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Towards Glocally Situated TESOL Practices

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003001522-15

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11 Towards Glocally Situated
TESOL Practices
Collaborative
Autoethnography
Soyoung Sarah Han, Mari Haneda,
and Magda Madany

Introduction
In the current neoliberal era of teacher accountability and standardized
testing, which over-emphasizes measurable outcomes, it is ever more
important not to lose sight of those dimensions of teaching that defy
easy quantification. Of critical significance is the teacher’s and teacher
educator’s sense of self (i.e., their professional identity). Our orienting
conceptualization of teacher identity is that of “identity-in-discourse”
(Varghese, Morgan, Johnston, & Johnson, 2005), with three key post-
structuralist features of identity (e.g., Darvin & Norton, 2015; Varghese,
Motha, Trent, Park, & Reeves, 2016). These features include identity as
multiple, shifting, and in conflict; identity as crucially related to social,
cultural, and political contexts; and identity as being constructed, negoti-
ated, and maintained primarily through discourse.
To briefly describe who we are, Sarah and Magda are currently doctoral
candidates in education in a US research-intensive university, and Mari
is a faculty member who works with them. All three of us are bi/mul-
tilingual and bi/multicultural, having English-as-an-additional-language;
we have also lived in a variety of countries in which our first language
was not the primary language. In this chapter, through a collaborative
autoethnography (Chang, Ngunjiri, & Hernandez, 2016), we aim to
respond to Kumaravadivelu’s (2012) call for rethinking English-language
teaching (ELT) practices and the responsibilities of ELT professionals in
the globalized world. We used two broad questions as our prompts: (1)
How have our transnational experiences shaped our professional iden-
tities and/or TESOL pedagogies and practices? and (2) What have we
come to understand about TESOL practitioners’ responsibilities in this
globalized world?
We engaged in our autoethnographies in several steps. First, we started
our reflection by discussing our transnational experiences in light of glo-
balization, migration, mobility, and the dominance of English. As we
engaged in discussion, we each identified our focus: Sarah on her identity
 Towards Glocally Situated TESOL Practices 207
struggle; Magda on her becoming an advocacy-oriented TESOL profes-
sional; and Mari on her current teaching/advising practices. Then, we dis-
cussed what heuristic tools to use to select pivotal moments or life events.
Each of us decided to use the theoretical tool that was most appropriate
for our particular focus: Bhabha’s (1994) concept of “inbetween-spaces”
for Sarah, Kumaravadivelu’s (2011) concept of “global cultural con-
sciousness” for Magda, and Noddings’ (2013) “ethics of care” for Mari.
As will be seen, the focus of our autoethnographic narratives differs
because what each of us deemed important for our professional growth
was not uniform. In what follows, we start with our individual narratives
and then discuss them in relation to what it means to be an ELT educa-
tor in this global era. The first two narratives by Sarah and Magda focus
on the transnational experiences of the authors over time, and the third,
Mari’s, examines one aspect of the author’s current professional practice.

Sarah’s Story
My identity as a TESOL practitioner builds on my experiences as an
ESL student and an EFL teacher as well as on my ongoing development
as a TESOL researcher. People used to say to me, “You are so lucky to
have lived abroad at such a young age. You must have had so many
good experiences. No wonder you are good at English.” However, what
people often fail to see is my unspoken struggle for identity—in defin-
ing my self. In this autoethnography, I examine my identity struggle
stemming from my transnational experiences and narrate how I came to
resolve it by recognizing and accepting my hybrid identity and my being
in “in-between spaces” (Bhabha, 1994). This recognition nurtured in me
a willingness to take risks and to be open to new possibilities as a global
TESOL practitioner.

Korean in Britain
I was 13 when my father was relocated to his company’s London office,
and our family moved to England—spending the next three years there.
My younger sister and brother, who were 8 and 9 years old respectively,
did not seem to have any difficulty in transitioning to the new environ-
ment. My father was working at a Korean office in London with mostly
Korean colleagues, and my mother was making friends with some Korean
moms. However, my transition was not as smooth as theirs. I found
myself as a noticeable Other at the middle school that I attended—the
only ESL student and the only Asian. My classmates did not know how
to approach me, and my beginner-level of English certainly did not help
my socialization process. The first year of my move was a period of
adjustment for me to understand their world and learn their “acquired
properties.” I can still vividly recall countless days watching TV series,
208 Soyoung Sarah Han et al.
borrowing DVDs, and trying to memorize the lines just to be able to take
part in my friends’ daily conversation at school. The mornings would
always start with someone shouting, “Did you see it last night?” And
that magical sentence had a power to form a circle of people who would
jump in with excitement and chime in, “I can’t believe such and such did
that!” If I didn’t keep up, I would never become a part of the circle. To
help me keep pace with the schoolwork, my father used to go through
English grammar books with me, and my mother sat by my side all night
long with tons of books piled up beside her. My parents even had me take
music lessons so that I could play in the school orchestra and use music
to make friends.
All this effort, however, often felt meaningless and made me feel
powerless when English-speaking people around me continued to label
me as “the ESL student who needs help.” I felt as if there was this glass
ceiling, something I could not fully break through—what Bourdieu
(2011, p. 82) refers to as the embodied state of “cultural capital”—no
matter how hard I tried. According to Bourdieu (2011, pp. 82–83),
this embodied cultural capital requires long-term cultural inculcation,
which results in long-standing dispositions of the mind and body.
Not only was I lacking in this capital, but so were my parents. Even
though they tried their best to support my enculturation, it was not
possible for them to fully comprehend or be involved in my school
life to the extent that my British friends’ parents could. My parents’
English-speaking skills often left me feeling ashamed, as their limita-
tion seemed to indicate a lack of “legitimate competence” (Bourdieu,
1991, p. 44) of symbolic capital. Because “the ways in which identities
are tied to language can either advance or impede language learning”
(Lo Bianco, Liddicoat, & Crozet, 1999, p. 184), I was desperate to
improve my English proficiency to be able to identify myself as British.
In order to conceal my Korean-Self, I deliberately tried to highlight
my British-Self by avoiding speaking Korean and staying away from
interacting with my incoming Korean friends at school. In my mind,
my British friends and my school community were powerful while my
parents and I were powerless. I strived to gain a sense of belonging,
to assimilate as much as possible to my surroundings. Looking back
at my experiences in England, I now realize that I had an “essential-
ist notion of culture” that made me assign “fixed and frozen cultural
traits” to what is Korean and what is British (Kumaravadivelu, 2008,
p. 126). My Korean identity was often linked to a feeling of shame,
while my British identity gave me a feeling of superiority and accept-
ance. I was keen to acquire new cultural beliefs and practices even if
it meant negating my Korean ones—I wanted to dress more like my
British friends; I wanted to talk and act more like my British friends;
I wanted to think more like my British friends. Little did I know then
that such desperation to un-become the Other was causing me to be
 Towards Glocally Situated TESOL Practices 209
“imprisoned in one cultural space” (Kumaravadivelu, 2008, p. 124).
I was pushing aside Korean-ness and embracing British-ness.

British in Korea
My family returned to South Korea and I resumed my schooling there
when I was 16. Based on my two vastly different schooling experiences in
the two countries, I developed an interest in education and chose to study
education at a Korean university with the goal of working in the field of
education. As a university student, I often wondered what it would be like
to teach at a school in Korea in the way I was taught in England—reading
Shakespeare and English novels and writing essays. With this curiosity,
I first taught at a private high school for three years and then at a private
middle school for the next five years. In my earlier teaching career, I grad-
ually came to notice that my perception of the English language and the
notion of culture that I developed during my sojourn in England was per-
meating my teaching practices. For example, I was drawing a strict line
between Britain and Korea, neatly ascribing English language and British
culture to Britain and Korean language and Korean culture to Korea:
A direct correlation between the nation-state and the language—the
national paradigm that is based on “the national constituting the natural
frame of reference for language teaching” (Risager, 2007, p. 191). I was
once again the Other among Korean teachers as someone foreignized,
but I could bring out my British identity and be the powerful one inside
my classroom. My Korean identity could once again hide beneath my
British identity. The way I spoke, taught, and acted seemed coherent as
British-Self—I spoke only English in class, many times asking students
to do the same; I introduced Western culture, and emphasized the goal
of learning English as “being able to communicate with native speakers
of English.” I believed that immersing my students in an English-only
environment and presenting myself as their model would help them be a
part of—to fit into—the powerful community of native English speakers
by honing their use of the weapon—English competence. My perceived
Self-identity as a British English teacher when in my classroom seemed
to make it easier for me to keep separate my Korean identity and British
identity in a “split-space” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 37) so that here would be
no tension or collision between the two.

Korean-British in America
While working as an EFL teacher in Korea, I was fortunate to be selected
to participate in the Fulbright American Studies Program for Korean
English Teachers (FASP). This experience helped me realize two things.
First, teaching a language is “inevitably tied with the issue of ideology
and identity” (Canagarajah, 2013, p. 32). Second, my EFL teaching had
210 Soyoung Sarah Han et al.
perhaps been oriented to my own ideologically conceived view of English
language and of my Self-identity. The objective of this Fulbright program
was to offer us, Korean K–12 public-school English teachers, an oppor-
tunity to learn about American society and culture and to improve our
teaching skills. After the Fulbright orientation, consisting of lectures and
seminars for three weeks, each of us was assigned to an American middle
or high school, where we were to conduct short lessons on Korea. This
seemingly easy task presented a huge dilemma on my part because it was
the very first time I came into direct contact with my multiple identities.
I was in America, thinking and acting like British, introducing Korea. It
was a confusing moment as the already-established strategy of shaping
my cultural being—neatly allocating one identity to one “split-space”—
seemed to fall apart (Carr, 1999, as cited in Kumaravadivelu, 2008). On
top of this, preparing lessons about Korea was another challenge because
not only did it require deep engagement in my Korean-Self in a foreign
environment, but it also revealed how little I knew of my own heritage
language and culture. My identity as Korean had been overshadowed by
my British-Self for so many years that I had become oblivious to my own
Korean cultural frame. I was one of the “minority elites” absorbing and
replicating the target culture and not an “intercultural diplomat,” able
to negotiate between home and target culture (Corbett, 2003, as cited
in Kumaravadivelu, 2008). I was so caught up in the idea of the tension
between my Korean- and British-Self that I did not consider the possibil-
ity of creating an in-between space. This liminal, hybrid space, as Bhabha
(Rutherford, 1990) argues, gives rise to something different, something
new and unrecognizable, a new area of negotiation of meaning and rep-
resentation. However, “hybridity does not resolve any tension between
two cultures in contact”; rather, cultural identities are formed, reformed,
and constantly in a state of being so that instead of “getting imprisoned
in one cultural space, one can now belong everywhere” (Kumaravadi-
velu, 2008, p. 124).
The concept of hybridity freed me from my previous understanding of
my multiple identities the cause of my struggle. In this respect, my experi-
ence at the FASP helped me realize that all these identities are, as Cana-
garajah (2012) observed, not to be treated as a problem but as resources
that have made me who I am today. I realized that multiple identities are
what make me unique and in fact allow me to go beyond boundaries,
rendering the sense of “not belonging” that I had dreaded for so long
become the freedom to belong anywhere.

Korean-Myself-British in a Globalized World

I am now an emerging scholar in education. In making the transition to
researcher, I have come to understand that my experiences as an ESL stu-
dent and EFL teacher have helped me become more reflexive and critical
 Towards Glocally Situated TESOL Practices 211
of who I am as a TESOL practitioner and researcher. Of course, I still
experience identity conflicts trying to define for myself what my “third
space” would look like, “how to negotiate comfortable third places
between the Self and the Other” (Kumaravadivelu, 2008, p. 134). How-
ever, the way I view this has changed because I now understand that these
struggles are what gave me the courage and willingness to be vulnerable,
to be open to new possibilities as a beginning researcher. As I continue
to negotiate and translate all my resources as a transnational being, I am
constructing and reconstructing my own hybrid identity. By revisiting my
prior experiences and making sense of them in the light of my evolving
sense of what I am becoming in a globalized world, I have come to appre-
ciate my being in “liminal space” in which my in-betweenness becomes a
valuable resource to imagine new possibilities.

Magda’s Story
My professional journey is intertwined with my personal history of lan-
guage leaning and my ongoing TESOL-practitioner activities. I was born
in Poland during the communist regime and lived there until I graduated
as a Spanish philologist in the late 1990s. I have since spent my adult-
hood abroad, first in Ecuador working for 14 years as a teacher educator
and then subsequently in the United States as a doctoral student and as a
TESL instructor in a teacher-preparation program at a College of Educa-
tion. These experiences have helped me develop an analytical approach to
language learning and teaching (Yazan, 2019). Using the questions pro-
posed by Yazan (2019) to guide my language-teacher identity, I reflected
on my experiences and evolving professional awareness. In this autoeth-
nography, I first interrogate master narratives in Poland and Ecuador and
then discuss how the values that I came to espouse during earlier phases
of my career are not only captured but further developed the kinds of
practice that I create in my current work as a TESL instructor. Embracing
both linguistic and cultural diversity and honoring practices rooted in my
personal history are the values that guide my autoethnography.

TESOL Practitioner as a Language Learner

In 1955, the Warsaw Pact, formally known as the Treaty of Friendship,
Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was signed between the Soviet
Union and seven Eastern Bloc satellite states in Central and Eastern
Europe. Later, during the Cold War, the lingua franca became Russian. In
the Polish People’s Republic, where I was raised, Russian was one of the
most important subjects in school and, as a child, I did not understand
or question the lyrics of the popular Russian songs that I had to learn by
heart. This type of indoctrination was called “Russification” in Poland,
and I sang these songs loud and clear with my classmates, unaware of the
212 Soyoung Sarah Han et al.
Cold War and the fear of communism in the West. Yet, perhaps ironi-
cally, my love for languages started in this environment of coercive learn-
ing via tedious grammar-translation methods.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russian was eliminated from schools
after 1989, while, at the same time, discrimination against both the lan-
guage and its teachers began. Some schools were even proud of not hav-
ing any Russian teachers. As a teenager, I was thrilled to be able to learn
English and, in college, to be able to choose Spanish philology as my
undergraduate major. I was finally experiencing the pleasure of choice
and freedom to learn a language voluntarily! However, I soon discovered
that the teaching of English and Spanish in Poland in the 1990s reflected
the modernist perspective on culture in which people are seen as members
of fixed communities (Kumaravadivelu, 2011). Indeed, I was assimilating
British culture while learning British English and Spanish culture while
learning the Spanish of Spain. Just as I uncritically repeated the Russian
lyrics of “May there always be sunshine,” I relentlessly practiced the Eng-
lish /θ/ and /ð/ sounds, forcing my tongue into an unnatural dental frica-
tive, and continually made sure to elongate my /u/s. My English teachers
seemed obsessed with the “accurate” production of these sounds as well
as emphasizing the importance of knowing popular tourist locations in
London and becoming familiar with British traditions. I would like to
believe that I now communicate well in English, despite the fact that I no
longer remember how to get from Buckingham Palace to Westminster
Abbey. Similarly, I recall repeating the Spanish phoneme “C” (/θ/) in an
audio-lab, only later in my professional career to adopt the /s/ pronun-
ciation common to the Ecuadorian variety of the language—most likely
much to the chagrin of my Spanish professors, who would probably
regret conferring the degree of a Spanish philologist on someone whose
fluent Spanish does not imitate “el castellano” for which they strived.
Upon graduation, with a scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in
communications, I moved to Ecuador, where I had to put forth conscious
effort to avoid the marked “C” and the rigid imperative forms of “el
castellano.” I re-learned Spanish in Ecuador. Subsequently, I started a
career as a TEFL instructor in an Ecuadorian branch of a multinational
educational company. The majority of my colleagues were from the
United States and I found myself forced to distinguish between the previ-
ously indistinguishable “cat” and “cut” or “shore” and “sure.” While
re-learning English, I was also reflecting on how to address culture in
language education to prepare learners for the challenges of cultural glo-
balization in the 21st century.

TESOL Practitioner’s Responsibility in the Postmodernist Era

When I first began training English teachers in Ecuador in the early
2000s, I was operating within the sphere of neoliberal educational
 Towards Glocally Situated TESOL Practices 213
policies, which were intended to push local schoolteachers to develop
higher English-language proficiency to meet the standards set for the
language teaching profession. The intent of these policies was to enable
these teachers to become more competitive in the global market and to
improve their socioeconomic status in the globalized economy in which
English was the lingua franca. At that time, only 2% of English teachers,
whose proficiency was evaluated using the TOEFL iBT, met the B2, or
Upper Intermediate level on the Common European Framework of Ref-
erence (Council of Europe, 2001)—the target-level English proficiency
set by the government to be qualified to teach English. After five years
of training, 800 teachers had reached the required level of proficiency
(Kuhlman & Serrano, 2017).
As a teacher trainer in a nation-wide training program for English
teachers launched by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Education, I heard
numerous personal stories of teachers who participated in the assessment
process, many of whom had never previously seen a TOEFL test and did
not possess basic computer skills. I recall elder teachers coming to my
office with brand-new computers saying: “My daughter bought me this
laptop. Can you teach me how to turn it on?” These teachers had little
or no opportunity to practice and were understandably anxious because
results were publicized by Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, who
had announced the end of “social deceit” and was committed to replac-
ing English teachers who were not proficient (Correa Delgado, 2012).
Accordingly, teachers were divided into groups according to their level of
TOEFL proficiency; those of lower proficiency were ostracized by school
administrators.
Now, as a doctoral candidate who investigates language policy issues,
I reflect on the language assessment procedures used in Ecuador with my
developing understanding of Global Englishes (e.g., Canagarajah, 2013,
2014) and “global cultural consciousness” (Kumaravadivelu, 2008,
2011, 2012). My reflections, combined with my reading on these top-
ics, helped me see the problems of uncritically adopting the center-based
knowledge systems and expectations of Inner-Circle Englishes (Kachru,
1985) for locally situated TESOL practices. I also understand that the
standardized tests used to assess Ecuadorian English teachers’ language
proficiency were culturally and ethically inappropriate, because of their
taken-for-granted assumptions of test-takers’ familiarity with Anglo-
centered cultural premises and of the typical social and cultural situa-
tions associated with American college life. In fact, these tests take no
account of the kinds of skills needed to teach English in Ecuador. EFL
teaching in Ecuador needs to be place-based, requiring the ability to retell
Ecuadorian legends in English, to describe peculiarities of the Ecuado-
rian life style, and to promote local tourism. However, at the time of the
policy implementation in Ecuador, there were already examples of more
contextualized ways of assessing EFL teachers’ English proficiency. For
214 Soyoung Sarah Han et al.
instance, Brown and Lumley (1998) designed a battery of tests for Indo-
nesian teachers that were based on local pedagogical expectations.
What I also came to recognize is that the modernist practice of assimi-
lation into a linguacultural target, as practiced both in Poland and
Ecuador, negates both the value of the learners’ cultural heritage and
the intercultural dimension of English as a global language. Hence, the
goal of a TESOL practitioner should not be to emphasize assimilation
but rather to facilitate English-language teachers in the development of
“global cultural consciousness” (Kumaravadivelu, 2011), which decon-
structs the simplistic culture-country correlation and proclaims a critical
evaluation of one’s and other’s cultural value systems (Kumaravadivelu,
2012). This post-colonial idea aligns well with the new pedagogical
model for teaching Global Englishes proposed by Canagarajah (2006,
2014), which focuses on developing procedural knowledge, including the
knowledge and skills of how to communicate, how use negotiation strat-
egies, how to express one’s own voice, and how to become aware of the
translingual practices that bi/multilingual speakers use to communicate
across the globe.
Now, as a doctoral student and TESL instructor, these theoretically
informed reflections on my past experiences form a foundation from
which I teach TESOL teacher education courses. Currently, I support
US pre-service ESL teachers in an ESL endorsement program that culmi-
nates in a six-week teaching practicum in Ecuador. I view my responsi-
bility as nurturing respect among my students for locally valued modes
of English teaching and as helping them to develop global cultural
awareness. I ask my students to engage in assignments that are designed
to promote global cultural awareness, to reflect on their own language-
learning processes while studying Ecuadorian Spanish or Kichwa and to
conduct ethnographic observations to develop an awareness of the new
culture and to unveil their own cultural assumptions. My teaching expe-
rience in this context has also expanded my understanding of culture as
an element of global awareness and, more specifically, as the revival of
local indigenous identities and respect for nature and the environment.
My own learning of Kichwa and the cosmovision of its people have
helped me understand that indigenous people perceive education to be
an integral part of their community and of local systems of knowledge.
Kichwa people take a holistic approach to generating diverse global
knowledges, including physical, biological, linguistic, spiritual, social,
and economic (Martusewicz, Edmundson, & Lupinacci, 2014). Indig-
enous knowledges are passed from generation to generation and are
naturally place-based.
This holistic approach honors human-non-human co-existence, as
expressed in the sumac kawsay, a concept used in the Ecuadorian consti-
tution, which refers to “good living”—the way of living I have adopted
in my transnational practices. My students appropriate the “good living”
 Towards Glocally Situated TESOL Practices 215
principle in an embodied manner during the program: By learning eco-
logical ways of animal husbandry, by planting trees, or by teaching good
habits of waste recycling during their practicum. The values of “good
living” are the building blocks of the stories in The Tales and Legends of
the Amazon Jungle, a bilingual Kichwa-Spanish literacy project launched
recently by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage:

Everything has a relationship. We do not exist in isolation. Nothing

exists on its own. We are all responsible for what happens. Being
passive also influences. . . . You have to live in harmony with Mother
Nature and the rest of the living beings. The work is communitarian,
we all work with everyone and for everyone.
(Ministerio de Cultura de Ecuador, 2016, p. 26)

Our personal lives, identities, and feelings are partly constituted by the
sociocultural contexts into which we were born or in which we now
choose to live and work (Anderson, 2006). I have learned to incorpo-
rate my learning history into my current understanding of the role of
a TESOL practitioner in the globalized world. In preparing pre-service
ESL teachers to teach in culturally diverse schools, I emphasize the need
to recognize one’s cultural roots and develop an openness to learn from
cultures that operate from non-Western epistemological systems. I join
Kumaravadivelu (2011) in encouraging teacher educators to cultivate
openness to global Englishes and local cultures, while also developing
awareness and pride in their own heritage.

Mari’s Story
I work closely with the first two authors as their advisor. It may there-
fore be fitting for me to look at where our paths intersect. In this narra-
tive, I briefly describe my own academic trajectory and how my being an
English-as-additional-language (EAL) speaker/writer has influenced my
work as a TESOL/applied linguistics scholar and, in turn, how this has
strongly influenced the ways in which I approach my role as an advisor.
Originally from Japan, I came to North America to pursue graduate
studies in applied linguistics/L2 education at a Canadian university. Dur-
ing that period, my experience as a member of a school-university col-
laborative action research project left an indelible mark on me. I came
to take a non-hierarchical approach to research, in that, rather than
doing research “on” teachers, I learned to co-research with teachers. As
a result, in my classroom-based research, I have been mindful to incor-
porate teachers’ voices in developing a contextualized understanding of
the particular phenomena or events under investigation. This “dialogic
stance” (Flecha, 2011) guides my research and teaching and also my
advising.
216 Soyoung Sarah Han et al.
Since completing my doctorate in Canada, I have worked at several
research-intensive universities in the United States. My research, drawing
on critical sociocultural theoretical perspectives, has examined how US
K–8 public school teachers can create productive and equitable learning
opportunities through the ways in which they manage classroom inter-
action in contexts in which many English learners (ELs) study together
with their non-EL peers. More recently, I have extended my research
to include the learning and professional development of US urban ele-
mentary school teachers who work with ELs in ESL and mainstream
classrooms.
However, my path to becoming an academic in the field of TESOL/
applied linguistics has been rather bumpy. As I look back, I see two
problematic areas. First, I was left to find my own way through the
dissertation process, which at the time I took to be the norm. I do not
recall being mentored on any regular basis nor did I have the privilege of
jointly engaging in research with my advisor, let alone co-presenting at
conferences or co-writing manuscripts. One of the consequences was that
I found myself not sufficiently enculturated into academia when I took up
my first position as an assistant professor of ESL education. As a result,
I had no choice but to enculturate myself in my chosen field while also
pursuing my tenure. Second, as an EAL writer whose first language dif-
fers greatly from English, both typologically and culturally, I found writ-
ing academic articles to be daunting. I was particularly frustrated by my
difficulty in articulating my thoughts precisely in the sentence structures
of academic English. These difficulties were exacerbated by my choice
to be a qualitative researcher. It has been only through repeated drafting
and redrafting my written texts that I have developed sufficient ability
to write in acceptable English prose. However, my lived experience of
overcoming these challenges has formed the basis for my current advis-
ing. I not only consciously create opportunities for my advisees, both
American and international, to become enculturated through joint schol-
arly activities, such as co-presentation and co-writing, but I also try to
help them improve their academic writing by focusing on the processes
involved. Most importantly, I want them to know that I care about them
as people, not just as prospective academics.
As in my research, my advising is guided by critical sociocultural per-
spectives and “ethics of care” (Noddings, 2013). I strive to co-construct
knowledge with my advisees, respecting who they are and supporting
their academic growth and success. I believe that respect is critical in
any advising, regardless of the discipline. However, the importance of
respecting students’ funds of knowledge becomes even greater in the
Department of Curriculum and Instruction where I work. This is because
our graduate students, seasoned educators from across the globe, like the
first two authors, bring a wide diversity of knowledge and lived expe-
riences to bear on their doctoral studies. This diversity is particularly
 Towards Glocally Situated TESOL Practices 217
salient in my doctoral courses, in which a mixture of domestic US and
international students engage in productive dialogue, as they bring to
class heterogenous sociocultural expectations, varied English verbal com-
petence, and differences in the extent of their familiarity with US higher
education practices.
On one hand, the task of advising is unambiguous in that there are
clearly demarked milestones on this journey (e.g., comprehensive exam,
dissertation defense). On the other hand, advising can be challenging
because there is no detailed guide for how to help doctoral students to
reach the milestones. Over the years, I have come to recognize certain
key issues that influence how my colleagues engage in advising: (1) their
understanding of what it means to be a scholar; (2) what they consider
to be the key mentoring tasks and their role in carrying them out; and
(3) the extent to which they are willing to invest their time in the activ-
ity of advising. For me, doctoral advising is a task that I need to take
very seriously, since I am responsible for shaping the future of my pro-
spective colleagues. I therefore invest considerable time and energy in
mentoring my advisees throughout the doctoral program. I meet with
them regularly to keep up to date on their academic progress and on
challenges that they may be facing so that I can support them in a con-
sistent manner throughout their doctoral careers. Also, celebrating their
successes! What has been particularly helpful in honing my mentoring
skills is observing my colleagues in action when chairing their doctoral
advisees’ committees. Another important source of my learning is the
advisees themselves, as I have come to recognize that there are vastly
different ways of engaging with the world and completing doctoral stud-
ies. That is, each advisee is unique in how they learn, write, or articulate
their thoughts and feelings.
I have learned to actively attend to verbal and non-verbal cues, not just
to what they are verbally conveying to me but also to what cannot be put
into words. In responding, I try to select what I think will be the most
helpful form of support at a particular point in time. With my advisees,
I have also learned new theories and explored new areas of research.
From my own transnational experience, I am particularly aware of the
challenges that EAL doctoral students face, so I try to create opportuni-
ties for collaboration in conducting research and in joint-writing, as we
are attempting to do in this chapter. My learning as an advisor is continu-
ously evolving, and I feel honored to have this opportunity to work with
future leaders who will shape the field of TESOL/applied linguistics.
Underscoring my doctoral teaching/advising-practices is my own iden-
tity as a transnational and translingual scholar—being simultaneously an
insider and outsider. I find myself in a liminal space in which I must con-
stantly balance two poles: The need to help doctoral students understand
the “language games” (Wittgenstein, 2009) of academia and my desire to
assist them in finding their own voices.
218 Soyoung Sarah Han et al.
Discussion of Common Issues That Emerged
From the Narratives
We used two prompts as common starting points for our narratives:
(1) how our transnational experiences have shaped our professional
identities and/or TESOL pedagogies and practices; and (2) what we have
come to understand about TESOL practitioners’ responsibilities in this
globalized world. In response to the first prompt, our narratives show
that, despite our divergent pathways, our transnational experiences gave
rise to a relatively convergent stance. We came to embrace our hybrid
identities and/or developed pedagogies that create a liminal space for our
students to think productively with ideas from different linguacultures
(Agar, 1994). The second prompt helped us probe into the ethics and
values underlying our teaching practices. In this regard, our narratives
raise two important issues: The need for rescaling our practices and for
reevaluating who owns English. By discussing these two issues, we aim
to respond to Kumaravadivelu’s (2012) plea to rethink ELT practices and
ELT professionals’ responsibilities, which in turn are closely intertwined
with TESOL practitioner identities, pedagogies, and practices.
The first issue concerns the need to value the agency of TESOL practi-
tioners and L2 learners, more specifically the agency to develop “reper-
toires of practices” (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003) that are most appropriate
for their goals. In our view, this involves scale shifting. Our use of the
term scale draws on Blommaert’s (2005) explication of the sociolinguis-
tic concept of “scale,” which treats language as a resource with ascribed
values dependent on its position on the vertical scale that compares all
the world’s languages. Prestige languages in the West (e.g., English) are
at a higher level compared with the languages of less developed countries
(e.g., Swahili). Similarly, elite language varieties (e.g., standard native-
speaker varieties of English) are at a higher level than dialectal varieties
(e.g., African American Vernacular) or non-native varieties (e.g., Chi-
nese English). Therefore, prestigious languages are considered as “high-
mobility resources” that unlock and “allow mobility across situations
and scale-levels” (Blommaert, 2010, p. 12). Indeed, Sarah’s and Magda’s
narratives describe how the norm of higher scale native-speaker varieties
of English influence an individual ESL learner’s aspirations (Sarah) and
decisions on language policy in Ecuador (Magda). However, what both
authors ultimately show is the importance of recalibrating existing scales
so as to create individually or locally viable practices. This recalibration
shows that the scales are not fixed, objective, and predefined. Recall that
Sarah decided to place Korean and English at the same level in order to
cultivate her own transnational space in which she could thrive. Her nar-
rative also points to the fluidity of social practice, which requires not only
high mobility resources (i.e., academic English) but also lower mobility
ones (i.e., peer talk) for her survival in an English middle school. Taking
 Towards Glocally Situated TESOL Practices 219
this issue to a societal level, Magda’s narrative highlights the necessity
of shifting scale in a post-colonial EFL context, particularly in relation
to language policy (i.e., policy borrowing). Mari’s example of graduate
teaching and advising also supports the necessity of rescaling practices.
The second issue concerns the ownership of English in the era of glo-
balization. English has increasingly become a medium of communica-
tion across the globe. It is through English-as-an-international-language
that international relations are negotiated and business transactions car-
ried out. English also has rapidly become a medium of instruction in
countries in which English is not the primary language (e.g., Europe,
Africa, Asia), particularly in higher education contexts. Thus, treating
native-speaker varieties of English as the norm and as the goal for L2
learners is no longer appropriate, given the wide range of purposes for
which English is being used internationally. Nonetheless, this dominant
view persists. In fact, all three narratives recognize its pervasiveness:
Sarah’s example of her cultivation of a British Self at the expense of her
Korean Self; Magda’s example of the Ecuadorian government’s uncriti-
cal adoption of Western-based ELT assessment tools to evaluate local
English teachers; and Mari’s example of needing to master the genre of
academic writing. However, based on our transnational experiences, we
see an indiscriminate application of this normative view to all TESOL
practices as inappropriate. Mari’s narrative shows that English already
functions as an international language in her graduate classes and in her
advising at a public university in the United States. Her ethnolinguisti-
cally diverse students engage in dialogue through the medium of English.
What matters in such contact zones is intelligibility, collegiality, and the
desire to understand each other, not upholding the norm of the native-
speaker variety of English.
When we think of international English as belonging to all its users,
irrespective of linguistic and cultural history, what dispositional charac-
teristics are important for TESOL practitioners? We use the term TESOL
practitioners to include pre- and in-service teachers, teacher educators,
and researchers. Magda’s narrative explicitly addresses one aspect of
this complex issue. Magda writes about being intentional about helping
US pre-service ESL teachers, the majority of whom are speakers of the
elite variety of English, develop global cultural awareness. In her teacher-
education courses, she engages them in intercultural assignments that are
designed to help them develop knowledge about and respect for local
Kichwa “linguaculture” (Agar, 1994). She also makes it clear that she too
is a learner, as she engages in intercultural explorations with her students.
This teacher-as-learner perspective also reinforces Sarah’s and Mari’s nar-
ratives. Sarah reflects on her experiences with English, positioning herself
as a learner who is growing personally and professionally by building
on her previous experiences and her ongoing professional development.
Mari illustrates how her current graduate teaching and advising takes
220 Soyoung Sarah Han et al.
place in intercultural spaces, in which her orientation to co-learn with
her students is important.
The discussion above makes it clear that, as TESOL practitioners in a
globalized world, our tasks have not only expanded but have also become
even more complex. However, we welcome this challenge, as we see it as
opening up opportunities for our professional growth.
To conclude, we wish to note the benefits of autoethnography. First, it
was eye-opening to learn about our different stories of becoming and of
the concrete ways in which globalization and the dominance of English
have affected our lives. Particularly beneficial was the engagement in the
simultaneous acts of reflecting on our experiences with key theoretical
ideas and materializing our thinking through writing. We narrated some-
thing new into being through writing, developing a new sense of self-
understanding. To become, or to create something new or transformative
(Chang, 2008), we kept our own subjectivities in check by enacting the
“ethnographic ethos of ambivalence, ambiguity, and openness” (Biehl &
Locke, 2010, p. 321). We believe that a critical mass of such transforma-
tive telling has the potential to become a powerful source of our collec-
tive professional knowledge.

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