Dr Wang Zi

‘You look too happy to be a PhD student’ — Some autoethnographic reflections

Abstract: Dear postgraduate students, have you ever felt lost, lost motivation, or doubted yourself? You are not alone! In this workshop, I will use personal stories from my autoethnographic data – which includes personal journals and social media posts from 2017 to 2022 – and share reflections on my PhD journey. My reflections will focus on such aspects of doing a PhD degree as task and time management, work-life balance, and self-regulation of motivation. This workshop also includes interactive activities for you to get to know each other, reflect on your own motivational ups and downs, and try out some strategies I personally find useful. There will be a Q&A session towards the end of the workshop, so come along with your questions!

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Prof Richard Smith

Supporting teachers to research their classrooms

Abstract: In the field of language education, most PhD students, along with early-career and established academics, want their research to be of use, i.e. want their research to have a positive impact. However, we also know that teachers rarely read research theses or articles, finding them inaccessible and/or impenetrable. We begin, then, by considering whether/how this kind of barrier can be overcome.

Many suggestions seem to position teachers as consumers of research rather than engaging them in research to meet their own real needs. Different forms of participatory research will, then, be briefly discussed, from the point of view of how they can involve practising teachers as active agents.

The main focus of the workshop, however, will be on how teachers can be supported to do their own practitioner research – research by teachers, for teachers, as this has sometimes been sloganised in the context of the British Council’s Champion Teachers programme in Latin America. Lessons from this programme will be shared, in particular regarding how academic norms may need to be subverted if teachers are to do feasible, useful and empowering research (Smith & Rebolledo, 2018).

In this connection, how to mentor teacher-research has emerged as a particularly important area of interest within programmes like Champion Teachers and the Action Research Mentoring Scheme in India and Nepal (cf. Smith, 2020). The workshop ends with practical insights relating, specifically, to teacher-research mentoring.

Assuming that current PhD students are educational leaders of the future, the workshop should help them to conceive of engaging teachers as active agents in practitioner research and/or participatory research, not only attempting to engage them with academic research as consumers in years to come.

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Dr Annamaria Pinter

Some complex ethical issues when working with participants under 18 years of age

Abstract: In this workshop I will explore challenges that researchers face who decide to work with participants aged 18 or under. Contrasting priorities resulting from researchers’ desire to engage these learners fully on the one hand and to protect them on the other hand lead to some difficult dilemmas. I will explore both macro and micro-ethical issues while giving the workshop participants a chance to reflect on their own experiences (if they have any). The workshop will conclude with some guidelines for conducting ethical research with this population.

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Prof Fred Dervin

Climbing and descending the ‘impossible stairs’ of critical research on intercultural communication

Abstract: In my talk I use the metaphor of Penrose stairs (also known as the ‘impossible stairs’) to problematize the idea of criticality in research on intercultural communication today. The ‘impossible stairs’ consists of a two-dimensional staircase with four 90-degree turns which form a continuous loop. When one climbs the stairs, one could thus be descending them – and vice versa. This Sisyphean-looking illusion is called ‘impossible’ since it could not possibly exist. Here I want to use it as a (positive) metaphor to guide us in thinking further about some of the problems often found behind claims of criticality in research on intercultural communication, where the word ‘critical’ now appears to be omnipresent. I ask a certain number of questions for us to consider: What might it mean to do critical research on such a complex phenomenon and object of research and education as interculturality (a term I prefer to intercultural communication)? Inversely, what would doing a-critical research on intercultural communication refer to (no one ever declares that they do such research)? If most research on intercultural communication is critical, why do we still use the adjective? What seems to be hiding behind certain claims of criticality, which appear to be ‘biting their own tails’ and e.g. essentializing essentialism? How to promote perspectives that might lead to criticality of criticality, accepting to climb and descend the ‘impossible stairs’ of criticality? How could criticality of criticality reinforce interculturalizing interculturality? What is the role of multilingualism in this matter? I am hoping that my talk will make us unthink and rethink together what to do with the ‘new normal’ of criticality.

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Prof Claire Kramsch

Language education and symbolic power: Dialogic perspectives

Abstract: Despite the ever greater ease with which we can connect and interact with others through face-to-face and online encounters, and despite the ease of access to past and present texts online, real dialogue with persons or texts seems to have become more and more difficult and risky. Exchange of information, yes, but dialogue? In our era of misinformation, fake news, politically correct slogans, and armed conflicts, how can we continue to teach language for communicative, or even intercultural competence? What should the goal of foreign language education be nowadays? Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of “symbolic power” (Bourdieu 1981) and Bakhtin’s “dialogism” (Holquist 1990), I will try to recuperate the notions of power and dialogue from their all too facile reference to “participation and interaction” in the classroom to deeper principles of relationality (Kramsch & Zhang 2019) and symbolic action (Kramsch 2021) that are essential for students to understand the multilingual world around them.

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Slides are available here.

Prof Theo van Leeuwen

Resemiotization – an organizational semiotic approach

Abstract: This paper will introduce the emerging area of organizational semiotics, sketching its origins in collaborations between multimodal discourse analysts and scholars from the field of organization and management studies, and outlining its agenda.

It will then argue for resemiotization (Iedema, 2001, 2003) as a key approach to organizational semiotics, which needs to combine ethnography and semiotic analysis, as the stages of the resemiotization process result from the way organizational practices are organized and managed, and manifest themselves in particular uses of particular semiotic resources and in the discursive transformations this engenders.

The approach will be exemplified by a study of the practice of producing sexual and reproductive health information resources in a non-government Family Planning organization. Here written documents couched in specialized language are first resemiotized in ‘Easy English’ and in design briefs for graphic designers and audio-visual producers, and then into richly multimodal web pages, printed brochures, posters and videos produced for specific communities including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities and young people in both these categories. Analysis will focus on the way the organization’s resemiotization practices make sexual and reproductive information more accessible and culturally appropriate, but also transform the information through specific deletions, substitutions, additions and rearrangements.

The paper will end by showing how resemiotization analysis may benefit organizations with respect to a range of practices.

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Dr Judith Hanks

Transcending dialogues in language teacher development: Exploring practices for wellbeing and quality of life

Abstract: Traditionally, dialogues of research in applied linguistics have positioned teachers, teacher educators and learners (i.e. practitioners) as objects or subjects of research rather than as co-researchers capable of investigating praxis. But what if we transcend such dialogues? In this plenary talk I introduce the principles of the Exploratory Practice framework and relate these to practitioners researching in a variety of contexts. I discuss ways of investigating classroom language learning and teaching, using our normal pedagogic practices as investigative tools and multimodal methods of inquiry.

By inviting practitioners to puzzle about their teaching/learning experiences, we can co-produce research into language learning/teaching practices. Such insights from engaged practitioners are crucial to developing our understandings in applied linguistics and language teacher development alike. Referring to teacher development projects in Northern Cyprus, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UK, I chart the challenges and benefits of teachers investigating their puzzles, with emphasis on mutually developing understandings. I illustrate the potential of ‘Sticky Objects’ as a way in to explorations of emotions. Drawing on analysis of multimodal accounts using daily life items as stimuli for positive emotions, I argue that rigid/traditional views can be questioned, as practitioners realize they can puzzle and investigate in productive, creative and motivating ways. We are constantly engaged in negotiating, defining, rejecting, and aspiring to, cultural and intercultural norms as we transcend old dialogues and create new ones. This is a springboard for exploring the ‘new normal’ for applied linguistics and language teacher development in the future.

Full speaker biography is available hereLink opens in a new window.

Slides are available here.