Breaking the Cyclical Reproduction of Educational Inequalities and Epistemic Dependency in Global English Language Teaching

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Abstract

This presentation draws on Kumaravadivelu’s (2012) notion of “epistemic dependency” and Barad’s (2007) diffractive analysis to generate new knowledge that breaks from the cyclical reproduction of educational inequalities in Global English language teaching (ELT). Our discussion centers on the development, implementation and review of a successive three-month study-abroad teacher professional development program that ran from 2015-2018, and involved 243 English language teachers from the Western Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Gansu. Drawing on post-program data collection from Canada (where the host university was located) and China, we present individual interview and focus group data to disrupt center-researcher/periphery-research subject positionality. We conclude by arguing that un-doing epistemic dependency requires scrutiny of taken-for-granted ideology, terminology, concepts, subject positions, and identities.

Authors

• Eugenia Gene Vasilopoulos, University of Ottawa

• Douglas J. Fleming, University of Ottawa