interviews, observations and policy documents, revealed that our focal participant, Alan, was able to align with the feeling rules and manage his emotion labor by employing different strategies (i.e., spirituality and empathy). Instead of resisting the feeling rules or avoiding the emotion labor that stemmed from his workplace, he actively accrued emotional capital by developing tools for future work-related endeavors. The study ends with a call for more research on teacher's emotional capital in TESOL.

From the Editors

From the Editors

Rewriting deficit storylines: the positioning of one fourth-grader as comics expert

PurposeThis study took place in an elementary English language arts classroom during a comics writers workshop unit and focused on one fourth-grade author. This paper aims to explain how a fourth-grade student receiving special education services positions himself and is positioned by others as an expert during a unit on comics. When students’ knowledge about multimodal composition is recognized and valued, the classroom community can become a place where students can author themselves into positions of power and authority.Design/methodology/approachInformed by sociocultural theory, social semiotics and positioning theory, the authors conducted a qualitative study to analyze the focal participant’s published comic, classroom interactions and interview data using open and in vivo coding systems.FindingsThe findings documented how the focal participant was positioned as an expert by others and how he positioned himself as an expert. The findings also explore how this fourth-grade comics expert left an authorial residue that extended beyond the boundaries of this particular comics unit, impacting his teachers and future iterations of the comics workshop.Originality/valueScholars have theorized multimodal approaches to reading and writing pedagogy as an equitable enterprise that values meaning-makers using a wide variety of semiotic resources. This study shows how incorporating an explicit multimodal composition opportunity allowed one fourth-grade author space to craft a comic and re-author traditional classroom positions of power.

Materialising semiotic repertoires: challenges in the interactional analysis of multilingual communication

ABSTRACT This article takes the inquiry into semiotic repertoires beyond their classifications and inventories to analyse their interactions with each other and the way they gain indexicality in situated communication. As previous theorisation suggests that semiotic repertoires are deployed by agentive individuals, this article draws from New Materialism to focus on how social agents, semiotic repertoires, and material ecologies work together in distributed practice for meaning making. Expanding sociolinguistic constructs for this purpose, the article defines the relevant units and objects of analysis, and illustrates the framing of activities in indexing the values, meanings, and relationships of semiotic repertoires. The role of these repertoires in the interaction of an international community of scientists is analysed through the research group meeting of a team of microbiologists. The article demonstrates that though the focal participant from Korea claims limited English grammatical proficiency in his personal repertoire, he draws strategically from the repertoires in the physical setting and those of his disciplinary community to communicate successfully.

Integrating Qualitative Research into the Community College Linguistics Course: An Autoethnographic Inquiry

This article presents an autoethnographic inquiry of a professor's journey when integrating qualitative research practices into the community college linguistics course. With the abundance of studies on undergraduate students’ quantitative research experiences in STEM and health sciences, the study addresses a gap in the research literature in humanities and social sciences and focuses on one professor's experiences through the theoretical lens of the ecological perspective and the methodological lens of an autoethnography. Analysis of the focal participant's and undergraduate students’ journal entries and interviews with students allowed for constructing a narrative account of the challenges and successes when preparing to teach, when teaching qualitative research to undergraduate students, and when reflecting about the participant's conceptual self from a critical standpoint.