Tangled Practices:
Day of Reflection 2019
Date: 2019.9.29 (Sunday, September 29, 2019)
Location: Seoul, Sookmyung University Injaegwan Center, Room 207
숙명여자대학교 숙명인재관 207호
(Google Maps)
Limited spaces. Please pre-register here: tinyurl.com/RPSIG2019
The KOTESOL Reflective Practice Special Interest Group is excited to present a day of vibrant, diverse, and enriching workshops. The theme, 'Tangled Practices', reflects the knotty and intricate overlaps and complexities faced by teachers, and over the course of the day we will reflect on some of these issues and explore some of the intersections between Reflective Practice and other inquiry approaches relevant to language teaching.
Schedule
10:00 - 10:50 Brian Raisbeck
Motivation in the EFL Classroom
11:00 - 12:30 Maria Lisak
Intimate Inquiry for Reflective Practice, Action Research, and Autoethnography
12:30 - 13:30 Lunch Break
13:30 - 15:00 Kevin Kester
The Transrational Educator: Embodied Methods for Learning
15:10 - 16:00 Brennand Kennedy
"That's just who I am.": Reflecting on Philosophy
Session Information
Motivation in the EFL Classroom
Motivation is one of the most important driving forces in the EFL classroom. Without it, very little language learning can occur. This exploratory workshop opens with small group discussions on the role that motivation plays in participants’ current teaching practices and is followed by a brief overview of important L2 motivational research and implications for EFL instructors. The workshop will also include further dialogue on how participants can apply research findings to their practice and wrap up with a reflection on lessons learned during the session.
Brian Raisbeck
Brian Raisbeck currently teaches EFL at a high school in Seoul, South Korea. He holds a BA in History from the University of California at Santa Cruz, an MAT in TESOL from the University of Southern California, and an MSc in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition from the University of Oxford.
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Intimate Inquiry for Reflective Practice, Action Research, and Autoethnography
Radical counter narratives of possibilities from a broadened view
This workshop introduces a research practice from Laura’s (2016) intimate inquiry framework for a love-based approach to qualitative studies in education. Intimate inquiry questions look at personal, social, intellectual, and methodological problems to construct new knowledge with meaningful explanations of personal and social worlds. Intimate inquiry moves back and forth between local and broad contexts, fully disclosing the researcher as well as research values, purposes, commitments, and key background assumptions. These aspects of this qualitative research practice encourage self-examination and critique while also valuing care (knowing research participants in all of their particularity), love (acting on behalf of participants), and solidarity (working with participants in research endeavor). (p. 229)
The first 20 minutes of this workshop seeks to explore these questions: what is intimate inquiry; what are the assumptions and methods of intimate inquiry; and what are the implications of invoking love in qualitative work, especially for critical, truth-telling educational researchers? (p. 215) Additional examples of intimate inquiry studies in Asian classrooms are shared as models of how this research can be practiced. The participants will then have 30 minutes with guided activities to prompt exploration of a topic of their choice to initiate an intimate inquiry. The final 30 minutes, participants will have space to share their interests and develop peer support to continue their intimate inquiry research project.
Maria Lisak
Maria Lisak teaches administration and welfare at Chosun University. She is a lifetime member of KOTESOL and regularly participates in Gwangju-Jeonnam's Reflective Practice Special Interest Group. She is currently working on her dissertation on radical hospitality for an EdD from Indiana University in Literacy, Culture and Language Education.
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The Transrational Educator: Embodied Methods for Learning
This 90-minute experiential session will explore the concept of transrational learning. It will begin with a warm-up/contemplative activity exploring issues of reflexivity and transrationalism in education, and their relevance for classroom pedagogy. The session will then be followed by a series of activities for transrational teaching, such as Qi Gong, Quaker Circles, Autoethnography, and Image Theatre. The objective of the session is to provide participants some specific contemplative and theatrical methods for transrational learning in university contexts. The workshop will conclude with group discussion of the potential transferability of these methods to the participants’ own learning environments.
Kevin Kester
Kevin Kester is Assistant Professor of International Education and Global Affairs at Keimyung University in Daegu, and consultant to UNESCO, UNODC, and UPEACE. He researches and teaches in the sociology and politics of education and global affairs with a focus on comparative and international education; education, conflict, and peacebuilding; and the global governance of education in conflict-affected contexts. He has been Director of Studies for Education at Queens’ College, University of Cambridge, and Visiting Scholar at Yale.
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"That's just who I am.": Reflecting on Philosophy
When we think about reflecting on our practice, some of us may assume that reflection consists of nothing more than mere musings about problems which occur in our classrooms, while others may take a more evidence-based approach through systematic journaling or other methods. While both of these approaches are certainly not without their merits, a more holistic approach to reflection can be much more rewarding to the practitioner. Simply noting the observable behaviors in our classroom may not paint a full enough picture of our practice because such observations can only hint at the reasons behind the behaviors. Therefore, Farrell (2015) has suggested that we begin our reflective journeys by first taking a broader account of who we are as teachers by reaching far into our inner worlds. In other words, we must access and explore the basic teaching philosophies that we have been developing since birth.
This workshop will detail Farrell’s (2015) ideas of reflecting on philosophy as part of his larger framework for reflective practice and will take participants through some reflective techniques to help them discover the experiences in their lives that have shaped who they have become as teachers and what it means for their practice.
Brennand Kennedy
Brennand Kennedy is from Calgary, Canada. He is currently an assistant professor at Dongshin University in Naju, Jeollanam-do and he has also taught for many years in rural Elementary schools in Hadong, Gyeongsangnam-do. Before starting at Dongshin University, Brennand completed his Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics (TESL) at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. As part of his graduate program, Brennand conducted research in the area of reflective practice under the supervision of Dr. Thomas Farrell. Brennand continues to be interested in reflective practice as well as issues of social and environmental justice in language teaching.
