Report on the Four Corners Tour and JALT Conference

Sarah Mercer, Austria

This year I had the great privilege of being asked to be a ‘featured speaker’ for the JALT (Japanese Association for Language Teaching) conference and tour on behalf of the C Group. The tour involves giving a series of talks, lectures and workshops for local chapters across Japan before making your way to the main annual international conference held this year for four days in Nagoya.

Having had little experience of Japan previously, I was unsure about what would be perceived as local concerns. Despite having read some literature about language education in Japan, I was aware that reading can only ever scratch the surface of how another culture thinks, feels and functions. However, I have always been guided by a focus on our shared humanity and a belief in the importance of seeking to be empathetic with others respecting and appreciating diversity and difference. I feel that irrespective of our backgrounds, as humans, we all tend to share similar needs in interpersonal relationships such as trust, respect, interest, openness and warmth (see, e.g., Roffey, 2011). Indeed, quality interpersonal relationships were a theme that ran through the four main topics I addressed in the course of my various workshops and talks during my 12-day stay in Japan.

My tour began in Sendai with a one-day mini conference on positive psychology in ELT organised by Marc Helgesen with talks also by Tim Murphey and Joe Falout. All four of us are united by our shared interest in the topic and by all having chapters in the book entitled ‘Positive psychology in SLA’, published by Multilingual Matters and edited by Peter MacIntyre, Tammy Gregersen and myself. Marc introduced the day explaining the heritage of and rationale for positive psychology (PP) making the case for its importance for all educational endeavours but especially language learning. Marc went on to exemplify his understandings of the field with some excellent ideas of practical activities teachers can do to incorporate PP elements into their regular language tasks. His book on combining positive psychology and language learning will be out with ABAX publishers earlier next year. For those who cannot wait till then, he manages an excellent website with great resources: www.eltandhappiness.com

The next workshop was given by Joe Falout, who used practical examples to help us appreciate how our past selves are constantly influencing our present as well as future selves. He discussed the role of our present communities as teachers and/or learners in serving as a valuable resource to help us discuss our experiences and strengthen positive narratives of our selves. He showed us how we need to learn to cherish and savour the positive moments in our language learning or teaching histories and perhaps reframe the negative ones to ensure healthy and empowering future selves.

The third workshop was held by Tim Murphey, who discussed the power of music for generating positive emotions and facilitating effective learning. He taught us various songs that can be adapted for language learning purposes but which use familiar tunes so that everyone can join in. Indeed, this was a very interactive part of the day, which saw the entire audience up and singing! As he promised, it generated a lot of positive emotions and great opportunities to interact with each other.

I had the privilege of holding the final workshop on the topic of ‘socio-emotional competences for language teaching’. In the workshop, I argued for the importance of socio-emotional skills for language teachers, especially given the interpersonal, communicative and fundamentally social character of language learning and use. We discussed the power of relationships for all forms of successful learning, reflecting on their significance for academic success with the teacher-pupil relationship being in position 11 in Hattie’s (2009) list of the 138 most influential factors on learning. We also considered practical strategies for teachers to enhance their own socio-emotional competence to help them be empathetic teachers and serve as positive role models for their learners, such as reflective emotional logs, professional gratitude portfolios documenting positive experiences in our jobs, and finding ways to combat stress such as through exercise and mindfulness activities depending on personal preferences. Drawing on some of the results from a study I conducted with my colleague Christina Gkonou funded by the British Council (Gkonou & Mercer, in press), we also discussed positive classroom behaviours and different ways in which teachers can express their ‘caring’ for their learners so as to respect their personalities and authenticity as teachers. It was a wonderful start to my tour, which inspired, motivated and energised me for the rest of the trip. Handouts from all the presentations can be found at: www.eltandhappiness.com/nov-20-mini-conference.html

At another set of workshops that I conducted on the tour, I chose to focus on one area of socio-emotional competence that is especially important for learners to develop for their future lives as well as for teachers, namely, empathy. Empathy has repeatedly been referred to as a key 21st century life skill and I have argued elsewhere (Mercer, 2016a) that it is a core competence for language learners, especially for those learning English which functions as a lingua franca for many users. Thinking of my own students, it is impossible for me to prepare them in a culture-specific way for all the contexts in which they may use their English. Indeed, the whole concept of ‘target culture’ is hard to conceptualise for anywhere, let alone the English-speaking world. As such, non-culture specific approaches to intercultural competence, which focus on developing interpersonal skills are one possible way to work in this area.

In the workshop, we examined definitions of empathy reflecting on the affective and cognitive components as well as associated compassionate action. We took a critical stance to empathy discussing its potential misuse for non-humanistic purposes such as by some politicians, marketing managers and sales people. We also stressed the point that empathy does not mean agreement, it means seeking to understand and appreciate what it is like to walk in somebody else’s shoes as a means for better dialogue and potential reconciliation. We discussed empathy as a fundamental human trait reflecting on the role of mirror neurons, the social brain hypothesis and the ability of humans to theorise about the minds of others. We talked about ways of enhancing empathy such as through the use of role play and scenarios, working critically with literature and film as well as activities to better understand elements of non-verbal communication. We concluded with a quote by Henry David Thoreau about the power of empathy as he asks, “could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for instance?”.

The next series of workshops again began from the premise of the importance of teacher-pupil relationships. As outlined earlier, the quality of the relationship between teacher and pupil is central to successful learning. We may have the best materials in the world but if we do not have positive rapport and good group dynamics, these materials may be destined to fail. One characteristic of relationships is that they imply reciprocity, which means that moods and emotions spread back and forth between teachers and learners. In other words, our emotions are contagious for those around us and it works in both directions. However, the onus is on us as teachers to initiate and ensure a positive spread of emotions. This means that teachers need to be in a healthy frame of mind emotionally and motivationally, so that it is more likely their learners will be too. As a result, these workshops looked at teacher professional well-being. I argued that there has been a relative neglect of teachers in the research literature. Although there have been a good number of studies on language teacher identity and cognition, there has been little work looking at other dimensions of their psychologies such as language teacher motivation, mindsets or overall professional well-being. However, as Maslach and Leiter (1999: 303) explain, “the most valuable and costly part of an education system are the people who teach. Maintaining their well-being and their contribution to student education should be a primary objective of educational leaders”. Therefore, in the workshops, we actively explored five key areas of teacher professional well-being: self-efficacy (believing in your competences as a teacher), locus of control (having a sense of control over things that happen to you in your professional life), mindsets (having a growth mindset about teacher competences, believing these can continually be improved), motivation, and goal setting including engagement in professional development. Given that there are reported record rates of teacher burnout across the globe (Hong, 2010) including also Japan, there is an urgent need to support teachers and help them appreciate their value and the need to also ‘take care’ of themselves, because they are worth it in their own right but also because research shows that it enables them to be better teachers when they are satisfied, motivated and engaged happily in their professional roles (e.g., Day & Gu, 2010).

The final topic I addressed during the tour and conference is something I have termed ‘relational pedagogy’. All of my research to date has focused on understanding language learner and teacher psychology (see, e.g., Williams, Mercer, & Ryan, 2016), given my conviction in the primary importance of understanding the people involved in language learning first and foremost. However, psychology is a complex area, which can sometimes feel overwhelming for those beginning to think about their teaching or learning in these terms. Consequently, I have been reflecting on a way to talk about psychological dimensions in a more readily accessible manner without overly simplifying. To this end, I am currently exploring the idea of thinking of our psychology in terms of a network of relationships. We usually think of relationships in social terms and we have already discussed some of their qualities earlier in this article. In essence, a relationship is an ongoing way of thinking and feeling about another person within a contextual setting. In other words, relating is an active process involving our contextually situated thoughts and feelings in connection with someone. Extending this idea of relating beyond social relationships, we can also think of how we relate to a whole host of things in our lives, such as our classrooms, our schools, our textbooks, the language itself and other users of the language. We can also relate to dimensions within ourselves, such as our memories of our past experiences and our goals for the future. We cannot change our pasts but we can change how we choose to relate to them from the present. In this line of thinking, we can conceptualise psychology in terms of how we actively relate to ideas, languages, objects, places, experiences as well as people.

One way to envisage the relating process is to think of the ABC of relationships – the affective/emotional (A) dimension, the beliefs we have about the relationship (B), and the contexts within which we relate and the personal meaning of those contexts (C). It is important, when we think about contexts and cultures, to appreciate that these are not objective monolithic constructs, but rather as individuals with our own frames of reference and personal histories, we actively make our own sense of our environments. As such, we can think of contexts as subjective realities that we relate to in ways unique to ourselves. However, it is worth noting that we may share characteristics of our relationships with others who may have similar frames of reference and dimensions of our histories. Indeed, this perspective helps us to understand both commonalities and uniqueness within cultures (Mercer, 2016b). In the workshop, after outlining the rationale for taking a relational stance, participants were encouraged to reflect on specific relationships to things, ideas, people, or places in their own professional lives to make the abstract initial discussion more concrete. They considered the affective nature of the relationship (A), the beliefs underlying and about it (B) as well as the subjective contextual frame surrounding it (C). I have found that many of us can readily comprehend the idea of a relationship, making it easier to think about working on a specific relationship, which we may wish to reframe if we feel it is negatively affecting our psychology or that of one of our learners.

In respect to our learners, we concentrated on discussing ideas about four key areas where we could help learners to develop positive relationships in order to enhance their approach to language learning: to themselves as language learners (working on facilitative beliefs such as growth mindset and scaffolding genuine experiences of worked-for success), to their teachers (in terms of rapport and a sense of trust, respect and care), to their language learning contexts (physical and emotional space in terms of belonging, bonding, community and commitment – Fredricks, 2014), and to the language itself (reflecting on passions in and beyond the classroom and how the teacher and peers can act as positive role models).

On a personal and professional level, the tour and conference were an excellent opportunity for me to enjoy relating with colleagues old and new. I was able to grow in my own appreciation of a new set of language learning and teaching contexts as well as gain valuable fresh ideas from the many talks at the conference, which addressed topics ranging from action research, young learners, testing and assessment, cultural competence, language ideologies, working with textbooks, methods for skills areas, ideas for working with technologies, as well as issues close to my own professional heart, such as active learning, identities, motivation, emotions, beliefs, leadership, and brain-based research. My special thanks go to the C Group for facilitating my trip, to Pilgrim’s for their financial support, and to JALT, especially the Teacher Development SIG, who also contributed financially to my visit and were kind enough to invite me to join them. The JALT conference is an excellent opportunity to relate positively to our profession and its relevance as a conference stretches way beyond the bounds of Japan. It is an experience I will treasure and learn from for many years to come.

References

Day, C., & Gu, Q. (2010). The New Lives of Teachers. London: Routledge.

Fredricks, J. A. (2014). Eight Myths of Student Disengagement. Thousand Oaks: Corwin.

Gkonou, C. & Mercer, S. (in press). Understanding Emotional and Social Intelligence among English language Teachers. London: British Council.

Hattie, J. A. C. (2009). Visible Learning. London: Routledge.

Hong, J. Y. (2010). Pre-service and beginning teachers’ professional identity and its relation to dropping out of the profession. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 1530- 1543.

Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (1999). Teacher burnout: A research agenda. In R. Vandenburghe & A. M. Huberman (Eds.), Understanding and Preventing Teacher Stress (pp. 295-314). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mercer, S. (2016a). Seeing the world through your eyes: Empathy in language learning and teaching. In MacIntyre, P., Gregersen, T., & Mercer, S. (Eds.) (2016) Positive Psychology in SLA (pp. 91-111). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Mercer, S. (2016b). The contexts within me: The learner’s sense of self as a complex dynamic system. In. King, J. (Ed.). The Dynamic Interplay between Context and the Language Learner (pp. 11-28). Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Roffey, S. (2011). Changing Behaviour in Schools: Promoting Positive Relationships and Wellbeing. London; Sage.

Williams, M., Mercer, S. & Ryan. S. (2015). Exploring Psychology in Language Learning and Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.