scholarly journals Surviving a Cultural Genocide: Perspectives of Indigenous Elders on the Transfer of Traditional Values

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 316
Author(s):  
Shawn Clark ◽  
Ruth Wylie
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Cultural Genocide ◽  
Culturally Tailored ◽  
Indigenous Elders

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to examine how Indigenous elders perceive traditional values. This study employed Portraiture, which allowed Indigenous elders to share their stories in a culturally tailored and relational manner. The authors’ captured and present richly detailed stories that describe the intersects between human experiences and sacred beliefs. The scholars eloquently braid the first authors experiences at three (3) traditional Indigenous ceremonies with the words of Indigenous elders to tell a story about overcoming an attempted cultural genocide. The ceremony participation and elder visits helped identify ten traditional values encasing spirituality displayed in the Hoop of Traditional Blackfoot Values presented in the English language and the Blackfoot language. 

scholarly journals A meta-ethnographic study of fathers’ experiences of caring for a child with a life-limiting illness

2020 ◽  
pp. 026921632097915
Author(s):  
Gianina-Ioana Postavaru ◽  
Helen Swaby ◽  
Rabbi Swaby
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Psychosocial Interventions ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Qualitative Studies ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Care Experience ◽  
Care Giving ◽  
Critical Appraisal Skills ◽  
Limiting Condition

Background: There is a growing body of qualitative studies examining parents’ experiences of caring for a child with a life-limiting condition, coinciding with recent evidence that indicates an increasing incidence of paediatric life-limiting conditions. However, research focusing on fathers’ needs remains sparse and is often diluted among a predominant ‘mother’s voice’, raising questions about whether practices in clinical settings meet fathers’ needs. Aim: To provide an in-depth assembly of the current state of knowledge around fathers’ experiences of caring for their children diagnosed with life-limiting conditions and understand the implications for healthcare services and policies. Design: A meta-ethnography was conducted to synthesise findings from existing qualitative studies exploring fathers’ experiences of caring. Data sources: Four electronic databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL and Science Direct) were searched up until April 2020. Qualitative studies exploring fathers’ care experience and published in English language were included. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklist was employed for study quality appraisal. No temporal limits were used. Results: Sixty-three studies met the inclusion criteria. Thirty life-limiting conditions were included. Based on responses from 496 fathers, a conceptual model was developed which translates key experiences within the fathers’ caregiving journeys. The overarching concepts identified were: the paradox of support, challenges in the caring process, ‘nobody thinks of men’, impact on family life and the fall of the curtain: an irrevocably altered world. These and associated sub-concepts are discussed, with recommendations for future research and practice provided. Conclusion: The findings indicate the value of a family-oriented approach to develop psychosocial interventions and support channels for fathers, thus empowering them whilst reducing the care-giving burden on the family unit.

“It’s a Black Hole . . .”: Exploring Teachers’ Narratives and Practices for Digital Literacies in the Adult EAL Context

2021 ◽  
pp. 074171362199151
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Tour ◽  
Edwin Creely ◽  
Peter Waterhouse
Keyword(s):  
Black Hole ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teaching Practices ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Digital Literacies ◽  
Strength Based ◽  
Approach To Teaching ◽  
Teachers Perspectives

A strength-based approach to teaching digital literacies can advance language education for adults from refugee and migrant backgrounds, preparing them for life in a new country. This article draws on a 6-month ethnographic study at an adult English language center in Australia and explores teachers’ perspectives and practices related to teaching digital literacies to understand how prepared they are to employ learners’ own resources. Using sociomaterial theory, this research found that English as an Additional Language (EAL) teachers’ narratives about learners focused on what they lacked rather than what they brought to learning. It also found that while teaching practices utilized some strength-based pedagogical principles, the teachers viewed their work as being deficient. They did not always recognize their agential power nor did they overtly understand that the technology itself afforded this power. The article concludes with implications for EAL practice and professional learning of teachers who work in the adult sector.

scholarly journals School life on the margins: Slovak Roma pupils negotiating education

Race & Class ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-76
Author(s):  
Mark Payne
Keyword(s):  
Secondary School ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
First Year ◽  
School Life ◽  
White Skin ◽  
English Only ◽  
Educational Framework ◽  
Academic System

Building on the work of Chris Searle in this journal, the author draws on an ethnographic study of a Sheffield school to examine the experiences of Slovak Roma children in the first year of secondary school as they negotiate prevailing English-only language ideologies and complex curriculum challenges and attempt to fit into an educational framework that is trying to adapt to the forces of migration and super-diversity. Struggling to engage academically, pupils are banished to the bottom sets where they are fed a watered-down curriculum. It is argued that the Roma pupils in this situation are in the exclusionary ‘anteroom’; unable to rise through the academic system, weighed down by lack of English language, an alien culture, non-white skin colour and the lack of various forms of capital prized by schools, the next logical step for many is temporary or permanent exclusion. This article sheds light on those pupils at the bottom of the heap for whom chances are curtailed, and adds to debates about xeno-racism, exclusion and class-biased pedagogies.

Cosmopolitan English, traditional Japanese

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 238-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Baudinette
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
English Language ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Japanese Men ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Queer Space

Abstract The Linguistic Landscape of Tokyo’s premier gay district, Shinjuku Ni-chōme, contains much English-language signage. Previously described in touristic literature as marking out spaces for foreign gay men, this article draws upon an ethnographic study of how signage produces queer space in Japan to argue that English instead constructs a sense of cosmopolitan worldliness. The ethnography also reveals that participants within Ni-chōme’s gay bar sub-culture contrast this cosmopolitan identity with a “traditional” identity indexed by Japanese-language signage. In exploring how Japanese men navigate Ni-chōme’s signage, this article deploys Piller and Takahashi’s (2006) notion of “language desire” to investigate the role of LL in influencing individual queer men’s sense(s) of self. This article thus broadens the focus of LL research to account for how engagement with an LL may impact identity construction, with an emphasis placed on how learning to “read” an LL influences the formation of sexual identities.

“Maid to maiden”: The false promise of English for the daughters of domestic workers in post-colonial Kolkata

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (262) ◽  
pp. 67-95
Author(s):  
Anindita Chatterjee ◽  
Anne Schluter
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
English Language ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Domestic Worker ◽  
British Council

AbstractDrawing from a larger ethnographic study, the current article examines, through interactional sociolinguistics, interview and observation data related to English-language tutorials between two employers and their domestic workers’ daughters in two households in Kolkata. The post-colonial, South Asian context represents a site in which such scholarship has been underrepresented (see Mills and Mullany’s 2011 Language, gender and feminism). The focus of analysis is two-fold: it evaluates the existing power structures between participants, and it assesses the degree to which widespread Indian discourses about the upward mobility of English (see Graddol’s 2010 “English Next India”, published online by the British Council) are relevant to the current setting. In terms of power structures, legitimated domination (see Grillo’s 1989 Dominant languages) of the employer over her domestic worker emerges as a salient theme; however, affective attachment (adapted from Hardt’s 1999 article “Affective labor”, published in Boundary; McDowell and Dyson’s 2011 article “The other side of the knowledge economy: ‘Reproductive’ employment and affective labours in Oxford”, published in Environment and Planning) and reciprocal dependencies help to both reinforce and diminish the severity of the power asymmetry. With respect to the applicability of popular Indian discourses that equate English-language proficiency with upward mobility, the study finds little evidence of their relevance to the current context in which the subordinate positioning of gender intersects with social class to compound its constraining influence.

scholarly journals Critical language teaching in a dynamic language policy terrain: lessons from the Brazilian Science without Borders student mobility programme

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-388
Author(s):  
Jonathan Luke
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Student Mobility ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Science Without Borders ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACT This article reports on a case study of English language learning in higher education, considering the impact of language policies embedded within a mobility scholarship programme on the practices of language teachers. Based on a larger ethnographic study following the experiences of several undergraduate members of one cohort of Brazil’s Science without Borders programme for students in science and technological fields, this article describes how several language teachers engaged with the power relations of the frequently shifting policy terrain of the programme. It concludes with a discussion of possibilities for teachers in similar situations who endeavour to take a critical approach to language teaching and explores some of the tactics they might employ against those policies which they see as incompatible with their practices.

scholarly journals A Day in the Life of Evil

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Boedy
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Ethnographic Study

Evil is a well-traveled word. It is a word that finds itself in many a discussion about many a subject. And it is not just an American trend; it is used in English-language countries in various ways, some mirroring its use in the States. And because evil is such a broadly used word, its rhetorical power can best be seen in part by its rhetorical scope. This is why this ethnographic study aims to analyze the uses of evil on the English language internet over the course of a day. The day chosen was October 24, 2016, situating the analysis with discourse about the 2016 American election, Halloween, but also other areas such as crime and religion. Such an analysis reveals the lack of elaborated definitions for evil but the powerful judgment it evokes in these different contexts.

scholarly journals Do You Want to Tell Your Own Narrative?”: How One Teacher and Her Students Engage in Resistance by Leveraging Community Cultural Wealth

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Martin-Beltrán ◽  
Angélica Montoya-Ávila ◽  
Andrés A. García ◽  
Nancy Canales
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Academic Success ◽  
English Language ◽  
Literacy Practices ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Community Cultural Wealth ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
School Students ◽  
Cultural Wealth ◽  
Immigrant Narrative

This qualitative case study offers a window into one classroom in which one Latinx English language arts teacher and her newcomer high school students tapped into community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) as they engaged in literacy practices to resist oppression, denounce discrimination, and strive for social justice. We draw upon Yosso’s (2005) framework of community cultural wealth (CCW) to understand how teachers can encourage resistance among historically marginalized students within the current racist and xenophobic political climate; and we examine how students respond to the teacher’s invitation to engage and develop their resistant capital through their writing. Data analyzed for this study include student letters, teacher interviews, and fieldnotes from one lesson, which was situated in a year-long ethnographic study. We found that the teacher cultivated resistant capital by tapping into students’ lived experiences to scrutinize oppressive rhetoric and persist in the face of adversity. Students seized the opportunity to resist the dominant anti-immigrant narrative by leveraging their resistant capital through counter-stories, assertions of experiential knowledge, and appeals to a moral imperative. Our study contributes to scholarship on CCW by exploring how CCW is utilized in a previously under-examined context and has implications for educators by offering examples of classroom practices that cultivate CCW and transform deficit discourses that threaten to impede academic success, especially among Latinx students.

scholarly journals Racist and Raciolinguistic Teacher Ideologies: When Bilingual Education is “Inherently Culturally Relevant” for Latinxs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura C. Chávez-Moreno
Keyword(s):  
English Language Learners ◽  
Bilingual Education ◽  
Dual Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
Culturally Relevant ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Racial Consciousness ◽  
Dual Language Program ◽  
Teacher Ideology

AbstractMany schools attempt to address the needs of “English-language learners,” who usually are Spanish-dominant Latinxs, by offering dual-language (DL) bilingual education. While undertaking a larger ethnographic study of one such secondary-level dual-language program, I examined how dual-language teachers understood the program as equitable for Latinxs. I found that teachers believed DL met Latinxs’ needs by providing Spanish-language/biliteracy schooling, which deemphasized the need for explicitly enhancing youths’ critical consciousness. This teacher ideology of assuming DL is “inherently culturally relevant” led to significant issues. For example, teachers believed DL would improve Latinxs’ academic achievement, but when teachers perceived Latinx achievement was not on par with White dual-language students’ outcomes, teachers made sense of Latinxs’ underperformance in DL through racist explanations and did not interrogate the program’s cultural relevance. Specifically, teachers pointed to the program not providing Latinxs the needed Spanish input even though the Latinx students self-identified as bilingual and were the “Spanish-dominant” students, and teachers pointed to Latinxs’ cultural and familial deficits. I argue teachers overlooked critical-racial consciousness as an important component of an equitable education. Implications include for teachers to cultivate their critical-racial consciousness, interrogate raciolinguistic ideologies, and define an equitable DL as centering critical-racial consciousness.

scholarly journals An ethnographic study on the “Use of English Language by the Students of Grade nine” in a Private Boarding School of Chitwan

2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-60
Author(s):  
Ananta Dhungana
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
English Language ◽  
Boarding School ◽  
International Communication ◽  
School Policy ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Medium Of Instruction ◽  
English Language Policy

English in Nepal is generally believed to be used only for international communication. The medium of instruction in private boarding schools is English & in most public schools are also practicing English medium classes. Most of the private schools have applied compulsory English language policy. English continues to play a crucial role in the communication among the students in those schools. This study has made an attempt to analyse the reason behind adopting compulsory English language policy and also tried to explore the trend of following the language policy by the students of grade nine. The study concludes that parents in particular and the society as a whole is responsible for the compulsory English language policy and the students of grade nine do not follow the school policy for exercising the freedom.

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