Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices

Stories of Learning and Teaching Practices |学習・教育実践の成功談・失敗談
Narratives of Filipino English Teachers in Japan:
A Reflective Dialogic Review of Stewart (2020)
Prumel Barbudo
Yokohama City
University
Email:<pbarbudo@yokohamacu.ac.jp>

Stephanie Keith Lim
Miyazaki International
College
Email:<slim@sky.miyazakimic.ac.jp>

Stephanie: In her book, Narratives of Filipino English Teachers in Japan, Alison Stewart presents the stories of
Aurora, Lori, Elma, Sampaguita, Anna Marie, Shin, Katrina, Renata and Carmela as foreign English teachers working atdifferent levels of education in Japan. Through their accounts, Stewart delves into the notion of teacher identity andhow it is affected by the community in which they belong.
Prumel: I think that Stewart is bold in adopting an “identity politics perspective” (p. 26) to explain the central
theme of the book, language teacher recognition. Stewart suggests that recognition involves a very strong attachment
to the background the Filipino teachers were born into, as well as other attributes such as language identity, gender andsocial class that are both inscribed and ascribed to them. She effectively presents the stories of the interviewees toargue that feelings of prejudice and pride are fundamental to identity. I find her interviews successful in eliciting these
emotions from the interviewees. In her analysis, she portrays the organization Filipino English Teachers in Japan(henceforth FETJ) as a driving force for social activism that merits recognition and acceptance.
As Filipino teachers with shared cultural identity with the interviewees, Stephanie and I will include our emic view orinsider’s interpretation (Creswell, 2014) of the narratives which may be disparate from Stewart’s perspectives.
Stephanie: My name is Stephanie Lim. I have been working as a lecturer in Miyazaki, Japan for three years. I am
Filipino-Canadian—born and raised in the Philippines, but my family moved to Vancouver when I was a teen, so I feellike I grew up in the Philippines, and became an adult in Canada. I identify strongly with both national identities. I havefirm cultural roots in my birth country, and I have internalized values shaped by my Canadian experience.
Prumel: I am Prumel Barbudo, a lecturer at universities in Yokohama and Tokyo. Just like Stephanie, I was born andraised in the Philippines. I moved to Tokyo several years ago to do some research on teacher development under theJapanese Government Monbukagakusho (MEXT) Scholarship. Working as an English teacher abroad, I have always been
proud of my Filipino heritage. I grew up as a “probinsyano”(Filipino slang which loosely translates as “country boy”), so
my ex-urban, semi-conservative values are deeply shaped by my Ilokano regional ethnicity, which intersects with myprofessional and personal identities.
Stephanie: All the teachers interviewed presented diverse and compelling narratives of their respective teaching
journeys. Certainly, many of the stories shared and analyzed in the book resonated with us as fellow Filipino language
teachers in Japan. In this discussion, however, we would like to focus on three aspects that stood out to us from thestories: teaching path, discrimination, and Native English Speaking Teacher (NEST) and Non-native English Speaking
Teacher (NNEST) identities.

Teaching Path
Stephanie: Shin, Katrina and Carmela were clear that teaching in one form or another would be their profession. Shinstated that it was his childhood dream, while Katrina and Carmela expressly pursued a degree in education.

Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

22

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices
Meanwhile, for Lori, Sampaguita and Anna, it appears that they arrived at teaching rather fortuitously as they studied
Medicine, Business and Computer Science at university. However, one point is consistent among everyone, and that is it
took a while, having had to overcome significant personal and professional obstacles, before they were able to establish
themselves as English educators in Japan. What was your teaching path like as you moved from the Philippines toJapan?
Prumel: My bachelor’s degree was in Secondary Education, major in English, and my master’s degree was in English
Education. In the Philippines, the English department in my university hired me after graduation and while doing this, I
passed the licensure exam for professional teachers. I decided to move to the public high school system after a year. I
had the privilege to be promoted to a position called “Master Teacher I,” which means I had more senior roles such as
conducting a mentoring program for other English teachers. When I moved to Japan, I worked at all levels of Japanese
education, teaching both adults and children in public and private institutions. It was a struggle for me to start all overagain in a foreign land but I worked my way through to become a university lecturer. I love the teaching profession. I
have been enjoying this for over 18 years and I could not see myself doing other work. What was yours?
Stephanie: I have been teaching for almost nine years, three of which here in Japan. Like Renata, I never thought I
would be in academia. Growing up, I did not like school, but when I was at university, I learned to appreciate it thanks
to some of my professors who I felt taught with great passion and kindness. That was when I began imagining myself asa Psychology teacher. For the most part, though, I was unconvinced that it could happen because, at that time, it
seemed like getting into graduate school was daunting and arduous. Also, I am quite introverted, and I did not think mypersonality would be suitable. However, a few months after completing my Bachelor’s, I enrolled in the Teaching English
as a Second Language (TESL) program as I was unsure about what to do with my Psychology and International Relations
degree. Fortunately, I was hired at a private language school in Vancouver not long after graduating from the program.
In my five years there, I realized how singular a profession English teaching is.Among other things, I found it remarkablethat people from all over the world, who have highly diverse backgrounds, could converge in our small classroom andconnect with each other. I do not think there are many fields which can facilitate this kind of rich cultural exchange. It
has allowed me to forge valuable friendships with some of my students, with whom I keep in touch with to this day, andI have really come to appreciate that aspect of this work. In my third year of teaching, I went back to school to get my
Master’s degree in Teaching English as an Additional Language (TEAL), which then led me to my current position at
Miyazaki International College.

Discrimination
Stephanie: In Chapter 4, Sampaguita said she “does not experience or sense any discrimination against her as a Filipino
in Japan” (p. 112). She received assistance from Japanese authorities when she needed it, and she stated that her
coworkers have been appreciative of her work (p. 112). Similarly, Elma said she is aware that there is discrimination, but
believs it can be overcome if you prove yourself to be better at your work than others (p. 93). As Stewart points out,
Elma achieved this by garnering distinctions that recognize her as one of the best teachers at her workplace (p. 93).
Have you ever experienced discrimination as a foreign English teacher here in Japan?
Prumel: I have not experienced overt discrimination directly from native English speakers or even Japaneseteachers and administrators. However, I believe it still exists in the workplace and in our discourses. In the language
teaching industry in Japan, we almost always equate the term discrimination to “negative discrimination,” which isbasically the poor treatment of a teacher because of his background, especially his mother tongue. However, “positive
discrimination” is evident in the Japanese workplace too and affects the lives of all English teachers here. It usuallyfavors teachers who come from Inner Circle countries (Kachru, 1992) where English is used as the primary language
such as the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. One specific example even until today is that the job
advertisements of English schools require candidates to be “native” English speakers from Inner Circle countries.
Upon deeper reflection, based on my recent experiences, discrimination often comes from fellow Filipinos, notfrom some explicit behavior or discourse from other nationalities. Having said this, I think it is also imperative toaddress discrimination with this specific Filipino organization in question. Having dealt personally with the interviewees
myself, I noticed firsthand that some teachers exhibit a Filipino socio-cultural trait called “kanya-kanya” or selfcenteredness. Specifically, when job opportunities come, some of them deliberately withhold information so only a few

学習者ディベロプメント研究部会 <http://ld-sig.org>

23

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices
or only members of the organization know about it, hence, fewer competition. This is primarily a manifestation of“circles within circles” (Martin, 2014) and is a harmful practice in the language teaching community.
Stewart is right to interpret that FETJ primarily caters to the professional, social, and sometimes political concernsof Filipino teachers in Japan. While this maybe so, there needs to be a more truthful representation of who we are as acommunity. I somehow feel FETJ is a platform where there is a mirage of Filipino values and hard work being projected,
but it does not necessarily speak for other modern Filipino English teachers in Japan. Also, it has recently become abusiness enterprise whose programs are driven more by money-making activities than social activism. Therefore, there
is a dire need to represent other Filipino teachers in Japan and not just the already established ones. What about you?
What is your experience with discrimination, if any?
Stephanie: Like Sampaguita, I can say that I have not actually felt discriminated against because of my identities. I
do not think that it has set me back professionally. I do recognize that it is a reality many minority teachers face, notonly here in Japan. I also acknowledge that I inhabit this liminal space; my hyphenated national identity most probably
affords me certain privileges. Having said that, I do feel like I have to prove myself as a teacher. Citing Morgan (2004),
Stewart points out that, as language teachers, “our identities are ‘on show’ to learners and the people who hire us” (p.
192), so because I look a certain way, I feel there is an initial invisible barrier I need to overcome to get the fullconfidence of my employers and students. Whenever I enter a classroom for the first time, I feel like I am subjected tothis automatic evaluation. I am unsure if this stems from my own insecurities given my age and experience.
Nevertheless, that feeling does arise, but the good news is that I think I feel it less as I teach more.
With regards to the “kanya-kanya” mentality within FETJ, as I do not have first-hand experience with the group orother Filipino teachers in Japan in general, I cannot speak much about it specifically. In any case, I do understand thistrait you are referring to as I have witnessed some form of it at different points in my life. It truly can be detrimental to
everyone involved. As it pertains to us, however, if the larger goal is to elevate the image of the Filipino English teachersin Japan, then this issue within the community needs to be addressed directly and meaningfully. I do recognize that thisis definitely easier said than done as everyone would have to acknowledge and accept that it is a legitimate point ofcontention in the first place.

NEST/NNEST Identity
Stephanie: When asked about her identification as NEST or NNEST, Renata asserted that she “do[es]n’t want labels” (p.
168). I understand where she is coming from as these categorizations are not straightforward. In my case, for speaking, I
consider Cebuano as my native tongue. However, I cannot write formally in Cebuano or in Tagalog (Filipino languages),so if I were hard pressed to choose, I would say my first language for writing is English. As for reading and listening, I
feel English, Cebuano, and Tagalog are my “first languages.” I think this is true not only for me, but for many people whogrew up in the Philippines as the various Filipino languages are more often than not used simultaneously and/orinterchangeably with English. Overall, however, I do identify as NNEST, but perhaps part of the hesitation some teachers
may have when it comes to these labels arises as a result of this internal/personal, somewhat imprecise linguistic
distinctions, even within ourselves. What do you think about the NEST and NNEST distinction?
Prumel: This dichotomy is simplistic but I still believe that these terms should be considered in meaningful
discourse. This is not to say that I am complicit to perpetuating stereotypes about native and nonnative English
speakers. On the contrary, having a demarcation between the terms “native” and “nonnative” to identify the teachers isthe first step in recognizing that these all backgrounds matter. Misrecognition of these subjective terms alone may
further marginalize those who identify as such. What should be forsaken is what Stewart mentions in Chapter 1 and theIntroduction, which is native speakerism (Holliday, 2005, 2018) or the ideology that native speakers are better suited toteach English because they come from the Inner Circle countries. Another ideology that should be condemned islinguicism, or the preference for native English speakers (p. 24). There have been many attempts, even at recent
international teacher conferences, to use terms such as “multilingual teachers,” “intercultural teachers,” and the like.
Using these alternative terms achieves a superficial goal: It simply euphemizes the real problem that conflicts and formsof discrimination usually start in what we know, believe, and think or simply “cognition” (Borg, 2003) as manifested inour discourses and behaviors. Therefore, I do not see a huge problem in using the terms “native” and “nonnative,”
however subjective they are, as they can help expose the disbenefits of the ideologies behind them.

Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

24

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices
Different types of World Englishes have now been intellectualized and as a result, we should have more tolerance todifferent varieties of the language. As a lingua franca, English is not anymore just owned by speakers from the Inner
Circle countries. As Professor Ryuko Kubota (2001) of the University of British Columbia once mentioned, we, as
nonnative speakers, also take ownership of the English language. However, in Japan, the misconception that the idealteacher of a language is a native speaker of that language is still pervasive. This labeling is deeply ingrained in our
professional communities, and we can start to change this by asserting ourselves and showing others that regardless ofbackground, first and foremost, we are all English teachers. All experiences are valid, and ethnicity, race, or color should
not be a factor in being an effective English teacher. Sure, nonnative speakers may have issues with their linguistic
confidence, but if you qualify and can deliver, then nobody should discriminate against you in any form.
Stephanie: Agreed. I would also like to include age, gender and sexuality to those dimensions you mentioned.
Indeed, it is wonderful that there are institutions like Renata’s workplace that value the various identities of teachersand see them as assets. Arguably, it would be better for students, teachers, and institutions as a whole to recognize thatdiversity in English language teaching, and in life in general, is an advantage.
References
Borg, S. (2003). Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know,
believe, and do. Language Teaching, 36(2), 81-109.
Creswell, J. W. (2014). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Sage.
Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: the English language in the outer circle. In R.
Quirk & H. G. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures (pp.
11-30). Cambridge University Press.
Kubota, R. (2001). Teaching World Englishes to native speakers of English in the USA. World Englishes, 20(1), 47-64.
Martin, I. P. (2014). Philippine English Revisited. World Englishes, 33(1), 50-59.
Stewart, A. (2020). Language teacher recognition: Narratives of Filipino English teachers in Japan. Multilingual Matters.

学習者ディベロプメント研究部会 <http://ld-sig.org>

25

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices

Dis/Connect – a virtual art exhibition by students ofMiyazaki International College and Kyoto University of the Arts
Will Hall
MiyazakiInternational
College
Email:<whall@sky.miyazaki-mic.ac.jp>

Eric Luong
Kyoto Universityof the Arts
Email:<eluong@kua.kyo
to-art.ac.jp>

Dis/Connect: virtual art exhibition is an online project featuring the artworks of students from Miyazaki International
College (MIC) and Kyoto University of the Arts (KUA). The project was organized from August to September 2020, andthe works are currently available to view online. Featured artworks span a wide range of media, including photography,
illustration, graphic design and video. The theme of the exhibition was distance and isolation, as they relate to theongoing pandemic.

Motivations and Goals
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, which coincided with the beginning of the university school
year in Japan, many universities moved their classes online (MEXT, 2020). Students took classes in the form of live Zoom
sessions, Google Meets, or through on demand resources. However, with extra-curricular activities being cancelled, thismove to online teaching drastically changed university life and narrowed the breadth of student experience (Cohen,2020). There were two main reasons for beginning the Dis/Connect exhibition project: to provide an opportunity forinternational exchange (and thereby practice English) and use art to share experiences during the pandemic.
Both MIC and KUA have international exchange programs that were suspended due to the pandemic. All secondyear students at MIC have the opportunity to study abroad, while students at KUA can apply to study abroad for one
semester. With study abroad no longer possible, the Dis/Connect exhibition project aimed to provide exchange
between international and Japanese students using capabilities of suddenly very familiar video conferencing software.
An open-call to participate was sent via email to students at both schools in August 2020, and finally 21 students of fivenationalities in three countries decided to join. The project was run completely in English, and outside of regular classtime, giving students the chance to maintain their English skills throughout the summer holiday. Communication was
done via email and two Zoom meetings were held before the opening of the exhibition. The opening day also included
an online reception on Zoom where students introduced their works.
The Dis/Connect exhibition project was partly based on +Project (Plus Project), an international student group at
KUA. Every year, international and Japanese students work together to create art exhibitions, artist talks, and otherevents. This is a student-centered project, also run in English, whereby planning, design, and same day operations aredone by students. One result of this project is that students could use English outside of the classroom and makeinternational friends. Many have gone on to study abroad. In the same spirit, the Dis/Connect exhibition project aimed
to promote interaction between Japanese and international students.
During the first semester of online classes in 2020, there was a concern that the students were feeling isolated(Okutsu, 2020). Many did not have any plans for the summer and some reported that they missed meeting friends andsocial interaction. Extra-curricular activities at the schools were also cancelled. By giving a chance for students to meetothers going through a similar experience, the Dis/Connect exhibition project aimed to support students during thistime.

Theme and Format
When considering what theme would be appropriate for the exhibition, it became clear that it needed to address the
pandemic, something everyone was going through. As the exhibition title suggests, students were invited to make a

Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

26

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices
work of art on issues of connection, isolation, and distance. It was hoped that by sharing individual experiences,
students could help each other during this time of isolation, and perhaps find some positives such as how we can
support one another in uncertain times. The Dis/Connect exhibition project was a chance for students to reflect andexpress feelings which are perhaps difficult to share in a classroom.
To encourage a diversity of artworks, students were invited to create a work (or a series of works) in any media. The
final result was a collection of photographs, illustrations, graphic design, video, and manga. Another reason for not
limiting works to one medium was to keep the project as inclusive as possible and avoid discouraging students who did
not come from an art or design background. Along with their work, students were asked to submit a short introduction
in English. In this way, they had two tasks: first, to interpret the theme artistically and second, to reflect on andarticulate the ideas behind their work in English. This helped viewers to appreciate the art, as both text and image aredisplayed together online. More importantly, this also encouraged students to further articulate their ideas. First,
teachers presented their own images with introduction texts as examples. These were discussed in the first Zoom
meeting to provide scaffolding for students to write their own introductions which were edited and checked by theorganizers via email and feedback was given.
It was decided that two hosting formats would be used: Tumblr, a free blog website, and Instagram, the social
media app. Using two platforms made it more accessible to a wider audience. A benefit to using online platforms wasthat all media could be shared, not just two-dimensional works. Viewers could click and immediately see videos.
Judging by the number of students who already had Instagram accounts at the time of the project, it appeared many
students were familiar with the application. This allowed for further visibility as students often shared posts and tagged
other users from the official project account.

Meeting and Exchanging Ideas
The exhibition was planned for the summer break. Exhausted from the disruption of the first semester, and following
social distancing protocols, most universities had planned to limit summer activities to the bare minimum. It was aconcern that students, already suffering from limited social interaction, may feel especially isolated with the ceasing ofa regular academic schedule. We wanted to give interested students the opportunity to do something productive andcreative, while encouraging as much social interaction as possible, under the unprecedented circumstances of thepandemic.
The project consisted of two one-hour meetings and one opening reception, all held on Zoom. The first meeting, atthe end of August, was a chance for students to introduce themselves, share their experiences of the pandemic, andlisten to those of others. It was especially interesting to hear the voices of students from places we were seeing on thenews such as Italy and Sweden, as well as different parts of Japan. The capabilities of the Zoom software, which had
become clear during the spring semester, such as the breakout rooms and screen sharing functions, helped make theexperience involving and interesting. Several art-related warm-up activities had been planned, but students were more
keen to share their experiences with each other, and it seemed a shame to interrupt them. The time went by very
quickly. The remainder of the meeting was used to explain the details of the project (such as deadlines and formats for
submissions) and to answer any questions students had at this stage. Most participants were not art university students
and so had limited experience in creating artworks; especially work to be shown in a public exhibition. For this reason
we decided it was important to provide sufficient guidance and support for them to start their creative process withconfidence and energy, while at the same time avoiding over-prescriptive instruction which might hamper theirindividual expression. We ended the meeting encouraged that students understood the requirements and were excitedabout working on their projects in the coming weeks.
The second meeting was held in mid-September and functioned as an interim discussion in which we could share
our ideas and show what we had made so far. By this time, students had begun to formulate some ideas about thedirection of their artworks. Some had already started experimenting with test works and were excited to share what
they had created. It was crucial at this stage to relieve students of anxieties they had around what makes a good
artwork, or how finished their artworks should be at this stage. We stressed the importance of the process over thefinished piece and encouraged students to discuss their ideas, however unfinished, as a way of fleshing them out andthinking of possible new directions.

学習者ディベロプメント研究部会 <http://ld-sig.org>

27

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices
Once finished, the artworks were submitted to the organizers via Email along with the short English captions. They
were then uploaded to the Tumblr and Instagram sites and launched before the online opening reception on
September 28th. The event was a chance for participants to introduce their finished artworks and to see them hosted in
the virtual public galleries. The presentations were followed by lively discussions as we were all excited to see the works
on display and learn more about the creative processes of the artists. Translating creative decisions into words is noeasy task, let alone in a second language. Yet, while this was a new and challenging experience for many, it helped to
add depth to the artworks and a welcome element of closure to the project.

Student Works

Aya Fukunaga Family, 2020
This is my dis/connect image. By using this image, I showed “loneliness” and “connection”. The hand below is mineand the hand above is my grandfather's. He was in a nursing home because of dementia, so I could not meet him often.
This image shows the situation when I held his hand and said good-bye after seeing him. Because of coronavirus, thechance of seeing him drastically decreased. This October, his condition suddenly changed and he passed away. So, thisimage became my treasure and also my family’s treasure. At his funeral, I made a photo album by using this image and I
displayed it at the back of the ceremony hall. If I did not join the dis/connect project, I don't think I could have had thiskind of valuable experience. After joining this project, I thought that taking pictures is important not only in a happy
situation but also a difficult situation because we can look back on the memories. So if I feel loneliness and sadness, I
look back at this image.

Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

28

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices

Lucia Rose Buffa, Untitled, 2020

When COVID first hit Italy, there were some initial precautionary measures, but it wasn’t long until the strict, stayhome order was issued. Suddenly, all these layers appeared, separating us from the World, as we’d previously known it.
They arrived overnight, and now they’re integrated into everyday life. There are physical layers—plastic gloves,
Plexiglas, facemasks. Layers of distance - 2 meters from other people, a thousand kilometers from my family. Layers of
uncertainty and unknown, for all of us. Quarantine in my city lasted 12 weeks. I spent a lot of time in my room (whodidn’t?). Spring arrived and I opened the windows to let it in; I watched the street through my sheer curtains. One day, inthe supermarket, the plastic gloves I had to put on at the entrance caught on the handle of my shopping bag and thethumb snagged open. It felt symbolic.

Outcomes and Reflections
Since the launch, the exhibition has been introduced in two PechaKucha Night conferences in Tainan/Kyoto(December 2020) and London (January 2021), helping the artworks reach many more people than would be possible ina physical exhibition. The project was also presented at the CCLT6 conference in which three participating students
from MIC were able to reflect on their experiences and show their artworks. The chance for students to talk publicly
about their artistic process was very important. Not only did it help them to think deeper about their artworks andprocess what they had learned, but it also offered educators a direct insight into the outcomes of the project. This wasa rare chance to hear directly from the students without teacher mediation.
One interesting take-away from the project that was mentioned by students was the novelty of taking part in a
public exhibition. While some participants had prior experience of interpreting guidelines into creative artworks, formost it was their first time. Many commented on the challenge of trying to turn partially formed, perhaps not fully
understood, feelings and emotions into something concrete and visual. As a mode of expression, art differs greatly fromspoken or written language. One difference being that full explanations are, in fact, often redundant in art. Art
welcomes nuance and suggestion, is forgiving of imprecision, and is the perfect vehicle for expressing what you struggle
to with more direct forms of communication. Art can help us in the messy task of making sense of our inner world, evenwhen it is not yet fully understood. It is this dialogue with ourselves that can lead to new realisations and discoveries,
and help to process emotions in tough times. With all the uncertainties and anxieties of the pandemic, perhaps rightnow is the perfect time to introduce more creative expression activities into our students’ lives.
2020 was a challenging year for students and teachers alike, and new teaching methods were adopted anddiscarded with rapid pace. On a positive note, being forced to experiment with new educational tools has led to somevery creative outcomes, but it will take time for us to reflect upon and realise how successful our response to the crisis
actually was. We feel that the virtual exhibition was one step towards helping students process their experience of avery difficult year. By encouraging them to reach-out, make connections, and share what they are going through, we
hope that they could realise that they are not alone in these times and that their anxieties and worries are perfectly

学習者ディベロプメント研究部会 <http://ld-sig.org>

29

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices
normal. We were able to create this project thanks to the hard work and openness of the students and we now have a
precedent in place that can be built on. Once we emerge from the pandemic, we hope we can encourage the same
sense of creativity and optimism in future collaborative art exhibitions that transcend the physical boundaries of theclassroom and create real bonds between students, regardless of how disconnected they may feel.
The Dis/Connect exhibition can currently be found at:
Tumblr: https://miyazakikyoto.tumblr.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dis.connect2020/
References
Cohen, S. (2020, September 20). A digital pivot at Japan’s universities: ‘A lot of us expected to have our worst semesters
online.’ The Japan Times. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2020/09/20/lifestyle/japanese-universities-onlinecoronavirus/
Dis/Connect: A virtual art exhibition by students of Miyazaki International College and Kyoto University of the Arts
[Virtual exhibition]. (2020-2021). https://miyazakikyoto.tumblr.com
dis.connect2020 [@dis.connect2020/]. (n.d.). Exhibition by students of Miyazaki International College and Kyoto
University of the Arts. Dis/Connect (Distance, Contact, Isolation) [Virtual exhibition], Instagram. (2020-2021).
Retrieved March 17, 2021, from https://www.instagram.com/dis.connect2020/
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). (2020, September 11). [COVID-19] Information
about MEXT’s measures [Policy brief]. https://www.mext.go.jp/en/mext_00006.html
Okutsu, A. (2020, August 24). Lockdown generation: COVID-19 upends Asian students’ plans. Nikkei Asia. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Asia-Insight/Lockdown-generation-COVID-19-upends-Asian-students-plans

Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

30

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Learner’s Voices

Silence, Voice, and Writing
Leena Karlsson,
Helsinki University
Email:<karlsson.leena.k@gmail.com>

Chika Hayashi,
Seikei University
Email: <chayashi@bus.sei
kei.ac.jp

The Independent Learning Association (ILA) 2018 was held at Kobe Women’s University from the 5th to 8th September
in 2018. Due to the heavy typhoon that hit Japan at the beginning of September, a number of conferences werecancelled not only in Japan but other countries. Fortunately ILA 2018 took place although the schedule needed somechanges.
On September 7th, we gave our joint plenary titled “A Collaborative Reflection on Our Professional Journeys with
Learners' Voices.” When we were invited as plenary speakers, we were informed that it was the first endeavour to havea joint, collaborative plenary at ILA. Wondering how it would work and what we could co-construct, we started tointerweave the two threads. We thought of our communication and preparing for the plenary as an engagement in“doing collective biography” via dialogic emails. Our first contact with our potential audience happened, when we wereinvited to write a “prologue” (which we later called “A meeting of hearts and minds”) mainly to give readers of Learning
Learning a glimpse into our journey of exploration towards the plenary (Hayashi & Karlsson, 2018). This was our firstcollaborative writing effort. We had hoped that some readers might have gotten a touch of our complexly interwoven
emotions on the journey towards our joint plenary. And so we gave our plenary!

1. Missing a piece: Pursuing the meaning of silence
Chika: Immediately after our joint plenary ended, I realised that the room was full of silence. If my memory serves
me correctly, nobody was applauding. I had attended several conferences and listened to various kinds of plenary talk,but this ending full of silence was my first experience. On reflection, I feel a sense of accomplishment every time I give a
presentation, as do most people. However, I have to say that I felt awkward about the situation at the front of theroom, confused about how to react to the silence (or pretend not to realise it at all) because this was a completely
different ending from what I had expected. Actually, it was my first time to leave the room with such awkward feelings.
What caused the silence? Was the content overwhelming and uninteresting? Was the audience just tired after listening
to our one-hour talk? Had we perhaps disclosed too much in our personal stories? Was our talk too fast to understand?
Was the talk successful overall? I was asking myself, but these questions that I came up with indicate that myimmediate reaction was not positive.
Leena: I remember the silence. I remember how I was trying to first smile, then not to smile. It was me who had
said the very last words. I had spoken about Naoko Aoki, I had finished with the lyrics of a song, I had spoken out her
words: Let’s keep autonomy stories alive. That is, if my memory serves me right. If what I did was taken to be asking fora silence in Naoko’s memory and honour, then the silence was good. But at the moment when the talk was finishedthere was no way of knowing. Because the organizers had asked people to hurry to the next thing, because we hadtaken too long, because… I was stunned and remember seeing how somebody came to talk to you, Chika, to ask you aquestion. I hovered there for a while, then sneaked out into the corridor. A colleague who hadn’t been listening was
sitting and typing in the hall. My answer to a friendly “How did it go?” was a stunned “Nobody applauded.” Would weever know what the true meaning of that silence was?
Chika: “Silence is golden”—this is a common cultural belief and practice in Japan. As far as I know, this is based on a
Buddhist idea that “novice” priests need to maintain silence and devote themselves to special training to be “real”
priests until they completely master special skills and manners as a priest. In my everyday life, I admit that I am

学習者ディベロプメント研究部会 <http://ld-sig.org>

31

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices
accustomed to silence in class and meetings, but the silence both Leena and I had experienced in Kobe was completely
different.
On the last day of the ILA conference, Leena and I explored Kobe city (and enjoyed shopping!), chatting about manythings such as our families and workplaces. (Do you remember we even dropped in at a cozy coffee shop and our chatcontinued almost forever over a cup of coffee? I still remember the delightful aroma of coffee we enjoyed together!)Turning this way and that in Kobe city as a stranger, I seemed to be waiting for the right time to talk to Leena about themeaning of silence which I could not get out of my mind at all. I think it was me who broke another “silence” andstarted to talk about the silence we had experienced. I clearly remember that you told me in a soft but firm voice that
we would find out the true meaning of silence after a while. You even said that the audience also would understand thetrue meaning of silence after several years, which reminded me of the “parallel process” we had discussed in our
Learning Learning piece just before the ILA conference (see Hayashi & Karlsson, 2018). I was convinced that ourmeanings of unspoken and nonverbal messages about silence and its various connotations would be transmitted andeven shared in due course.
Leena: On our exploration of rainy Kobe we were talking, sharing stories in yet another way from the days before,
including our plenary. This was more intimate, not done in front of an audience or through writing stories to be later
shared in front of an audience. A Japanese coffee shop was a novel experience for me, and we were, I felt, truly
becoming friends.
In the plenary, we had both emphasized the importance of learners’ voices, including their feelings and emotions.
We had, at length, talked about how we both aim at truly “hearing” students’ insider experiences and their learner
voices. We had written about this in our prologue as well. But now we had had to listen to the silence of our audienceand needed to “hear” their collective inner experience. We both struggled. And yes, Chika, you broke the silence of thelast moment of our plenary. It was important that we verbalised our embarrassment and admitted to not “hearing”
what the voice of the audience was trying to say. A colleague who had been listening to us immediately said to me that
she thought it was meant to be a two-minute silence to remember Naoko. I think that her words gave me comfort andan understanding of sorts was developing in my heart and mind.
When the two of us talked in the coffee shop, we started moving back to what we had come to see as sharedunderstandings and in thinking about educational stories we were looking into the future. At the moment, I feel that
there is never one true meaning for a silence. This is true of the Kobe silence as well. And, we have the same saying in
Finnish: Silence is golden. In fact, the Finnish silence can be read about in a book (The Silent Finn) written by two
linguists, Lehtonen and Sajavaara, in 1982. So I know what a silence can feel like in a classroom with Finnish students!
By the way, wasn’t it on this walk that meeting each other in Helsinki was mentioned?
Chika: The Kobe silence was always in my mind and even echoed (of course, soundlessly). I guess it was the same asyou, Leena. Looking back on our plenary and looking for the meaning of silence like the story of Silverstein’s (2006) “TheMissing Piece,” I came across some reflective writings on our joint plenary in Learning Learning, and Self-Access
Learning Journal, respectively.
■ Maria Giovanna Tassinari & Christian Ludwig (2018)“Opening an authentic dialogue with learners and sharing their own personal stories, they encourage learners
to find their own (inner) voices [……] Leena and Chika’s such a reflective journey as the “textual friendship”(ibid.) they developed through their virtual and textual communication illustrates. [……] Their plenary wasmuch more than passing on knowledge and raising questions as they let the audience participate in their very
personal “process of re-storying [their] professional pasts as practitioners, researchers and persons” (ibid.: p.
34).” (p. 72)■ Elizabeth Schlingman (2018)“This honest and engaging presentation, made more impressive by the fact that Karlsson and Hayashi live on
opposite sides of the globe and …” (p. 449)

Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

32

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Learner’s Voices
The three participants’ reflective writings give a glimpse of their inner voices that Leena and I had been looking for.
The importance of transparency and authenticity that both Leena and I emphasised and embodied in our joint plenary
were not merely transmitted as Maria and Christian describe, but more importantly, it was mutually shared at least
with the three participants. Reading their writings, I came to think that the Kobe silence may have been a sign of ourcollaborative and reflective moment and endeavour. The audience would have been engaged in the “parallel process,”going back and forth between the present and the past in pace with our wandering stories. They may have looked backon their own personal and professional histories related to teaching and learning, and explored critical incidents as they
gradually emerged as the “fellow passengers” in our collaborative journey. So, perhaps the silence was one of bothindividual and collaborative reflection.
As you said Leena, in Kobe I also truly felt that we were bound more tightly with the magic drink (coffee!) and wealready started talking about Helsinki as our next destination. To my surprise, I landed in Helsinki airport just one year
after our joint plenary. It was September 2nd, 2019—a sunny but a bit chilly afternoon for me.

2. From ILA to Finland: Puzzles, New Encounters and New Challenges
Leena: I, too, read the texts in Learning Learning and Self-Access Learning Journal with a refreshed understanding about
the silence. Our audience had been travelling with us with their own personal memories, histories, experiences, theirwhole autobiographies. Our individual professional and personal stories and, as Elizabeth Schlingman writes, our
virtually and textually shared, and thus entangled, story had resonated with them. Thinking back to our need to look for“the missing piece”, Chika, I feel very strongly and palpably how fragile our stories of teaching and learning always are.
It is, however, this vulnerability as the tellers that also gives positive hope: there are always listeners with whom thestory will resonate.
And a year later you landed in Helsinki and our virtual story continued as a live story. For me it was so enjoyable tointroduce my colleagues, the Language Centre and, in particular, ALMS counsellors and students to you. And Hetti, mydog, who loved you from the very first moment.
It was great to have you sit in my ALMS Opening Session with my theology students. I don’t always wholeheartedly
enjoy having visitors in my classroom because I also tend to feel a bit nervous. Now, it was different. I felt my shy andsilent students and I were safe with you. The group you were observing, like any faculty group, is always very diverse interms of language skills and potential anxieties: not everyone is feeling comfortable in the session when it starts. Somebring a lot of baggage with them. A lot of pedagogical sensitivity is needed and observation can make this a bit
problematic. Not with you, Chika!
Your visit to my Opening session was the beginning for a small project which we also planned to write about one
day. At the moment, May 2020, I am struggling with an article that is a rewrite of something I had already finishedwriting when you came to Helsinki. It was the educational story I had referred to in the Kobe plenary:“My current research work is happening round the ideas of arts-based language, using poetic language, mindful
and attentive listening in narrative inquiry, and how an ethical know-how can be developed using these as inspirations
in research writing (Reed & Speedy, 2011). This is work in progress that is at a beginning stage with a text with theworking title Laura, the girl who wrote the fear. Laura is a diarist, a creative writer, an explorer and experimenter withwriting in English, the girl who suffered from language anxiety but found her voice and used it as an expression of her
autonomy.”
The text, written along the lines in the above paragraph, was not accepted for publication by a particular journal on
the basis of it being too experimental and “not interesting to our readers.” I am now trying to rewrite it for anotherjournal. At the moment, I am pondering about (non-native) academic writing, about narrative educational stories, andwhat kind of qualitative writing is considered “interesting”, acceptable, and publishable in academia. Chika, am I making
sense when I bring up writing for publication? We wanted to write together about our students’ Japanese-Finnish DIY.
What are your passions and concerns as an academic writer?
Chika: My first visit to Helsinki was memorable, enjoyable and informative! Prior to my departure, you kindly
arranged everything for me, asking what I would like to do in terms of my academic (and personal) interests and needs.
You may not have realised this, or this may be your natural manner, but I felt that you were carefully listening to myinner voice. I also thought that this is your way of approaching students ahead of and during your counselling sessions.

学習者ディベロプメント研究部会 <http://ld-sig.org>

33

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices
Getting a sense of your educational approach, I was welcomed to your first session with your theology students on mysecond day in Helsinki.
It was the first encounter for all of us, but as you have described, Leena, I was not nervous either and felt safety inthe classroom. I think I was an observer, but I felt as if I were auditing your first lesson. Do you remember that one ofyour students asked about your learning history? I think you didn’t expect to be asked such a personal question at thevery beginning of the first lesson. But you answered when and how you started to learn English in a friendly but sincere
attitude, which I believe sent an implicit and explicit message to your students about you as a practitioner, counsellor,
and person. Also, another magic item (not coffee but chocolates this time!) that you prepared for your students helped
to establish a trusting relationship between you and your students as well as among students! Again, it reminds me ofSilverstein’s (2006) The Missing Piece. By having one chocolate and sharing parts of it, some of them might havethought that each member is an important part of the team. Smiling at this “sweet” story and taking a note of teachingstrategies and critical incidents in the class, I began envisaging a new English course starting from April 2020.
Yes, not only your students, but also your wonderful colleagues kindly welcomed me in a friendly manner! I
immediately felt a warm and caring environment that both you and your colleagues co-constructed—Yes, it was a lively
community bound together with strong ties. I enjoyed observing some of your colleagues’ classes and also talking
about their classes over coffee and lunch. I really appreciate that you kindly connected me to your colleagues!
We also talked about our potential Do-it-Yourself project when I visited your home! I was trying to expand ourinteractive process to a much wider context and wondering if it would be possible to involve our students somehow.
Moreover, I had chances to talk with some of your students after the classes I observed. The feeling I had in talking withthe students made me realise that there are some commonalities between your Finnish students and my Japanese
students. I have no intention to make a sweeping generalisation, but students in both countries are kind of modest but
they have their own ideas and opinions which are probably not expressed or shared so often. I immediately thoughtthat these similarities would work effectively because students would be able to naturally establish an equal andhealthy relationship for their mutual learning without one student dominating.
With lovely Hetti sitting next to us (probably carefully listening to us and hoping for success), we opened ournotebooks and started to make a concrete plan. I soon realised that we were heading in the same direction even if we
didn’t say anything directly. We were also naturally trying to leave some space for our students to make decisions andalso negotiate with each other about how to proceed with the project. Like you, I also invited my students to join the
Do-It-Yourself project in exactly the same way as you.
So, our interests in learners’ voices including emotions and feelings face challenges. It is often the case that texts
related to learners’ voices are as a simple record of their learning processes and get judged as “not academic” as you
say, Leena. This is a big challenge for us indeed. With a careful choice of appropriate research methods and techniquessuch as interviews, diaries and drawings, we are able to step into an internal aspect of individual learners’ minds. We
understand that those are the keys for us to approach and see learners’ internal voices and establish a symbiotic
relationship, which is an important basis for learner counselling, advising and teaching.
I think this is similar to the reading theory that “reading is an interactive process.” As a reader of students’ inner
voices, we activate our schemata and connect their stories narrated verbally and through drawings to our own learning
experiences, several theories, some tips we got in conferences, our former students’ failures and successes and otheracademic papers to find the best practice in a specific context and case. There may be a gap between research andpractice. I’ve just remembered Stevick’s (1980) observation that “Success depends less on materials, techniques andlinguistic analyses, and more on what goes on inside and between the people in the classroom.” (p. 4)
Leena: The beautiful analysis in your latest entry, Chika, very strongly resonates with what I am struggling to write
about, or touch upon, in the article that is on my computer screen right now. We teachers, advisers, counsellors “asreaders of our students’ inner voices” indeed struggle with how to show, not only tell about, the internal voices in ourpapers. The challenge is how to “convert” into academic text our research done using research tools and methods likediaries, drawings, letters, stories, creative writing, counselling notes and recordings, research discussions, “dream data.”
When we re-story, we should be brave and stick with evocative storytelling ourselves and this still, amazingly often,
seems to be a problem for journals. But we’ll keep trying!

Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

34

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Learner’s Voices
I have to confess that all my energy has gone into rewriting the article I keep referring to. In fact, I’ve been “writing”
it for two years now. And I do not think I’m ever going to finish and send it off to be (not) published! In fact, it is turning
into a text about “different” academic writing and the voice is now mainly a practitioner-researcher’s voice, which she
uses as an expression of her own autonomy as a counsellor, as a non-native academic writer. The first version was
telling the parallel stories of two writers, myself and Laura, the girl who wrote the fear. I talked about her in Kobe as you
might remember. I haven’t yet given up on student voices but have to ponder further on how Laura and potentiallyanother student could be written into this “new” story. Writing is a huge struggle and I might be missing a focus and apoint but seem to keep going back to the file, like a cat scratching a sore spot.
Chika: It is obvious that we are always with our learners. As you describe, Leena, we need to analyse and interpretthe data to share it with readers without distorting the learner voices expressed in their “products.” In a sense, we are a
mediator between participants (learners) and readers and take responsibility for all the “interactive” processes.
However, as you said, we also need to convert the data into academic text. Those who engage with learner voices face
the same challenges and dilemmas but both of us dare to choose to devote ourselves to understanding learner voices
and move forward together with whatever voices learners have!
Leena, I was thinking about “learner voices in this COVID-19 pandemic.” Due to this unprecedented situation, we
have been struggling to adjust ourselves not only to the new normal but also to the new teaching/learning
environment. Likewise, we also need to change or transform our ways of approaching our learners. In my case, I’ve
been conducting online lessons using Zoom since the middle of April. To be honest Leena, I cannot really feel thepresence of my students during the classes although I was aware that our interaction should be clearly different fromwhat we used to have before. I cannot physically feel or touch students or directly interact with students.
Any assignments related to their learning are perfectly typed and sent to a Learning Management System as digital
data. Unlike the previous years, I cannot receive their assignments directly from my students, which equally and sadly
means to me that I cannot really feel their authentic feelings and emotions. It is my first time in my teaching career that
I feel I’m away from my students. All the perfectly typed documents I receive from my students every week are a set ofsimple, artificial and monotonous documents to me; I cannot feel their particularity even if the assignments are related
to their own learning history or their opinions about certain topics. Of course, I know that students put so much effort
and time into their assignments and I appreciate their contributions during this difficult time though. I cannot really see
how they work on each assignment, but I can imagine that they rewrite their sentences, carefully choosing more
appropriate words as they type.
It is a very natural thing, but this means to me that their spontaneous and authentic voices are easily altered tosomething different or even erased completely. The strength of their hand writings, their use of space, their choice ofcolour pens and drawings are what I’m missing. I’m missing even dirt like coffee or sweets on some papers I received
from my former students, which gave a glimpse of their personality and personal lifestyle. That kind of small but
significant “trace” tells me something which is not explicitly expressed but implicitly shared through each student’s
product. As for my feedback, I myself typed my comments in the same Word file and sent it back to each student,
strongly feeling that some important things are really missing …
Struggling with this challenging situation and pursuing alternative ways, last week I decided to print out all the
documents that students had sent to me. I then wrote my comments manually using various color pens. Yes, I decided
to be transparent myself in this small way and share my own voice not verbally but visibly. I’m wondering whether andhow it will work…

3. What is Writing?
Leena: Chika, I simply love your new angle, the effects of COVID-19 on our students’ and our own embodied being in
the world and our (written/Inner) voices! It’s so very tangible to me, the whole destruction and loss of teaching andcounselling as meetings of minds and bodies. I love the way you write about the “perfectly typed” texts with no tracesof life in or on them (the dirt, the lovely dirt, the wonderful messes are missing). “Simple, artificial and monotonous,”
yes, that’s what writing can become when we make it possible for writers to use templates, models, when they can just“copy and paste” in their minds, if not in reality, when they never leave an Other’s influence, when the whole English-

学習者ディベロプメント研究部会 <http://ld-sig.org>

35

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices
speaking and English–writing world is writing on their screens, when “help”, when “inspiration” is only a click away.
When the product becomes more important than the process, again this happens but for different reasons than before.
In my own work, I got more and more interested in asking the students to freewrite, to write in order to think, toclaim their voice, enriched with the native language, but authentic, not copied (Karlsson, 206; 2017). More and more I
was inspiring writing that would be messy and colourful and could be worked with endlessly and “improved” but not
immediately, but with time, first reflecting and then “editing”, first generating and then polishing, first making a messand then cleaning up. This writing approach makes use of pictures and coloured pens and scrap books and glittery
pictures.
Do you remember the ALMS Diaries in the session I had with my students when you visited? And you have beengetting those kinds of spontaneous texts and drawings back from your students! And we have both enjoyed thereading! We have been reading and thinking with their stories, living their stories in the pictures and colours andhandwriting, the scribbles. I think we need to print these pages soon and both take pictures of how we handle them,
what visible traces we leave (I can promise footprints of coffee mugs and other dirt!). In fact, could this be the next
phase: printing what we have and taking time to READ, UNDERSTAND, BE SURPRISED and DIGEST and do ourhandwork? Will we see what inner voices are expressed in our entries? Will we be able to spot and mark each other’s
feeling voices (a lovely term I came across again just now by Elbaz-Luwisch, 2014)? In my email I said this, right? On 24
May I wrote:
We both need to print out this diary, read it with a pen (or many coloured ones) in hand in order to understand andfeel what's going on in the text, what (inner) voices are being expressed. When we do it, taking our time, I'm sure
we will know what to do with our dialogic diary, themes will emerge…
As I am (almost) retired now and not active in teaching, I can see how these times of upheaval in our lives and ineducation make me stop and sigh, but not necessarily think of immediate solutions to the problems. I also want to
attach a bit of text from my article to this email, the one I’m struggling with, just to hear your immediate reaction. The
thing to know is that the article is experimental and I am including my own writing exercises from a course in creative
academic writing I took in the research story, using my own writing as data. This bit might be of interest because it isabout voice, although a spontaneous writing exercise. I ponder on unique voices in educational stories, how we cankeep our own unique, although incomplete, voices as practitioner-researchers and also allow our students to keep
theirs. I write how previous student stories always echo in our texts and how it’s always a chorus of voices in narrativeinquiry that the readers will hear. You’ll see that I worry about silence, I truly worry about how to write about it in mytext and also about not hearing the sound of Laura’s silence, perhaps even silencing her story.
Chika: I was thinking about Freire’s (2000) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He demonstrates the dichotomous
relationship between teachers and students and defines it as “the banking model of education.” In that model, theexpected roles of students in a traditional classroom are clearly described in contrast to those of teachers. One of themis that students are expected to listen to teachers. This means that the student role is to be silent and their voices are
not expected to be heard. Then I came up with an idea of two types of silence: intentional silence and oppressive
silence. In the former case, we are supposed to read between lines and keep quiet so as to maintain harmony. For
example, students who believe that “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down” would choose not to express theiropinions so as not to stand out or to be isolated from others in a group or class. On the other hand, in the latter case,people are forced to keep quiet to play a role imposed on them like Freire’s example of students described above.
Whatever types of silence it is, silence includes (un)intentionally unspoken messages and implicit or explicit meanings,
and appear and disappear any decisions a learner makes and a sign of autonomy behind their authenticity.
Leena: Permission to write, that’s the name I decided to give to my article! I think that what you and I are talking
about now is about the right to write, the right to write academic texts, too, “differently”, in a more human language. I
did send my article and will hear in due time if this journal, if these reviewers, might consider that some of their readers
might be interested. I’ll keep you posted, Chika! But even to be given a vague permission is not enough; one needs tobe able to call oneself a writer by claiming one’s voice and right to write. There are always multiple social and cultural
norms that won’t allow a writer writing against them to quite use her voice because there’s always the possibility to be
rejected. I guess that somebody from the margins of academia, like myself, a non-native writer, a practitioner-

Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

36

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Learner’s Voices
researcher, not a real researcher, will always hear the nagging internal censor’s voice in her head: “This is not going tobe accepted, and for a good reason!”
So what can we do? Keep writing and sending our papers to different journals. Live with the rejections andsuggestions of re-writing and editing. There are also different rejections: rejections for a good reason and for the wrong
reasons. The wrong reasons often have to do with strong expectations of conventional and conforming writing only. I
believe that the world of education needs experimental writings, texts emerging from experience; it needs narrativeand stories, memories and dreams, the use of imagination and creativity. I think it needs feeling voices (Elbaz-Luwish,2014). It needs practitioners who listen to the inner voices of their students and have micro-dialogues with their own
inner voices. If we write in our feeling voices arising out of our inner dialogues, perhaps the readers will hear our inner
voice, and perhaps they will also hear our students’ inner voices in our re-storying. Perhaps it’s about a resonance ofexperiential stories (Conle, 2000) in the world of learning and teaching (advising/counselling for) foreign languages?
Chika, it is a perfect point to bring in Freire! Silence indeed is about power. And here it is learner autonomy thatgives me hope! A student who has autonomy, a permission to act autonomously, can choose to be silent and weteachers/counsellors have to have the skill and sensitivity to listen to that silence. Granger (2011) writes about silence
as “a presence rather than a lack, as a methodology rather than a pathology.” Isn’t it also a permission to be(autonomously) silent that students need to have in classrooms and counselling offices? We are the ones who can givethat permission. But we are also the ones who can reject and refuse silence, force our thinking, our meaning and power
on students.
Silence is an ethical question in education, in practice and research. Giving thought to and exploring how welistened to a certain silence might be the starting point to understand it, the slippery and obscure meanings of silencesin different contexts, our own prejudices included. Which takes us back to the beginning, to Kobe, and the moment at
the end of our plenary.

4. Collaborative Reflection After Writing …
Leena: I’m looking at a printed version of our dialogue so far. Colours, underlinings, circles and words are trying to tell astory of a collaborative writing project, a project which is experimental in terms of what form the end product, an
article will/could/might/should take. Writing has many meanings here, writing is the inquiry in the project. Our writing
takes the form of a dialogue, consistently so. And yet, there are fragments, episodes, small stories by Chika and yetothers by Leena inside the big story called Silence. Because I am not a particularly visual person, my use of colour isvery modest and pragmatic, I go for words, this time I used a red pen to write my words/reactions/ideas/interpretations, which is very interesting as I don't use red as a teacher at all!
We both seem to have an agenda, or an underlying silence/passion/issue wanting to find a form in words; these are
not exactly the same but they do emerge from the dialogue for both of us. For me, it's definitely writing, academic andpersonal, students' and practitioners', writing as written voices, feeling voices. I do not venture to say what's yours,
Chika, perhaps you disagree with the whole idea of agendas (a negative word but I mean it as a neutral way of saying
we want to focus on certain issues). For me, the other issue, which also gets coloured in yellow (=hope) or orange(=vitality), is minds and bodies, learning as a bodily process, embodied encounters in counselling/teaching, which wemight not have in the future. No colours, pens, handwritten texts, breathing the same air, smelling each other. I guess
I'm not alone here…
Chika: Our collaborative writing is an explorative process of our own and collaborative voices. We have spent somany years exploring our common interests, students' inner voices, but we may not have been so conscious of thepresence of our own voices or we simply didn't have any chances to express or share our own voices at least in a
written form and even didn't expect our voices would go across oceans and continents, but we have still continued our
dialogue even if we didn't know what our end product would be like.
The dialogue started with my voice and included the emotions I had in Kobe. In response to that, your voice also
included your real voice of the negative feeling you had after our plenary session. In this way, our monologue graduallyturned into dialogue, expanding it with the others' voices like Elizabeth, Giovanna, and Christian, who had shared thesame space and time with us in Kobe. As researchers, we understand the importance of triangulation, so we might have
tried to explore the meaning of silence, which is our main concern, from various perspectives. However, it might have

学習者ディベロプメント研究部会 <http://ld-sig.org>

37

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Stories Of Learning and Teaching Practices
been simply out of our curiosity as human beings that we wished to understand how the audience felt about ourplenary.
As the dialogue goes on, not only voices of ourselves as plenary speakers, but also various voices emerge, such aspractitioner-researchers, counsellors, writers, teachers, and human beings. It was like a soap opera and each player
appeared one after another and expressed their own emotions and feelings from their own perspectives. Theirstruggles, challenges, passions and hopes are well reflected in our collaborative dialogue. As we responded, repeated,paraphrased and summarised what they expressed, we reflected on our specific teaching/learning environments like amirror image. In this way, multilevel voices are echoed, mingled and resonated.
Leena: Thank you for the great insights into silence, Chika. I've read your reflections with interest. You don’t
mention colours at all, this is the only thing I’m surprised about. These months, even years, that we’ve spent with first
the idea of silence and now the writing project are indeed a rich story of professional and personal development. I can
see and feel a web of experiences forming and resonating and I can hear a chorus of voices joining in, speaking and atother times listening, silently pondering. Voices in us and around us.
The starting point for us was indeed the need for ”triangulation” as researchers and plenarists but also humancuriosity or perhaps both? For me, this dialogue has given a peace of mind about the original Silence of Kobe. It has
provided me a space for reflecting and critically looking back at the silence and its repercussions. During our dialoguing
I’ve written three papers and been engaged in inquiries about themes that are not directly related to silence but alsowith one that has to do with being "silenced" as a writer. This silencing, or more accurately, the feeling of being silenced
has to do both with my inner voice and my written voice as an expression of my autonomy as a practitioner-researcher.
Our text as a “soap opera” is a telling metaphor, Chika!
Because we’ve shared our feelings and opinions and ever-evolving ideas about silence and its meaning, I’ve started
to hear novel echoes of voices having to do with English as an academic lingua franca and writing as a non-native
practitioner. During this time, I wrote one text in Finnish about (learning) diaries in ALMS and felt much more expressive
and playful in writing it than I do when I use English. Ideas emerging from our “dialogic diary via emails” have writtenthemselves, in deliberately reformed ways, in the other texts and papers I have been writing and vice versa. Two ofthem have now been published and one is still “becoming” an article. The article I mention struggling with will be
published soon and the one in Finnish has just come out. There is a writing story (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005) or astory about writing here that I'd be interested to pursue now that as a “third age” teacher, or rather a third-age
practitioner- researcher, I have all the time in the world.

5. Closure
Chika: Like our joint plenary at ILA 2018, this piece of writing reflects our authentic voice narrated from themultidimensional aspects of ourselves: teachers, counsellors, researchers and human beings. Whatever aspects it is, wehave been constantly pondering, wondering and facing issues, but we are surely moving forward. In my research study(Hayashi, 2010), one of the participants (a 15-year-old junior high school student) drew rock climbing on a sheet of apaper and explained that rock climbing is closely related to English language learning. If we need to climb a rock byourselves, it would be very challenging and hectic; we might easily give up on the way to the top unless we do not havea strong motivation and can maintain it. However, if we do that with someone with similar interests and goals, thewhole process will be more dynamic, motivating and more importantly enjoyable! Likewise, our second piece of writing
demonstrates the power of dialogic inquiry between Leena and me, which always empowers me both professionallyand personally even under the unprecedented circumstance of the COVID-19 pandemic!
Leena: The experience of writing this text with you, Chika, and our whole two-year-process, reminds me of a
project we did in ALMS and reported on in Bradley et al. (2015). This was an exploration of our (possible) counsellor
selves, of our beliefs and attitudes but also a way of visioning our professional futures. Most importantly, we wanted to
explore how a scholarship of language counselling (Vieira, 2010) could be developed via professional discussions andcollaborative writing. The way the two of us have worked together since we started preparing the plenary has been asimilar effort in developing our scholarships of teaching and pedagogies for autonomy across the oceans andcontinents. It has been a project of sharing and caring, of peer mentoring, or learning together: learning about
ourselves, about teaching, about autonomy, about writing, and about life, both our personal and academic lives.

Newsletter of the JALT Learner Development SIG <http://ld-sig.org>

38

Learning Learning 『学習の学習』 28(1): Learner’s Voices
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Andy Barfield for his insightful comments on the first draft of our collaborative writing and more
importantly for making it possible for us to engage in the joint plenary at ILA 2018 in Kobe, which was a seed of ourcollaboration! We would also like to express our gratitude to the Learning Learning editorial team, especially HughNicoll and Ken Ikeda, for sharing their thoughtful perspectives and for providing kind support in finalising this piece ofwriting.
References
Bradley, F., Karlsson, L., Amendolara, S., von Boehm, S., Kidd, K., Kjisik, F., Koskinen, L., Moncrief, R., & Toepfer, T. (2015).
Generating visions, generating knowledge‒ALMS counsellors write! In T. Lehtonen, & J. Vaattovaara (Eds.), On
advising and counselling in language learning. Helsinki: University of Helsinki Language Centre (pp. 91-118).
Available at https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/159069
Conle, C. (2000). Thesis as narrative or “What is inquiry in narrative inquiry?” Curriculum Inquiry, 30(2), 189-213.
Elbaz-Luwisch, F. (2014). Auto/Biography & pedagogy. memory & presence in teaching. Peter Lang.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum International.
Granger, C. A. (2011). Silence in second language learning: A psychoanalytic reading. Multilingual Matters.
Hayashi, C. (2010). A teacher’s perceptions of students’ transformational creativity in a secondary language classroom
in Japan: A case of professional development [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Nottingham.
Hayashi, C., & Karlsson, L. (2018). A meeting of hearts and minds. Learning Learning, 21(1), 32-35.
Karlsson, L. (2017). “It’s all in the writing” – Learning diaries and secret diaries in a pedagogy for autonomy. In C.
Nicolaides & W. Magno e Silva (Eds.), Innovations and challenges in applied linguistics and learner autonomy (pp.
231-256). Pontes Editores.
Karlsson, L. (2016). Write the fear – autobiographical writing and language (classroom) anxiety. Scriptum: Creative
Writing Research Journal, 3(1), 32-59.
Karlsson, L., & Bradley, R. (2018). Storytelling for learning and healing: parallel narrative inquiries in language
counselling. The Learner Development Journal, 2, 100-116.
Lehtonen, J., & Sajavaara, K. (1982). The silent Finn. University of Jyväskylä, Department of English. ISSN 0358-6456;
0358-6456.
Reed, M., & Speedy, J. (2011). Scrapbooks and messy texts. Notes towards sustaining critical and artful narrative inquiry.
In S. Trahar (Ed.), Learning and teaching narrative inquiry: Travelling in borderlands (pp. 107-123). John Benjamins.
Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2005). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage
handbook of qualitative research (pp. 959-967). Sage.
Tassinari, M. G., & Ludwig, C. (2018). Reflections on the Independent Learning Association (ILA) Conference 2018,
September 5th – 8th, 2018, Kobe, Japan. Learning Learning, 21(2), 72-74.
Schlingman, E. (2018). Review of the Independent Learning Association 2018 Conference. Studies in Self-Access
Learning Journal, 9(4), 448-455.
Silverstein, S. (2006). The missing piece. HarperCollins.
Stevick, E. W. (1980). Teaching languages: A way and ways. Heinle & Heinle.
Vieira, F. (2010). Towards teacher and learner autonomy: Exploring a pedagogy of experience in teacher education.
Revista Canaria Estudios Ingleses, 61, 13-27.

学習者ディベロプメント研究部会 <http://ld-sig.org>

39