Impact

Having just returned home from South Africa, I am stunned at my delayed reaction to the trip and the experience of taking students abroad. While on the trip I concentrated on trying to be the best leader I could be, and together with Dr. Hamann, worked to make sure students were getting a variety of rich experiences that would broaden their world views and understanding of South Africa and its people. However, I didn't have time to concentrate on my own experiences and the wonder and joy of it all. After returning to Lincoln, I spent the afternoon telling my family about the people, about the food, about the amazing discussions and things I learned and realized that I haven't had the time to truly process the trip. I think that for many of us, the impact of the trip on our lives is just beginning - many of us will see that the experience has enlightened us in so many ways, and has given us a greater appreciation for the importance of international inter-personal interaction, a greater understanding of issues related to language planning and policy and the day-to-day impact these policies have on people and schools, and a deeper understanding of the history and similarities/differences between the U.S. and South Africa. But we won't see this right away, it will come to us each day as we ponder the experiences, look at photos, discuss the trip with family and friends. I am deeply thankful for our South African friends and colleagues, who took the time to talk with us, eat with us, and teach us about South Africa. I hope that the experience of our visit has impacted our friends and colleagues in South Africa as well and that they will be able to come to Nebraska in order to continue this amazing intercultural experience.

-Theresa Catalano

Final reflections

Language Planning and Policy Discussion

COLLAPSE

Parent Post

Thanks for the rich discussion today about language policy and planning in both South Africa and the United States. I agree with you that a common language is important for national communication and unity. I also agree that it is important to maintain home languages. While alike in many ways, the United States and South Africa have very different contexts from which to construct language policies. South Africa has 11 national languages (that are fairly geographically based), the United States has none, though English is most widely spoken. When I think about the medium of instruction for my former school in Lincoln, there were 16 native English speakers, one native Spanish speaker, one native Karen speaker, and one native German speaker in the entire grade level. Obviously it would not be possible to teach these students each in their native respective native languages, however, I tried to create space for their home language use in our classroom as often as possible. For example, as a class we had "daily math routines." During this time, students led various math activities including counting from one to twenty (which was determined by our curriculum). To create space for their home language in our classroom, these students led us in counting in German, Spanish, and Karen each day as well. Although they were not learning in their language, I am hopeful that these instructional practices, which create space for languages other than English, encourage them to continue to develop and maintain their home language.

-Tiffany Teichmeier

Final Reflections

COLLAPSE

This study abroad experience has been very interesting to me. As a Latina and an international student, it has been the first time that I have "lived" and had a lot of time together with a group from whom most of its people have a different ethnicity than mine. It has been a very enriching experience which has helped me understand that independently of our different backgrounds, personal stories, ethnicity, social class, nationalities, and ideologies, we share similar perceptions about the world and its problems and challenges.

At the end of this trip, I take several learning experiences with me. I like the recognition that South Africa does about its differrent languages and how South African educators try to promote them despite the covert policies (Wiley, 2010) that continue giving an ideological superiority to English and Afrikans. As Cassels & Freeman (2010) highlights, educators have an active role in developing policies and practices about bilinguism and/or multilinguism in microlevels. In this sense, I return to the U.S. wondering how I might work actively for giving a real space to languages and its varieties in my university in Chile and other educative environments.

In addition, even though South Africa has more poverty, less resources for education, and higher levels of corruption, I admire that they have less individualism, more sensibility to understand other's needs, more solidarity, and more optimism. I usually see the children and other Africans with a smile despite their problems. It was also interesting to see the norms about spaces which remind me some countries around the world. It seems that private or personal space is not a matter here.

Finally, I would like to thank everybody for his/her warmth, kindness, and understanding during this time. Most of the times, I really felt Iike I was among friends.

-Andrea Flanagan Borquez

Appreciation

COLLAPSE

My experience in South Africa has been very enriching, both from academic and personal perspectives. As one of the instructors of the mixed methods seminar, I was able to interact with a wide range of South African and other African countries graduate students. As I was working with the different groups during the activities, I was very moved hearing about some of the research projects these students are conducting. AIDS, hunger, inequality, lack of education... The complexity of these issues made me think of the importance of my own research, and how scholars work influenced by their environments and availability of resources. The majority of the students do not have access to statistics courses or research methodology, which I was very surprised to hear since they are doctoral students. For many of them it was the first time hearing about mixed methods. It made me feel very lucky to be able to contribute in some way to their research process, and at the same time very thankful for the opportunities that I have and the education I am receiving at UNL.

Visiting the schools and the townships was eye-opening. Not that I never saw extreme poverty and inequality before, because I did see that situation in Colombia when I was growing up. The difference is that back then I believed that was the normal way of life. It was not until I moved to Spain and later to the US that I saw that people could live differently, so I came to South Africa with a different mind and eyes. Being a doctoral student in education, it becomes even more a duty to look at Dr. Soudien's question from this morning, "How do you intellectually come to engage with social structure?" This trip has made my "degree of self-consciousness" rise, and has broadened my academic and research perspectives, which I am very thankful for, because it has made me grow as a person. I am looking forward to collaborating with South African colleagues in the near future and engage in research that seeks social justice.

-Carolina Bustamante

Past and Future

As I sit here in my room listening to the call to prayer,  I can't help but think about the things that I'm going to take away from my time here in South Africa. 

The world we live in is not as big and expansive as we think it is.  People are people are people, no matter their race, religion, gender etc.  Having traveled to many parts of the world, I have to come to realize that the things that separate us are not as big as the things that bring us together.  Also, through the many conversations that I have had with my peers on this trip and from the other students at UP, I have come to realize the many things that South Africa and the U.S. have in common, especially from a historical stand point.  I know that in our talk with Crain Soudien today, he would say that we shouldn't plan for the future with our past in mind, but I think that sometimes you have to let your past inform your future.  You don't want to move forward and repeat the same mistakes from the past.

-Linsay Wach

Monolingual vs. Multilingual Society

COLLAPSE

As I reflect back on my travel study experience in South Africa, I realize that I have never been in the presence of so many speakers of a language that I could not understand. In the countries I have previously visited/lived prior to this travel study experience (i.e. Costa Rica, Spain, Nicaragua, and Panama), I at least had working knowledge of the Spanish language  and still managed to run into other English-speakers there. There were limited numbers of indigenous languages that I encountered during these travel experiences, so my unfamiliarity with the language(s) was not so dominant in my time spent there.

 In South Africa, however, this was completely different for me. One thing that came as a shock to me is that I had never encountered so many spoken words that I could not even identify which language it was derived from. Working with immigrants and refugees in my community as well as international students on campus, I have become a bit familiar with identifying certain nuances about certain languages (e.g. Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, Vietnamese, Hindi, etc.). However, I felt completely lost trying to identify difference between the nine indigenous languages that hold official status in South Africa, as well as other languages indigenous to Africa that I encountered through engaging with other UP students.

In addition, something that surprised me (at least at first) was how many of the White South Africans were speakers of Afrikaans. While I already anticipated this prior to traveling to South Africa from our readings and other news, I think I realized that this may have been the first time I was surrounded by so many White people that had the ability to speak a language other than English.

In the United States, especially in the Midwest, it seems as though the presence of White privilege also includes the privilege of speaking English and only English. As a person who loves to learn languages, this is very disheartening. As a refugee resettlement location, as well as a large draw for other diverse communities, the community of Lincoln hosts a plethora of language backgrounds. The common discourse does not embrace this linguistic diversity; rather, “if they come here, they should learn English” is often times heard.   Why should immigrants and refugees be the ones viewed as deficient in language? Some of them are coming to the table with three or four languages already on their plate, while many people native to the United States only find one to be a necessity, English. Why must everyone conform to learning English? While I realize the importance of having a common language as a lingua franca to be able to communicate across these differing linguistic backgrounds, must it always be to privilege the already privileged? Why are foreign and heritage language programs in the United States structured as an afterthought rather than a valuable resource?

In sum, I am left with more questions than answers. However, the study of language policy and planning is very enticing to me. In what ways can we work to combat this language ideology shift, whereby recognizing the importance of every language rather than submitting certain languages/language varieties as inferior.

-Kristine Sudbeck

Thoughts

COLLAPSE

This trip will be memorable, as it was my first visit to Africa and filled with many new experiences.  I will remember the connections I have made and intend to maintain with University of Pretoria students.  It also reminded me that the variance within races is greater than the variance between.  People share more similarities than differences and are generally good.    

The best part of my trip, however, was seeing the spectacular sights of Cape Town.  I cannot find adequate words to describe it.  Although I wanted much more time hiking at the top of Table Mountain, I am quite thankful for the experience.  The nature, the air, the paths, and the views.  I will return someday.

-Tim Guetterman

Table Mountain

The excursion to Table Mountain has been the highlight of my trip! I loved being able to break away from the academia which I have been surrounded by and simply immerse myself in nature. I felt unbound by obligations for one hour and explored the different paths on Table Mountain. I was surrounded by people while on the mountain but somehow I felt very alone and free. This is something that I have been craving on the trip and I was so happy that I was able to experience it. 

-Allix Catlett

Sign from District 6 Museum in Cape Town

 
                                     With Professor Crain Soudien, renowned author of our class textbook
                          "Realizing the Dream" and University of Cape Town Deputy Vice Chancellor

                               
                                View of Lion's Head and Signal Hill from Table Mountain

                                  Messages written to Nelson Mandela at the District 6 Museum

                                      Visit to Bo-Kaap district in Cape Town with Jessica Sierk

Thoughts...

COLLAPSE

Ah ha Moment

As I said this morning at the round table, one of the best experiences for me in South Africa has been working with the graduate students in the mixed methods class. As I was teaching in my second language, I struggled with my English at some points, both trying to say things and understanding the students here, which happens sometimes as well when I teach in the US to an American audience. However, I felt very comfortable speaking to these students, and it felt different somehow from my previous teaching experiences in the US. One of our colleagues from the University of Pretoria talked about how people here believe that the South African English dialect is inferior to the American English dialect, so deficit notions not only about languages per se, but also about varieties, exist here. This comment made me think of my own experience as a speaker of English with an accent in the US. It has happened to me on a few occasions that people make fun of me, imitate me, or ignore me, and, similarly to what our colleague explained, having a Spanish accent is not generally seen as positive in the US. This made me realize that part of what made me feel so comfortable with these students was the fact that many of them were also second language speakers of English, so, linguistically, we were in the same place.

-Carolina Bustamante

Rich Points

COLLAPSE

One of the things I noticed that were highlighted and articulated during our round table discussion on Thursday were the "rich points" that both UNL and UP students brought up in their reflections of this experience. In his book Language Shock, Michael Agar (1994) explains the notion of frames: "a frame sets a boundary around details and highlights how those details are related to each other” (p. 130). A frame serves as a layout for how to understand a concept. As different discourses come into contact and tensions arise, what Agar calls “rich points”, frames permit a person to tie things together and show their interrelationships. This may happen at the micro level, between individual words that people use, or at the macro level, between ideologies and entire systems of discourses.

In our discussion, this phenomenon was highlighted several times. I even heard several people ask, "What do you mean by ______ in the US/South Africa?" These are rich points. One example is the phrase "developing critical thinking skills". I think all of the words in this phrase serve as rich points: of all of the people involved in the conversation, what did we each mean by development, critical, thinking, and skills? From the initial reactions, I gathered than many UP instructors were viewing "develop" through the frame of "teach directly"; I approached this term through the frame of "foster" or perhaps "scaffold". (Dr. Jenelle Reeves once deemed me to be a "radical constructivist".) I think it would be very interesting (yet outside of the word requirement) to think more deeply about each of the words in this phrase from all perspectives.

Agar (1994) also highlights rich points as moments of negotiation of culture. Tension between ideologies, discourses and frames is what permits the definition of one’s own culture through the identification and negotiation of the “other”. So, whether we were aware of it or not, we were all "doing" culture during our round table discussion while we were discussing culture and cultural differences. Go us!

-Jen Stacy

UNL student Marlene Grayer sees the ocean for the first time in Cape Town.

UNL students frolic on a Cape Town beach.

White rhinos at a watering hole...

              Jamie Stech ponders two white rhinos in a blind in Pilanesburg National Park.

July 17, 2013

Assessment

COLLAPSE

I want to understand more about the state of assessment and testing in South African schools.  As learners switch from their mother tongue as a medium of instruction to English or Afrikaans after grade three, I wonder whether teachers use language assessment formatively.  Language assessment is a tool to identify student needs in terms of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. 

Language assessment harkens to the larger issue of testing in general.  I need to learn more about testing views and practices in South Africa.  South Africa has participated in the TIMMS, however, I would like to know about additional testing.  South Africa uses the National Senior Certificate examinations (“matric”) in 12^th grade as a culminating exam, which appears to be a combination of short answer and essay.  During my time here I would like to research three aspects of this exam: 1) reliability, 2) validity evidence, and 3) use of the results.

-Tim Guetterman

 Visit to Tamil Hindu temple with Prof Vandeyar

Dinner with Michelle Finestone to celebrate the end of a successful seminar week.

Some select photos....

                             Students from Mixed Methods Seminar at the University of Pretoria

                                      The ubiquitousness of an ailing hero.

                                         At Mandela's house

 

                         At Lesedi African Village for a night of African food and culture including spectacular       traditional dances.

Reactions to the first week

The first week

COLLAPSE

It was a terrific week meeting, interacting, and talking with University of Pretoria students and faculty.  I made some wonderful connections that I hope to keep for a long time.  I talked with many students who had questions about methods or methodological issues with their research. I really enjoyed providing consultation and individual coaching.  I felt like I was helping others, but I also learned from the process.  I learned from their studies, designs, and perspective.  Hearing and responding to methodological questions encourages me to think more deeply and clarify my knowledge of methods. I hope to continue this type of work in the future. 

The Apartheid museum was quite fascinating.  It traced a history of modern South Africa from the inception of Apartheid through its end and ANC’s assumption of power.  The exhibition on the life of Mandela was excellent.  I can (and did) spend an hour listening to him speak and inspire.  The museum allows visitors to construct their own experience and meaning from it.  For me, visiting was especially interesting as I am currently reading Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela’s autobiography.  I highly recommend the book, especially to provide background and context to those visiting the museum.  In essence, it gave me a deeper experience. 

-Tim Guetterman

Transformative Education

Today in our trip visiting an African Flea Market and, then, at the Sterkfontein Caves, I was able to learn a little more about this country and its people. For me it has been very interesting to recognize that, despite being thousands of miles away from home, this place has several commonalities with the United States and Latin America, the region where my country is located. The historical and symbolic load about race and language of many Africans, which affects their relationships and ideologies, reminds me mainly of the U.S. On the other hand, the high social segregation illustrated for instance in who are most likely to enroll in universities and attend museums and/or historical sites, reminds me mostly of Latin American countries. Moreover, talking with my African classmates it was encouraging to hear about how most of them, like us, are studying a graduate program in order to develop knowledge and skills that will allow them in the future to work on their country's problems. In this framework, education constitutes a transformative space with direct or indirect social consequences and, personally, I think this program reinforces the idea that knowledge should be a product from our personal experiences and each socio-cultural context where our lives have been built.

-Andrea Flanagan Borquez

Involvement of the Community: Issues in Language Planning

In

COLLA

Involvement of the Community in Language Planning

Involvement of the Community in Issues of Language Planning

As we did our presentations today, one of the topics that came up frequently and resignated with me was how the lack of involvement of the community in the development of language policy makes its implementation ineffective. If teachers and members of the community, the ones who have to implement the policy and the ones who will use the language selected in such policy, respectively, play a role in what needs to be addressed by the policy, and more importantly, what are the resources and institutional support needed in the implementation phase, the line -as the metaphor I used in my presentation- would not be so irregular. An interesting comment regarding this issue was the lack of democracy in language policy, illustrated as "CEO's vs. educators" or "democracy vs. control and manipulation." The administrator in the Philadelphia district believed in the research literature more than in the teachers, which makes me think of the kind of research that needs to be conducted in this area, research that demonstrates how the involvement of the community has a positive effect in the implementation of the policy.

-Carolina Bustamante

July 12, 2013

Languaging

Travels around the world have made me appreciate languaging more than I ever imagined. With each encounter with a new person in a new context, I find myself noticing more and more details about the act of doing language, the act of communicating, the act of relating. This week has provided several opportunities to converse with graduate students with broad research interests: math and English education, integration of students with special needs, HIV and AIDS research, STEM etc. etc. But each of these conversations included much more language than the words we shared. I enjoy the proximity of space my African classmates are willing to share with me and the slight touches of the hand to acknowledge understanding. When I begin a conversation, I feel as if I enter an intimate space of communication that extends through the physical body: messages are shared through eye contact, facial expressions and stature. We communicate with our bodies everyday, but it is not until we do language with someone who does it slightly different than us that we recognize our own patterns. I often worry so much about learning (some of) the spoken language(s) of a new place that I forget how much other languaging and relating happens without words.


-Jen Stacy

Tiffany contemplates the eternal flame at Freedom Park

July 11, 2013 Part 3

Integration

One of the themes focused on in the texts we read for TEAC833, is that there is a difference between desegregation and integration (I think this was mentioned specifically in Carter but I don't have the text here so correct me if I'm wrong!). Desegregation means that the demographics of a school might change, but students of different races interact only to the extent that is required in the classroom. Integration, on the other hand, suggests a much deeper level of interaction in which students’ social groups outside of the classroom (ex: sports, clubs, friendships), include people of different races.

 Today while I was sitting at dinner with Tandi, a student from the University of Pretoria, it made me think about this concept (albeit on a much, much smaller scale). Only two days ago, the students from the universities of UNL and Pretoria, may have been “desegregated” (in terms of university affiliation) in the sense that our two universities were no longer receiving instruction in two different classrooms.  Furthermore, we were even communicating during class time about given class topics. To the extent that the two universities represent two different cultures, this did not necessarily represent integration. After school, we all returned to our “segregated” lifestyles.

 However, once both groups of students left the confines of the physical classroom, and entered a more relevant context for our interaction, I found that more genuine, personal relationships arose. Within the context of the museums, I was able to ask much deeper questions and could gain a better understanding of the histories of several people from the University of Pretoria. This led into a 3-hour dinner, in which our communication was no longer an “expectation,” but rather something that was actively sought out.

 The question I began to ask myself was how this could be applied to the context of schooling in South Africa. What if these “forced communications” in the classroom, were given space outside of the confines of a classroom which historically was used to award/deny privilege? Perhaps students would get to know each other on a different level, when they experience the “outside” world together. Perhaps they will find a peer’s reaction to such outside stimuli intriguing, and perhaps they will come to understand each other on a much deeper, more integrative level.

-Tiffany Teichmeier

July 11, 2013 part 2

Visitor's memory as a memorial

COLLAPSE

Today, as we made our field trips to the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park, I found myself being reminded of the MacCannell (2011) reading multiple times throughout the day. I actually wouldn’t have minded spending less time at the Voortrekker Monument, not necessarily because it was making me angry but because Freedom Park was so well done (i.e. architecture, aesthetics, playing on all senses, sharing a story often times not heard). Something Tim pointed out to me, and I would have to agree with, is that the museum of Freedom Park had a somewhat similar resemblance to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. which also remembers the lives lost and the horrific events that occurred in the past. As MacCannell (2011) recognized, “[t]here is only one place where painful memory is maintained, considered, and preserved: in the minds and hearts and the expressions of visitors” (p. 7). It is not only important that we visit memorials such as these, but recognize the significance of being aware of these histories and sharing personal connections so that the stories of people being commemorated can live on through its visitors.

-Kristine Sudbeck

Select photos

 Group photo- with some students from Stellenbosch and University of Pretoria

 In Freedom Park

 Khoisan language on top- the entrance to Freedom Park

Dinner with UNL Alumna Leigh Anne Albert and her husband Allan Wilson

July 11, 2013

Pondering our Week 1 design

As we come toward the end of our first week in South Africa (I’m writing this on Thursday, our 4^th day of 5 participating in joint seminars with graduate students from the University of Pretoria and other southern African universities), I find myself contemplating the unorthodox design of our program.  In brief, our 16-day travel study effort has started with multiple days of participating in joint workshops with advanced African students.  This design was necessary (the reason we were invited to the University of Pretoria was to lead these week-long workshops), but I am also finding that it is authentic and serendipitous. 

Why these last two adjectives?  I write ‘authentic’ to highlight the fascinating dynamic of watching UNL students work in small groups with African peers.  With English as a common language (although it is not the first language of many of our African peers), I am watching our group form preliminary friendships; wrestle with concepts that the African students are expected to master (and shouldn’t our students do the same?); and joke, question, and suggest with each other because there is authentic work that needs to be completed.  In other words, our UNL students have a reason to interact with their African peers and vice versa.  I want our students to build their understanding of mixed methods research and language planning/language policy (the foci of our two seminars), but I think the real power of this first week experience is the interaction.

I use the adjective ‘serendipitous’ to point out how much of this first week is unscripted.  I don’t mean the content of the workshops; Carolina, Debbie, and I (in one case) and Theresa and I in the other have worked hard to create Powerpoints, stand up/sit-down activities, and the like, which give the workshops structure.  Rather, I am talking about the moment by moment interaction.  There was no advance script when three women in the workshop (two from Zimbabwe and one from Uganda) worked with me to think through research designs related to HIV patients’ responses to medical treatment and to obstacles/hazards negotiated by African students in their transition from primary schools (that allow them to live at home) to secondary schools (which are often boarding schools, because their scarcity means they are distant from most of their enrollees).   I had no idea I would have such a conversation until I was having such a conversation, but it was fun, as well as substantive and illuminating.

Although there has hardly been time for reflection, if I think about it, isn’t it amazing that me, a guy from New England who teaches in Nebraska, can go half way around the world and find people with whom I have something to share (and vice versa).  No doubt, globalization has its complications and perils, but there are upsides.

 - Ted Hamann

Reflecting on rulers

On our first afternoon at the University of Pretoria, all 14 of us were given folders by our hosts that included a pen, a notepad with the University of Pretoria logo, a brochure/short magazine that described the university, and a 15cm-long plastic ruler.  A ruler?  OK….Fast forward to Thursday and we are sitting in the mixed methods morning workshop and the task Carolina assigns (Carolina Bustamante, co-instructor extraordinaire) includes tearing apart a handout into six rectangles (like flashcards) that will be used to complete an exercise.  I watch the man and woman in front of me.  She takes out her University of Guateng plastic ruler, which is green and longer than our University of Pretoria rulers, but otherwise largely similar.  She starts to precisely tear the sheet of paper, holding the ruler along the edge of the tear line to make neat ‘cuts’ without scissors.  It’s a silly little thing to notice and it would be an overgeneralization of substantial magnitude to ‘decide’ that we were given rulers because it is common in South Africa to use their straight edge to assist tearing paper.  Still, I wonder, is this an intriguing, if unimportant, glimpse into an educational difference?  South Africa, the land of rulers as an educational technology.  Or America, the country that forgot about its rulers.

 - Ted Hamann

On translanguaging

As a second language education specialist, I teach classes that instruct future teachers on strategies used to help their multilingual students understand the English curriculum better. Negotiating the South African language planning and policy class I am co-teaching with Ted, and sitting in on the Mixed Methods seminar led by Ted, Debbie and Carolina, I have realized that I am continually witnessing translanguaging as a meaning-making process, something that I regularly advise my teacher candidates to use to help their students. As Carolina presented visually and verbally today about mixed method procedure design (entirely in English) I witnessed groups of South Africans and other African students (such as a group from Botswana) break into language groups and help each other learn the English material. It occurred to me while watching this that this small adaptation (letting the students break into groups to make sense of the material in their first language) did wonders for their comprehension of the material. In our language planning and policy class we have studied about how many South African teachers have expressed doubts about their role as facilitator (as opposed to knowledge-giver) in the classroom. Watching the combination of a lecture and small group multilingual, multimodal activities, I am impressed by the effectiveness and simplicity of this small adaptation. In our one lecture we had first language speakers of over 20 languages, and although minority language speakers were still disadvantaged, they had found a way to help each other because the teacher gave them the chance to break into groups and work together. This use of cooperative learning elevated the level of understanding. As a linguist, I continue to be amazed every day by the multilingual finesse with which students move fluidly each day from one class or activity in various languages (most are fluent in at least 4) and I am amazed that the multilingual research community has not fully embraced all that Africa has to give regarding language learning. Having participated in many international language related conferences, I have always noticed the absence of African language experts and researchers and I wonder why we have not done more to include African language speakers and researchers as I feel we have so much to learn from them.

 -Theresa Catalano