Dialogic Approaches to TESOL

Where the Ginkgo Tree Grows

Shelley Wong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780805855975
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135600617
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book locates dialogic pedagogy within the history of TESOL approaches and methods in which the communicative approach has been the dominant paradigm. Dialogic inquiry in the form of story telling, oral histories, and knowledge from the ground up and from the margins has much to offer the field. In dialogic approaches, the teacher and students learn in community and the students' home languages and cultures, their families and communities, are seen as resources.

Dialogic Approaches to TESOL: Where the Ginkgo Tree Grows explores teacher research, feminist contributions to voice, social identity and dialogic pedagogy, and the role of teachers, students, families, and communities as advocates and change agents. After a brief history of TESOL methods and an introduction to dialogic pedagogy, four features of dialogic approaches to TESOL are identified and discussed: learning in community, problem-posing, learning by doing, and who does knowledge serve? The main text in each chapter considers a single topic related to the concept of dialogic pedagogy. Branching text leads to related discussions without losing the main point of the chapter. This structure allows readers to become well-rooted in each component of dialogic pedagogy and to "branch out" into deeper philosophic understandings as well as actual practices across a range of contexts.

Dialogic Approaches to TESOL offers a place for dialogue and reflection on the prospects for transforming educational institutions to serve those who have historically been excluded and marginalized. It provides questions, frameworks, and resources for those who are just beginning in the field and for U.S.-based educators who want to bring critical multicultural and multilingual perspectives into language arts, reading and literacy education.

1 Political and Philosophical Roots of TESOL

DOI: 10.4324/9780203929155-1

Taproot, n. the main root of a plant, which grows directly downward with small branch roots spreading out from it. —Webster’s 20th Century Dictionary Unabridged, 2nd ed., 1983

The roots of the ginkgo provide a foundation for the tree. Each tree has numerous roots, ranging from large to microscopic. Some roots are not essential for the life of the tree; if you cut them, others will grow back to provide nourishment and support. But each tree has taproots that enable the tree to get water, minerals, and nutrients from deep in the soil and to position itself vertically to grow towards sunlight. If you cut a taproot, the tree will not survive.

The roots of pedagogy lie in larger social and historical forces such as political and economic structures, and they center around the question, “What purpose does education serve?” This question can be divided into two possibilities, which in any classroom in actual schools become mixed up with one another: Should education replicate hierarchical social structures, as they currently exist? Or should education seek to change these structures to allow every person to participate fully in a democratic society with liberty and justice for all (Edelsky, 1991; Wiley, 1996)?

History includes many examples of education that reproduced oppressive social structures (Baugh, 1999; Collins & Blot, 2003). Before emancipation in the United States, it was against the law to teach enslaved people to read. Indigenous people such as the Alaska Eskimos, Indians and Aleuts, Lakota and the Navajo in the United States and Canada, the Sami in Norway, and the Aborigines in Australia were put in English-speaking boarding schools and were beaten or had their mouths washed with soap for speaking their native languages (Crawford, 1998; Jordan, 1988; McClanahan, 1986). Most universities did not admit women in equal numbers to men until well into the 20th century; at the beginning of the 21st century, women remain underrepresented in positions of academic leadership in university, professional, and graduate programs around the world (Balderrama, Texeira, & Valdez, 2004). In middle schools and high schools in which there are equal numbers of girls and boys, what is privileged as “natural,” “normal,” and “right” in the classroom and curriculum silences, shadows, and hides certain voices with respect to class, race, and gender (Weis & Fine, 1993).

The replication of unequal social structures through education continues (Apple, 1982; Chomsky & Macedo, 2000). Although university personnel recognize the cultural bias of entrance examinations (e.g., SAT and GRE), these test scores nonetheless remain significant to admissions processes (Haney, 1993). Kozol (1991) pointed out that in the United States, within the same district there are different schools for the rich and the poor. In predominantly European American middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods there are attractive, well-maintained public schools, with well-lit classrooms, state-of-the-art libraries and computer labs, manicured lawns, and well-equipped gymnasiums with clean locker rooms. Public schools in poor and racial minority neighborhoods have metal detectors, unsanitary and smelly toilets with no doors, leaky roofs and unsafe structures, outdated books, and no computers. Even within the same school, tracking and sorting of students into ability levels produces disparities between the quality of education provided to the children of upper-middle-class families and those of poor and working-class and racial minority families (Oakes, 1985; Harklau, 1994).

Drawing from the U.S. Bureau of the Census data, Sorlorzano and Ornelas (2002) showed that out of every 100 Chicana/Latina¹ students who begin elementary school, 56 will drop out before graduating from high school:

¹ Solorzano and Ornelas used Chicana/Latina as a gender-neutral term to be applied to both women and men. Chicanas/Latinas are defined as female and male persons of Mexican and Latin American ancestry living in the United States, irrespective of immigration or generation status.

• Only 44 will go on to graduate from high school.
• Only 24 will pursue some form of postsecondary education; 13 continue on to community colleges and 11 will go to a 4-year institution.
• Of the 13 who enter a community college, only 1 will transfer to a 4-year institution.
• Only 6 Chicana students will graduate with a baccalaureate degree.
• Less than 1 will receive a doctorate degree.

Differences in the treatment of rich and poor children result in dramatic differences in incarceration rates for drug-related offenses. Although the majority of drug users are White, a disproportionate number of minorities are arrested and put in jail. In the United States there are more African American young men in prison than in college. Differences with respect to race and class background are reflected in who gets elected to public office. In the entire history of the United States there have been only two African American senators.²

² There are different theories to account for the differential incarceration rates and differences in who goes to the university. For critiques of biological determinism, see Gould (1981) and Selden (1999).

What does it mean for education to help people gain access to economic success and political influence? To do so would mean realizing the dream of framers of the U.S. Constitution, wherein all people—who are created equal—have the opportunity to make for themselves a life of liberty, in which they can pursue happiness rather than remain at the margins, scraping for survival.³ This sounds like an educational ideal with which everyone can agree, and yet since the institutionalization of this ideal through the French and American revolutions more than two centuries ago, serious discrepancies remain. French sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Claude Passeron found that more French university students came from the middle- and upper-class families than from working-class families and that students from rural areas were underrepresented (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). The patterns they found in France exist around the world (Heller & Martin-Jones, 2001; Lin, 2001 b). The democratic ideal of education for all is not easily attained, for complex reasons that become apparent in this chapter and throughout this book.

³ The ideals of the American Revolution for freedom from tyranny and “no taxation without representation” did not include the indigenous people, the Native American Indians. Women were excluded from the democratic rights, as well as African slaves and their descendants. Similarly, the French Revolution ideals of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” were limited to men with property. Excluded were women, landless peasants, and the emerging urban proletariat, who did not own property.

How do we understand the role of language in the creation and maintenance of institutions as well as what it means to teach another language, particularly the “power language,” English? How do we understand the forces within and among our educational institutions that replicate injustice as well as the possibilities for ending oppression? How do we understand the possibilities for action that can be taken by individuals, especially teachers? This chapter and the succeeding chapters address TESOL in the broadest way, drawing from a variety of perspectives, including political and philosophical theories (e.g., Marx, Freire, and Mao) that account for teaching and learning in the context of social and political liberation; dialogic perspectives on language, literature, and linguistics (e.g., Bakhtin); sociocultural psychology (Vygotsky); critical race and post-colonial approaches that question racism and differential treatment with respect to the historical legacies of the descendants of slaves, plantation workers, and colonized and indigenous people whose language and accents are respected or discriminated against (Canagarafiah, 1999; Lippi-Green, 1997; Matsuda, 1991; Vandrick, 2002); and feminist and post-structural perspectives on gender, race, language, and identity (Collins, 1991; Greene, 1986, hooks, 1981, 1994; Lather, 1991; Lin, 2001 a; Luke & Gore, 1992; Norton, 2000; Pavlenko, 2001, 2004).

TEACHING METHODOLOGY

Teaching begins with methodology, which has roots in philosophy, politics, psychology, and various understandings of the nature of language. Although we may think of method as a series of steps taken within a given class session, we find that these steps can change drastically (or even not so drastically, but with a greater deliberation) based on which roots are identified as the taproots.

Methodology in TESOL includes the theory and practice of “curriculum and instruction,” “teaching and learning” at several levels, from the everyday planning of classes to understanding how one’s own teaching fits into the larger context of linguistic, psychological, social, and political constructs. It includes study of syllabus design, activities and assignments, selecting, adapting and creating appropriate teaching materials, and evaluating and assessing student progress, as well as raising teachers’ awareness of our own learning, as we reflect on how to better meet the needs of our students.

Clifford Prator (1979) provided three questions or “cornerstones” (Fig. 1.1) to consider in developing TESOL methodology.⁴ These three questions are taproots in preparing to teach ESOL students in both EFL and ESL contexts:

⁴ Dr. Prator wrote “Cornerstones of Method” in 1964–1965 when he was on sabbatical leave from UCLA. It appeared as a chapter in Celce-Murcia and McIntosh (1979).

1. What is known about the nature of the language?
2. What is known about the nature of the learner?
3. What are the aims of instruction?

FIG. 1.1. Prator’s three cornerstones of method.

For Prator, the field of linguistics was related to his first question, “What is known about the nature of language?” and the field of psychology was related to the second question, “What is known about the nature of the learner?” As we show later, the emphasis on psychology was in keeping with Prator’s time. Today we would point to the value of interdisciplinary perspectives from anthropology, sociology, political economy, and history to help us understand the nature of the learner. Although the answers and the fields of study relevant to Prator’s questions might have changed with time, his questions remain central to TESOL methodology.

As a teacher educator, Prator trained his students to determine how to teach EFL or ESL by inquiring into the nature of their students and the purposes for which they needed to learn the language. He encouraged teachers to use a flexible and pragmatic approach to language teaching by asking, “What is the aim of instruction?” This question was student centered. Like the Council of Europe (Wilkins, 1976), which developed notional functional approaches to the teaching of foreign languages, Prator’s cornerstones of method was rooted in needs analysis, a careful, systematic account of the purposes for which students were studying a foreign language.

In surveying the history of foreign and second language methods, Prator observed a tendency toward “violent swings in the pendulum,” citing examples such as the role of rules, the use of phonetic symbols, and vocabulary control:

A first dip into the literature on methods ... is likely to be a puzzling, even a disheartening, experience. In fact one highly touted “method” or “approach” has succeeded another in the favor of educators, and the proponents of each have tended to deny the validity of all that preceded. The use of the mother tongue in the foreign language classroom has been successively emphasized, banned, required, and barely tolerated. (p. 5)

Prator wanted teachers to know about the history of teaching approaches, and to not get caught up in the passing fad of the moment. He thought that teachers should become familiar with many approaches and methods and make informed decisions concerning which methods to utilize for the benefit of their students. In that respect, he fostered a ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Personal Prologue
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Political and Philosophical Roots of TESOL
• 2 Under the Ginkgo Tree: Learning in Community
• 3 Taste of the Ginkgo Nut: Problem Posing
• 4 Learn by Doing
• 5 Memory: Knowledge for Whom?
• 6 Conclusion
• Appendix
• Glossary
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index