a number of obstacles that teachers may face. One of the primary obstacles noted immediately by most teachers is the institutional obstacle. The institutional obstacle includes things like the school leadership, the departmental curriculum, and other teachers. In my case, I was fortunate that these were not obstacles for me, but I do want to recognize that they could have been. I had my director’s support, I was relatively free to pursue the curriculum I wished so long as it met the primary goal of preparing learners to produce acceptable texts at a university level, and I was free to develop and select the materials I deemed appropriate. I am grateful that I did not experi- ence external obstacles in these areas.
In classrooms, learners are also a source of obstacles or resistance, and I did have learn- ers, so I did experience resistance from them. From the beginning of the course, I wanted to practice mutual empathy, yet, also from the beginning of the course, some of the learners and I were on different pages in terms of goals. For me, the course was about becoming an academic
writer that could thrive in the real world (i.e., the U.S. university) of Anglo-American academic writers. Thus, I pre-selected a focus on texts like e-mails in the U.S. university context, the aca- demic research paragraph, and the analytical research paper. However, for some learners, the goal of actually getting into the university by achieving a higher TOEFL score was much more compelling. This mismatch of goals was something that was brought to my attention early and something that I had to carefully consider as the following field note illustrates:
On the first day of class, each learner discussed how they had accomplished a challeng- ing assignment in English. In the course of their descriptions, many identified the TOEFL essay or timed writing as their challenging assignment and expressed some de- sire to work on improving it in our class. I explained that the TOEFL was a one-time writing event and that they needed to also consider writing beyond the TOEFL.
Hope that explaining the “artificialness” of TOEFL and why we won’t be practicing it specifically is useful for adjusting expectations. Ques for me: If it is their preoccupation, should it be mine, or can a CP [Critical Pedagogy] teacher use their expertise to assess the worthiness of preoccupations? (Field Notes, August 23)
Their preoccupation with TOEFL continued throughout the course, and in my opinion, created unnecessary confusion for them. For example, their comments frequently made it clear that they were comparing the information I gave them about writing an academic research para- graph to things they had learned about writing the TOEFL, and these comparisons did not im- prove their understanding of writing academic research paragraphs (e.g., in previous data, I have mentioned their confusions about thesis statements versus topic sentences).
Having different goals can create a relational disconnection, and I do think that in some cases learners resisted development because they felt like their goals were not being addressed. The following excerpt illustrates one learner’s point of view about the course and her goals:
Me: Okay, alright, okay. Now, we’re gonna think about all of your English
writing teachers that you’ve ever had in Korea or here [mhm] okay and I want you to think about who was your favorite English writing teacher, you don’t have to tell me who, why was this person your favorite, what did they do that made them your favorite?
Jieun: In here?
Me: Wherever in all of your experience
Jieun: Uhm, maybe someone uh teach me if someone teach me how to write uh I
don’t know, mmm, I think I am different from the other student, so if if I wanted to be a university student in U.S. mmm, my favorite teacher would be the teacher how to write academic writing, but I don’t want to be uni- versity student, so I think the favorite teacher would be the teacher teach- ing me business letter or business document, how to write business letter or business document, that’s that would be my favorite teacher, yeah
Me: Okay, alright, so in your experience of studying English, have you had
many writing teachers [no] no, okay, so it’s not something you’ve studied over and over again [mhm, yeah] okay, alright, uhm, alright, that makes sense, so let’s change then to if you’re talking to a friend, in Korean, and you say, “Oh, I’m taking 700 writing,” and they say, “Oh, what are you learning in 700 writing?” What would you say?
Jieun: 700 I learned about how to write academic paragraph that’s
Me: Okay, alright, how are you feeling about your writing right now?
Jieun: Mmm, I was very confused or confused how to write academic writing,
but now I have I mmm, I learned about how to make beam, I think beam is very important to write something. Now, I learned about how to build beam and how to add illustrations, so that’s good for me if I want to be a university student [Jieun laughs] (Interview 1, Jieun)
Jieun’s comment, “…so that’s good for me if I want to be a university student,” clearly indicates that the course is not aligned with her goals, and I think is indicative of a relational stance of opposition. To be fair, Jieun never behaved in any oppositional ways, but she was sig- nificantly less engaged in the class than others.
Another important external obstacle to my practice of theory was learners’ self-
contradicting expectations about how writing was best taught and learned. For example, most learners were highly appreciative of the parts-before-whole approach and clearly felt that it met- aphorically spoke to their needs, but several learners still retained the view that the only way to improve their writing was to write more even if what they were writing did not make sense to them. I will use the case of one particular student to illustrate what I mean. Min A claimed in Interview 1 that she wanted to learn how to organize, and she did not want for her teacher to just edit her texts as the following illustrates:
Min A: Actually the organization is the most difficult to me, so I have to knew
how to organize in steps, so I want to learn how to organize it all of it like this, this, this, but actually in 600, it’s good, but she always editing my es- say, “You have to write essay, and I’ll edit,” like that, so I don’t know
how to write well, but just edit, “Oh, okay, oh yeah, I got it, I got it,” but next time I will, “Oh, I can’t, I don’t know, how do I,” and that repeat re- peat difficult something like that, so I wanna I wanna know how to organ- ize well, then the steps kind of (Interview 1, Min A & Ye Jin)
Then, she suggested also in Interview 1, that we should be writing more, but she simulta- neously claimed that she was learning from what we were doing excerpt shows:
Min A: Actually, in last session, we have a lot of writing, writing, writing essay,
but actually this time just one writing, so I’m I’m worried about it because I I think we have to write and then you have to you edit something like that and you advise me, so I learned about because doing something by doing something, but yeah actually it is it was so good you teached me, but I think by doing is more I learned about I think, yeah (Interview 1 Min A & Ye Jin)
In, Interview 2, she continues to claim that she was learning through what we were doing as follows:
Min A: Actually, improve I think improve the research paper yeah, this is because
we have to write research paper on xxx so I have to find something yeah to xxx to organize it, so that kind of process helps me to improve (Inter- view 2, Min A)
And, in Interview 3, she returns to her claim that we should have written more and that I should even have given more homework as follows:
Min A: Uh, other class? [Like that that class that you took with Lauren, what
you change to make it better for you?] Yeah, practice I think. Practice be- cause uh when we learned, then I think after class we forgot something like, so we have to remind all day something, so she, I think a lot of homework is good because yeah a lot of homework is hard for us but I think it’s helpful because we heard but, “Oh yeah, I know, ah, yeah, yeah I remember like that,” so I think that practice and a lot of homework some- thing is helpful to student I think (Interview 3, Min A)
The ironic thing in all of this is that Min A did not even turn in all of the writing assign- ments she was given (i.e., learners were asked to do 7 complete academic research paragraphs after we completed the shorter writing assignments given after each step in addition to a research paper), and she had to be reminded to turn in several of them late.
Adult learners, especially adult ESL learners wanting to attend a U.S. university, tend to be relatively highly motivated. High motivation is often linked with the presence of goals, so it is reasonable to expect in a classroom CoP such as mine in an IEP that learners’ goals may be an obstacle to relationship building if their goals and their feelings about their goals are not
acknowledged in some way. It is also reasonable to assume in a classroom CoP such as mine that learners have studied writing before, and their experiences have influenced their expecta- tions of future writing teachers and classes. Again, as with goals, if learners’ expectations are not explored and addressed in some way that empathetically recognizes and affirms their exist- ence, those expectations may become an obstacle. I was aware of these obstacles as I taught the course, and I did feel challenged by these obstacles. I do not think the presence of these obsta- cles was a sign that the practice of theory I was enacting was inappropriate in any way. In fact, long experience shows me that these obstacles are fairly consistent no matter what practices a
teacher chooses. Thus, I would say that overall, my biggest obstacles to enacting my practice of theory was truly myself, which is not exactly what I would have predicted prior to doing this study.