Читать книгу Understanding the Complexities of Self-Image in an EFL Rural Setting - Bertha Ramos Holguín - Страница 4

THE TRIP THAT WE PLANNED

The research group TONGUE has had a history of working with rural areas and education communities. We have been able to witness the dire need to comprehend rural education and how it shapes people’s experiences. We have also come to understand that the school is no longer a place to teach subjects. It has become an opportunity for students’ voices to be amplified and echoed. Because of this, we recognize that education also encompasses a humanistic orientation to it. As such, we agree with Bognar (1999), who suggests that the humanistic perspective is still neglected and suppressed in our schools in particular with the education of a positive self-image.

We considered the previous argument and our experiences with eleventh graders at a public institution in Boyacá, Colombia, to make the choice to understand their self-images. We wanted to comprehend how the students, who are constantly constructing and co-constructing their self- image and identity, went through the process. As researchers, we used this opportunity to get to know them, and their contexts better. Since the idea of self-image implies taking a look at how people and the community see themselves, the students’ life stories would allow us to take a deeper look at what lied beneath their words as their underwent the process of self-image construction.

In addition to the previous, one of our main objectives, as teachers-researchers, was to gain a better understanding of our teaching practices by getting to know our students’ complex realities in a rural school. We did so by asking our students to write their life stories, which helped them express themselves, how they saw their world, and what they lived every day. The life stories gave us a glimpse into their world, which would have been invisible if we had focused primarily on EFL teaching and learning.

As teachers, we understand all too well assigning students multiple written pages focused on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and structures. However, we have come to realize that these assignments rarely provide the chance to contemplate meaning. Instead, it is tempting to judge students’ writing based on their lack of spelling or grammatical disfunction. Similarly, we have also been guilty of giving students writing topics that restrict their freedom to express themselves. As we grow in our teaching practices and think about our students, we chose to focus on short life stories that could give students the freedom to write meaningful narratives about themselves, their lives, and how they saw themselves within their communities. Their stories went far beyond the linguistic features of the language. Moreover, they invited us to share, comprehend, and open our minds to their lives.

We wanted our students to see the language as a vehicle to express themselves and for their voices to be heard as part of their local community. Part of our point of view comes from the idea that schools play an important role in a students’ self-image construction. According to Simel (2013), schools need to create a positive environment, so that individuals can create an idea of themselves in a safe place. Additionally, schools and society go hand-in-hand when it comes to change, which means that schools have to provide a space where students’ characteristics are discovered, valued, and highlighted. Simel (2013) also pointed out that it is difficult to witness students’ personal growth within a traditional classroom, where the teacher is the center of the class. To witness the students’ perspectives; a student-centered approach needs to be the core of the learning process.

Understanding the construction of our self-images, not only for ourselves but also for the “other”, is a deep and meaningful experience, which could lead to improving our practice, as well as creating long lasting connections for the participants: learners, teachers, and parents. We see this research as our way of putting ourselves in someone else’s tiny shoes.

We expected to gain understanding about how adolescents build their image and the meaningful “spaces” (community, home, school, etc.) connected to self-image construction revealed in the eleventh graders’ life stories. Then, we aimed at describing and understanding these meaningful “spaces” (community, home, school, etc.) that were connected to self-image construction.

By understanding how self-image is constructed and the meaningful spaces for self-image construction, we could work together as a community in rural schools, so that students can develop better self-images and build their confidence and self-respect. As such, they could improve their experiences in the educational setting, and imagine their futures from positive and enriching perspectives.