29.1578, FYI: The Ideological Work of English Teaching

Thu Apr 12 21:32:06 UTC 2018

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-1578. Thu Apr 12 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.1578, FYI: The Ideological Work of English Teaching

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Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2018 17:31:55
From: Seyyed-Abdolhamid Mirhosseini [samirhosseini at yahoo.com]
Subject: The Ideological Work of English Teaching

Call for Papers:

Special Issue of 'Changing English' (Taylor and Francis)
The Ideological Work of English Teaching

This special issue of Changing English seeks to explore how the word
‘ideology’ might strategically be deployed to open up critique within our
current policy environment at both a national and a global level. We know that
the word has accrued multiple negative connotations since it was coined in the
late 18th century, to the point where Raymond Williams was prompted to
speculate whether it might not be better for those committed to progressive
social reform to abandon it altogether (Williams, 1977, p.71). Williams’s
doubts about using the word relate to the way it has been employed to diminish
the significance of ordinary people’s views and values in relation to the
so-called ‘material’ process of history. He argued the importance of
reaffirming the centrality of a ‘practical consciousness’ (p.70), in which
people were able to reflexively engage with their ‘conceptions, thoughts, and
ideas’ as the products of the social activities in which they were engaged. 

We are anticipating that contributors will in various ways situate their work
in relation to the debates that have surrounded the word ‘ideology’ since it
was first used. But rather than providing an historical overview of various
theories of ideology over the past two centuries, we expect that – taken
together – the essays in this special issue will inquire into the potential of
this word to open up new dimensions of language and experience, new ways of
seeing educational institutions and English classrooms, that currently receive
little or no emphasis within our existing policy environment. 

The word ‘ideology’ does not exist in the lexicon that educational systems
make available to educators in order to give an account of their work. If it
is used, it is invariably in the negative sense, in juxtaposition to ‘science’
(specifically a positivist science that prioritises measurement) and ‘common
sense’ (reflected in policy initiatives to diminish the role of teacher
education and so-called ‘theory’ in the induction of beginning teachers in
preference for the nuts-and-bolts ‘reality’ of school settings). We are
inquiring into the value of using the word ‘ideology’ vis-à-vis such mindsets.

We are anticipating that contributions might engage with two broad areas of
inquiry within the field of English language education:

- We firstly have in mind the large claims made on behalf of ‘global English’
to create a world in which English functions as a lingua franca that
facilitates communication between culturally and linguistically diverse
communities around the world (cf. Clyne and Sharifian, 2008; Canagarajah,
1999). Can such a project be disentangled from the globalising ambitions of
neoliberalism? What will be the fate of other languages and cultures in a
world where English is dominant? Does a concept of ideology enable us to
puncture the illusion of the benign effects of English as a global language? 

- We are also seeking to understand how ideology might be applied to open up
critique within national settings that have been radically reshaped by
neoliberal reforms. The impulse behind those reforms is typically constructed
as a humane desire to improve the literacy levels of students in order for
them to surmount their social and economic disadvantage, ensuring that ‘no
child is left behind’ and that everyone can partake of the benefits of the
economy (cf. Doecke and Pereira, 2012). Yet the fact that such attempts to
raise literacy levels typically take the form of standardised testing that
radically alienates whole cohorts of students raises questions as to the
intent of those reforms. 

At both the global and the national level such rhetoric is the common sense of
our era, a set of practices and values that cannot be questioned, when the
challenge becomes one of finding ways to think and speak differently, in order
to imagine other futures than those that governments impose on us. We are
asking whether it is possible for educational practitioners to speak a
language that involves words like ‘criticality’, ‘politics’, inequality’,
‘power relations’, ‘class structure, ‘dominance’, ‘struggle’, ‘resistance’,
‘praxis’. 

Bahktin famously declared that words ‘sparkle’ with ideology (Bahktin,
1981/1987, p.277), celebrating the way that new words and phrases reflect new
understandings, new ways of being in the world. We are asking whether the word
‘ideology’ itself might likewise be reappropriated and made to ‘sparkle’
within our current historical moment, providing a means to think and speak
differently, and indeed to see schools and classrooms differently from the
ways of seeing that neoliberal reforms have forced us to habitually employ,
when educators and researchers reduce classrooms to sites where everything can
be measured and regulated, where so-called ‘measurement’ experts are
constructed as having the capacity to understand what is happening in a way
that ordinary classroom practitioners do not. 

We are seeking contributions from English language educators working in both
Anglophone settings and settings where the globalisation of English is having
an impact on the way people talk about and understand their work.

Brenton Doecke, Deakin University, Melbourne Australia,
brenton.doecke at deakin.edu.au 
Seyyed-Abdolhamid Mirhosseini, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran,
mirhosseini at alzahra.ac.ir 
Ali Said Mohamed Al-Issa, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman, ali2465 at squ.edu.om 
John Yandell, UCL Institute of Education, London, England, J.Yandell at ioe.ac.uk

Due Dates:

1 September 2018 Submission of Abstract
20 September 2018 Notification whether Abstract has been accepted
20 December 2018 Submission of draft
31  January 2019 Feedback from Reviewers
1 April 2019 Submission of final version 

References:

Bahktin, M.M. (1981/1987), The Dialogical Imagination, ed. M. Holquist, trans.
M. Holquist and C. Emerson, Austin: Austin University Press.
Cangarajah, A.S. (1999), Interrogating the ‘Native Speaker Fallacy’:
Non-Linguistic Roots, Non-Pedagogical Results. In Braine, G. (ed.), Non-Native
Educators in English language Teaching, Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum,
pp.77-92.
Clyne, M. and Sharifian, F. (2008), English as an international language:
Challenges and possibilities. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 31
(3), pp.1-28.
Doecke, B. and Pereira, I. (2012), Language, Experience and Professional
Learning: What Walter Benjamin Can Teach Us. Changing English, 19 (3),
pp.269-281.
Williams, R. (1977), Marxism and Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
                     Sociolinguistics

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