Community Language School Teachers' Negotiation of Culturally Relevant Teaching: From a Perspective of Transnational Dispositions

• In Event: Leveraging Transnational Funds of Knowledge for More Equitable Education for Multilingual Learners

Abstract

Objectives
Since many Chinese as heritage language (CHL) learners are socialized into western style of teaching and learning, successful HL teaching requires conscious negotiation between the Chinese way of teaching and western style of learning of these learners. However, the existing CHL teaching practices have been criticized for a lack of contextual relevance to students’ multilingualism/multi-cultural assets (e.g., Sun & Curdt-Christiansen, 2018). Consequently, learners often lose interest in learning and become disengaged in CHL classes. Recognizing the unfavorable pedagogical conditions, McGinnis (2008) calls for culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) for Chinese language education among the diasporic communities, a student-empowering approach that promotes high academic expectation, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness (Ladson-Billing, 1994). This study, therefore, aims to examine how CHL teachers negotiated their cultural differences between China and Canada into their enactment of CRP-oriented instructional acts.

Theoretical Framework
This paper is informed by the theoretical lens of bifocality and transnational habitus. Bifocal orientation describes the tendency of migrants to compare life experiences and situations from different points of view of their home and receiving societies (Vertovec, 2004). The dual frame of reference constantly interacts with transnational habitus, a term Guarnizo (1997) proposed to capture people’s socialized dispositions from their social positioning and experience across countries. The CHL teachers’ transnational habitus, as is manifested in the revision and adaptation of their pedagogical beliefs and behaviors, needs to be interpreted based on their immersed experience with the social, educational, and cultural textures across the national boundaries.

Research Method
As part of an ethnographic study of CHL teachers from a community language school in Vancouver, Canada, this paper purposefully selected three teachers who displayed the strongest disposition for CRP were selected. Weekly classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with the focal teachers were analyzed through the qualitative procedures of inductive and interpretive coding (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2018). Using constant comparison method, key linkages among the coded data were identified to generate general themes relating to the research questions.

Research Findings
The following themes surfaced the analysis: a) Informed by the immersed experience with distinct educational cultures in China and Canada, the teachers appropriated the student-centered approach to academic learning they observed from Canadian educators while holding a high academic standard observed in their home country; b) The focal teachers’ simultaneous exposure to the diverse cultural and linguistic social networks across the two countries enabled the teachers to utilize them as resources for teaching, a practice is often not employed in schools in China; and c) The teachers’ interactions with various educational and political structures across the countries also affected how they approach critical issues such as gender and race that frequently emerged in class discussions.

Conclusion
This study revealed that CHL teachers’ pedagogical dispositions are not void of struggles and contestations. Their levels of engagement with CRP vary, depending on how they leverage different comparative perspectives into instructional repertoires. This study also contributed to critical implications for the education and training of Chinese language teachers for linguistically and culturally diverse educational contexts.

Authors

• Zhuo Sun, University of British Columbia
  Presenting Author

• Guofang Li, University of British Columbia
  Presenting Author