Some of you who follow me on other websites might have noticed that I posted a couple of preprints coauthored with Gretchen Clark in the last week or so. In this post I will cover both of those preprints and also our article in the special issue of FLuL edited by the tireless Jules Bündgens-Kosten and Carolyn Blume (2024) (Prof. Blume being the best PhD supervisor one could ever hope for, and then some!), and also the duoethnography written my myself and Matthew Noble, all of which look at ADHD in language teachers.
Nearly two years ago, my friend and colleague Matthew Noble and I published our duoethnography in the JALT Teacher Development SIG journal, Explorations in Teacher Development. This article was something that we both looked forward to initially but near the end of the project grew somewhat fatigued and maybe even fraught.
the duoethnographic process could be so challenging that it felt for Matthew “like staring into the sun” and for me (Marc) like a stomach-churning process wherein certain elements of my past, like alcoholism, had to be revisited (Jones & Noble, 2023, p. 36).
However, the paper came up with some useful ideas, in my opinion. We discussed what seemed to work for us to channel our ADHD into our work effectively, and how to work without some of the ADHD traits derailing our work. Processes like Teaching Unplugged/Dogme (Meddings & Thornbury, 2009), being prepared to teach reactively rather than planning in deep detail, could potentially be useful for teachers like us. Additionally, we noted that having set spaces to prepare and store materials rather than ad-hoc places seemed to be more suited to us.
After the duoethnography, I undertook a questionnaire study with the frankly wonderful Gretchen Clark. Gretchen had just undertaken a questionnaire study on listening, and had also given a poster presentation on teaching students with ADHD. We also found that we both have ADHD.
The questionnaire study was approached with a quantitative approach looking at correlations in experiences and self-efficacy (how well you think you can do certain things) and a qualitative approach called frame analysis, which looks at the overall data and interprets how participants seem to frame their experiences and perspectives of a topic, in our case ADHD (Jones & Clark, 2024). We also used a theme analysis of what teachers said, that is, a more detailed examination of the qualitative data (Clark & Jones, under review). In the 2024 article we found that perceived ADHD traits basically have no relation to teacher self efficacy, and also that teachers didn’t frame their experiences in relation to the subject of language, but within education more generally. In the theme analysis, we found that there is a tendency toward extremes of planning lessons, both toward highly structured planning and that of being prepared but of no exact plan, which echoes the perceived benefits of Teaching Unplugged mentioned in Jones and Noble (2023).
We followed the questionnaire study with an interview study of nine Japan-based non-Japanese participants selected from the questionnaire sample (Clark & Jones, submitted). These participants were selected further based upon availability and their interesting answers. This more detailed, granular data showed us that teachers were wary of potential stigma associated with disclosing their ADHD status, or that they were indeed discriminated against by a senior colleague in one case. However, the teachers were conscientious in their work, creative and considering the students they worked with, and aimed to make their working environments fit to them in order to help create effective learning conditions.
What I have learned from my involvement in these studies was that far from the ‘disorder’ that teachers with ADHD may experience, they care about their work so much that they frequently hyperfocus on aspects of their work, particularly the creative aspects such as materials development and lesson planning. They value assigned preparation spaces such as offices or set spaces where they are not disturbed (Jones & Noble, 2023; Clark & Jones, submitted). There are negative aspects to the work, such as very routine work such as marking and administrative tasks, and these may prove particularly difficult for teachers to do, but they work through any difficulties in order to do their work with pride.
References
Bündgens-Kosten, J., & Blume, C. (Eds.). (2024). Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen, 53(2): Themenschwerpunkt, Neurodiversität in Fremdsprachenunterricht und -lehrkräftebildung. Narr Verlag. https://elibrary.narr.digital/journal/flul/2024/2
Clark, G., & Jones, M. (Under review). Workplace experiences of language teachers with ADHD. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.14789397
Clark, G., & Jones, M. (Submitted). Workplace orientations of language teachers with ADHD. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14810522
Jones, M., & Clark, G. (2024). Language teachers with ADHD: Self-efficacy and framings. Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen, 53(2). https://doi.org/10.24053/FLuL-2024-0025
Jones, M., & Noble, M. (2023). “What about teachers?”: A duoethnographic exploration of ADHD in ELT. Explorations in Teacher Development, 29(1), 34–45. https://td.jalt.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ETD-291-Jones-Noble.pdf
Meddings, L., & Thornbury, S. (2009). Teaching unplugged: Dogme in English language teaching. Delta Publishing. https://www.deltapublishing.co.uk/book/teaching-unplugged-9783125013568/?page_id=1