Disaffection and agentic engagement: ‘Redesigning’ activities to enable authentic self-expression

By Alastair Henry, C. Thorsen. Language Teaching Research, 2018

86 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Demotivation (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2011) and non-participation (Norton, 2001) characterize negative responses to classroom practice of a generally chronic nature. In this article, focus is directed to negativity that emerges within the context of a particular language developing activity, and which can be understood as a situated response to the activity’s demands. In conceptualizing negative responses at the activity level, disaffection – the negative face of engagement – is a construct of central importance. Drawing on data from a large-scale ethnographic project in secondary English classrooms in Sweden, in this exploratory case study disaffection (Skinner, 2016) is examined in the context of two language developing activities. Analyses reveal that disaffection can transform into active engagement, and that when called upon to perform an inauthentic identity, students can ‘redesign’ activities in ways that enable them to act authentically.

Subfields: Education, Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/50bea56e0f7b7fcd4f4442b3bd50f48e88721390

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Citations in the corpus

Teachers’ accounts of learners’ engagement and disaffection in the language classroom (2020, background): “This promising line of enquiry has been undertaken by Henry and Thorsen (2018a), who looked into reasons for disaffection in task performance.”
Engagement in language learning: A systematic review of 20 years of research methods and definitions (2021, background): “…are interesting suggestions about engaging students using video games, synchronous CMC tools, authentic social media and web-based uses of language, and other affordances to establish rapport and increase L2 interaction during online exchanges (see, for example, Henry, 2019; Henry & Thorsen, 2020).”
Teacher enthusiasm and students’ social-behavioral learning engagement: The mediating role of student enjoyment and boredom in Chinese EFL classes (2021, background): “…she claimed that learners who felt competent, autonomous, in a growth mindset, in positive relationships with peers and teachers, and enjoyed learning more, became more motivated and involved in the process of language learning (see also Henry & Thorsen, 2020; Hiver, Al-Hoorie & Mercer, 2021).”