Moving beyond Whitened Prestige Perceptions in Korean English Education for Psychosocial Sustainability and Enhanced Learning

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 3:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Motivation, Care, and Resilience: Sustaining a Transformative Educational Journey

Abstract

This paper investigates current Korean elementary English teachers’ perception of different accented forms of English and subsequent implications. Findings highlight ongoing reliance on English varieties perceived as hierarchically prestigious and circuited with whitened idealizations implicating race, ethnicity, and nationality (Segal, 2000; Hall, 2017). However, whitened standards governing prosodic speech performance, operating as cultural habitus (Bourdieu, 1990), heighten Korean teacher and learner anxiety, eroding English-speaking confidence, and entrenching socioeconomic disparities. Data also yields contradictions in responses, signaling paradoxical desire for Korean English education status quo change. Critical Korean teacher insights are theorized to parse recommendations for culturally sustaining Korean knowledge as basis for enhanced psychosocial wellbeing, learning, and the advancement of curricula emphasizing identity-affirming proficiency-focused Korean ownership of English.

Authors

• Pauli Badenhorst, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley

• MinSoo Kim-Bossard, The College of New Jersey

• Younkyung Hong, Ball State University