Papers by Stewart Gray
The Matter of Practice, 2021
STEM Journal (Society for Teaching English through Multimedia), 2019
This article explores the potential of a multimodal classroom activity in which students graffiti... more This article explores the potential of a multimodal classroom activity in which students graffiti their textbooks for encouraging elementary-age Korean EFL students to express themselves, to engage critically with and transform their English class materials. The authors conducted an action research project in three sixth-grade EFL classes and four third-grade EFL classes in a Korean elementary school. Participating students were instructed to choose a page in their English textbooks and graffiti it however they wished. The students were then surveyed, and their textbook graffiti was analyzed. Results demonstrate that Korean elementary students can use English in combination with other expressive modes to create graffiti that engages with and transforms their textbook contents. This engagement/transformation took four forms: basic, parodic, personal and social. Common focal themes in students’ graffiti included study stress, appearance, romance, authority, conflict, and others. Also, many students found the graffiti activity enjoyable and approved of its use in English class. Thus, this paper supports use of graffiti by teachers to determine what issues are relevant to their own students, to relieve students’ stress, to encourage students to express themselves meaningfully using English, and to provide students an opportunity to contribute their own meanings to the classroom discourse.
Asian EFL Journal, 2019
This writing details a four-month exploratory action research project conducted by two teacher-re... more This writing details a four-month exploratory action research project conducted by two teacher-researchers with five, early-elementary age, Korean EFL students of mostly beginner level to explore ways of promoting dialogical critical thinking through English-language discussions. Researchers employed Kolb’s learning cycle to generate reflective notes throughout the project, then performed a conventional content analysis on these and on representative class audio transcriptions. This analysis led the researchers to the following conclusions: (1) Teachers can encourage participation by designing game-like discussions; (2) teachers can encourage participation by allowing students to engage in translanguaging when discussing; (3) teachers can facilitate students’ English use in discussions by providing language support, particularly discourse markers.; (4) teachers may promote discussion by encouraging students to interact with peers; (5) teachers can encourage students to generate critical discussion questions themselves, and connect personally with even serious topics.
Humanising Language Teaching, 2018
Creativity is enshrined in the South Korean school curriculum as a core objective of education. Y... more Creativity is enshrined in the South Korean school curriculum as a core objective of education. Yet, in practice, it can be challenging for teachers to find space for encouraging creative thinking within the constraints of the Korean public education system, focused as is it often is on rote learning of correct answers for achievement on standardised tests. For this reason, two English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers (the authors) in Korea chose a private class of four young, early-stage EFL learners as a project site. In conducting this project, which took place over six months with two, 90-minute classes per week, our goal was to encourage students to create their own works of art, stories, and games as part of their English learning, and to use assessment as a tool to guide them in their creation. This reflective account of practice outlines our approaches to class and assessment design, and the experiences we had while implementing these – thus, it represents a particular example of the process and practice of incorporating creativity into EFL pedagogy for the reader’s consideration.
Original article: https://www.hltmag.co.uk/dec18/creativity-and-student-made-materials
Sheffield Student Journal of Sociology, 2018
This study explores the complex relationship between the experience of privilege and marginalizat... more This study explores the complex relationship between the experience of privilege and marginalization, individual performance of identity, and contextual norms and values, using the example of 'foreign English teachers' (FETs) in South Korea. Data was collected via semi-structured interviews conducted with four of these teachers. The accounts and analyses presented in this paper exemplify the unique ways individuals perceive, understand, and interact with the values of their context. They also provide insights into the circumstances in which FETs live, and the complex ethnic, social, linguistic, and professional norms at work in the South Korean context, the sorts of identities that may be subject to privilege and/or marginalization in that context, and how people variously perceive, understand, and react to their own privilege and marginalization.
Hillary Place Papers, 2018
This paper makes the case for teachers/researchers conducting research projects in which they and... more This paper makes the case for teachers/researchers conducting research projects in which they and/or their own practice are the subjects of study. The author outlines and exemplifies two self-research methodologies through accounts of their own experience: (1) autoethnography, and (2) action research. With reference to these accounts of experience, as well as to the literature, the author highlights a number of ways in which self-research can be beneficial to a teacher/researcher by, variously, helping them to develop an understanding of themselves and their experiences, facilitating their ongoing development, and enabling them to contribute their experiences, insights, and perspectives to the wider research field and professional community.
International Journal of Issues in Language and Teacher Education, 2018
This reflective paper describes the experiences and challenges facing the author, an experienced ... more This reflective paper describes the experiences and challenges facing the author, an experienced teacher of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in South Korea, beginning for the first time to train other EFL teachers professionally. Having begun with overly optimistic expectations, the author experienced unanticipated issues, such as self-consciousness and power struggles with participants. The result was a drastic reduction in the author’s self-efficacy. The reflective descriptions in this paper provide a detailed example of a teacher facing challenges to their self-efficacy, and may be particularly informative to teacher trainers and EFL teachers interested in pursuing teacher training as part of their career.
Sheffield Student Journal of Sociology, 2017
Stereotype threat describes the debilitating anxiety experienced by someone trying to perform an ... more Stereotype threat describes the debilitating anxiety experienced by someone trying to perform an action of personal importance to them while under observation by others who hold a negative stereotype of the person’s ability to perform this action because of the group to which they belong. The focus of this article is stereotype threat as experienced by a White ‘foreign English teacher’ (the author) living in South Korea (an ethnically and linguistically homogeneous society) and speaking Korean while belonging to a group that stereotypically cannot do so. This article takes the form of an autoethnography, for which the author used Kolb’s experiential learning cycle to generate narratives of his own experiences, and analysed these using a directed content analysis in order to understand his experiences through the theoretical lens of stereotype threat. The findings of this research include descriptions of: the nature of the particular group stereotype to which the author is subject (that White foreigners are native English speakers, and cannot speak Korean); the manifestations of this stereotype in the behaviour of members of the majority, ethnically-Korean population (presumptions of ignorance, assertive use of English, surprise, excessive complimenting); the psychological effects of the threat of this stereotype on the author (anxiety, aggression, shame); the reasons for the author’s particular susceptibility to this threat (self-identification as second-language [L2] Korean speaker; history of language learning, anxiety over privileged professional position as native English speaker); and, the author’s attempts to mitigate the threat (seeking to disprove it through Korean use, aggression and sarcasm). This research serves as a detailed example of the experience of stereotype threat, and strengthens the ties between this theory and the domain of second-language educational research.
Asian EFL Journal, 2017
This research examines the narratives of six foreign English teachers learning and speaking Korea... more This research examines the narratives of six foreign English teachers learning and speaking Korean in Korea, the ways in which learning contributed to the teachers’ self-formation, and helped them to negotiate their position in Korean society. Participants' stories were gathered via conversational interviews and internet correspondence. Data gathered serves to highlight the discourses within Korean society to which foreign teachers are subject: (1) foreign teachers generally cannot speak Korean; (2) foreign teachers learning and speaking Korean are therefore special and respectable; (3) White foreign teachers are a relatively privileged group in Korea because of their ethnicity; (4) though a foreign teacher may learn Korean, they will still be an Other in Korea. Recognizing these discourses, participants variously partly rejected and partly embraced their pre-given position in Korean society in an effort to find the most comfortable space for themselves. Learning Korean served a beneficial function in this process, as it bestowed upon them the values of open-mindedness and sophistication, helping them to distance themselves from negative perceptions of foreign teachers as a group held by the Korean majority. This, combined with the privileges afforded to ethnically White immigrants, allowed participants to find an agreeable position for themselves in Korean society.
International Journal of Issues in Language and Teacher Education
This short, experiential writing describes the author's perspective on the assertive and proactiv... more This short, experiential writing describes the author's perspective on the assertive and proactive social behavior he has observed among people in Korea eager to make 'foreign friends' in order to practice English. The author ties his experiences to broader discourses related to the value of English in Korea and globally and to the arguably dehumanized position occupied in Korean society by people employed as 'foreign English teachers'. He concludes that people in Korea are not necessarily, as has been suggested elsewhere, restrained by a sense of Confucian propriety, but rather can be very socially forthcoming in the face of opportunities to practice English.
Book Reviews by Stewart Gray
Korea TESOL Journal, 2019
Korea TESOL Journal, 2017
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Papers by Stewart Gray
Original article: https://www.hltmag.co.uk/dec18/creativity-and-student-made-materials
Book Reviews by Stewart Gray
Original article: https://www.hltmag.co.uk/dec18/creativity-and-student-made-materials