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Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 230  Sue Ollerhead and Anne Burns A further key criticism is the tight prescription of time frames within which learners have to make progress in certain assessment areas.As teachers in the field would recognize, adult language learning is often a laborious and erratic process. For ESL literacy learners with little experience of formal education, research shows that individual learner progress is impossible to predict and may not even be observable within short spaces of time (see Tarone & Bigelow, 2007). This discussion of the main challenges and constraints within which LLNP teachers work paves the way for a more finely grained exploration of how agency and creativity are exercised within or despite such limitations. Contextualizing the Case Study Here we introduce and contextualize a particular instance of creativity conceptu- alized as resistance to constraining policy conditions.Teacher Paula was employed as a beginner-level adult ESL literacy teacher at a large vocational college, located in an ethnically and socially diverse suburb of a major Australian city.The locale was home to a large migrant population, with 31% of residents having been born overseas and 23% of residents coming from non–English-speaking backgrounds. As a classroom teacher, Paula’s role encompassed delivering literacy tuition to pre- and low-literate adult ESL learners enrolled in the LLNP program, as well as assessing and reporting on their progress. Paula described her learners as being at “marginally post-beginner level,” com- ing mostly from refugee backgrounds in Africa and Asia, where their schooling was severely disrupted as a result of violent conflict and displacement. Most learn- ers had very little or no literacy skills in their first languages and also very little experience of formal learning situations. An Adult ESL Literacy Teacher Conceptualizes Her Creativity Exploration of the effects of teacher agency on classroom teaching and learning behavior is well documented in contemporary literature (see Norton & Toohey, 2011; Priestley et al., 2013). Indeed, researchers such as Kwek and colleagues (2007) and Pahl (2007) have made a direct link between creativity and critical pedagogies through which teachers use their agency to contest powerful policy discourses governing literacy tuition. We propose that the profound challenges posed to teachers within highly pre- scribed, predominantly “skills-focused” programs, coupled with the unique social and learning needs of their students, demands a particular type of creativity: one that subverts or transforms the pervading teaching scenario. In this sense, the close link with creativity is laid bare. Paula’s “socio-culturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn, 2001, p. 112) led her both to subvert and transform her teaching condi- tions in ingenious and creative ways.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity as Resistance  231 Priestley and associates (2013) assert that the promotion of teacher agency is not only a matter of increasing teachers’ capabilities through teacher education and professional development, but that it also requires attention to “cultures and structures” (p. 96). Furthermore, the extent to which teachers feel able to exer- cise this type of creativity is not random but constitutes what Stritikus (2003) describes as their pedagogical, personal, and political ideologies. In other words, teachers make sense of their teaching situations based on their personal under- standing of the circumstances, and their understanding of those circumstances is rooted in their belief systems (Decker & Rimm-Kaufman, 2008). It is against this analytical framework that we trace the origins of Paula’s par- ticular brand of creativity, through examining her biographical background as well as her personal ideologies about teaching. Paula was a petite, soft-spoken, lively Anglo-Australian woman in her mid-50s who had been teaching adult ESL literacy learners for five years. She had lived in a middle-class suburb of the city for most of her life, and spoke only English. Despite having spent 20 years helping to run her family’s piano business, she had always been interested in languages and held a master’s degree in linguistics. She had begun her literacy teaching career volunteering with the Australian Red Cross, where her learners were predominantly refugees and asylum seekers, work she found very stimulating and rewarding. A core part of her job training involved the treatment and rehabilitation of torture and trauma survivors. Paula had been teaching at College A4 for three years, where she had culti- vated a strong rapport with her learners. Many of them turned to her for advice on extracurricular issues, such as housing and health-related problems. She also worked hard to develop and maintain social cohesion in her classes. They [the learners] often have very good support groups amongst them- selves, but then there was a girl from Ethiopia who was the only Ethiopian, and she was actually very lonely. I took the other women aside and asked if they would sit with her during morning tea and they were glad to do it but they’d never thought of doing it themselves. (Interview 1, lines 20–25) Paula described herself as a“social worker-cum-facilitator”(Interview 2,line 14) as well as a teacher, explaining how she worked alongside the college counselors to help learners resolve various personal and social problems. I use them [the college counsellors] a lot, to find emergency housing for Ayen,5 to find recompense for Adolfo’s prescriptions because he couldn’t afford to buy his prescription medicine. You have to use the counsellors, who are wonderful. But you have to do a lot of the legwork to get them to the counsellors, you end up having to do a lot of work on your own.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 232  Sue Ollerhead and Anne Burns Go with them, fill out forms, it’s very time consuming. Most have health issues that they don’t understand. I had a girl who had diabetes and she didn’t know, she had been told that she wasn’t able to eat sugar. But she didn’t know that things like Coke had sugar, so she was drinking it and she was always having these dreadful episodes. She’s never really been edu- cated about her condition. So you’re always organizing, educating and so on. (Interview 2, November 2008, lines 24–29) Paula seemed to embrace the myriad extracurricular social responsibilities posed by her learners, saying “I don’t mind doing all the extra stuff, that’s the side of the job I love.The thing I do mind is all the paperwork and the reporting. I could do without that” (Interview 2, lines 35–36). Although Paula had taught English language learners with more advanced skills (from intermediate to advanced levels), she found teaching beginner level learners more interesting and satisfying. For Paula, the fundamental and multifac- eted linguistic and social challenges posed by her learners were at once the source and the impetus for her teaching creativity, which provided her with ongoing opportunities for self-reflection: I actually love the challenge of getting right down to the basics of a lan- guage and working out how to present it in its simplest form for people at beginner level. It’s rewarding breaking the language down and thinking about how you can present it so that it’s meaningful to them. I find it very challenging, very difficult actually. (Interview 1, lines 75–80) In-depth interviews with Paula revealed evidence of her intuitive and innova- tive approach to teaching, prompted by her well-articulated desire to find out more about “how learners learn” (Interview 1, line 96). Paula explained that despite being given little specific training for beginner ESL literacy learners, she had devised a whole-text method of teaching that, through a trial-and-error pro- cess, had turned out to be beneficial for her learners. Understanding that it was crucial to connect with her learners beyond the classroom to ensure their engagement, Paula’s initial approach was to develop and read her learners simple illustrated stories that aligned with their life situations. For example, one such story involved the experiences of a young woman who immigrated to Australia after spending many years in a refugee camp and wanted to become a childcare worker. We’d read the stories again and again, around the class, until the Sudanese6 almost did know it by heart, because they have such a good ear. So then I’d collect all the stories from them, and then we’d work backwards, we’d generate them on the board. (Interview 1, line 116–119)

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity as Resistance  233 Paula would elicit key vocabulary and spelling from stories from her learners, who would then write them on the whiteboard as a class. I’d say,“How do you spell it?” and we’d sound it out, ad nauseum, until they gradually took wild guesses at the spelling and they learned some simple rules.We’d generate the key words in random order, all over the whiteboard, and then learn to read those words out of context, so they were no longer just memorizing the story. (Interview 1, lines 130–134) Paula would then present learners with the pictures and the text, which had been cut up separately, and she would ask them to match the simple texts with the pictures. By this stage, her learners had learned to recognize some of the words from the story as sight words. She would repeat this exercise every week, using a different story. For Paula, therefore, it would seem that her particular creativity lay in her abil- ity to develop her own evidence-based classroom teaching techniques and mate- rials to meet the complex needs of her learners. In other words, the very absence of specific training and materials for ESL literacy learners provided her with the impetus to devise classroom lessons that were vibrant, active, and clearly engaging to her learners. In doing so, she was able to exercise her agency as a teacher, and, as Hornberger and Skilton-Sylvester (2000) would suggest, contest the traditionally powerful policy conditions at a micro level, through her own creative and intui- tive classroom teaching practices. An Adult ESL Literacy Teacher Enacts Her Creativity To complement Paula’s conceptualizations of her creativity, it is necessary to explore the extent to which her perceptions of her own classroom practices were borne out by what was observed in her classroom (Crookes et al., 1992). In order to do this, we position her practices within the theoretical framework of critical pedagogy (McKinney & Norton, 2008). In this respect, we argue that while much of the literature on creativity relates to inherent abilities and aptitudes, the poten- tial link between creative and critical teaching has been overlooked.Yet as Pahl (2007) states, the two concepts are intricately linked through their mutual goals of transformed practices:“Any creative or critical practice . . . must be embedded in a pedagogical practice that construes transformed subjectivities as new representa- tions of reality” (p. 237). In this sense, critical pedagogies emerge through teachers’ enactment of their creative agency. The recent origins of critical pedagogy date back to Paulo Freire (1970), who believed that literacy education should enable learners to read both “the word” and “the world” (Freire & Macedo, 1987).Teachers enacting critical ped- agogies would thus aim to help learners develop knowledge of both themselves

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 234  Sue Ollerhead and Anne Burns and their society and of the ways in which they are shaped by relations of power. In this way, critical pedagogy ascribes a transformative element to learn- ing (Papen, 2005). McKinney and Norton (2008) catalogue a number of critical teaching meth- ods applied in adult literacy classrooms. Among these is the use of multimodal pedagogies, as illuminated by Stein’s (2008) research on a multilingual storytelling project in an informal settlement in Johannesburg. Her work explains how giv- ing learners the opportunity to tell stories in their home languages enabled them to introduce previously proscribed information into the classrooms. These were converted to texts, which were later analyzed. Learners were encouraged to think about the beliefs and attitudes surrounding such information, the role of the nar- rator and the interpreter, and the way the meaning shifted with each subsequent narration of the tale. Linking the concept of creativity as resistance to the well-documented tra- dition of critical teaching pedagogies opens up the opportunity to attribute a transformative potential to ESL literacy teaching.This transformative impact can be seen in the ways that creative teachers such as Paula might transform what could be limited and narrow literacy teaching pedagogies into engaging, cultur- ally relevant practices. It is manifested by resisting the socially powerful policy and material conditions of their teaching contexts through creative teaching practices. It is through this lens, therefore, that the data from Paula’s classroom are analyzed. Observing a Lesson in Creativity We present data from Paula’s classroom in the form of a “snapshot” or vignette describing a particular lesson observed over a two-hour period.7 Paula’s lesson in progress involved speaking and reading tasks centered on the theme “Going to the doctor.” To begin the lesson, Paula introduced the lesson topic by miming that she had a headache, placing her arm against her forehead and grimacing exaggeratedly. Her learners responded enthusiastically with responses such as “You have sore head,” and “headache.” Next, Paula said, “I think I need to lie down,” which prompted laughter from the learners. She then told learn- ers she was going to play them a conversation between a doctor and a patient. She checked for understanding of the respective roles of a doctor and patient by asking,“Who is sick?” Paula then played learners a simple recorded dialogue of a doctor–patient interaction (see Table 15.1). Paula played the recording twice without adding an explanation. Next, she organized her learners into pairs and gave each pair six strips of paper contain- ing short phrases from the dialogue. She explained to learners that they needed to match the phrases together to form three full sentences from the dialogue. For example, the phrase “I have” needed to be matched with “a stomach ache” to form the sentence “I have a stomach ache.”

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity as Resistance  235 TABLE 15.1  Doctor–Patient Dialogues Taught by Paula (Lesson 3) Doctor Good morning.What can I do for you? Patient Good morning Doctor. I have a stomach ache. Doctor Do you have diarrhea? Patient Yes, I do. Doctor Do you have any other symptoms? Patient Yes, I feel nauseous. I also feel very hot. Doctor Let me take your temperature. (pause).Yes, you have a fever.You must take some Panadol. Patient Thank you doctor. Paula assumed a peripheral role during this activity, offering assistance only when asked by the learners. Four of the Sudanese learners were observed code-switching or “translanguaging” (Baker, 2006) between Arabic and English during this activity. Each pair of learners was then asked to read their sentences out loud.Where errors were made, Paula did not provide the correct answer herself but elicited it from other class members. Each time a correct sentence was read out by a pair of learners, it was repeated by the whole class. Next, Paula called out the first two or three words of a sentence and asked the whole class to complete the sentence orally, without looking at their printed sentences. She then invited learners to recite the dialogue chorally, accompanied by marking the rhythm through finger clicking, clapping, or beating their desk- tops. Eventually, learners were able to recite the entire dialogue without referring to the script. Paula elicited recitations from all the class members, paying care- ful attention to their pronunciation and intonation. She modeled appropriate intonation by encouraging learners to “make music” with their voices, making a wave-like motion with her hand to show learners when their voices should “go up” and when they should “go down.” Learners initially giggled self-consciously and then responded by adding exaggerated intonation to their speech, especially when reciting questions. In the second half of the lesson, Paula changed the classroom dynamic by seating learners in a large semicircle. Pulling her own chair into the circle, she used mime and gesture to elicit the question, “What do you do when you get a headache?” indicating the number of words of the question on her fingers. Learners were then invited to respond with an appropriate remedy,such as“I take pill”or“I drink water.” Learners repeated the target question aloud as a group and then individually, again paying careful attention to pronunciation and intonation. She used the whiteboard to initiate a substitution drill, in which the phrase “have a headache” was replaced by terms such as “have a stomach ache” or “have a fever.”Alternative remedies were also elicited, such as drinking “flat” (nonfizzy) Coca-Cola or eating bland food.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 236  Sue Ollerhead and Anne Burns Throughout the lesson, learners responded readily to Paula’s prompts, fre- quently alternating among their first language, English, and mime actions to offer diverse remedies for suggested ailments. In a concerted effort to subvert the rigor- ous demands of the curriculum, which stated that learners should acquire specific linguistic skills within prescribed time frames, Paula instead chose to draw on and connect with learners’ lives beyond the classroom, ensuring high levels of engagement, which maximized effective learning. Moreover, Paula succeeded in achieving a significant degree of intercultural learning and sharing among her learners by drawing on culturally prescribed healing practices, ranging from acu- puncture to inhaling the vapors of specific herbs. The lesson also prompted a significant contribution to the group discussion from class member Ayen, who had remained largely silent on each of the three prior occasions of class observa- tion. With the assistance of fellow learners, she related how she had grown up in rural South Sudan, in a nomadic family of pastoralists, who moved constantly through the desert in search of food for crops.As a result, she had developed spe- cialized knowledge relating to navigation and the environment, such as where to find water, how to handle animals, and the hard task of survival during times of drought. Her remedy for fever, which involved inhaling steam and fumes from a specific herb boiled over a fire, had been used in her tribe for centuries. She continued to use it in her changed, urban context of living in Australia. Ayen’s contribution was acknowledged with interest and enthusiasm by the other learn- ers, as seen in their nodding and interested questioning. The benefits of such a teaching approach were evident in learners’ patent enjoyment of the lesson. This was reflected in the words of Nancy, one of the learners who took part in the focus group interviews. I love here at [college] the way the teacher teaches. She lets us laugh and enjoy to learn English.To know more, to try, I’m happy with that. (Nancy, lines 96–98) Similar appreciation was expressed by Hassan, who observed: I like the way our teacher is encouraging and respectful.This helps to avoid quarrels. (Hassan, line 88) Conclusion This account of Paula’s teaching practices provides empirical evidence of cre- ative and critical agency in the face of the well-documented teaching constraints experienced within the LLNP teaching context. Paula’s choice of lesson content drew successfully upon learners’ multiple identities as parents, nurturers, healers, consumers, and survivors of intense hardship. She also drew upon learners’ unique,

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity as Resistance  237 situated knowledge, as seen in Ayen’s account of her nomadic existence in rural Sudan. In this way, Paula afforded learners imagined identities as brokers of cul- tural knowledge, which contributed to their investment in her teaching practices. Her use of a problem-solving approach, centered on proposed remedies to dif- ferent ailments, as a vehicle to teach health-related vocabulary and language, was effective in engaging learners, as was evident in learners’ high level of participation and positive responses. Paula’s introduction of learners’ vernacular and multimodal language forms into the lesson, including choral chanting, clapping, and mime, helped learners use the target language in an authentic and expressive way, thus emphasizing meaning over “correctness.” Through a careful choice of lesson content and teaching strategies, Paula intentionally positioned her learners as individuals with unique histories and life experiences that were valuable to share with the class and to record publicly (on the whiteboard) for purposes of learning. Learners’ interactive positioning in response to Paula’s teaching showed that they appreciated being acknowledged in this way, as seen in their readiness to share and participate in the group discussions. Clearly, they felt valued and appreciated as a result of Paula’s pedagogical practices. Finally, it would seem that Paula’s teaching practices made a positive contri- bution toward learners’ growing participation in the ESL literacy classroom as a community of practice.Their evolving membership within a community of legit- imate learners can be viewed in terms of their generally high levels of engaged participation in the classroom activities, which, according to Wenger (1998), serve as evidence of active learning. The case of Ayen, in particular, seems to illustrate the positive impact of Paula’s teaching.Ayen, an older learner at 52, with no prior experience of formal schooling, had previously remained on the fringes of class- room participation. However, Ayen was becoming sufficiently invested through Paula’s creative practices to share fascinating details of her life experiences. More- over, her fellow class members showed they appreciated her contribution and accepted her as a member of the learning community. Through fostering this kind of intercultural sharing, Paula helped Ayen become better integrated into the classroom community. In so doing, she provided an exemplar of cultural inclusiv- ity for other learners to follow (Hornberger, 2003). We would contend that Paula’s creativity, which can also be conceptualized in terms of critical pedagogical practice, was in essence an act of resistance to what she saw as constraining LLNP policy conditions. As Freire (1970, p. 65) argues, “critical pedagogy is based on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation.” Despite the many limitations of heavily prescriptive policy and materials placed on teaching practices worldwide, creative teachers continue to exercise agency by offering learners innovative and novel ways of interacting with the

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 238  Sue Ollerhead and Anne Burns target language. Their creativity acts as a symbol of resistance to obstacles and challenges imposed by both sociopolitical and economic factors and policy deci- sions taken at a distance from their classroom concerns and realities. However, this resistance proves ultimately to be transformative rather than normative, translating as it does into engaging, relevant, and empowering teaching practices that ulti- mately impact learners’ lives for the better. Questions for Discussion 1. How does the notion of creativity appear to be defined in this chapter? What essential features of creativity does it suggest? 2. To what extent do you agree with the contention that creativity is a form of resistance? 3. What relationships between creativity and critical pedagogy were suggested by the discussion in this chapter? 4. In what ways does the curriculum in your context facilitate or impede learning? 5. To what extent have you resisted the curriculum in your context in order to teach your learners more creatively? 6. What do you see as the main characteristics of creativity demonstrated by the teacher, Paula, in this chapter? 7. In what ways do you attempt to incorporate your own learners’ life experi- ences, learning experiences, and social and cultural backgrounds and contexts into your teaching? 8. To what extent does your own teaching context create opportunities for learners to develop effective communities of learning practice? How are these communities created? Suggestions for Further Research 1. Interview colleagues in your teaching context about what they see as the constraints of their current curriculum. Ask them to identify ways in which they could teach creatively within these constraints. 2. Develop a research question about creative teaching or learning that you could explore in your own teaching context. Identify what kind of data you would need to collect to answer your question. Discuss your ideas with other teacher colleagues. Notes 1 The term “ESL literacy learners” refers to those adults who face the challenge of learn- ing how to read and write in a second language with little proficiency in that language and very limited familiarity with literacy.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Creativity as Resistance  239 2 Mutual obligation refers to the general principle that it is fair and reasonable to expect unemployed people receiving income support to do their best to find work, undertake activities that will improve their skills, and increase their employment prospects. These activities may include job search, training, working for the dole, or a work experience activity (http://guidesacts.fahcsia.gov.au). 3 Centrelink is a program within the Australian government’s Human Services Depart- ment. It delivers a range of social security services and payments. In Australia, many migrants’ social security benefits are contingent upon their attendance of compulsory literacy and numeracy classes. 4 The college has been anonymized. 5 Pseudonyms have been used to protect learner and teacher anonymity. 6 According to Paula, most ESL literacy classes at her college comprised high numbers of Sudanese learners. 7 Our classroom observation is presented in the form of an analysis of a specific “lesson in progress” taken from Paula’s classroom, one of six lessons observed during the course of data collection. This lesson was selected on the basis of what we perceived to be its representativeness of the overall observations of teacher–learner interaction in Paula’s classroom. It can thus be considered a snapshot of lessons over time rather than an iso- lated instance of teaching practices. References Ahearn, L. (2001). Language and agency. Annual Review of Anthropology, 30, 109–137. Baker, N. (2006). Foundations of bilingual education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Baynham, M. (2006). Agency and contingency in the language learning of refugees and asylum seekers. Linguistics and Education, 17(1), 24–39. Black, S., &Yasukawa, K. (2011). Beyond deficit approaches to teaching and learning: Literacy and numeracy in VET courses. Paper presented at the 14th Annual Conference of the Austra- lian VET Research Association, Melbourne, Australia. Retrieved December 29, 2014, from http://avetra.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/62.00.pdf Canagarajah,A. S. (1999). Resistance in ELT. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Canagarajah,A. S. (2004). Subversive identities, pedagogical safe houses and critical learning. In B. Norton & K.Toohey (Eds.), Critical pedagogies and language learning (pp. 116–137). New York: Cambridge University Press. Castleton, G., & McDonald, M. (2002). A decade of literacy: Policy, programs and perspectives. Melbourne: Language Australia. Crookes, G., Johnson, D. M., & Saville-Troike, M. (1992).Validity and reliability in qualita- tive research on second language acquisition and teaching: Two researchers comment. TESOL Quarterly, 26(3), 602–605. Decker, L., & Rimm-Kaufman, S. E. (2008). Personality characteristics and teacher beliefs among pre-service teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(2), 45–64. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. P. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Hornberger, N. (2003). Continua of biliteracy: An ecological framework for educational policy, research and practice in multilingual settings. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 240  Sue Ollerhead and Anne Burns Hornberger, N. H., & Skilton-Sylvester, E. (2000). Revisiting the continua of biliteracy: International and critical perspectives. Language and Education, 14(2), 96–122. Janks, H. (2010). Literacy and power. New York: Routledge. Kwek, D., Albright, J., & Kramer-Dahl, A. (2007). Building teachers’ creative capabilities in Singapore’s English classrooms:A way of contesting pedagogical instrumentality. Lit- eracy, 41(2), 71–78. McKinney, C., & Norton, B. (2008). Identity in language and literacy education. In B. Slosky & F. Hult (Eds.), The handbook of educational linguistics (pp. 192–205). London: Blackwell. Norton, B., & Toohey, K. (2011). Identity, language learning and social change. Language Teaching, 44(4), 412–446. Norton-Peirce, B. (1995). Social identity, investment and language learning. TESOL Quar- terly, 29(1), 9–31. Pahl, K. (2007). Creativity in events and practices:A lens for understanding children’s mul- timodal texts. Literacy, 41(2), 86–92. Papen, U. (2005). Adult literacy as social practice: More than skills. Oxford: Routledge. Pavlenko, A., & Blackledge, A. (Eds.). (2004). Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pavlenko, A., & Norton, B. (2007). Imagined communities, identity and English language teaching. In J. Cummins & C. Davison (Eds.), International handbook of English language teaching (pp. 669–680). New York: Springer. Perkins, K. (2009). Adult literacy and numeracy: Research and future strategy.Adelaide: NCVER. Priestley, M., Biesta, G.J.J., & Robinson, S. (2013). Teachers as agents of change: Teacher agency and emerging models of curriculum. In M. Priestley & G.J.J. Biesta (Eds.), Rein- venting the curriculum: New trends in curriculum policy and practice (pp. 186–206). London: Bloomsbury. Searle, J. (2002). Policy and passion in ALBE: A discourse about discourses. Fine Print, 25, 3–12. Stein, P. (2008). Multimodal pedagogies in diverse classrooms: Representation, rights and resources. London: Routledge. Stritikus, T. T. (2003). The interrelationship of beliefs, context and learning: The case of a teacher reacting to language policy. Journal of Language, Identity and Education, 2, 29–52. Tarone, E., & Bigelow, M. (2007). Alphabetic print literacy and processing of oral correc- tive feedback in L2 interaction. In A. Mackey (Ed.), Conversational interaction in second language acquisition:A series of empirical studies (pp. 101–121). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Toohey, K. (2007). Autonomy/agency through socio-cultural lenses. In A. Barfield & S. Brown (Eds.), Reconstructing autonomy in language education (pp. 231–242). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 16 CULTIVATING CREATIVE TEACHING VIA NARRATIVE INQUIRY Cynthia D. Nelson Introduction: The Creativity Agenda Meets the Narrative Imperative Of central concern to this chapter are two phenomena that are each attracting increased attention in (language) education, albeit separately: creativity and nar- rativity. My main aim is to show why and how the latter can be put to work in service of the former for the purposes of teacher development (and ultimately, of course, for the benefit of language learners).To this end, I draw together research from education and applied linguistics, including narratives published by teachers on teaching/learning, to make a case that engaging in narrative inquiry can help language teachers expand their creative repertoire in some important ways. Put simply, teachers can learn much about teaching creatively and about the creativity that language use requires from other teachers’ real-life stories as well as their own. The Creativity Agenda Gaining ground across many sectors of education is what has been called a “cre- ativity agenda” (Philip, 2013, p. 365). Addressing the daunting societal, environ- mental, and economic challenges of the current era and the foreseeable future requires creative thinking on a mass scale.This means the educational focus needs to shift from information accumulation to idea generation,from top-down instruc- tion to inquiry-based learning, from disembodied rationality to whole-person engagement, from unthinking replication to innovation and experimentation, from lone problem solving to collaboration and community building (see, e.g., Philip, 2013). Conceptions of creativity have shifted to include not just “big-C

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 242  Cynthia D. Nelson Creativity,” which tends to be associated with artists and thinkers of renown, but also “little-c creativity,” which is integral to ordinary, everyday life (see, e.g., Jones, 2012; McWilliam & Dawson, 2008).There are various understandings in educa- tion research as to what constitutes creative teaching, so here I draw out just a few pertinent ideas from that literature. Creative teaching, as Sawyer (2004) sees it, is an improvisational performance; and since it occurs within structured frameworks and routines, it is a “disciplined improvisation” (p. 13) (see also Jones, this volume). This is exactly why creative teaching can be challenging, he says:“it is difficult for adults (including teachers) to learn how to manage a collaborative improvisation in class” (p. 15) and decide when to “stick with the script” and when to improvise (p. 16). Exacerbating the difficulty is that in some education, contexts curricula and instruction have become highly scripted, or predetermined, in an effort to compensate for teach- ers who are not seen to have sufficient “creative skill”; however, “teacher-proof ” approaches do not build teachers’ creativity—in fact, they end up dissuading teachers from becoming more creative (p. 18). Creativity would seem to be ubiquitous in teaching and learning, as Philip (2013) explains in his paper on creativity in higher education, but perhaps for this very reason, there tends to be little acknowledgment, much less serious focus, on how creativity might be developed. There should be, though: “The litera- ture suggests that educators may not necessarily have the skills and knowledge to develop their own creative pedagogical practice, to develop students’ creativity, or to adequately measure and assess creativity” (Philip, 2013, p. 365).Teachers should not be expected to advance their creative teaching skills in isolation, but, Philip (2013) argues, should be supported by a “system of interactions” involving leaders at their institutions, peers, colleagues, and other experts all working together to create the conditions to foster the “emergence of creativity” (p. 366). With regard to fostering creativity, Philip (2013) notes a contrast between education systems in different parts of the world: [W]hile western education in theory seeks to promote creativity, there is pressure to increase testing and standardisation in order to improve compet- itiveness with large emerging economies. Countries like China, by contrast, are moving to reduce testing and conformity, and foster creative opportuni- ties in order to better compete globally. (Philip, 2013, p. 364, citing Zhang et al., 2012) Though this is a broad generalization, I mention it here because it is important to keep in mind that especially in the transcultural arenas of language education, there are likely to be multiple and sometimes conflicting conceptions of creativity and its value to teaching and learning. In applied linguistics research, as in education, there has been a growing focus on “little-c creativity” as an ongoing aspect of everyone’s communicative lives.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Cultivating Creative Teaching via Narrative Inquiry  243 Moreover, creativity is less linked to notions of originality and uniqueness than to the processes of recontextualization and appropriation—creativity is not seen as invention so much as reinvention, in other words (Pennycook, 2007; see also Jones, 2010, p. 475, on “creative interdiscursivity”; Choi, this volume).The impli- cations of these ideas for language teaching have not yet received much schol- arly attention. But work has begun on identifying the characteristics of creative language teachers and teaching practices and how creativity can be supported and advanced in language learning and teacher-development programs (Richards, 2013)—more on this later. The Narrative Imperative Concurrent with the rise of the creativity agenda is “the narrative imperative” (Nelson, 2011, p. 468). With the Internet described as a “global autobiography project” (Karlsson, 2006, p. 301), digital communication is bringing new oppor- tunities and requirements in terms of developing language learners’ and teachers’ “narrative literacy” (Ochs & Capps, 1996, p. 20). It is becoming ever more nec- essary for language learners, teachers, teacher educators, and researchers alike to develop what I have elsewhere called “critical narrative knowledge—that is, expertise and versatility in interpreting, analysing, critiquing, learning from, incorporating, creating, co-constructing, and performing narratives” (Nelson, 2011, p. 469). “Narrative inquiry,” or using stories and storymaking to understand and reflect on experience, has become a popular methodology in education research (Clan- dinin & Connelly, 2000). Narrative inquiry and other forms of narrative research are on the rise in language education (Barkhuizen, 2011; Curtis & Romney, 2010; Nunan & Choi, 2010), and this includes language teacher education. As Golombek and Johnson (2004) note: Two decades of educational research argues that teachers’ knowledge is largely structured through stories . . .Thus, the use of narrative has emerged as the predominant means of getting at what teachers know, what they do with what they know and the sociocultural contexts within which they teach and learn to teach. (p. 308) The focus of this chapter is why and how narratives of teaching/learning—not just writing them but sharing them—can be used to cultivate teachers’ under- standings of creativity in language and in the classroom. About This Study This investigation emerged from my ongoing interest in how narrative (and per- formance) can enhance research and teacher development (Nelson, 2005, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015). My purpose here is to help cultivate creativity in language

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 244  Cynthia D. Nelson teaching by showing how narrative inquiry might be used for this purpose, whether in formal or informal teacher development/teacher education programs or by individual teachers. The chapter is in two parts. The first half presents key studies and findings from my survey of education and applied linguistics research on creativity, narrative inquiry, and teacher development. (Unable to find any research connecting all three areas, I make my case by braiding together different studies on different aspects.) Drawing on this scholarly foundation, in the second half of the chapter, I propose a template of questions meant to prompt reflection/ discussion of teaching/learning narratives and then present excerpts from two teachers’ published narratives that could be used for this purpose. My argument is, in a nutshell, that sharing teaching/learning narratives for collegial support and scrutiny can be an effective way of promoting creative teaching (and, ultimately, creative learning) in the language fields, and as such should be taken up more often and taken more seriously in practice and in research. Creative Language Teaching What constitutes creative language teaching, how is it being encouraged, and what insights might be gleaned from language research on creativity? These are the questions touched on in this section. Creativity and Teaching In a study of “creative teaching,” English-language teachers were asked to write about their philosophies of teaching, and those whose stories seemed to reflect “a creative disposition” were interviewed (Richards, 2013). Creative teachers were found to do things like the following: take risks and experiment with new approaches; review and reflect on their own practice, which in some cases involves keeping a journal of their teaching activities, thoughts, and decisions; seek out new ideas and activities from other teachers to apply in their own classes; and (as we saw with Sawyer, 2004) skillfully improvise, often adjusting their teach- ing during a lesson in order to respond to “teachable moments” (Richards, 2013, p. 13). Creative teachers choose class activities that seem likely to promote cre- ative responses from students, such as those that: connect with students’ lives and interests but in ways that are novel or unexpected; are intriguing, paradoxical, ambiguous or incongruous and thus stimulate curiosity; allow individual students to make individual choices according to their preferences; and encourage risk tak- ing (Richards, 2013, citing Dörnyei, 2001). Fostering creative teaching is becoming even more crucial—albeit more challenging—as teaching environments become “increasingly standardized,” with set curricula and materials and test-driven teaching, and increasingly pres- sured, with teachers rarely given enough time to develop more creative ways of

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Cultivating Creative Teaching via Narrative Inquiry  245 working (Richards, 2013, p. 17). In those (all too rare) teaching contexts that do focus on building “creative capital,” collaboration and collegial exchange are encouraged—through team teaching, peer observation, and shared lesson plan- ning (Richards, 2013, p. 23, citing Fisher 2004). And teachers are encouraged to “recognize and share what is creative in their own practice” (Richards, 2013, p. 23). Two points are worth noting here.First,though the Richards study involved lan- guage teachers, virtually all of the concepts and approaches outlined—wonderful though they are—could apply in most any educational context. What are some creative ways of teaching language in particular? How is creativity connected to language use—and thus to language learning and language teaching? And second, when teachers are encouraged to plan together and watch each other teach—all worthy acts—do they also have opportunities to find out about the creative teaching practices of those working in other localities? And conversely, (how) is the good work being done by creative teachers in one institution managing to reach other teachers further afield? Creativity and Discourse In considering not just creative teaching but creative language teaching, it is help- ful to differentiate a language focus from a discourse focus. Though much has been written about these complex concepts, one point in particular is useful here. In applied linguistics and related fields, research on creativity and language tends to focus on literary and other creative works or on inventiveness with words and texts. In contrast, research on creativity and discourse extends the focus to a broader web of social actions and relationships, asking “what social actions this piece of discourse was intended to accomplish” and what effects these have had in the material world (Jones, 2010, p. 474).This is because in discourse-oriented research, creativity is understood to reside “not in language but rather in the actions people take with language” (Jones, 2010, p. 472; italics added; see also Jones, this volume). Applying these ideas to creativity in language education, it would seem use- ful for language learners, and thus language teachers, to become skilled at a dis- course approach so that they can recognize the social functions of words and texts, including how bits of language are used creatively with different interlocutors, for different purposes, and with different effects.Whether the text in question is spo- ken or written, a discourse approach would involve “reading around the text and understanding the networks of interdiscursivity of which it is a part” (Jones, 2010, p. 477). In this way, the societal and cultural contexts within which a text is “pro- duced and consumed” can be taken into account (Jones, 2010, p. 477). Though Jones (2010) is addressing researchers, not language teachers or teacher develop- ers, I think the practice of reading around a text and considering its conditions

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 246  Cynthia D. Nelson of production and reception is a useful and creative approach to teacher develop- ment and language learning. Another useful notion from the research on creativity and discourse is this: “Creativity is to a large extent a matter of finding our way around constraints or limitations placed on us by the Discourses within which we operate” (Jones, 2010, p. 477, citing Fairclough 1992). Taking a creative approach to language teaching, then, can involve paying attention to creative ways of working around the inevitable social and discursive constraints that characterize communicative interactions. Narrative Inquiry for Teacher Development Having set out some issues concerning creative teaching in language education, I turn now to narrative inquiry and what it offers teacher development.What are the benefits for teachers in writing and reflecting on their own teaching/learn- ing narratives—by which I mean autobiographic writings pertaining to teaching, learning, language, culture, identity, and the like—and of engaging with other teachers’ narratives? I address these questions next. Writing Teaching/Learning Narratives Narrative engagement has clearly benefitted language teachers. In a study of how this works, Johnson and Golombek (2011, drawing on Vygotsky, 1986) identify the following three ways in which the use of narratives (oral and written) supports and enhances teachers’ development. Externalization:Articulating their own teaching/learning experiences via nar- rative allows teachers to take a step back, in a sense, from the material and from their own thoughts and feelings, “to make their tacit thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, fears, and hopes explicit,” and in so doing, to better understand how these are connected and influence their teaching.(Johnson & Golombek, 2011, p. 491) Verbalization:By not just giving voice to but actively internalizing concepts drawn from both scientific and everyday realms as they write and reflect, teachers connect abstract ideas that they encounter in their training with on the ground realities of their workplaces; they learn to “think in concepts”— and most importantly, to use the concepts in their own teaching. (p. 493) Systematic examination:When teachers-in-training are asked to do things like write their own language learning autobiographies, they must system- atically consider their lives, their teaching practices, and the sociocultural contexts in which they live and work.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Cultivating Creative Teaching via Narrative Inquiry  247 Johnson and Golombek (2011) point out that as teachers’ narrative artifacts are increasingly made public—through journals and other publications, conference presentations, online depositories and blogs, and the like—their impact on the field will broaden.They also note that individual teachers who are not in a formal development program also “need to know how to engage in productive narrative activities” for the benefit, ultimately, of their students (p. 505; italics added).There- fore, Johnson and Golombek (2011) call for more scholarly work on ways that teachers can use teaching/learning narratives, given their proliferation and their ready accessibility to individual teachers. Sharing Teaching/Learning Narratives In Nelson (2011), I make a case for “crafted narratives of classroom life” to be encouraged and taken seriously in (and as) research. Drawing from that argu- ment, I outline some key advantages of generating teaching/learning narratives and sharing these with colleagues. Widening participation: Since the style of narratives (as opposed to academic texts) tends to be broadly accessible and often engaging, sharing these can prompt dialogue between teachers in different regions, with different types of classes, and between teachers and others (teacher educators, researchers). It can also promulgate the perspectives of teachers who historically have been dissuaded from taking up the “right to narrate” (Nelson, 2011, citing Bhabha, 2003), and help identify neglected but important issues that require attention and action in the profession at large or in a particular professional development context. Illuminating crucial yet less obvious dimensions: Narratives can illuminate the ongoing dynamic theorizing that goes on during teaching as well as the underlying emotions that may be shaping practice. Narratives can shed light on silences, bewilderments, and dilemmas, and allow for dialogues of doubt as well as stories of success. Sparking multiple and imaginative interpretations: Narrative forms often involve multiple perspectives and highlight complexities, so sharing these can spark multiple, conflicting interpretations, which is useful for learning purposes. Narratives also sharpen the aesthetic senses, offer pleasure and enjoyment, and develop imaginative and creative capacities. Another advantage of sharing teaching/learning narratives is noted by Conle (2000), who makes the point that teachers tend to follow the same “scripts about teaching and learning into which they were enculturated as students, unless they experience some kind of awareness of those scripts and begin to counter the parts . . .

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 248  Cynthia D. Nelson they do not like” (Conle, 2000, p. 55; italics added). Being exposed to other teach- ers’ “scripts” through their narratives can help teachers envision alternatives to their own scripts, plans and actions: “Experiential stories thus bring into view possible futures” (Conle, 2000, p. 56). Moreover, sharing narratives can also help teachers identify shared experiences and, in this way, to collectively construct “communal knowledge and empathy” (Sarasa, 2014, p. 21). Reading Teaching/Learning Narratives By synthesizing research on creativity with research on narrativity, I have argued that teaching/learning narratives can, when used productively, be of value in developing creative teaching; however, in the research literature there seem to be few suggestions or examples of what this might look like in practical terms. So in this section, I present two narratives as exemplars. But first, drawing loosely on analytic categories from Barkhuizen (2011), I propose some questions that could be adapted for and applied to the process of reading and responding to teaching/ learning narratives. Questions for Reflection/Discussion 1. Overall response: Once you have read the narrative, what is your response to it? Would you recommend it to your education colleagues, classmates, or students? Why or why not? 2. Consider the content of the narrative. a) Which parts of the story, if any, do you find especially insightful or prob- lematic, and why? b) Are there “teachable moments” in the story? Were these approached effectively? Creatively? c) What different actions/speech may have led to a different result in the story or to a different response from you as a reader? d) Do similar things sometime happen in your education setting? Have you ever been in a similar situation as someone in this story? What did/would you do? 3. Consider the purpose and form of the narrative. a) What do you think the writer hoped to achieve by writing this story? For what sort of readers is it meant? b) Underline any words or phrases that you especially like or dislike, and explain how they affect you. c) If this story had been written by a student of yours, what feedback would you give them on the writing, in terms of text structure, voice, wording, style? If possible, include both positive praise and constructive sugges- tions for improvement.

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Cultivating Creative Teaching via Narrative Inquiry  249 4. Consider the broader context and implications of this narrative. a) Are teaching/learning narratives readily available to you (through publi- cations, presentations, workshops, or the Internet)? b) Share this narrative with a colleague who you think may like it and with another colleague who may not. Pose a question (one of these or one of your own) about it for them to consider. Discuss and compare your responses if possible. c) Having read the narrative, is there anything you might like to change about your own teaching or learning processes? 5. Rewrite this narrative or write your own. a) Rewrite the same scene but from the perspective of one of the minor characters (as opposed to the protagonist). What things change? OR Rewrite this story with a different action taken and a different ending. OR Write a one-paragraph summary of the main points of the story and a second paragraph on your responses to it. b) Write a narrative about a time when you were in a similar situation or dealing with a similar issue.Who, if anyone, would you like to show it to? Narrative 1: Away from Home In this first narrative sequence, a language educator from the Bahamas recounts two classroom interactions.The first occurred while she was undertaking a doc- torate in Canada and the second when she was working as a teacher educator in Hong Kong (Tinker Sachs, 2010). My coursemate had asked me to teach her master’s-level course on reading for one night because she was unavailable . . . The classroom was small and held about 15 part-time students, all of whom were full-time teachers. They were all female and White . . . I introduced myself and explained why I was there.There were a few sniggers from the women directly in the front of me. I continued, but the three women in the front kept laughing and talking in whispers for quite some time. It was becoming impossible for me to ignore the situation because the room was small, everyone could hear and see them, they were disturbing the flow of my thoughts, and above all they were totally disrespecting me. I had already given them a look that signaled my unhappiness with their continued chatter, but soon I realized that I had to exert my “authority” as a lecturer or be totally disrespected. I was scared, because I had never had to exert authority over White people before—they had always been the authority figures in my life as teachers, nuns, or priests. Dare I do it now? My self-integrity was on the line and I would not be further humiliated. So, I took a bold step and told those disrespectfulWhite women that they were disturbing the class and me, and that I would appreciate it if they would stop their chattering and laughter.The class grew very quiet and I continued the lesson.At the end of the class, one of the other students came to me and apologized for her classmates. I felt

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 250  Cynthia D. Nelson utterly small and so shattered for days, weeks, and months afterward. It was my first encounter teaching White people and I wondered if this was how it would be if I had to do it again. [. . .] In visiting primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong, I was always given a welcome of some form. My welcome to the school ranged from whoops and loud laughter to stunned silence. I often experienced the ripple effect as I walked along the corridor to arrive at the class that I was observing.The instantaneous reaction of the students upon seeing a person of my skin color inhabiting their world was so powerful that many stu- dents jumped out of their seats and shouted and pointed while laughing loudly—this happened in every class until I arrived at my destination, and sometimes here too the response was shocked silence or screams and shouts.What was always interesting to me was the reaction of my own student teachers to the response of their students. In most cases, none said a word to me about it, and neither did I bring it up. I conspired to the unwritten code of secrecy about the taboo subject. I realized that this was an uncom- fortable experience for most of my student teachers and I did not want to add to their embarrassment or discomfort. Some of their students often broke the ice by shouting out,“Michael Jordan,”“Whoppi Goldberg,” [sic] or any other Black person they knew from the media. I have also been called “jyù gulik” (Cantonese for “chocolate”) by a Form 1 student.These ice-breakers prompted me to laugh and made the situation easier for my student teachers. (Tinker Sachs, 2010, pp. 122–123, 128) This narrative could lead to some interesting discussions about the creativity that is often required of language teachers (and learners) in terms of coping with and responding to discriminatory actions/speech, particularly in interactions that are cross-cultural or transcultural, and particularly when unplanned for and unex- pected. Here the discriminatory actions/speech manifest in these two scenarios in very different ways and are responded to by the teacher educator in very different ways as well, which provides interesting points of comparison. There is also the question of which teachable moments do or do not get taken up and why and what kinds of things need to happen on a collective, systemic level—at a given institution and across the profession at large—so that discriminatory actions/ speech can be creatively addressed and unpacked for the benefit of language learners and teachers alike. Narrative 2: Voiceless This second narrative involves a teacher educator from the United States who has moved to Japan, where she teaches English language teachers and aspires to learn Japanese (Cummings, 2010). One requirement of the program at Teachers College was each day the class met, the professors had to have lunch with a group of the students, mainly Japanese high school

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Cultivating Creative Teaching via Narrative Inquiry  251 English teachers. I admit, my social skills are limited . . . so I had prepared a list of questions to fall back on. One question involved a friendly woman my partner and I had nicknamed “Pony Tail Gail” . . . I saw her at a convenience store [near my home] almost every day . . . She smiled in such a friendly way I wished I could learn to say,“Hi again,” or “Nice to see you again,” or “How are you tonight?” or, jokingly, “I’m back!” as I might have said at a deli I frequented in NewYork City.As soon as we had ordered lunch—they had to order for me because I could not read the menu . . . —there was the first awkward silence. I said,“I have a question about Japanese.” Then I explained the situation.An even more uncomfortable silence ensued.Then my students began whispering to each other in Japanese. Finally, the oldest one among them gently explained,“You can’t say any of those things.They are simply not said.” “But she’s young,” I protested.“I’m foreign. Maybe she’s foreign, too.” Another uncomfortable silence was followed by more whispering. “You are a professor,” another student told me . . .“You can say,“Atsui desu ne.” “What does that mean?” I asked. . . .“It’s a hot day, isn’t it?” “But that’s not even related to what I want to say.” “In this situation, to this person, in a store, this is what is said by people of your stature: Doctors, professors, high-ranking executives.” [. . .] I hired a former student, Naomi, to tutor me . . . [But] I had been Naomi’s teacher and she found this very inhibiting.Then, whenever I asked her, in English, how to say something in Japanese, her answer was always, “It depends.” It depends on the context and the other person. She would sit across the table from me, paralysed with the anguish of trying to explain it to her professor. I wanted to know how to ask the office ladies about their weekend . . . It depends. It depends. [. . .] [A]bout a year [later] . . . [m]y partner . . . reported that she’d found the method for us . . .A woman in a neighboring town . . . was using the Kumon Method to teach English to Japanese children. Shioya-san was different from my other teachers who were mostly wives of professors. She ran a liquor store and loved to listen to Stevie Wonder . . .Twice a week, for two or three hours in the afternoon, I slipped out of the university and drove to Inawashiro.The children were welcoming and kind.They . . . helped me with my lessons and I helped them with theirs. Most importantly, my life at Kumon was a secret. I never told anyone at the university that I was doing this. And I didn’t tell anyone in Inawashiro that I was a professor. (Cummings, 2010, pp. 84–85, 88) This narrative could generate productive discussions about the creativity that is often required of language learners and teachers who find themselves navigating linguistic and cultural terrain that is unfamiliar, baffling, and sometimes frustrat- ing. What I found myself wondering, with this narrative, is how this experience with language learning ended up influencing this teacher educator’s own teach- ing practice. In other words, what insights can be gleaned about how to assist

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 252  Cynthia D. Nelson language learners in both adapting to larger cultural discourses that they may find constraining and at the same time exercising agency in the face of these, to suit their own learning aims? Conclusion Creative teaching ought to be considered fundamental in second and foreign language education, and not seen as an optional extra. This is because “little-c creativity,” at least, is part of everyone’s daily communicative life as we nego- tiate discursive interactions and work around constraints; moreover, learning is an inherently creative process, too. But, as the research shows, creative language teaching can be challenging for a number of reasons: the general lack of acknowl- edgment and scholarly discussion in the profession about what it means and how to do it; often the lack of a coordinated system of interactions through which teachers are supported and encouraged toward creative practice; in some cases open or subtle discouragement, with standardization taking priority over experi- mentation; the difficulty of accomplishing disciplined improvisation in the class- room, that is, balancing structure with spontaneity; and the perennial problem of limited resources and development time. Nonetheless, creative teaching is worth cultivating. It includes responding skill- fully to teachable moments – such as exchanges that are unexpected, ambiguous, inequitable, or transculturally perplexing, like those in the two narrative exemplars. Importantly, teachers’ narratives provide invaluable access to other teachers’ real-life experiences, dilemmas, and solutions, which are not always prioritized in research; moreover, teachers’ narratives can highlight the creativity that is often required of teachers though rarely recognized as such.Thus, sharing narratives and reading these through a creativity lens can expand and deepen teachers’ (and researchers’) under- standings of what constitutes creative teaching. In sum, narrative inquiry—not just writing one’s own teaching/learning narra- tives but reading, reflecting on, and discussing other teachers’ narratives, too—can be a viable way of hearing from other teachers, especially those whose perspec- tives are underrepresented in scholarly literature, and of hearing about historically neglected issues that can help to shed light on all sorts of silences and puzzlements that can arise in a classroom. In this way, narrative inquiry can help to activate and extend teaching know-how by helping teachers step back and take note of how their own ideas and emotions, as well as broader sociocultural discourses, may be shaping their teaching practices. Engaging with narratives can invite multiple interpretations, stimulate imaginative and creative responses, and prove meaning- ful and pleasurable. Novelist Toni Morrison has said: “Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created” (Morrison, 1993, para. 30). She was speaking of writ- ing narratives, but the act of reading others’ narratives can also, in a sense, (re)create

Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Cultivating Creative Teaching via Narrative Inquiry  253 us, fostering not just creative learning and teaching but creative living. Such is the power of narrative. Questions for Discussion 1. Nelson lists some activities that have been associated with “creative language teaching.” Which one(s) do you consider especially valuable or especially challenging and why? What additional activities would you add to the list? 2. Nelson outlines some benefits for language teachers of writing teaching/ learning narratives and reading those of others. How did you find the experi- ence of reading the exemplar narratives? Would you like to read more teach- ing/learning narratives? Why or why not? 3. Choose one of the narrative engagement questions that Nelson posits and answer it with reference to one of the two narratives presented in this chapter. 4. Nelson includes narrative engagement questions about not only content but also form and context. Do you see any of those questions as potentially useful in fostering creative teaching? How so, or why not? 5. Choose one of Nelson’s narrative engagement questions and explain how it might help enhance creative teaching. If you don’t think any of them can do this, suggest a better way to bring this about. 6. If you were in a situation like either one of the teacher educators in the nar- ratives, what do you think you might do differently and why? 7. Write a short narrative about your own experience as a language learner or teacher. Who would you like to share it with? Who wouldn’t you want to share it with? Who might benefit from it, do you think? 8. What issues does this chapter raise that warrant further research, and what research approach might work? Suggestions for Further Research It would be helpful to see research that: 1. develops and analyzes ways of writing engaging teaching/learning narratives for the purposes of teacher education and development; 2. identifies creative examples of teacher narratives to use (or adapt or edit) and develops selection criteria for making these decisions—with the examples drawn from scholarly literature, literary works, and visual, video, and multi- media modes, too; and 3. investigates and analyzes how teachers, student teachers, and teacher edu- cators/developers actually use narratives—whether on their own, with colleagues informally, in one-off development sessions, or in a degree program—and what the consequences are in terms of fostering creative thinking among teachers and, ultimately, learners.

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Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Cultivating Creative Teaching via Narrative Inquiry  255 Ochs, E., & Capps, L. (1996). Narrating the self. Annual Review of Anthropology, 25, 19–43. Pennycook,A. (2007).“The rotation gets thick.The constraints get thin”: Creativity, recon- textualization, and difference. Applied Linguistics, 28(4), 579–596. Philip, R. (2013). Cultivating creative ecologies: Creative teaching and teaching for cre- ativity. In S. Frielick, N. Buissink-Smith, P. Wyse, J. Billot, J. Hallas, & E. Whitehead (Eds.), Research and development in higher education: The place of learning and teaching, 36 (pp. 360–369).Auckland, New Zealand.The Higher Education Research and Develop- ment Society of Australasia Richards, J. (2013, June 5). Creativity in language teaching. Plenary address given at the Sum- mer Institute for English Teachers on Creativity and Discovery in Teaching University Writing, City University of Hong Kong. Sarasa, M. C. (2014). A case study of narrative inquiry within EFL teacher education in Argentina. English Language Teacher Education and Development, 16, 18–26. Sawyer, R. K. (2004). Creative teaching: Collaborative discussion as disciplined improvisa- tion. Educational Researcher, 33(2), 12–20. Tinker Sachs, G. (2010). The world away from home. In A. Curtis & M. Romney (Eds.), Color, race, and English language teaching: Shades of meaning (pp. 121–135). New York: Routledge. Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Language and thought. In A. Kozulin (Ed.), Thought and language. Cambridge: MIT Press. Zhang, G., Zhao, Y., & Lei, J. (2012). Looking forward to a special issue on educational innovations in China. On the Horizon, 20(2), 104–109.

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INDEX Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 Note: Page numbers in italics followed by b indicate text boxes, by f indicate figures, and by t indicate tables academic writing see writing as a poet, “big-C Creativity” 241–2 writing as an academic case study bilingualism, cognitive benefits of 35 bilingual study (Ghonsooly and action focus 18 adaptability 25 Showqi) 35 addressivity 26 Boden, Margaret 12, 198–9, 207 affordances and effective abilities 19, 20t; body, language and 64–5 Branson, Richard 55 language is ambiguous 23–4; language is Bréal, Michel 28 dialogic 26–8; language is rule governed Burns,Anne 13, 227; see also creativity as 20–3; language is situated 24–6 agency 7, 228 resistance case study Albert,A. and J. Kormos, task study 34–5 Cambodian immigrant study with focus altruism thought experiment 208–9 “Always be Connecting Dots” (Branson) 55 on article da (Huebner) 39 Alzheimer’s disease 35 Canada narrative 249–50 ambiguity, of language 20t, 23–4 categories 37–9 America’s Army (video game) 68–9 categories task 34 assessment dimension of curriculum challenge 102 168–9, 169t Chappell, Philip 11, 13, 14, 130; see also audience: processes and 90; revealing and concealing self and 90–1; sense of 83–4 inquiry dialogues Australia: Experiencing Australian Chik,Alice 8, 12, 180, 183; see also Language and Culture 146–61; see also creative criticality in multilingual texts technology in second-language learning Bailey, Kathleen M. 13, 213–26; see also and teaching teacher education conversation by Chinese students see creative criticality in Kathleen M. Bailey and Anita Krishnan multilingual texts behaviorist theories 42–3 Choi, Julie 11–12, 146, 243; see also Bhatia,V.K. 197–8 creative criticality in multilingual texts Chomsky, N.: defining language 18; language as “organ” of the brain 65; linguistic productivity 36–7; mentalist theory and 43

258 Index Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 classroom see curriculum as a conceptual encounter exhibit 155f; farewell message space; voices from the classroom to author Choi by a student 159f; Ferris wheel of culture illustration 149f; Coffey, Simon 8, 10–11, 114; see also voices harmony of identity illustration 150f–2f; from the classroom questions for discussion 159–60; reading 154–7; self-reflection 158; suggestions cognitive psychology 50 for further research 160; tangram and collaborative creativity 6–7 chain illustration 147f collective scaffolding in Discussion activity creative indterdiscursivity 243 “creative language” 18 136–7 creative language vs. creative pedagogy common problem task 34 118–19 “communal language” 39 “creative people” 18 communicative language teaching (CLT) creative teacher training 4 creative teaching principles 5 paradigm 115, 126; see also voices from creative teaching via narrative inquiry see the classroom narrative inquiry case study community, engagement with 84–5 creativity: defining 3–7, 14, 16–18, 165–7, complexity theory 39 182, 185, 198–9, 207; see also affordances conceptual dimension of curriculum and effective abilities 167, 169t creativity and language learning 32–48; conceptualizing creativity and culture behaviorist theories 42–3; emergentist in language teaching 49–62; 1. person theories 43–4; examples of L1 and L2 51–4; 2. process 54–7; 3. product learners 37t; incidental creativity in 57–9; adherence to tradition 58–9; communicative speech 36–9; L2 learners background 49–51; critical-thinking 33, 36–8, 37t, 40–5; language play and skills or problem solving 55; English as 40–1, 41t; mentalist theories 43; person a foreign language (EFL) 50; English as (trait) creativity and 33–6, 45; process of an additional language (EAL) 49–50; language acquisition 42–4, 45; product fluency 54–5; heritage and tradition creativity and 36–41, 45 53–4; imagination 56–7; innate ability creativity and language teaching 97–113; 53; knowledge and skill 52–3; levels of background 97–9; characteristics of creativity 50–1; novelty and originality 109; the institution encourages creative 57–8; political acceptance 58; quality partnership 110; the institution helps 59; risk taking 56–7; teacher-student teachers recognize and share what is relationship 52 creative in their own practice 109–10; conceptual space 165–9, 169t; see also the institution provides resources to curriculum as a conceptual space support creative teaching 110–11; constraints 6–7, 20–3, 33, 37, 45; see language-learning tasks 102; the also creativity as resistance case study; school rewards creative teachers 111; rule-governed language second-language learning and 98; constructional dimension of curriculum supporting creative teaching in the 167, 169t institution 108–11; teachers adjust and constructions 37–9 modify teaching during lessons 104–5; content 102 teachers are confident and willing to content and language integrated learning make his/her own decisions about how (CLIL), in an Italian primary school to manage classes 104; teachers are 171–3 not committed to a single approach or contextual dimension of curriculum method 99–100; teachers are willing 168, 169t to take risks 103–4; teachers customize convergent thinking 17 teaching 106–7; teachers draw on Cook, G. 116, 126 academic and pedagogical knowledge cooking identity illustration 148f to support creative practice 101; Cotterall, Sara 10, 97; see also creativity and teachers look for new ways of doing language teaching creative criticality in multilingual texts 146–61; background 146, 153–4; cooking identity illustration 148f;

Index  259 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 things 105–6; teachers make use of a Densky, Karen 9, 49; see also wide range of teaching strategies and conceptualizing creativity and culture in techniques 100–101; teachers make use language teaching of technology 107–8; teachers seek to achieve an individual teaching style 103; dialects 63 teachers use activities that have creative dialogic language 20t, 26–8; see also inquiry dimensions 101–3; see also voices from the classroom dialogues creativity as resistance case study digital pedagogical technologies 4 227–40; an adult ESL literacy teacher disciplined improvisation 242 conceptualized her creativity 230–3; disciplines 5; creativity in all 49; see also an adult ESL literacy teacher enacts her creativity 233–4; agency and language teaching in the disciplines 228; background 227–8; conclusion (Language for Specific Purposes (LSP)) 236–8; contextualizing the case study discourse focus 245–6; see also narrative 230; criticisms of LLPN 229–30; inquiry case study doctor-patient dialogues 235t; observing Discourses 9, 22;Yu-Gi-Oh social language a lesson in creativity 234–6, 235t; and 70–4; see also vexed nature of overview of Australia’s Language, teaching and learning Literacy, and Numeracy Program Discussion 135t, 136; collective scaffolding (LLNP) 228–30 in 136–7; constrained Discussion creativity concept 198–9 activity for inquiry dialogue 138–41, creativity conversation see teacher 140t–2t; negotiation of meaning in education conversation by Kathleen M. Discussion activity 137–8; see also Bailey and Anita Krishnan inquiry dialogues Creativity From Constraints (Stokes) 20 divergent thinking 17, 32 creativity levels 50–1 doctor-patient dialogues 235t critical narrative knowledge 243 Dymoke, Sue 10, 77; see also writing critical-thinking skills 55 as a poet, writing as an academic c-test 34 case study “cult of originality” 7 EAL see English as an additional language cultural context (2nd level of creativity) Edinburgh student project 186–7, 187f 50–1 editing 85–6 cultural tool: language as 18–28; see also effective abilities see affordances and affordances and effective abilities effective abilities culture see conceptualizing creativity and EFL see English as a foreign language culture in language teaching elaboration 32 curriculum as a conceptual space 165–79; Ellis, Rod 8–9, 32, 51; see also creativity assessment dimension 168–9; conclusion and language learning 177–8; constructional dimension 167; emergentist theories 43–4 contextual dimension 168; creativity empowerment 7 defined 165–7; curriculum defined Empson,William, Seven Types of 165; example 1: literature in a Hong Ambiguity 23 Kong secondary school 169–71; encounter exhibit 155f example 2: content and language English as a foreign language (EFL) 50, 52 integrated learning (CLIL) in an Italian English as an additional language (EAL) primary school 171–3; example 3: 49–50 a functional language approach in a English as a second language (ESL) Japanese university 173–5; example 4: learners 157, 227–40; see also creativity project-based approach for adults in the as resistance case study; headings under United States 175–7; five dimensions creative/creativity; inquiry dialogues; of (summarized) 169t; interactional technology in second-language learning dimension 168; overall purpose of the and teaching case study curriculum 167 English Teaching: Practice and Critique ( journal)  88 “epidemic of creativity” 3

260 Index Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 ESL see English as a second language (ESL) Hong Kong/Hong Kong students: group learners project example 205–6, 205b–6b; an in-class task example 202–4, 203b–4b; European Commission on Languages, literature example in a secondary school “The Year of Creativity” 3 169–71; narrative 250 experience, language learning and teaching Huebner,T., study of Cambodian and 66–9 immigrant with focus on article da 39 Experiencing Australian Language and Hughes, Janette 88–9 Culture 146–61; see also creative ideas, variety and number of 32 criticality in multilingual texts ideational fluency 54 Iedema, R. 207 exploratory creativity 166 imitation 131–3; see also inquiry dialogue expressional fluency 54 improbable situations task 34 externalization 246 improvisations 26–7 fantasy element 102 incidental creativity 36–9; see also product farewell message to Julie Choi (illustrated creativity by a student) 159f in-class task example 202–4, 203b–4b, Ferris wheel of culture illustration 149f flexibility 32 208–9; see also language teaching in the flow, in the second-language classroom disciplines “incubation” 57 134–5 indirect communication 24 fluency 32, 54–5 individual choice 102 following a script 26–7 innate ability 53 form-focused language work 22 inner editor 86 formulaic sequences 37 input triggers/factors 43–4 foundational tools (1st level of inquiry dialogues 14, 130–45, 135t, 140t–2t; conditions for creativity in creativity) 50 second-language classrooms 134–43; framing 25 extract 1: collective scaffolding in Freud, Sigmund 49–50 Discussion activity 136–7; extract 2: functional language approach (in a negotiation of meaning in Discussion activity 137–8; extract 3: constrained Japanese university) 173–5 Discussion activity 138–43, 140t–2t; gaming addiction theory 180–1 flow 134–5; imitation, semiotic Gee, James Paul 9–10, 63; see also vexed mediation, and zone of proximal development 130–3; implications for nature of teaching and learning classroom teaching 143; sociocultural genre theory 196–8; see also language view of creativity in human development 130–4; suggestions teaching in the disciplines for further research 144; thinking Ghonsooly, B. and S. Showqi bilingual and speaking 133–4; types of talk 135–6, 135t study 35 “Inside Notebooks” (Dymoke) 89 The Giving Tree (Silverstein) 98 institutions: creative teaching and 108–11; Grammar and vocabulary area 115 see also creativity in language teaching grammar rules 20–1; see also rule-governed instruction/exposition 135t interactional dimension of curriculum language 168, 169t Grammar Translation Method 50 interactional sociolinguists 25 Graves, Kathleen 12, 165; see also interlocutors 39 International House London 114 curriculum as a conceptual space group project example 205–6, 205b–6b Hafner, Christoph A. 8, 12, 196; see also language teaching in the disciplines (Language for Specific Purposes) harmony of identity illustration 150f–2f heritage 53–4

Index  261 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 intriguing elements 102 group project 205–6, 205b–6b; Introduction-Methods- extract of Hong Kong legislative text 206b; genre theory 196–8; in-class Results-Discussion 197 materials—altruism thought experiment IQ tests 35, 53 208–9; legal popularization assignment Italy, content and language integrated prompt excerpt 205b; task design and creativity: from imitation to innovation learning (CLIL) in a primary school 207; transformation as a guiding 171–3 principle in LSP task design 202–7; Japan/Japanese students: functional writing simulation 203b–4b language approach in a Japanese learners acquiring a first language (L1) university 173–5; narrative inquiry 37t, 42 250–2; see also creative criticality in learners acquiring a second language (L2) multilingual texts 33, 36–8, 37t, 40–5 Jones, Rodney H. 3, 8, 11, 16; see also legal popularization assignment group affordances and effective abilities; writing project (legislative text) 205–6, creativity, defining 205b–6b knowledge 52–3 Leung, Constant 8, 10–11, 114; see also Krishnan,Anita 13, 213–26; see also teacher voices from the classroom education conversation by Kathleen M. lexicogrammar 21 Bailey and Anita Krishnan linguistic anthropology 19 L1 learners see learners acquiring a first Linguistic competence area 115 language linguistic productivity see product L2 learners see learners acquiring a second creativity language literariness 17 language as a cultural tool 18–28; see also literary language, defined 17 affordances and effective abilities literature 51; in a Hong Kong secondary Language for Specific Purposes see school 169–71 language teaching in the disciplines “little-c creativity” 242 (Language for Specific Purposes (LSP)) Local Knowledge (Geertz) 158 language learning see creativity and “Maxim of Manner” 24 language learning; headings under meanings 92 creative/creativity; vexed nature of mediated discourse analysis 18 teaching and learning mentalist theories 43 Language, Literacy, and Numeracy mind, language learning and teaching and Program (LLNP,Australia) 13, 228–30; 66–9 see also creativity as resistance case study monolingualism 63 language play 36, 40–1, 41t, 56; as “fun” Mozart 49 and as “rehearsal” 40–1, 41t; functions of multilingual creativity 4 41; L2 learners and 40–1, 44 multilingualism 63 language teaching see creativity and multilingual/multimodal texts 6; see also language teaching; headings under creative criticality in multilingual texts creative/creativity; narrative inquiry narrative inquiry case study 241–55; case study; vexed nature of teaching and conclusion 252–3; creative language learning teaching 244–5; creative language language teaching in the disciplines teaching (with a discourse focus) 245–6; (Language for Specific Purposes (LSP)) creativity agenda 241–3; description 12, 196–210; background 196–8; 243–4; illuminating crucial yet less concept of creativity 198–9; creativity in obvious dimensions 247; narrative 1: the disciplines 199–202; example 1: an away from home 249–50; narrative 2: in-class task 202–4, 203b–4b; example 2:

262 Index Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 voiceless in Japanese 250–2; narrative process creativity 42–4, 45, 54–7, 182, imperative 243; questions for reflection/ 185, 188–92; critical-thinking skills discussion 248–9; reading teaching/ or problem solving 55; fluency 54–5; learning narratives 248–52; sharing imagination 56; risk taking 56–7 teaching/learning narratives 247–8; sparking multiple and imaginative process elicitation 135t interpretations 247; for teacher product creativity 36–41, 45, 57–9, 182, development 246–8; widening participation 247; writing teaching/ 185; adherence to tradition 58–9; learning narratives 246–7 novelty and originality 57–8; political National Curriculum for Languages acceptance 58; quality 59 (England) 114–15 product elicitation 135t native language learning 63 project-based approach for adults (United nativist theories 42 States) 175–7 natural languages 16 quality 59; personal 119–23, 120f Nelson, Cynthia D. 13, 241; see also quarterly projection model (QPM) 200 narrative inquiry case study Raven’s Progressive Matrices 35 novelty 57–8, 102 reading multilingual texts 154–7 Ollerhead, Susan 13, 227; see also creativity reading teaching/learning narratives as resistance case study 248–52; see also narrative inquiry oral/aural language use 50 case study oral language, vs. written language 63 recitation 135t originality 32, 57–8 recursion 21 original thought, encouraging 102 reframing 25 original work (3rd level of creativity) 51 registers 63 Otto, I., task study 34–5 resistance see creativity as resistance outcome of language use definition 16–18 case study out-of-class learning see technology in response-ability 27–8; see also dialogic second-language learning and teaching language overextension of categories and Rhodes, M. 182, 184–5 constructions 37, 38–9 Richards, Jack C. 3, 10, 97; see also paper-and-pencil tests 50 creativity and language learning parallelisms 40 risk taking 56–7; student satisfaction person (trait) creativity 33–6, 51–4, 182, and student welfare 124–5; tasks that 185; heritage and tradition 53–4; innate encourage 102; teachers and 103–4 ability 53; knowledge and skill 52–3; Robinson, Ken 181 teacher-student relationship 52 role playing 49 personal element 102 Rome student project 185–6, 185f–6f personality, creativity and 32 rote 135t personal reading histories 87t rule-breaking 21–2 Philip, R. 242 rule-governed language 20–3, 20t poet-academic writer study see writing as rules of grammar 20–1 a poet, writing as an academic scaffolding, in Discussion activity 136–7 case study scripts 26–7 poetry 51, 88t; see also writing as a poet, second-language acquisition (SLA) 42, 98; writing as an academic case study see also creative criticality in multilingual political acceptance 58 texts; English as a second language pragmatics 22–4 (ESL) learners; headings under creative/ press creativity 182, 185, 188–92 creativity; inquiry dialogue; learners primary school, content and language acquiring a second language (L2); integrated learning (CLIL) (Italy) 171–3 technology in second-language learning problem solving 55 and teaching case study; writing as a poet, writing as an academic case study

Index  263 Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 second-language writing 91 180; new creativity, spaces, and self-efficacy 7 affordances 181–3; process and press for self-reflection 158 creativity 188–92; the project 183–5; semantic association task 34 Rome and Edinburgh student projects semantic simplification 38 185–7, 185f–7f; trajectory dimension semiotic mediation 131–3; see also inquiry added to the model 183 TED Talks  181 dialogue textbooks 22 “semiotic recontextualization” 207 text messaging 21 sequential nature of language 21 theoretical perspectives 4 Seven Types of Ambiguity (Empson) 23 “thinking outside the box” 22, 55, 97 sharing teaching/learning narratives 247–8; Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking 17, 32, 34, 35 see also narrative inquiry case study tradition 53–4; adherence to 58–9 situated (embodied) meaning 65–6 trait creativity 33–6; see also person (trait) situated language 20t, 24–6 creativity skills 52–3; critical-thinking skills 55; transformational creativity 7, 166, 207; see also language teaching in the disciplines professional skills and personal quality transformation in agency 7 119–23, 120f translanguaging space 156 SLA see second-language acquisition United Arab Emirates 10 Smart, Graham 199–201 United States, project-based approach for social contexts 17, 25; see also situated adults 175–7 language Universal Grammar 39, 43 social languages:Yu-Gi-Oh (anime card unusual uses task 34 game) example 70–4; see also vexed users of language definition 16–18 nature of teaching and learning variety, of ideas 32 sociocultural dimensions of creativity 4, verbalization 246 6, 51, 130–3; see also conceptualizing vexed nature of teaching and learning creativity and culture in language 63–76; background 63–5; connections teaching; creativity and language between language and the body 64–5; learning; inquiry dialogue creative language teaching (Yu-Gi-Oh Spiro, Jane 10, 77; see also writing as a poet, anime card game social language writing as an academic case study example) 70–4; dialects and registers 63; structural simplification 38 different types of language learning 63; substitution drills 22 language teaching vs. language learning systematic examination 246 64; mind, experience, and language talks, types of 135–6, 135t 66–9; principles of teaching 74–5; tangram and chain illustration 147f situated (embodied) meaning 65–6; target language grammar 37–9, 45, 51 social languages and Discourses 69–70; task-based language teaching 33–4, 45; see teaching acts 64; the word “language” also language teaching in the disciplines 63; written vs. oral 63 task studies 34–5 voices from the classroom 114–29; teacher education conversation by communicative language teaching Kathleen M. Bailey and Anita Krishnan (CLT) paradigm 115, 126; creative 213–26 language vs. creative pedagogy 118–19; teacher-student relationships 52 creativity as a personal quality and a teaching contexts/topics 4 professional skill 119–23, 120f; creativity technology, creativity and 4, 107–8 as risk (student satisfaction and student technology in second-language learning welfare) 124–5; creativity in context and teaching case study 180–95; 3 114–16; discussion/concluding remarks dimensions (technology, practices, and 125–7; five educational aims from context) 182; 4-dimensional model (location, formality, pedagogy, and locus of control) 183; 4 Ps (person, process, press, and products) 182; background

264 Index Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 16:02 12 March 2017 International House London 114; coding and analyzing the data) 80–2, National Curriculum for Languages 81t–2t; one or many meanings 92; for schools in England and 114–15; the parallels between writing transitions teachers, data collection, and analysis and those of second-language writers 116–18, 116t 91; poetry experience 81t; processes Vygotsky, Lev 19 writers engage when they write for War of the Worlds (Wells) 138 different audiences and purposes 90; “wild grammars” 39 sense of audience 83–4; visibility/ word fluency 54 invisibility of the author in the writing writing as a poet, writing as an academic 91–2; writing and identity 80; writing case study 77–94; academic and poetic self and others 80; writing story/ messages and the inner editor 86; history 80 academic experience and disciplines writing simulation in-class task example 81t; applying the difference between 202–4, 203b–4b creative and academic writing 86–9, writing teaching/learning narratives 87t–8t; aspects writers reveal or conceal 246–7; see also narrative inquiry as they move between audiences case study 90–1; background/research questions Writing the Economy (Smart) 199–201 77–8; crafting, honing, and editing written language, vs. oral language 63 85–6; different kinds of writing style, “The Year of Creativity” (European purpose, and audience 80; engagement Commission on Languages) 3 with community 84–5; findings 82–6; Yu-Gi-Oh (anime card game) social identity with the writing process 82–3; language example 9–10, 63, 70–4; implications and conclusions 89–92; see also vexed nature of teaching and informing the teaching and learning of learning second-language writing 91–2; inner zone of proximal development (ZPD) and outer editor 82; literature review 132–3; see also inquiry dialogue 78–80; methodology (what?, who?,


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