27.3302, Review: Applied Ling; Socioling: Barcelos, Kalaja, Aro, Ruohotie-Lyhty (2015)

Wed Aug 17 15:21:24 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-3302. Wed Aug 17 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.3302, Review: Applied Ling; Socioling: Barcelos, Kalaja, Aro, Ruohotie-Lyhty (2015)

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Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2016 11:21:08
From: Andrea Lypka [alypka at mail.usf.edu]
Subject: Beliefs, Agency and Identity in Foreign Language Learning and Teaching

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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-5162.html

AUTHOR: Paula  Kalaja
AUTHOR: Ana-Maria Ferreira Barcelos
AUTHOR: Mari  Aro
AUTHOR: Maria  Ruohotie-Lyhty
TITLE: Beliefs, Agency and Identity in Foreign Language Learning and Teaching
PUBLISHER: Palgrave Macmillan
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Andrea Eniko Lypka, University of South Florida

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

Current second language acquisition (SLA) research on identity and agency has
been guided by poststructuralist and sociocontextual lenses (Menard-Warwick,
2004; Norton 2013; Ollerhead, 2012, 2016). Moving this research agenda
forward, “Beliefs, Agency and Identity in Foreign Language Learning and
Teaching”, coauthored by Paula Kalaja, Ana Maria F. Barcelos, Mari Aro, and
Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty, is a collection of seven studies that explore the
intersection between second language (L2) learner and teacher beliefs, agency,
and identity in the field SLA. The authors, experts and researchers in this
field, claim that the interrelationship between these key concepts in L2
learning and teaching is integral to SLA. 

Written for researchers, novice and experienced pedagogues, and students, the
ten chapters in this volume bring together the interrelated and dynamic
concepts of beliefs, agency, and identity and explore these overlapping
constructs using innovative, interdisciplinary data collection, analysis
methods, and theoretical frameworks. The seven studies in Chapters 3-9 differ
in theoretical frameworks, data collection methods, analyses, participants,
foci, and contexts. However, they all adopt a longitudinal, qualitative
research design and contextual approach to reveal evolving L2 learning or
teaching trajectories from an emic or insider perspective.

This work is divided into five parts: introduction, L2 learning for young
adults, university students, and L2 teachers, and conclusion. Seven studies
are presented under the headings “Learning English as a foreign language: From
school children to young adults,” “Studying foreign languages: From first year
university students to graduates,” and “Teaching foreign languages: From
novice teachers to experienced professionals.” The initial two chapters are of
particular interest for novice scholars; these chapters provide an overview of
the book, synthesize relevant research, and discuss key concepts of beliefs,
agency, and identity in SLA. The research participants in Chapters 3 and 4 are
young learners; and Chapters 5, 6, and 7 are dedicated to older L2 learners
and users, including students of foreign languages and student teachers.
Chapters 8 and 9 are concerned with novice and experienced language teachers’
perspectives about L2 learning and teaching. The final chapter summarizes the
studies in this volume, including the practical, methodological, and
theoretical evaluations of these studies, concludes with a discussion of the
limitations and contributions, and provides recommendations for future
research. 

Viewing beliefs, agency, and identity as social constructs negotiated in
everyday, discursive practices, the studies in this volume reveal the key
concepts as longitudinal, contextual, and interconnected. The authors
illustrate the evolution of these constructs from cognitive, sociocultural,
and anthropological approaches in the contexts of relevant SLA studies and
theories to argue these terms have evolved from being fixed, individual traits
into dynamic, contradictory, and fluid concepts bound by space and time,
discursively enacted and negotiated. For example, initially connected to
learner autonomy and intrinsic motivation, within sociocultural approaches to
SLA, L2 learner agency has evolved into “learners’ ways of making informed
choices, which can be constrained by the social contexts” (p. 19). Beliefs are
“the personal meanings assigned by the learners and teachers to various
aspects of learning or teaching foreign languages’ (p. 5). Identity, “people’s
understanding of their relationship to the world” (Norton, 1997), is a
multidimensional, fragmented, relational, performed, and contradictory
process. By examining the links between these concepts, the studies in this
volume highlight the complexities of L2 learning and teaching. Inquiry on the
interplay between beliefs, agency, and identity in school and out-of school
contexts and from an emic perspective is important because it helps reveal how
power relations and access to linguistic resources are discursively negotiated
across time and space. 

The seven studies are presented in Chapters 3-9. In Chapters 3 and 4, Mari Aro
presents two related studies that track the English learning experiences,
identities, and agency of young learners in Finland over the course of 14
years. Analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with participants from
the age of 7 to the age of 21 reveals that learners’ beliefs and agency have
been initially linked to their student identities, family, teaching practices
in school, and English as a lingua franca ideology. For example, Emma viewed
that the literacy-based teaching practices conflicted with her multimodal
learning preference, and restricted her L2 learning. In contrast to Emma’s L2
learning trajectory, Helen perceived that her learning process has been
aligned with the teaching practices. However, over time, participants could
reposition their L2 speaker and user identities and learning in the context of
their current needs and individual experiences. 

The next three chapters expand the research focus to university students of
English and other foreign languages. In Chapter 5 Ana Maria F. Barcelos
discusses six student teachers’ professional identity development, agency,
beliefs and motivations to become EFL teachers in Brazil. The analysis of
written narratives, open-ended questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews
collected over the course of three years reveals that becoming a teacher is a
complex, sometimes contradictory process. Participants’ initial low investment
in becoming teachers was linked to extrinsic factors, including limited
financial rewards, students’ poor behavior, and the bad working environment.
At the beginning of their teaching careers, participants started to draw on
intrinsic factors, such as how they are perceived by their students in the
classroom. 

In a related study, Paula Kalaja compares student teachers’ beliefs about
their L1 (Finnish or Swedish) and L2 (English) at a university in Finland from
a discursive lens. The analysis of three questionnaires and interviews
collected over five years suggests that though initially participants
perceived that their linguistic resources encompassed both languages, over
time, when their identities have shifted from language learners to language
users, participants perceived English as part of their professional identities
and related more instrumental values to English, such as using English to
communicate in international contexts, finding employment or traveling. 
Building on SLA studies that used visual data (for example, Giroir, 2014;
Graziano, 2011; Nikula & Pitkänen-Huhta, 2008) in Chapter 7, Kalaja taps into
the affordances of multimodal narratives to explore student teachers’
identities and beliefs about their foreign language teaching. In contrast to
their past literacy-driven language learning experiences, the visual
narratives reveal the preference toward using authentic activities and
multimodal sources in their future classroom and connecting course content to
students’ lives. In such future language teaching contexts the participants
envisioned the teacher as guide. 

Studies by Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty in Chapters 8 and 9 shift from multimodal
narratives to a focus on written narratives and from student-teachers to
novice teachers at the beginning of their teaching practice. The author
examines 11 female novice teachers’ beliefs about foreign language teaching
and agency using interviews and reflections collected in years 1, 2, 3, and 4
at work in Finland. Results suggest that most participants’ professional
identities were predominantly mediated by their beliefs about teaching. They
viewed the school environment as restrictive to their professional development
and positioned themselves as dependent on standards and less autonomous as
teachers. The follow-up study in Chapter 9 examines five experienced L2
teachers’ narratives about their experiences in L2 teaching and evolving
professional identities. Findings highlight the relational aspects of L2
teaching; the teachers developed teaching practices and strategies by
positioning themselves in relation to their beliefs about teaching, emotions,
school environment, and students.

EVALUATION

The book furthers the field of SLA by adopting a transdisciplinary and
multimodal perspective to examine the links between literate L2 learners’ and
users’ beliefs, agency, and identity in non-US contexts. It is also unique
that it examines SLA from the perspectives of language learners and users. The
contribution of this volume is that it adopts a longitudinal approach to track
shifts in beliefs, agency, and identity. 

The book is well-organized, detailed, and readable. Each chapter follows the
same organization: background, aims of the study, data collection and
analysis, findings and discussion, and conclusion. Chapters 3 through 9
conclude with a summary in table format of the particular study. Chapters
include both written and visual summaries of the information provided. For
example, Chapter 1 summarizes the seven studies and highlights the common
traits and differences in these studies. Chapter 2 concludes with a table
format summary of the seven studies reported in this volume. The table shown
on page 24 informs the reader about key issues addressed, participants and
contexts, and methodological approaches. Specifically, among the key issues
addressed include development of beliefs about L2 learning, development of L2
learner agency, development of beliefs about L2 teaching and motivation to
teach, development of beliefs about first and second languages, and L2 teacher
identity development. Participants in these studies range from school children
in Finland, English and Portuguese majors at a university in Brazil,
preservice teachers in an MA programme for experienced language teachers in
Finland). Data collection methods include interviews, learner-created
drawings, and questionnaires. For example, in Chapter 7, the primary data
consists of participant-created drawings and verbal commentaries collected
over the course of five years at a university in Finland. In addition to a
detailed overview of data collection methods, the data analysis frameworks
include content analysis (Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 7), discourse analysis
(Chapters 6 and 8), and narrative analysis (Chapter 9).  The chapters also
provide theoretical approaches that guide the studies, including contextual
approach and dialogical lenses (Chapters 3, 4), person-in-context relational
view of motivation (Ushioda, 2009) (Chapter 5), contextual and discursive
(Chapters 6 and 7), sociocultural theory (Chapter 7), and ecological theory
(Chapter 8). An in-depth discussion of these studies is offered in the
appropriate chapters. 

One of the shortcomings of the book is that it focuses on literate learners’
SLA. Though much has been written about literate L2 learners’ identity, and
agency (e.g., Norton, 2000, 2013), compared to literate learners, low literacy
L2 learners’ SLA has been less explored. The affordances of the multimodal and
multilingual narratives as data sources could have been explored more
in-depth. It might be worthwhile to explain the affordances of the
multilingual interview excerpts. Also, it might be relevant to discuss how
multimodal narratives in qualitative research design as visual sources expand
on linguistic resources and create potential for meaning making by engage the
individual’s agency in more complex ways (Kress, 2010).

In “Beliefs, Agency and Identity in Foreign Language Learning and Teaching”
the authors have provided research-based evidence on the interrelated nature
of beliefs, agency, and identity in SLA. Findings of these studies further the
call for examining L2 learning practices beyond academic contexts, in
multimodal discourses with a focus on learners’ needs and using a longitudinal
approach. I would recommend this book to researchers and graduate students
interested in conducting qualitative research using multimodal data sources.

REFERENCES

Giroir, S. (2014) (a). “Even Though I Am Married, I Have a Dream”:
Constructing L2 gendered identities through narratives of departure and
arrival. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 13(5), 301-318.
doi:10.1080/15348458.2014.958037.

Graziano, K. J. (2011). Working with English language learners: Preservice
teachers and photovoice. International Journal of Multicultural Education,
13(1). 

Kress GR (2010) Multimodality. A Social-Semiotic Approach to Contemporary
Communication. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Menard-Warwick, J. (2004). “I always had the desire to progress a little'':
Gendered narratives of immigrant language learners. Journal of Language,
Identity, and Education, 3(4), 295-311. doi: 10.1207/s15327701jlie0304_5

Norton, B. (2013). Identity and language learning: Extending the conversation.
Bristol, England: Multilingual Matters.

Nikula, T., & Pitkänen-Huhta, A. (2008). Using photographs to access stories
of learning English. In P. Kalaja, V. Menezes, & A. M. F. Barcelos (Eds.),
Narratives of learning and teaching EFL (pp. 171–185). Basingstoke, England:
Palgrave Macmillan.

Pietikäinen, S. (2012). Experiences and expressions of multilingualism: Visual
ethnography and discourse analysis in research with Sámi children. In M.
Martin-Jones & S. Gardner (Eds.), Multilingualism, discourse, and ethnography
(pp. 163–178). New York, NY: Routledge.

Ushioda, E. (2009). A person-in-context relational view of emergent
motivation, self and identity. In Z. Dornyei & E. Ushioda (Eds.), Motivation,
language identity and the L2 self (pp. 215–228). Bristol: Multilingual
Matters.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Andrea Lypka is PhD candidate in the Second Language Acquisition and
Instructional Technology (SLA/IT) program at the University of South Florida
(USF). Her research interests include language learner identity, discourse
analysis, and visual research methods.

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