CONVIVIAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING AMID THE CRISIS OF SUSTAINABILITY: RECLAIMING A “LANGUAGE-AS-COMMONS” ORIENTATION IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
Open Access
- Author:
- Katunich, John
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 01, 2019
- Committee Members:
- Mark Thomas Kissling, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Mark Thomas Kissling, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Dana Lynn Stuchul, Committee Member
Elizabeth A Smolcic, Committee Member
Meredith Christine Doran, Outside Member - Keywords:
- commons
convivial
English language teaching
narrative inquiry
sustainability - Abstract:
- In an era of sustainability crises, including climate change, war, and the accelerating loss of biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity, those working in the field of teaching English (including English language teachers and teacher educators) must engage in “honest bookkeeping” (Orr, 1992, p. 5) to ethically account for the complicity of English and English teaching in these present crises. The field of English language teaching has for the last half-decade been guided by root metaphors of commodification, consumerism and progress (Bowers, 2006) that have limited the field’s ability to grapple with this complicity, by framing language largely as a resource that is subject to enclosure and privatization. In response to this dominant orientation toward language as a resource, I argue that the field of TESOL undertake a radical re-thinking of the root metaphors that inform our teaching, teacher knowledge, and teaching practice. The work of social critic and historian Ivan Illich (1926-2002), in particular Illich’s 1973 work Tools for Conviviality, forms the basis for a proposed, alternative, “language-as-commons” orientation. Such a convivial, language-as-commons orientation treats standard English as a counterproductive, radical monopoly over communication, rejects the view of language as a “need” to be satisfied, and advocates for vernacular language to be integrated into translingual practices and pedagogies in language learning classrooms. This project examines how one pre-service teacher, Josie, draws on her own teacher knowledge to make sense of conviviality and a language commons in her own teaching and learning to teach. Using a narrative inquiry methodology (Clandinin, 2013; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990), a narrative of Josie emerges, showing both the prospects and limitations facing a radical re-thinking of English language teaching that is oriented around reclaiming conviviality and the commons.