DISCOMFORTS & SAFE SPACES
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LEV04355
~ Annabelle Leve - Monash University ~
INTERNATIONALISATION IN
STATE SECONDARY SCHOOLS:
SHARING PRIVATE STORIES
(or)
~ DISCOMFORTS & SAFE SPACES ~
INTRODUCTION
When researching the phenomenon of internationalisation, we are
always having to adjust our thinking and responses to the rapid
changes in the area. I maintain the notion of fluidity and
multiplicity in all aspects of internationalisation. In the previous
five years since I began working in the secondary school realm of
internationalisation I have seen a great many changes. Some
changes have been for the better, ‘Doing the Public Good’ and
some difficulties have been addressed to the satisfaction of ‘clients
and providers’. However, I have always had a sense of discomfort,
of being caught up in something that sounds good in theory, but
jars in reality. This paper draws from my research, a work in
progress, which is my attempt to interrogate the causes of this
discomfort.
Only when we reflect on our initially puzzling
irritability, revulsion, anger or fear may we bring
to consciousness our ‘gut-level’ awareness that we
are in a situation of coercion, cruelty, injustice or
danger.
(Harding, 1997:191)
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ORIENTATION:
This paper begins with an introduction designed to shed light on
my inspiration for and my positioning within my research. A brief
description of my methodology follows, and through stories of my
own experiences as a teacher of International students and the
stories of others, plus images from Victorian Department of
Education marketing literature, I will begin to explore the various
discursive constructions of the Full Fee Paying Overseas Student
(FFPOS)1. The focus will be on three samples of text that represent
the three discourses that will make up the data for this study.
The paper concludes with a very brief outline of the aims of my
research.
CONSTITUTING THE SUBJECT I
Public (marketing) texts
From a Department of Education & Training, Victoria 2003
publication:
Victorian Government Schools and You
Australia is one of those countries that when you are here you feel
like you’re at home and you want to stay forever.
The teachers are a great help. They talk to all the students in a
friendly way. This makes us feel very special.
1
I use this term intentionally. It is used as shorthand in Education Department literature found on the
internet to refer specifically to full fee paying international students as distinct from other types of
‘international students’ such as short term, exchange or students in other education sectors. It helps to
identify these students as an ‘othered’ other.
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The students at school are really interested in different cultures.
Your English improves all the time as the English language
program at school is very good, and the support of the staff is
really helpful.
Life here is free. It is also relaxed. You can be yourself in
Melbourne. Nobody minds if you are different and the people are
very friendly and helpful.
(Department of Education &Training, 2003)
CONSTITUTING THE SUBJECT II
Private (teacher) stories
The ESL teacher & the Full Fee Payers (FFPOS)
I recall a conversation I had when I was completing my
TESOL practicum. My teaching Prac was carried out
in a number of different contexts, with adult
immigrants (AMES) and at an English Language
School (ELS) for students of secondary age whose
families had immigrated to Australia, and who came
from a ‘Language Background Other Than English’
(LBOTE)2, many of whom arrived as refugees.
It was at this ELS where I first came into contact with
the ‘full fee payers’. I was told to ignore this particular
group as they were only here because their parents
were wealthy, and didn’t know what else to do with
2 A more frequently used but disputed term is ‘Non English Speaking Background’ (NESB), which
denotes deficiency.
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them. “They don’t want to work; they’re not interested
in learning. They’re just here to have a good time.”
I, along with many others who work in the TESOL
area, teach for good wholesome reasons. We wanted to
help people, we had good intentions, they were needy
and we could help. We came with patience,
determination and lots of idealism. I can’t imagine
anyone doing it for the money. Gratitude perhaps, but
it was never just a job. We worked with migrants,
refugees, long term residents who had never learnt the
English required for any kind of upward mobility. The
children of migrants who spoke a different language
and lived a different culture at home. We offered
practical help, many of us went beyond our calling, we
gave love and care and were loved in return.
But here was a group of students who had some need, a
degree of desire, but appeared undeserving and
disinterested. They seemed more interested in
developing their social lives (with each other, not with
the locals) and spending their money on technological
gadgetry. There was little reward for spending time
with them, their families were wealthy; we could take
their money and then they’ll eventually move on and we
can concentrate on the deserving, the needy.
Two years later I found myself working with just such
students in a Secondary College. I was employed, on a
casual basis, to work solely with FFPOS who were part
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of a new “International Program”. I began with two
students, a brother and sister from Hong Kong, and
over the next 3 years, worked with many adolescents,
in the formal role of “ESL Teacher” and the informal
(largely voluntary) role of ‘Cultural Support’ for the
International program. (Annabelle Leve 2004)
“If you’re an international student you just want to learn what
you can the best way you can, get the best marks and get out so
maybe you have a more distant relationship with the ESL teacher,
not as nurturing…” (respondent quoted in Brown 2003:242-3).
My school employed me to address the deficiencies of the FFPOS,
not to broach the institutional deficiencies in relating to and
working with difference. I was not employed as a cultural
intermediary, nor to touch on the institutional practices of the
school. I was there simply to address the English language needs
of the students, and to introduce them to ‘Australian culture’. The
underlying assimilationist agenda becomes clearer through
reflection from a distance (as I am no longer employed) and
through research into alternative possibilities.
Usher & Postmodern Research – asking
questions about the text
In the postmodern, there is a foregrounding of
complexity, uncertainty, heterogeneity and
difference. (Usher 1996:28)
We create meaning through our research, we do not merely
inscribe meaning to what already exists. In researching a
particular topic (constructions of FFPOS in secondary schools) I
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am not simply describing an existing phenomenon, I am
creating/constructing through the choices I make in that
inscription.
I want to create something that will give meaning to (or
rationalise) and explain my own personal responses and
discomforts when immersed in the context I am both remembering
and (re)creating.
So in going into a school and collecting data, I am ‘borrowing’ from
a context that exists in various forms, in order to construct one that
exists only as my creation within my research. I could go to a
number of schools in order to do this because as an observer, I am
necessarily leaving in and leaving out, reinventing and transcribing
what I want, in order to construct a context (‘based on reality’) in
which to study my chosen phenomena. The focus of postmodern
research “is not the world which is constructed and investigated by
research but the way in which that world is written, inscribed or
textualised in the research text.” (ibid:31) My research is as much
a text requiring close analysis as the texts I am proposing to
examine.
As Usher points out, “…phenomena require an observer in order to
be observed – so decisions about how to observe will determine
what is observed.” (ibid:17 italics in original) I am creating this
context as a place in which to explore elements of
individual/social/institutional phenomena constructed by and
within the three discourses of internationalisation that I have
described above.
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Usher lists some reflexive questions we may ask about texts, both
those produced by us as researchers, and as texts being examined
through our research.
Why do we do research? How has our research
been constructed? What is it silent about? What
gives our text its narrative authority? What are
the gender, race and class relations that produce
the research and how does the text reproduce
these relations? To what extent does research
empower (and disempower) those involved in it?
(Usher 1996:31)
These questions necessarily include the author, the researcher. If
postmodern research involves a critical stance towards created
meaning (‘sense-making and sense taking’) the focus must then be
on the focus must then be on the way that world has been given
form both in and through the research text.
Therefore my research will critique texts produced about
international education, focussing particularly on Full Fee Paying
Overseas Students (FFPOS) in state secondary schools.
Three focus texts about FFPOS:
1. Already existing publicly available texts created to
describe/explain/sell/publicise elements of the international
program (marketing discourse).
2. Texts created from teacher discourses.
3. Research.
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Drawing from Usher’s list of reflexive questions, I will
address these texts in the following ways:
1. How do these texts constitute the FFPOS? (and why that
way?)
2. What are the socially constructed (eg racial, ethnic)
relationships and how are these reproduced (represented?)
in these texts?
3. What are the tensions, contradictions or dissonances
between these texts?
4. What future possibilities are suggested through these texts?
This approach to the texts is intended to interrogate the discursive
constructions of FFPOS with a view to reconceptualising and
initiating a way forward, of new notions of ‘success’ for
international programs within our schools.
I need also to retain a reflexive stance and acknowledgment of my
own role in the construction of my research text. I will include
textual narratives created out of my own experiences and (re- or
dis-)memberings which will reflect on and enlighten my own
standpoint from which I began this research trajectory. It was
from this initial standpoint that I felt my own voice being silenced.
Within a critical and intellectual research environment I was able
to question the institutional practices pertaining to
‘internationalisation’, yet as a teacher in that school my voice was
silenced alongside the dissenting voices of other teachers.
As researchers we all have an individual
trajectory which shapes the research we do, the
questions we ask and the way we do it. But as
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researchers we are also socio-culturally located,
we have a social autobiography, and this has an
equally if not more important part to play in
shaping our research and directing the kinds of
reflexive questions which need to be asked but
rarely are…
(Usher 1996:31-32)
I am no longer situated as an ‘insider’, but I retain ‘insider’
knowledges and past experiences within a secondary school
context of internationalisation. The questions I am asking
through my research and the position I maintain are shaped by
experiences that will be made explicit as I maintain my own
author-ity (ibid:30) over my research text.
ASKING QUESTIONS OF THE TEXT(S)
TEXT 1
Representing : Teacher discourse (private)
Standing in the library, waiting to use the photocopier, I overhear
a conversation between teachers. One teacher is speaking in
what is clearly a very bad imitation of one of my Chinese
student’s accent. He is making a very forgettable joke; I
recognise this as part of regular teacher informal banter. I
wonder to myself, should I say something? Should I point out the
racism inherent in their talk? Should I defend my student?
Should I defend all Chinese, or in fact, all students who speak with
an accent or come from a non Anglo background? Should I
pretend I didn’t hear (I wasn’t included in the banter) or should I
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laugh along? Am I uptight, or ‘too intense’ as I’ve been described
and just need to lighten up? Or should I use every opportunity to
stand up for those who are different, those left unrepresented,
undefended in ‘informal teacher discourse’ that comes across as
inherently racist and essentialising. Or should I just ‘get a life’?
(Leve 2004 – personal reflections)
TEXT 2
Representing marketing literature (Public text)
(Department of Education & Training, 2003)
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TEXT 3
Representing: Internationalisation of Education
Discourse
In an effort to define Internationalisation as it relates to secondary
schools, Edwards and Tudball (2002) documented responses from
secondary teachers.
Internationalisation was defined by one teacher as:
a process whereby students are empowered to
become global citizens with these characteristics:
‘tolerant, accepting, able to form cross-cultural
relationships, and with developed understandings
of a range of cultures’
(Edwards & Tudball 2002: 3/21)
1. How do these texts constitute the FFPOS? (and why
that way?)
Each of the texts constitute the FFPOS in a different way, by
different interlocutors, with different intentions.
Text 1: “One of my Chinese student’s accent”;
Text 2: free, relaxed, ‘cool’; and
Text 3: “empowered global citizens”.
However, none of the texts directly address or name the FFPOS
subject, nor do they specify ‘difference’ or ‘othering’ as topics
underpinning the discussion. In fact, within texts 2 & 3, which I
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deem the ‘public texts’, the FFPOS subject becomes subsumed in a
discourse that is apparently inclusive, that embraces the possibility
that everyone and anyone can be part of a politically neutral
relationship. Text 1, ‘private teacher text’ however, denotes
unequal power relationships and a more direct engagement with
notions of ‘difference’ and ‘othering’.
2. What are the socially constructed (eg racial,
ethnic) relationships and how are these reproduced
(represented?) in these texts?
Socially constructed relationships include those within the texts, or
represented in the text, those who produced the text, and the
viewer/reader/consumer/audience of the text.
Some of the Text 1 relationships include:
The ‘teachers’ and me (as a co-teacher)
The ‘teachers’ and me (as a defender of difference)
The ‘teachers’ and me (as a researcher)
Teachers and students
Students & FFPOS
Teachers & FFPOS
Me and ‘my’ (FFPOS) students
Public/private domains (including me as intruder)
The rhetorical nature of the text assumes a particular response
from the reader, providing that reader thinks like me and
understands my use of irony and self-depreciation. The actual
response(s) of readers may be focussed on any of the relationships
as outlined above (or others) which leads to the next question…
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3. What are the tensions, contradictions or
dissonances between these texts?
Each of these texts represent difference, however, whilst difference
is highlighted in the first text, it is obscured in the second and third
texts. The way these texts are understood requires the viewer (as
interlocutor) to make assumptions. Who or what is free, tolerant,
accepting, relaxed; what does it mean to ‘be yourself’? Who is
that? If “nobody minds if you are different”, does that mean they
are all the same? Is the guy in the picture me or you? Is he talking
to the ‘other’ or is he an ‘other’? Who is being ‘empowered’ by
internationalisation?
4. What future possibilities are suggested through
these texts?
Text 1, produced by me out of my own discomfort in not knowing
how to respond, asks how I can formulate a response without
further disengaging myself? Instead of feeling that I was able to
engage in any way with my colleagues, I (re)assumed a position as
an outsider. I did not feel that was a safe space in which to engage
the notions of difference and othering and in fact this vignette was
representative of the institution in which I was working at that
time.
The more public texts 2 & 3 have evolved through efforts of those
wanting to smooth over the dissonances and tensions in engaging
with difference, which is also a response to increasing
marketability of international education.
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The possibilities I am hoping to explore though my research
involve the creation and utilisation of a metaphoric and dynamic
‘safe space’ that doesn’t attempt to smooth out difference, nor to
negate the ‘crisis of engagement’ (Heyward, 2002) but instead
provides a reflexive, unstable, fluid and shifting space in which to
encounter and engage with difference in its many guises.
CONCLUSION:
FINDING ALTERNATIVE SPACES
Through extensive exploration of established theory in relation to
the discourses under investigation, my aim is to conceptualise a
notion of an alternative space suitable and conducive to the
development of an ethical, reflexive, but perhaps discomforting
response to new ‘communities of practice’. “Today, in particular,
we are witnessing the resurgence of nationalism and pan-
culturalism as a reaction to the processes of globalisation and
migration.” (Kostogriz, 2002)
Kristen Hibler (1998) suggests the need to “provide analytic tools
for assisting people … to see themselves as Others… [to] put their
own culture to crisis”. (Hibler, 1998) She suggests a postmodern
view of culture as “fluid and contested” and of challenging
conceptions of normalcy. My research is not designed to ask
questions or provide answers that will help ‘us’ to know our ‘other’,
nor to theorise a welcoming comfortable non-political space in
which we can all feel free to express our ‘selves’. It is, however, my
hope and intention to destabilize notions of ‘normalcy’, and to
notice and learn from our discomforts in order to help to create a
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‘safe space’ in which to encourage truly critical and inclusive
practices and pedagogies within our education systems.
REFERENCES
Brown, J. (2003). Teaching as an Act of Identity: the Work of ESL Teachers.
Unpublished PhD, Monash University, Clayton, Melbourne.
Department of Education &Training, V. (2003). Victorian Government
Schools and You. Melbourne: DE&T, Victoria.
Edwards, J., & Tudball, L. (2002). It must be a two-way street:
understanding the process of internationalising the curriculum in
Australian schools. Paper presented at the AERA Brisbane, Dec 2000,
Brisbane.
Harding, S., & Jaggar, A. (1997). Feminisms: Oxford University Press.
Heyward, M. (2002). From international to intercultural: Redefining the
international school for a globalized world. Journal of Research in
International Education, 1(1), 9-32.
Hibler, K. (1998). Inter/cultural Communication and the Challenge of
Postcolonial Theory. Retrieved 16/11/04, from
http://www.arts.uwa.au/MotsPluriels/MP497third.html
Kostogriz. (2002, 1-5 December 2002). Teaching literacy in multicultural
classrooms: Towards a pedagogy of 'Thirdspace'. Paper presented at
the Australian Association for Research in Education, Brisbane.
Tsolidis, G. (2002). How do we teach and learn in times when the notion of
'global citizenship' sounds like a cliche? Journal of Research in
International Education, 1(2), 213-226.
Usher, R. (1996). Understanding Educational Research: Routledge.
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