Hello. Thank you for visiting my website.
I am a teacher in the Tokyo and Kanagawa area. I am interested in how we teach English, especially how we teach listening and pronunciation. If you are interested in working with me, contact me.
Language teachers with ADHD – summary
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
New publication: Language teachers with ADHD: self-efficacy and framings
Two posts in a day! I must be ill or something.
Anyway, as with the post about teaching using duoethnography to foster critical multiliteracies, this also bears the influence of Robert Lowe, my friend and old supervisor when I worked at Tokyo Kasei University. Rob has written entire books on/using frame analysis, and so, having discussed things with each other when nerding out about research, it was probably inevitable that I would end up using frame analysis eventually.
This article is in a special issue of Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen on neurodiversity edited by the frankly wonderful Jules Bündgens-Kosten and my PhD supervisor Carolyn Blume. My co-author, Gretchen Clark and I conducted a questionnaire study into language teachers’ experiences and this article reports our quantitative findings and some qualitative analysis using some framing as mentioned above, although a combination of Goffman’s frame analysis and how Rob used frame analysis.
Continue reading →New presentation: Using duoethnography to foster critical multiliteracies
At the weekend I presented at JALT 2024 International Conference in Shizuoka and it was really enjoyable although overwhelming, due to a bit of personal news. I met new colleagues though, and people that I enjoy meeting that I don’t get to see often enough.
Anyway, on Sunday at six o’ clock, when anybody sensible who teaches first period on a Monday was wedged on a sofa with a cup of tea winding down mentally, I was presenting about the duoethnography assignments that I’ve been setting for first-year undergraduate students over the last three years.
Continue reading →New publication: Multiliteracies for student presentations
I found out this morning that my conference paper has just been published. I have long been using multiliteracies alongside task-based language teaching in my work, and this is a very teaching-based work, which is a bit different to some of my research. I also got to use some of my nascent R skills ability.
The article is open access and available on the JALT Post Conference Publication website.
New Publication: Teaching Project Management through Creating SDGs Lesson Plans
In the current issue of The University Grapevine, I have a featured article on Teaching Project Management through Creating SDGs Lesson Plans. You can check out the newsletter and subscribe to it, and check out the lesson plans here.
I am really pleased with the teaching report, and especially the level of student work.
Presentation: The reported processes of multilingual listeners
At the weekend I went to JALT PanSIG conference in Fukui. Two weeks ago I was at DIELE conference, which was much closer to home, but I think I have to vow to myself not to go to two conferences in a month ever again. I feel like I could sleep for a week; unfortunately, my marking load says otherwise.
Anyway, I was at the conference to present a pilot study that I ran with five students on multilingual listeners and their experiences. To be honest, what I presented barely scratches the surface of the data I collected, which was very rich, considering I only met with each participant for around 30-60 minutes.
Anyhow, there is not a lot of work done on multilinguals, and even less on their listening. I got some nice questions with food for thought about future directions that this research can take.
Presentation: Workplace Orientations of Teachers with ADHD
Yesterday, I presented with my colleague Gretchen Clark on Workplace Orientations of Teachers with ADHD at the Diversity and Inclusivity in English Language Education conference at Soka University. It was an interesting conference, and I met a lot of people doing interesting research that intersects a lot with my teaching interests, even if not always with my research agenda.
Our presentation was based upon interviews that we did to follow up a questionnaire study, with results to be published very soon. Our interview study should also, hopefully, be earmarked for a journal incredibly soon and I will link to it here.
Anyway, we interviewed nine language teachers in higher education in Japan, who were not Japanese nationals, who had ADHD, either medically or self diagnosed. We asked about what supports they have, what supports they would like at work. A lot of the best support comes from flexibility with structure. If clear communication channels are added, teachers can thrive.
We would like to thank all of the participants in the study who gave their time freely and willingly; we hope that we have shared your stories and that we can help to make positive change in education. All attendees, also many thanks for your positive feedback. I know that I get very shy about positive feedback, so if I may have appeared a little standoffish, or just otherwise weird, that is why.
Slides are here.
New article: The linguistic landscape of restaurant menus
I wrote an article with some of my students based on work we do in the first semester of their first year on linguistic landscapes. This work is to get students thinking about language and its use in context and the cultural variables that interact with the linguistic items to create meaning. It’s actually more interesting than it sounds, for me anyway.
This work was conducted under semi-quarantine so the information was gathered from the internet. However, I still think it stands well as a way for students to get used to research projects, and to think about how and what the language means and what message it is used to send and to which audiences (and which audiences is it looking to exclude).
Anyway, this is a departmental bulletin paper and it is not peer reviewed, but I still think it is pretty good stuff, even if it isn’t part of my research specialisms.
Kasamura, I., Liu, J., Nishimura, T., & Jones, M. (2024). The linguistic landscape of restaurant menus. Journal of Regional Development Studies, 27, 189-199.
Conferencing, PhDing, Translanguaging
Ooh, exciting times last week. I mean, it’s relative, but my Spring is usually spent catching up on research stuff, thinking about new teaching materials as new ways to generate extra workload for myself. This year, I went to Germany. It was my first time to leave Japan since I went on holiday to Thailand in 2010.
Coincidences being what they are, my trip managed to fall exactly on a German transport workers’ strike. I had my connecting flight from Paris to Düsseldorf cancelled, so Air France put me up in a hotel for the night. I then travelled on to Dortmund, because it was cheaper to stay there and I was going to go to TU Dortmund later in the week to meet my PhD supervisor.
Dortmund reminds me very much of Sunderland in that it is a very industrial town and obsessed with football. I ate a lot of bread and a modicum of cake. I have loved German bread since German class in comprehensive school.
The next day I travelled to Münster for the Foreign Language Listening Comprehension (LiCo) conference. I presented some of my PhD research (and I will share the slides when the research gets published or accepted for publication – it is basically a more finished version of this J-SLA poster presentation). I also saw some great presentations and a workshop by Jens Folkert Folkerts and Christine Goh. Everyone was lovely, but what was lovelier even than that was the cakes and sweets. Even lovelier still was I got to meet my classmates from TU Dortmund, Stewart and Sara, whom I had only met on Zoom before.
On the second day of the conference I attempted to hit up a symposium that my other classmate Raúl Garcia had set up. Unfortunately my superhuman powers of transportation got me there after it was all over. I did, however, get to meet Raúl for the first time, and meet my PhD supervisor Carolyn and also Martina Emke, for whom I had been a research participant before. We chatted about a lot of things. And then the next day I went back to the university and talked about a lot of things, but focused much more on my PhD.
As for the PhD, my publishing schedule (and prerequisite writing schedule) got discussed, as well as how to set up my capstone thesis. I am currently aiming for an August submission, which is considerably less tight than my previous self-imposed deadline of mid-April.
I then went to lunch with Martina and Carolyn, Joanna, a visiting researcher advising Raúl on his project, and most of my classmates, including also Christina, the post-doc in the department. It was lovely and I talked too much so it took me ages to finish my meal (exactly the thing I tell my son not to do)!
So, lots done, and I got to use my German half remembered from GCSE, refreshed by Duolingo and the Goethe Institut and not massively come off like a total idiot – or at least, if I did it probably wasn’t to do with my grasp of the language. There’s an awful lot of English that has crept into most world languages, and German is no exception, and also most Germans speak English in an easy to understand way, so it was a nice experience to believe I had become communicative in a language to meet immediate needs. However, whenever someone answered me at whipcrack speed, I could also roll out old faithful: Tut mir leid. Bitte noch einmal, mein Deutsch ist nicht so gut.
On the way back, my connection from Paris to Tokyo got cancelled, so by the end, I felt like Homer (the Greek one, not the American one). But yes, fruitful trip, and an enjoyable trip once I got over the jet lag.
Journal article: Exploring Duoethnography in ELT Research Ecosystems: Accessibility, Misuse, and Further Horizons
Recently, my friend and colleague Robert Lowe and I published an article in the International Review of Qualitative Research titled Exploring Duoethnography in ELT Research Ecosystems: Accessibility, Misuse, and Further Horizons. Basically, it’s a duoethnography about doing duoethnography, which could be silly and frivolous, but we are quite serious. We both really respect duoethnography as a research method: I have co-authored four duoethnographies including this one, and Rob has written a few, as well as having co-edited a book about it, which also contains some duoethnographies co-authored by him. Basically, we offer a critique of the method, look at how it can be used by researchers who do not typically use qualitative inquiry in their work, and express our ideas about where duoethnography, especially in English language teaching research, could go next.
While we both appreciate the affordances of duoethnography the fact remains that it is subject to many of the same flaws as autoethnography. Essentially, in the wrong hands, it is a method of navel gazing introspection for the sake of it. The authorial partnership should be critical, but in too many duoethnographies there is only backslapping and sycophancy. We hope that is not what we have done in any of our own work.
We also puzzle over why so few quantitative researchers have taken up duoethnography. I have a bit of a fancy idea about it being part of a research ecosystem. I think everyone should either have a go with it or at least quantitative researchers should be actively reading and citing qualitative inquiry including duoethnography. We all need all kinds of research. I also question whether duoethnography needs to be purely qualitative or whether there can be quantitative elements included. This last idea is one that I hope comes to fruition, because I think that it could help make duoethnography more appealing to a wider range of researchers.
If you don’t have access to the paper, you can email me and I can send it along.