Monica Waterhouse

EMO-TISSAGE / EMO-LEARNING

Affects dans l’apprentissage des langues

Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgique, Le 5, 6, et 7 Juillet 2017

Emotions in Immigrant

Language Education: from

Acquisition Barrier to

Affective Pedagogy

Overarching objective: examination of the

affective dimensions of adult immigrant second

language education in Canada from a Deleuzian

perspective.

Ongoing Research Program

3 angles

1. Curriculum = what to teach or content

2. Teachers’ perspectives = who teaches

3. Pedagogy = how teaching might go on

• Research has established the complex ways in which

emotion and cognition are intimately intertwined in

language learning (Arnold, 2011; Dewaele, 2013) and in

the professional experience of language teaching

(Benesch, 2012; Golombek & Doran, 2014).

• A proliferation of theoretical perspectives with distinct

strands that focus on “linguistic, psychological and

social aspects of the L2 learning process” (Pavlenko,

2013, p.6).

• Explicitly critical approaches (see Benesch, 2016 for a

review)

Conceptual Proliferations

• Anwarrudin’s (2017) discursive, materialist

critique of research that frames migrant and

refugee students “as emotionally vulnerable

‘problems’ in need of fixing” (p.113)

• “The goal of this [critical] research is not to

capture what emotions are, biologically or

cognitively, or to discover whether they are good

or bad for language teaching and learning, but

instead to examine how they work socially”

(Benesch, 2016, p.6).

Conceptual Proliferations

Resists binary oppositions (Spinoza’s monism)

“The perspective of the affects requires us

constantly to pose as a problem the relation

between actions and passions, between reason

and the emotions. We do not know in advance

what a body can do, what a mind can think –

what affects they are capable of. The

perspective of the affects requires an exploration

of these as yet unknown powers.” (Hardt, 2007,

p.x)

What Deleuzian affect theory does…

Affects:

• exceed individual bodies; they are relational

• are powers or capacities to affect and be affected, transform

(i.e. becoming, Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987)

• are visceral, preconscious, and autonomous

• may actualize in classrooms as emotions: fear, sadness, joy.

• described not in terms of what they are or what they mean for

an individual human subject (student or teacher), but are

studied in terms of what they do in the context of classroom

(Benesch, 2012) and what they produce (e.g. emotions, or

teacher pedagogical choices/responses)

• Non-human bodies (e.g. text-bodies) also affect and are

affected.

What Deleuzian affect theory does…

• Project title: Exploring the transformative powers of

Deleuzean affect in immigrant English language

classrooms: curricular and pedagogical implications

• Acknowledgement: funded by a Nouveaux

chercheurs grant (2013-2014), Budget de

développement de la recherche (BDR), Faculté des

lettres et des sciences humaines, Université Laval

• Research Question: How is affect conceptualized in

Canadian adult immigrant second language

programs?

Angle 1 - Curriculum

• Identification & collection

of key policy and

curriculum documents

from government funded

immigrant official

language education

programs in Canada.

• Government websites: – federal for the Language

Instruction for Newcomers to

Canada (LINC program)

– provincial & territorial programs

– 2012 Canadian Language

Benchmarks (CLB) & CLB

curriculum support docs

• 30 e-documents analyzed

from 8 provinces & 2

Territories

8

Angle 1 - Curriculum

Waterhouse & Mortier-Faulkner, 2014

• Psycho-cognitive orientations:

motivation and willingness to communicate

learner self-confidence and self-esteem

key role that teachers play in supporting the learning

process

• Linguistic orientations:

learning outcomes related to communicative

competence including sociocultural, pragmatic and

sociolinguistic conventions.

Angle 1 - Curriculum

• Title: Perspectives des enseignants sur les dimensions affectives des

classes de langue pour les immigrants : implications pédagogiques et

sociales/ Teacher perspectives on the affective dimensions of

immigrant language classes: pedagogical and social implications.

• Acknowledgement: funded by Fonds de recherche du Québec sur la

société et la culture (2016-2019)

• Online questionnaire for teacher-respondents. Part of a three-year

qualitative study exploring the pedagogical choices of French and

English second language (FSL & ESL) teachers working with adult

immigrants to Canada (Québec & Ontario) with respect to the affective

dimensions of classroom life

How do the affective dimensions of their classrooms influence

these teachers’ pedagogical choices?

How do these teachers respond to affective events that present

themselves in their classrooms?

Angle 2 - Teachers’ Perspectives

The need to develop a data collection tool aligning

theory & method:

• theoretical-methodological commensurability in

educational research on emotions (Kuby, 2016;

Zembylas, 2007b).

Tierney (2011) makes the case for vignettes in research

investigating:

• sensitive topics or ethically weighed dilemmas

• rarely occurring (not easily observable) and context-

dependent phenomena

• decision-making situations

Angle 2 - Teachers’ Perspectives

• Online, vignette-based

questionnaire distributed

to teachers by Ontario

and Quebec teacher

associations via their list-

serves and social media

(e.g. facebook)

• French version https://monicawaterhouse.limequery.c

om/431225?lang=fr

• English version https://monicawaterhouse.limequery.c

om/239992?lang=en

• open prompts invite

affective responses to

four fictionalized

vignettes inspired by real-

life experiences of teachers

and students involving

affectively charged events

in adult immigrant second

language classrooms

(Waterhouse, 2011)

Angle 2 - Teachers’ Perspectives

Preliminary thinking with data & theory

• As suspected, emotionally charged events like the ones

described in the vignettes are relatively rarely occurring.

• However, when they do, they are affectively impactful

within the classroom, for both teachers and students.

• Teachers are responding positively to a research focus

on questions of affect and are volunteering for the next

phase of the study.

Angle 2 - Teachers’ Perspectives

Classroom-based ethnographic research around arts-

based pedagogy (October 2017 to June 2018):

• Another component of the three-year qualitative study

exploring the pedagogical choices of teachers working with

adult immigrants to Canada with respect to the affective

dimensions of classroom life

How might an arts-based, affective pedagogy offer

teachers a way to meet the dual objectives of newcomer

language programs: language learning and integration

of immigrants?

Angle 3 - Pedagogy

From acquisition barrier to affective pedagogy:

• from exclusively linguistic texts to an appreciation of art as affective

thinking and knowledge creation in the learning process (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1994; Semetsky, 2009)

• from teachers’ emotional labour (Benesch, 2012) in managing

emotions to a critical reflection on the ethical-political stakes of

responses to emotions.

• from teacher-centred control to unknowablity of exactly how learning

will go on.

– “There are no ultimate or final guarantees – political, ethical,

aesthetic, pedagogic, and otherwise – that capacities to affect and

to be affected will yield an actualized next or new that is somehow

better than ‘now.’” (Seigworth & Gregg, 2010, pp.9-10).

Angle 3 - Pedagogy

Inspirations for an arts-based, affective pedagogy:

• ”Exactly what forms such a pedagogy might take is to be

constructed by each teacher and his/her students. To

prescribe the sort of pedagogical techniques or classroom

activities that teachers and students should be engaged in

would be to institute another normalising discourse for

teachers and students to submit to” (Zembylas, 2007a,

p.343)

Angle 3 - Pedagogy

Choice of text

(Cole, 2016;

Danzak, 2011)

• Affectively

powerful art

• Benefits of a

language-free

text

• Shaun Tan’s graphic

novel The Arrival

Working with the text

• See Cole, D. R. (2016). Affective literacy and

TEFL. Presentation slides retrieved June 12,

2017 from

https://www.slideshare.net/dracle99/affective-

literacy-and-tefl.

• Also, advantages for low literacy learners

Cole

(2

01

6)

You have left your readers with a very special gift: a headache.

By which I mean a problem: what in the world to do with it all.

That’s their problem. That’s where their experimentation begins.

Then the openness of the system will spread. If they have found

what they have read compelling. Creative contagion.

(Massumi, 2002, p.19)

Onwards…

Affective dimensions of adult immigrant

second language education in Canada

from 3 angles:

1. Curriculum

2. Teachers’ perspectives

3. Pedagogy

• Anwarrudin, S. M. (2017). Emotions in the curriculum of migrant and refugee students. Curriculum

Inquiry, 47(1), 112-124.

• Arnold, J. (2011). Attention to affect in language learning. Anglistik. International Journal of English

Studies, 11(1), 11-22.

• Benesch, S. (2012). Considering emotions in critical English language teaching. New York, NY:

Routledge.

• Benesch, S. (2016). Critical approaches to the study of emotions in English language teaching and

learning. In C. A. Chapelle, The encyclopedia of applied linguistics (pp.1-6). John Wiley & Sons. DOI:

10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal1478.

• Cole, D. R. (2016). Affective literacy and TEFL. Presentation slides retrieved June 12, 2017 from

https://www.slideshare.net/dracle99/affective-literacy-and-tefl.

• Danzak, R. L. (2011). Defining identities through multiliteracies: EL teens narrate their immigration

experiences as graphic stories. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 55(3), 187-196.

• Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. (B. Massumi,

Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1980)

• Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? (H. Tomlinson, & G. Burchell, Trans.). New

York: Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1991).

• Dewaele, J.-M. (2013). Affect and language learning. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of

Applied Linguistics (pp.1-5). Blackwell Publishing. DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0011

• Golombek, P., & Doran, M. (2014). Unifying cognition, emotion, and activity in language teacher

professional development. Teaching and Teacher Education, 39, 102-111.

• Hardt, M. (2007). Foreword: what affects are good for. In P.T. Clough with J. Halley (Eds.), The

affective turn : theorizing the social (pp.ix-xiii). Durham & London : Duke University Press.

References

• Kuby, C. R. (2016). Emotions as situated, embodied, and fissured: methodological implications of thinking

with theories. In M. Zembylas & P.A. Schutz (Eds.), Methodological advances in research on emotion

and education [e-book] (pp.125-136). Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978-3-

319-29049-2

• Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the virtual : movement, affect, sensation. Durham : Duke University

Press.

• Pavlenko, A. (2013). The affective turn in SLA: From ‘affective factors’ to ‘language desire’ and

‘commodification of affect.’ In D. Gabryś-Barker and J. Bielska (Eds.), The affective dimension in second

language acquisition (pp.3-28). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

• Seigworth, G. J. & Gregg, M. (2010). An inventory of shimmers. In M. Gregg & G.J. Seigworth (Eds.),

The Affect Theory Reader (pp.1-25). Duke University Press.

• Semetsky, I. (2009). Deleuze as a philosopher of education: Affective knowledge/effective learning. The

European Legacy, 14(4), 443-456.

• Tan, S. (2006). The arrival. New York : Arthur A. Levine Books, Scholastic Inc.

• Tierney, R. D. (2011, April 10). Vignettes as a complementary method in educational research. Paper

presented at the American Educational Research Association annual meeting, New Orleans, LA.

• Waterhouse, M. (2011). Experiences of multiple literacies and peace: A rhizoanalysis of becoming in

immigrant language classrooms. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Ottawa. Available

electronically at http://hdl.handle.net/10393/19942

• Waterhouse, M., & Mortier-Faulkner, G. (2014, May 27). Conceptualizations of affect in Canadian adult

immigrant second language education. Paper presentation at the Canadian Association of Applied

Linguistics, Brock University, St.Catherine’s, Ontario.

• Zembylas, M. (2007a). 'Risks and pleasures: a Deleuzo-Guattarian pedagogy of desire in education',

British Educational Research Journal, 33 (3), 331-347. DOI: 10.1080/01411920701243602

• Zembylas, M. (2007b). Theory and methodology in researching emotions in education. International

Journal of Research & Method in Education, 30(1), 57–72.

References

monica.waterhouse

@lli.ulaval.ca

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