Visualizing Identity: Sri Lankan Language Teachers' Conceptions of Their Teaching Selves and Commitment to Equity

• In Event: Autoethnographies of Critical Action Researchers: Trajectories to Equitable Learning Communities That Challenge Neoliberalism

Abstract

This autoethnographic account is driven by my own experiences of living and working in Sri Lanka. As a student and later as an educator I experienced a public education system that is largely shaped and driven by high stake standardized examinations and was increasingly feeling the long term effects of funding cuts. I saw and felt how these cuts were damaging the capacity of public education to address issues of inequity, poverty and systematic oppression. As a teacher educator in a public university, I experienced how education workers were constantly expected to gracefully do with less and internalize inequities as social realities. This prompted me to ask the questions, “what do teachers really think of their responsibilities towards their learners?”, “Is addressing issues of equity even a possibility?”


In order to tap into aspects of their teaching selves (Kumaravadivelu, 2012) that have not been previously tapped into, I had to shift away from conventional methodological approaches to a more creative and arts informed research method that would enable the partici[ants to think of themselves and their responsibilities differently. I adopted Busch’s (2010) concept of language portraits or body silhouettes to get the participants to visually recreate their identities. The switch in mode of representation from word to image helped to deconstruct internalized categories, and reflect on embodied practices that helped “generate narratives that are less bound to genre expectations” (Busch, 2010, p. 286). Both pre and in-service teachers from three provinces in Sri Lanka generated identity portraits depicting their roles and responsibilities towards their learners.


The visual data the identity portraits generated were an eye opener for me. It gave me insight into teachers teaching selves I had not seen before. The IPs revealed a stark contrast between the teaching selves of the pre and inservice teachers. The key identities that emerged in the pre-service participants’ IPs across all three programmes were the very same socio-cultural factors that fragmented the Sri Lankan society and were at the heart of the three-decade-long ethnic conflict, language, ethnicity and religion. The inservice teachers’ identities on the other hand highlighted the potential teaching offered to transform lives and the structural barriers that crippled them. The rich and nuanced themes that emerged from the IPs reveal how the larger sociocultural and economic structures were deeply rooted in their identities. The very macro structures which divided the country were deeply and unconsciously embedded in the identities of the participants.


I will conclude the presentation by reflecting on the insights I gained about the role of teachers and their identities in combating structural inequities in education and the role of creativity in educational research.

Author

• Sreemali Herath, University of Manitoba