Critical Emotional Reflexivity for TESOL: The What, Why, and How

Introduction

Over sustained periods of time, research and pedagogical engagement with reflexivity in TESOL has been somewhat limited. Despite the emergence of the “reflexive turn” in social sciences approximately two decades ago (Denzin & Lincoln, 2003) and Canagarajah’s (1996) earlier call for TESOL practitioners to celebrate reflexivity and subjectivity through research and pedagogy, many language teacher education programs worldwide continue to reject or overlook this orientation. Instead, numerous programs operate under neoliberal agendas “in the hunt for measures, targets, benchmarks, tests, tables, audits to feed the system in the name of improvement” (Ball, 2016, p. 1046) without providing adequate empowerment for teachers to increase sensitivity to the complexity of contexts and power relations in language teaching and learning (Kumaravadivelu, 2008) or tackle those “messy but crucially important problems” (Schön, 1983, p. 43). Similarly, although some educational programs claim to foster teacher reflexivity (Belvis et al., 2013), many teacher educators predominantly approach reflexivity from a positivist manner by using a “sustained and intentional process of identifying and checking the accuracy and validity of our teaching assumptions” (Brookfield, 2017, p. 3), thus being subject to “imposed singularities by discourses of modernity and Western science” (Byrd Clark, 2020, p. 88) and not necessarily helping student teachers develop critical awareness of the reflexive process. Additional criticisms also problematized certain reflective practices that are emotionally disengaging (Fook, 2010), confession-oriented (Fendler, 2003), and one-size-fits-all (Edwards & Thomas, 2010). These concerns necessitate the pressing need for TESOL practitioners to engage with reflexivity in alternative ways.

Moreover, mainstream language teacher education programs often downplay the role of emotions (e.g., Richards, 2022). This trend mirrors a long-standing practice that discourages teachers and students across disciplines and educational levels from engaging with emotional representations, experiences, and practices in the classroom. This discouragement is largely built on the misunderstood assumption that emotions, often viewed as ‘soft’, irrational, and unquantifiable, serve merely as distractions to learning (Prior, 2019; Richards, 2022). Consistent with this sentiment, within language teacher education, emotions have received significantly less research attention compared to technical aspects of teaching (Freeman, 2016; Lemarchand-Chauvin & Tardieu, 2018; Loh & Liew, 2016). Additionally, language teachers’ pedagogical practices concerning emotions have been swayed by an excessive focus on negative motions such as foreign language anxiety and their repercussions (Gkonou et al., 2017). Such training often leans towards linear and deficit approaches, overlooking the complexity and transformative potential of emotions. Only recently have TESOL researchers begun exploring emotions in more nuanced, holistic, and transformative ways, with an increasing number of studies focusing on enjoyment in second language acquisition (Dewaele et al., 2018), language teachers’ emotional capital (Gkonou & Miller, 2020), and novice language teachers’ positive identity development (Shahri, 2018; Xuan, 2014). However, to date, limited research has examined teachers’ and students’ critical reflexive awareness of emotionality and their understanding of “the social source of their emotions and entanglements with power relations, as well as the ways in which emotions are used in the reflexive process” (Zembylas, 2014, p. 214). Likewise, little is known about what critical emotional reflexivity means pedagogically and also why and how to teach this construct and its practices in the context of language teacher education.