ESL curriculum with a heuristic anchorage: Tokenist discourses and the epistemology of community service education

Chandrasoma, R

ESL curriculum with a heuristic anchorage: Tokenist discourses and the epistemology of community service education

Chandrasoma, R

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Publisher:: Wiley
Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Curriculum Journal, 2021
Issue Date:: 2021-01-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Chandrasoma, R https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0445-3715
dc.date.accessioned	2022-01-04T10:19:27Z
dc.date.available	2022-01-04T10:19:27Z
dc.date.issued	2021-01-01
dc.identifier.citation	Curriculum Journal, 2021
dc.identifier.issn	0958-5176
dc.identifier.issn	1469-3704
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/152668
dc.description.abstract	Community service education (CSE) in developing countries still remains under-represented in research. Addressing this gap, this article reports a study that investigated a CSE activity at a secondary school in Sri Lanka. The participants of this study comprised 10 English as a second language (ESL) teachers from four secondary schools, 68 Grade 10 students from a secondary school located in a semi-urban area and the author as participant observer. Based on this qualitative case study in the context of ESL writing pedagogy, the article conceptualises the epistemology of CSE in terms of four dimensions: experiential learning, knowledge/skills application, community participation and critical judgement. It also emphasises the futility of tokenist discourses and suggests that an ESL curriculum needs to have a heuristic orientation in CSE not as a mere extra-curricular exercise but as a mandatory component of social interaction where mutually constitutive benefits for students, teachers and the community are foregrounded. This article highlights how the student writer participants in this study were disadvantaged as a result of tokenist discourses and their teachers demoralised due to an inadequate grasp of the epistemology of CSE, curricular deficiencies, politically driven constraints and poorly resourced classrooms.
dc.language	en
dc.publisher	Wiley
dc.relation.ispartof	Curriculum Journal
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1002/curj.133
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess
dc.subject	1302 Curriculum and Pedagogy
dc.title	ESL curriculum with a heuristic anchorage: Tokenist discourses and the epistemology of community service education
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.for	1302 Curriculum and Pedagogy
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/School of International Studies
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access	*
dc.date.updated	2022-01-04T10:19:26Z
pubs.publication-status	Published

Abstract:

Community service education (CSE) in developing countries still remains under-represented in research. Addressing this gap, this article reports a study that investigated a CSE activity at a secondary school in Sri Lanka. The participants of this study comprised 10 English as a second language (ESL) teachers from four secondary schools, 68 Grade 10 students from a secondary school located in a semi-urban area and the author as participant observer. Based on this qualitative case study in the context of ESL writing pedagogy, the article conceptualises the epistemology of CSE in terms of four dimensions: experiential learning, knowledge/skills application, community participation and critical judgement. It also emphasises the futility of tokenist discourses and suggests that an ESL curriculum needs to have a heuristic orientation in CSE not as a mere extra-curricular exercise but as a mandatory component of social interaction where mutually constitutive benefits for students, teachers and the community are foregrounded. This article highlights how the student writer participants in this study were disadvantaged as a result of tokenist discourses and their teachers demoralised due to an inadequate grasp of the epistemology of CSE, curricular deficiencies, politically driven constraints and poorly resourced classrooms.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/152668