COMMENTARY
Do You See What I See? Some Thoughts on
Visualizing Learner Development
Alice Chik, Macquarie UniversityI

have lived in Sydney for almost three years now, and one thing I am still not used to is the(dis)connection between festivals and weather. It is now October, and it is getting hotter
and hotter by the day, but shopping malls and companies are starting to sell Christmas decorations and promote gift ideas In some shops, Christmas songs are already chiming merrily
through the PA system with Bing Crosby singing, Do You See What I See? (At least he wasn’tsinging White Christmas). This song reminded me of JALT2015 in Shizuoka City during the last
week of November, 2015. I stayed two extra days in Tokyo, and as one can imagine, Christmas
was in the air and the tune of Do You See What I See? was played everywhere
Then, someone corrected me, the song is not called “Do You See What I See?,” it is called “DoYou Hear What I Hear?.” I grew up thinking the song was called that because the lyrics include
the line “Do You See What I See?,” and because I never paid attention to the second verse ofthe song And I also thought this song is only about Christmas celebrations, until I read theWikipedia entry to the song. The music was written by Gloria Shayne Baker, and the lyrics
by Noël Regney. The song was not just another commercialized Christmas song, it was a plea
for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 In one song, I was wrong about
two things: the title and the origin of the song. I only got Bing Crosby right. This disturbing thought put me in a reflective mood. We all want to see what we want to see, as language
teachers and researchers, but do we necessarily see our learners the ways they want to beseen? But how do we explore different ways for learners and their development to be seen?

Visualizing Learner Development: My (Visual) Take
When the Learner Development SIG invited me to give a presentation at JALT2015, the conference theme was “Focus on the Learner.” I thought about it and the work I have done, andcame up with “Visualizing Language Learning.” The first thought about visualizing learner development, for me, is the actual visual representation of learner development I grewup with an education system in Hong Kong that emphasized classroom-based teaching andlearning However, when I started teaching in schools, the students were developing theirinterests in English by learning outside school and in their own social worlds My particularresearch interest is in what happens beyond the language classroom, and how learner development evolves over time and space Visualizing language learning then involved learners
producing artefacts to show various kinds or stages of learner development or reflections on
the learning process This assumption comes from my involvement in using narrative inquiry
as a research methodology (Barkhuizen, et al., 2014), which considers narrative as “the primary form by which human experience is made meaningful” (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 1). It
is not only the meaning-making aspect that appeals to me, the idea that telling stories as a“universal human activity” (Riessman, 1993, p. 3) means that this is a way for all language
learners to make their learning processes explicit. Story telling is also a way for learners to114

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Alice Chikboth better understand and construct their learning worlds (Bruner, 1991, 2004). To capture this concept of building knowledge, Barkhuizen (2013, p. 4) coined the term, “narrativeknowledging” for “making sense of an experience through narrating, analyzing narratives,
reporting narrative research, and consuming research findings.”
When exploring the visualization of learner development, my research approach leans toward a literal interpretation of the word “visualize,” and uses a visual narrative approach
Visual narratives come in different forms: language portrait silhouette (Chik, 2014, 2018),
photo-elicitation (Besser & Chik, 2014), and multimodal language learning histories (Chik &Breidbach, 2011, 2014). There are three main approaches to using these visual narratives fordata collection. First, the visual narratives are treated as artefacts and objects of investigation(Melo-Pfeifer, 2015). Secondly, visual narratives are used as prompts for language learninginterviewing and/or writing (Coffey, 2015; Besser & Chik, 2014; Giroir, 2014). And finally, ahybrid of the above two approaches (Chik, 2014, 2018; Kalaja et al., 2008; Menezes, 2008).
My particular research interest with visualizing learner development is through using freeform drawing (Chik, 2018; Prasad, 2014) or the coloring and labeling of language portrait silhouettes (Busch, 2012; Chik, Markose, & Alperstein, 2018; Coffey, 2015). In most of my studies, I am interested in the ways learners develop their language identities, and the resources
they utilize Through the process of drawing or coloring, a learner systematically selects andhighlights emotions, practices, and peoples that are important to them. However, I did findthat events are usually not being depicted Another discovery is how frequently learners portrayed themselves as being alone, both physically and metaphorically In my recent collectionof about 175 language portrait silhouettes completed by primary school students and pre-service teachers, fewer than 15 silhouettes included more than one human figure. These silhouettes were collected in classroom contexts, and this raises a question about what and how
learners actually see themselves and think about the learning process: Do most learners reallythink and feel that they are learning on their own? And if I use another research instrument,
would the learners have framed their learner development differently?

Visualizing Learner Development: The Collective Wisdom
I have discussed one approach to visualizing learner development, and the collection of articles in this special issue has opened my understanding of “visualizing ” To start a discussion:in a classroom setting, who are involved in visualizing learner development? Are we looking
at the teacher visualizing a group of students? An internal gazing by individuals? From one
student to another? How about from one teacher to another?
Trying to graduate from coloring, I am very excited by the work done by Porter and Hilton.
The idea of using a metaphor, and in this case a vibrant growing tree, as a model for learners
to organize their reflection is a perfect way for learners to envision future growth. This tree
metaphor is a particularly apt choice to remind us all that language learning does not happen
over night (or in three months as claimed by many commercialized courses and providers).
And if language learning can be conceived as growth, it requires some loving tender care
When learners see others’ representation, there are inspirations to think about what othernutrients do my tree needs? This reflective exercise also enables teachers to reflect upon howlearners view their learning as an ecology, and start a reflective dialogue with colleagues.
A continuous dialogue with colleagues is an important way for teachers to pause, rethink,reflect, and re-energize. But Karlsson and Bradley brought out a new dimension of emotions.
Many teachers experience a class and teaching not only professionally, but also emotionally
Teachers are frequently the first people who notice the ups and downs among learners, butteachers’ own emotions are frequently censured in formal contexts In their study, Karlsson
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Do You See What I See? Some Thoughts on Visualizing Learner Development

and Bradley use free writing to capture their own emotional reaction in their language consultation And the understanding of emotions can lead to explicit insights on a creative approach to language learning and teaching
The externalization and display of an internal construct can possibly jog students to rethinktheir own learning and development McCarthy’s exercise of having students display theirconceptualization of the meanings of learner autonomy presented a sad truth In the current
relationship between language proficiency (especially for English learners) and socio-economic advancement, learners are connecting levels of proficiency with all types of reflective
practices Learner autonomy, as a construct, should be directed toward helping a learner totake charge, make decisions, and possibly chart a growing path. I learn Italian on my own andin my spare time, and make hopelessly slow progress. I still feel that I am an autonomous
learner, because I made choices on what and how to learn, and am satisfied when I can sort ofunderstand some news headlines or recognize some words in a video. But I am not under any
pressure because acquiring some proficiency in Italian is only for my own pleasure, and I do
not receive any economic benefits. But the Japanese students in McCarthy’s study do not havethe luxury of learning English as a recreational activity Their visual representation of theirinterpretations of learner autonomy reflects the inequalities in the education system.
The idea of keeping up with the Joneses does not necessarily have to be a negative experience. Fukada and colleagues show that visualizing possible helping others could be empowering. By focusing on attributes for positive psychology and learning, learners then visualize
their own possible attainment to develop such attributes. And this could work really well with
Mariani’s use of metaphors to get students to move beyond the learning, and focus on thelearning process. Looking at the different categories of metaphors used by students, it is notdifficult to see that students connect their learning experience beyond the classroom. Theythink about how English learning skills can be transferred (or imported) from other types oflearning, or other forms of language learning. This connects to Abe’s work on developing students’ metacognitive knowledge to make learner development explicit.

Concluding Remarks
After reading through the studies in this volume, several questions came into my mind: Whenlearners are put into one classroom, they tend to be categorized as one group The “Englishfor Business” students, or the “Year 2” students, so on and so forth Learner development
tends to be institutionally measured in grades and achievement, and unfortunately, failure aswell The individual learner disappears into the crowd, and vanishes However, each study inthis volume asks one question: How can learner development be reconceptualized, especiallyby involving learners in this visualization process? The different researchers adopted different
research methodology that best fitted their teaching and researching contexts. However, one
observation from this collection of work is that the visualization of learner development is not
limited to what happened in the classroom Regardless of the research focus and methodology, the visualization of learner development revealed more about the learners as people, andhow language learning is connected to other aspects of their social worlds Development inlanguage learning is connected to the development of the person, and it does not exist as justone isolated event within the classroom
Coming back to my earlier mistaken musical memory of “Do You See What I See?,” the collection of papers in this inaugural issue of The Learner Development Journal helps make learnerdevelopment explicit Sometimes, it is important for the teacher to see that development orthe learning process explicitly because it is the students who are singing, do you see what I see(my triumphs and my struggles in learning a language). Sometime it is the teachers singing

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the tune because they can see what the students are going through and will be likely to gothrough in their language learning journeys, and the teachers are finding ways to help students externalize the mental processes at work. And sometimes it is also an excited shoutfrom one teacher to another when something amazing happened in the classroom So maybe it is Christmas after all, and visualizing learner development is the best gift in a language
classroom, for both the teacher and the learners

References
Barkhuizen, G. (2014). Narrative research in language teaching and learning. Language
Teaching, 47(4), 450–466.
Barkhuizen, G., Benson, P., & Chik, A. (2014). Narrative inquiry in language teaching and learning
research London: Routledge
Besser, S., & Chik, A. (2014). Narratives of second language identity amongst young English
learners ELT Journal, 68(3), 299–309.
Bruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1-21.
Bruner, J. (2004). Life as narrative. Social Research, 71(3), 691–710.
Busch, B. (2012). The linguistic repertoire revisited. Applied Linguistics, 33(5), 503–523.
Chik, A. (2014). Constructing German learner identities in online and offline environments. InD. Abendroth-Timmer & E-M. Hennig (Eds.), Plurilingualism and multiliteracies: International
research on identity construction in language education (pp. 161–176). Berlin: Peter Lang.
Chik, A., & Breidbach, S. (2011). Online language learning histories exchange: Hong Kong andGerman perspectives. TESOL Quarterly, 45(3), 553–563.
Chik, A., & Breidbach, S. (2014). ‘Facebook me’: Technologizing learner autonomy. In G.
Murray (Ed.), Social dimensions of autonomy in language learning (pp. 100–118). London:
Palgrave Macmillan
Chik, A., Markose, S., & Alperstein, D. (2018). Multilingual Sydney: The people, the languages, thepassion Sydney: NSW Federation of Community Language SchoolsCoffey, S. (2015). Reframing teachers’ language knowledge through metaphor analysis oflanguage portraits The Modern Language Journal, 99(3), 500–514.
Do You Hear What I Hear?. (2017, October 6). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia Retrieved
09:25, November 5, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Do_You_
Hear_What_I_Hear%3F&oldid=804053703
Giroir, S. (2014). Narratives of participation, identity, and positionality: Two cases of Saudi
learners of English in the United States TESOL Quarterly, 48(1), 34–56.
Melo-Pfeifer, S. (2015). Multilingual awareness and heritage language education: Children’s
multimodal representations of their multilingualism Language Awareness, 24(3), 197-215.
Menezes, V. (2008). Multimedia language learning histories. In P. Kalaja, V. Menezes, & A.
M. F. Barcelos (Eds.), Narrative of learning and teaching EFL (pp. 199–213). Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan
Polkinghorne, D. E. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.
Polkinghorne, D. E . (1995). Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. Qualitative Studies
in Education, 8(1), 5–23.
Riessman, C. K. (1993). Narrative analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

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Do You See What I See? Some Thoughts on Visualizing Learner DevelopmentAuthor Bio
Alice Chik is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies, Macquarie University. She recently published her work in Applied Linguistics Review on visual methodology, andin System on recreational language learning A new edited volume on Learner Autonomy: NewResearch Agenda (Palgrave Macmillan, co-edited with Naoko Aoki and Richard Smith) is to be
published in early 2018. Her recent projects focus on learner development and multilingualism, and an edited volume, The Multilingual City: Sydney Case Studies (Routledge, co-edited withPhil Benson and Robyn Moloney) is to be published in mid-2018.

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