Participatory Action Research Strategies in the Foreign Language Classroom: from communication to

knowledge production

Luis S. Villacañas de Castro Agustín Reyes Torres

Universitat de València, Spain

Dpt. Language and literacy education

5th Symposium on FL teaching, Universität Bremen

1. Context of the research 2. Theoretical framework and aims 3. Methodology 4. Results 5. Discussion

1. Context of the research

• University module: “Culture in foreign language teaching”, Universitat de València (Spain), 2013-2014 academic year.

• Subject curriculum: understand the role of the cultural variables in the FL classroom from a pedagogical perspective, and know how to handle them best to foster FL learning.

• 40 student-teachers (20-23 years old), future primary education EFL teachers, middle-high class.

• 11 Erasmus students from Germany (2) and Poland (9), 29 Spanish students. • Students EFL level around a B2

Subject’s key competences

• ‘Analyze and integrate in a critical manner the most relevant issues of today’s society that affect education at school and in the family’

• ‘Design, plan and assess the teaching and learning processes in multicultural contexts’

• ‘Become familiar with some of the most relevant aspects of the foreign culture’

• ‘Know how to act as a mediator between native and foreign cultures and languages’ (from the Subject guide)

2. Theoretical framework and aims

Researcher aims: For the subject: Design a teaching strategy which allowed students to improve their English at the same time as they critically analyzed their diverse cultural backgrounds and developed, in the process, competences related to cultural awareness. For EFL education: Need to find an additional criterion to determine the educational worth and interest of communicative FL tasks, which sometimes were uninteresting or cognitively undemanding. Strategy: adopt forms of expression and research typically employed in Participatory Action Research projects.

Participatory Action Research

Participatory Action Research invites students to act as researchers of their own lives through projects that orbit around issues connected to their own reality.

“PAR provides opportunities for people to insert themselves into the research process as subjects of their own history.” (McIntyre, 2008, p. 67)

Democratic take on research (Cammarota & Fine, 2008, p. 5): learners are allowed to make decisions on every single aspect of the research goals and process: methodologies, different “kinds of knowing” adapted to learners’ language and culture, research outcomes, etc.

Connections between PAR and Language education

1. The work of Paulo Freire: “reading the word and the world”. 2. E. Morrell (2006) provided evidence of the improvement of literacy achievement of ethnic and linguistic minority groups through involvement in critical PAR. 3. Jim Cummins’ (2001)“Literacy Expertise Framework”, reformulated in Cummins, Early and Stille (2011): focus on meaning, language and use.

3. Methodology

Research strategies through which PAR proves its democratic take on research were used throughout this module in a number of workshops orchestrated to foster first-person critical cultural awareness 1st workshop: photo-voices (3 Feb 2014 - 26 Feb) 2nd workshop: poems (24 March - 10 April) 3rd workshop: monologues and manifestos (14 April – 21 May) Pedagogy: Socio-constructivist and transformative pedagogical orientations. Teaching strategy: expression, knowledge-production and discussion lay at the heart of the curriculum, not content transmission.

“The pedagogy [of PAR] is specifically research such that participants conduct a critical scientific inquiry that includes establishing key research questions and methods to answer them, such as participant observation, qualitative interviews and questionnaires, film and speak outs. PAR follows and extends principles of validity and reliability by challenging, for instance, where expert validity and construct validity live.” (Cammarotta and Fine, 2008, p. 5)

Workshop 1. What is culture for me? Photovoice

“One creative-based method for generating knowledge that both participant groups engaged in was photovoice—an approach to investigating phenomena in which people utilize photography to raise awareness and make change. […] Once documented, [participants] crafted texts to accompany their photographs, thus providing outsiders with insiders’ knowledge about aspects of their communities”. (McIntyre, 2008, p. 22)

Based on McIntyre’s (2008) PAR projects, and on Freire’s (2000) cultural cycles which aroused discussion around slides. Images used to combat cultural bias and prejudice (Wolpert, 2007) Factual information (photos) was connected with conceptual frameworks (text and discussion)

Culture

GT

GT

GT GT

GT

GT

PHOTO

Voice

decoding

recoding

De/recoding

Define 4/5 Generative Themes recoding

GT1

TEXT: Your text should describe the image in terms of the generative themes you have chosen; then you should connect it to the wider issue of culture, and then finally suggest practical ways in which the problems associated with those generative themes could be dealt with and – maybe – solved.

A3

PHOTO

VOICE

GT2 GT4 GT3

Generative Themes: abstract concepts that help us define culture.

Workshop 2. Poetry Use poetry to contrast different cultural situations and the feelings associated to them, as in Schlessman (2012). Poetry as a way to sharpen and develop learners’ cultural voices. Poetry in EFL can be used as a “private dialect” that allows students to “take ownership of English”, and create investment on the part of the audience (Norton, 2011).

Workshop 3. Monologues and Manifestos

Monologues and manifestos were written in order to reflect on culture and injustice. Monologues were inspired by Class enemy by Nigel Williams (1978). Manifestos were inspired by Au’s (2000) workshop on the Black Panthers’ Ten Point Program.

Photovoices, poems, and monologues were shared in read-arounds in class, and discussions ensued through which the students reflected and analyzed the cultural standpoints reflected on their works, while the teacher acted as a moderator that made sure that quality standards were respected (McKernan, 2007, p. 2). Student participation was assessed on the grounds of their ability to • respect and appreciate sources of cultural wealth different from

their own, and also • engage in forms of cultural production that allowed them to

critically analyze their own cultural background.

4. Results (only Photovoices)

Photovoices explored a wide variety of topics: indigenous cultures in Latin America from a tourist’s perspective, immigration in Spain from Latin America, ethnic and cultural diversity in Spanish schools, the situation of Spanish education and health system, the lives of gypsy communities in Valencia, Erasmus life as an example of peaceful multiculturalism, the cultural role of children’s literature in education, Valencian folklore, Spain’s transition from rural to urban life and its impact on culture, poverty and its causes, cultural production and distribution in a market-oriented society, and globalization and universal culture. Immediate/local cultural backgrounds were connected with foreign ones. In texts and discussions, local culture was analyzed and interpreted in the light of social/global dynamics. Erasmus students in class worked together with Spanish ones.

Think about what culture is for you and, then, look at the photo. Does it represent what culture is for you? I guess not.

What we can probably see in the photo is that those men are immigrants. They look as if they were from Latin America. In fact, they are playing a typical instrument which can be found there– the ‘charango’. But they are not playing it for fun, or in order to earn some money. There are no clues that show this. Maybe they are just having lunch on a bench, during their free time, and playing some music before they get on with their work.

Think about culture again. Can you imagine yourself, in another country, during lunchtime, on a workday, resting on a bench, playing some music? I guess not, again.

Let me think about it louder. If I wonder what culture is for me, and look at the photograph, I can guess we are

from different cultures. I can’t imagine myself immigrating to find a job. And if I do it, I wish it would be for a

better job. But did they? Do their jobs allow them to have lunch on a simple bar, with a simple table and two

simple chairs? Well, it doesn’t. Do they wish to be separated from their households in order to find a better life by

having lunch on a bench? I guess not. If I were one of them, I would work so hard to get away from this situation that I

would probably spend my lunchtime on a bench, turning one of my habits into a medium to earn some extra money. Why not by playing the charango?

Have you ever wondered how hard being immigrants is? […] Now, let us try to think about culture one more time. What is culture for me? How can

I show my culture to other people? Is it hard or easy? [By P. Plader & and M. Alcañiz]

“I really liked this workshop for many reasons. I did it with Paulina, an Erasmus student, and from then on we have spent some time together, to improve our speaking in English, know both cultures, etc., and this makes one be culturally richer. Another reason is that I really liked the way we began the course by knowing how each of us understood culture on our own. And the last reason is that when we took the photo we spent some time talking with the men of the photo and they showed us a reality we weren’t used to, a really difficult one, and this made us question some aspects of our own life that we hadn’t had taken into account before” [M. Alcañiz, during the final reflection on the exam]

5. Discussion PAR strategies allowed the EFL researchers to fulfill both of their aims: • PAR strategies afforded a teaching strategy for students to improve their

English at the same time as they expressed themselves, actualized their own cultural backgrounds through art and language, and compared and critically analyzed the latter to develop competences related to cultural awareness

• The opportunity to produce knowledge was perceived as something

significant and valuable in itself which could enrich communicative FL tasks. • This is in keeping with approaches to EFL education which respect

learners’ true cognitive level (the one they show in their L1) and organize educational situations in the FL classroom that imply cognitive challenges. (Cummins, Early, Leoni & Stille, pp. 153-154; Gibbons, 2006).

Insofar as PAR initiatives are learner-centered and rely on creative and non-elitist forms of language expression, they are well-suited to enrich the FL language classroom and create meaningful and worthwhile learning contexts. • PAR and Task Based Language Learning: knowledge production

should be considered as an additional variable to design and decide on the significance of communicative language tasks.

The challenge is to adapt these perspective to primary EFL education contexts, something which is already being done and reflected upon during the practicum placements.

Concerning the inter-cultural dimension in EFL education, photovoices are a perfect resource to exchange with other students in foreign institutions, who can provide their own local take on cultural phenomena, and thus compare them on equal grounds – as they did in class.

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Freire, P. (2000), Education for critical consciousness. In A. M. Araujo Freire and D. Macedo (Eds.), The Paulo Freire reader (pp. 80-108). New York: Continuum.

McIntyre, A. (2008). Participatory Action Research. Los Angeles: SAGE. McKernan, J. (2007). The action inquiry seminar: Education in democratic classrooms. College Quarterly,

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Schlessman, E. (2012). Aquí y allá. Exploring our lives through poetry—here and there. In L. Christensen, M. Hansen, B. Paterson, E. Schliessman, and D. Watson (Eds.), Rethinking Elementary Education (pp. 113-118). Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools.

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