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Portfolio II—Analytical Personal and Professional Update, Hyejin Yoon

“I thank the Lord every day for I am not a teacher.”

A British linguist, David Crystal, said in response to an interview question about how busy

teachers can keep up with all changes in linguistic and pedagogy arenas. He added that he

thought the most important jobs in the world and the most difficult job in the world is teaching,

especially language teaching. The reason is because no aspect of human behavior is more

complex than language, so teaching languages could be an endless undertaking. Look at an

innocent human being who dares to hope to teach how/what to teach to English language

teachers!

Through this Analytical personal and Professional essay, I would like to show how the

suggestions given by my committee faculty nurtured me and what could be my future actions for

my academic career. Therefore, I constructed this essay with two parts—Addressing and Filling

the Gaps, and Intellectual and Professional Goals.

Addressing and Filling the Gaps

Preparing my first Portfolio and reviewing it with my committee members were

valuable experience per se. It is because I could see myself more clearly by means of

reflecting my past foot-steps and eventually find my epistemology and positionality. In the

process of completing the Portfolio 1, I tried to present who I was, what the purposes of

my study were and why I desired to fulfill them. My committee faculty guided me to see

where to go in order to be well prepared for a researcher as well as a teacher educator.

Thus, reflecting on the recommendations that my advisors gave me, I spent a year making

a commitment for the professional development as a prospect teacher educator and novice

researcher in three areas: identity, knowledge, and skills. All courses that I took during last two

semesters—2017 Fall and 2018 Spring, contributed to strengthening the three PD areas.

Moreover, I began to make attempts such as submitting conference proposals, attending

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Portfolio II—Analytical Personal and Professional Update, Hyejin Yoon
conferences, and presenting at conferences and facilitating a PD workshop to engage in various

professional communities.

On March 28-30, I attended the TESOL 2018 International Convention & English

Language Expo in Chicago. Due to the history and reputation of the convention, I

believed that it would likely be the best fit for my first academic experience as a

professional conference attendee. I also thought that because of my interest in English

language-teacher education, the TESOL international convention would be a suitable

place where I could be exposed to a great community of learning for educators,

researchers, administrators, and students. In addition, I wanted to have hands-on

experiences on presenting, especially in poster sections and round table sections. It was

because in May, I was going to be presenting in the poster section at KAME (Korean

Association for Multicultural Education) and in the round table at SSTESOL (Sunshine

State TESOL). Moreover, my doctoral colleagues and I collaborated to design and present

a 2-hour long workshop titled “Enhancing ESL teachers’ cross-cultural views through

various media” at CLLC(Conference on Language, Learning, and Culture).

Through the research of Izadinia (2014) that was introduced to me in EDUC 803, I could

understand that the community support activity plays a core role as a facilitator in forming

teacher educators’ identity and enhancing their identity development. Also, through staffing

resources and some role models, new teacher educators can develop their professional identity as

academics (Boyd & Harris, 2010). Hence, I believe that the experiences at the conventions were

meaningful, because those helped me identify myself as a researcher by engaging in the

professional community and learning so much about academic cultures. Furthermore, I was able

to collect a lot of useful information regarding ways to support refugee learners. My best ‘take-
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Portfolio II—Analytical Personal and Professional Update, Hyejin Yoon
away’ from the session—Refugee-Background Students with Traumas: Research, Pedagogy,

and Community Resources was that a teacher’s understanding of how trauma which refugee

students experienced when they left their countries hindered their cognitive and affective

developments was important.

Through two methodology courses—EDRS 811 and EDRS 822, I could build my

capabilities to conduct and access both quantitative and qualitative research by understanding

statistical ideas and developing necessary computer program SPSS skills from the former and by

exploring critical inquiry’s philosophical underpinnings and learning various analytical

techniques such as sequence analysis, power analysis, and care analysis from the latter. Course

EDUC 851 and 803 expanded my understanding on a teacher educator’s identity and made me

realize that I needed to make efforts to complete a confusing and challenging transition into

higher education roles (Boyd and Harries, 2010). Murray and Male (2005) conceptualized the

shift from school-teachers to educators of teacher education enterprises is “moving from being

first-order practitioners … to being second order practitioners” (p. 126).

In the course EDUC 893, I could deeply understand in what way “the complex

nexus of political and economic power that lies behind curriculum organization and

selection remains hidden” (Sarup, 2012 p. 1), considering Marxist perspective on

Education. Karl Marx’s (1867) fundamental theoretical text—Capital with massive

account of the reality of the capitalist economic system such as class struggle, exploitation

of labor, and ruling regime taught me that the ruling class had created and been using an

education system to serve their interests through reproducing class inequality, legitimating

class inequality, and working in the interests of capitalist employers (Anyon, 2011; Sarup,

2012, 2013). Hence, I realized that teacher educators had a responsibility to help pre- and
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Portfolio II—Analytical Personal and Professional Update, Hyejin Yoon
in-service teachers open their eyes to see that “many of the problems in schools are a

manifestation of the deeper structural contradictions of capitalism” (Sarup, 2012, p. 1).

Teachers should contribute to democratizing education by being advocates for poor

students to take back their right to access to the quality public education. In short, the

course—Educational Anthropology made me continue pondering deep structures and

unconscious motivations of today’s education that made against students in less affluent

areas and in the lack of cultural capital. Furthermore, the course DEUC 879 led me to

explore how English became the lingual franca and how language entails power in a

society. While seeking answers to several questions such as which English should we

teach in our classes? How can teachers guide students to have their English without any

feeling of suppression by English speaking cultures? In what ways should teachers

increase their students’ cultural awareness so as to let them be effective communicators in

international/intercultural settings?, I became strongly convinced that English language

teachers’ intercultural competence substantially influence shaping students’ identities in

post-colonial era.

Intellectual and Professional Goals

As my next intellectual steps, I would like to embark on learning of philosophical

foundation and data collecting and analyzing techniques about advancing a systematic

integration of quantitative and qualitative data. I would like to see whether utilizing two different

types of data create a more synergistic effect for my research. In addition, through Independent

Study, I would like to review literature with regard to my dissertation topic—teachers’

intercultural competence, in a comprehensive manner. First and for most, I hope to broaden my

understanding the dimensions of IC so that I could conceptualize IC more clearly. The

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Portfolio II—Analytical Personal and Professional Update, Hyejin Yoon
developmental models of IC will be another entity that I need to investigate.

Among a variety of assessment tools that I would like to employ the Intercultural

Development Inventory (IDI) in my PhD dissertation. In order to use IDI, I will attend the IDI

qualifying seminar where I could gain proficiency in implementing the assessment tool. Also,

during the summer break, I made an effort to submit a proposal with my PhD student-colleague

for a chance to co-present at the AERA 2019 Conference. I consider writing a conference

proposal together as a valuable experience, because collaborating works ushered my colleague

and me to maintain responsible and prudent attitudes toward our learning and allowed us to

enrich our background knowledge on various theories by facilitating each other. If the proposal

is approved and we successfully seize the presentation opportunity at the conference, my

colleague and I would have a wonderful opportunity to engage with one of major professional

communities in the education field.

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Portfolio II—Analytical Personal and Professional Update, Hyejin Yoon

References

Anyon, J. (2011). Marx and education. Routledge.

Boyd, P., & Harris, K. (2010). Becoming a university lecturer in teacher education: expert school

teachers reconstructing their pedagogy and identity. Professional development in

education, 36(1-2), 9-24.

Izadinia, M. (2014). Teacher educators’ identity: A review of literature. European Journal of

Teacher Education, 37(4), 426-441.

Marx, K. (2011). Capital, Volume I: A critique of political economy (Vol. 1). Courier

Corporation.

Murray, J., & Male, T. (2005). Becoming a teacher educator: Evidence from the field. Teaching

and teacher education, 21(2), 125-142.

Sarup, M. (2012). Marxism/Structuralism/Education (RLE Edu L): Theoretical Developments in

the Sociology of Education. Routledge.