Positioning myself as educator agent of change, as Monbec and Ding (2024, p. 12) suggest, ‘calls for robust theoretical tools’ for analysis, and as Bhaskar (1989, p. 2 in Ibid) argues, ‘change cannot occur unless we understand the structures that operate the events that lead to how things are.’
Understanding that qualitative research is ‘to a large degree an art’ (Tesch, 1990, p. 304 in Gray and Malins 2007, p. 130) was helpful in guiding my approach to data reduction. It is a representation of the raw data ‘in the same sense that an artist can… create an image of a face that we would recognise, if we saw the original in a crowd’ (Ibid). Fryer (2022, p. 366) offers a critical realist approach to thematic analysis that is appropriate for this project, which ultimately ‘seeks to develop causal explanations;’ this being compatible with the stages suggested by Braun and Clarke (2020) – see figure 1., (see appendix C for data reduction).
Using Monbec and Ding’s (2024) broad ontology of language as resource vs language as rule to frame the responses to the intervention, the key themes range from the facilitative: cognitive legitimacy of the intervention, to the constraining: cognitive illegitimacy, the themes of affective value and reflexivity connecting via sub themes (see fig. 2), perhaps the most significant (paradoxical) intersecting subtheme is the notion of comfort vs discomfort.
Whilst a pedagogy of discomfort is more explicitly focussed on the ‘pedagogisation of white discomfort within the broader decolonising project’ (Zembylas, 2020), language educators should also ‘explicitly aim to sensitise students’ about social injustice, cultivating ‘empathy, solidarity, hospitality and inclusion’ (Porto and Zembylas, 2020). These were all themes which were evident in the empirical data, and through challenging preconceptions students can develop a deeper sense of interconnectedness with each other (Smeenk, Mayer, and James, 2025). The data shows the affective value for both self and other as well as the cognitive value for learning, the pedagogy of translanguaging being strongly connected to ‘identity affirmation, equity, equality, and decolonialization’ allowing students ‘to construct and negotiate meanings’ (Haim and Manor, 2024).
A key limitation of study was data pertaining to the constraint of the intervention being limited to one or two responses. although there was a lot of potential data from some students and course leaders, which could not ethically be used as it was not offered as part of the data collection. This has however, prompted me to adjust the research question to more explicitly include the perspectives of educators (see figure 3),
I will continue to use of a critical realist lens as methodological approach for the future cycle (see fig 4). The EAP classroom ‘is a site of power, agency and multiple meaning makings’ (Chun, 2015, p. 2) and as Bourdieu (1993 in Monbec and Ding, 2024, p. 12) asserts ‘we must provide causal explanations to “make trouble” and “provoke”; that is, to question received categories and unveil the doxic taken-for-granted assumptions of the social world that typically conceal power relations.’
Here is FINAL presentation 16/01/2026:
(500 words)
References:
Bhaskar, R. (1989) Reclaiming reality: A critical introduction to contemporary philosophy. Routledge
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2020) Thematic Analysis: A Practical Guide. Sage
Chun, C. W., (2015) Power and meaning making in an EAP classroom: Engaging with the everyday. Multilingual Matters
Crouch, C., and Pearce, J. (2012) Doing research in design. Bloomsbury
Fryer, T. (2022) ‘A critical realist approach to thematic analysis: producing causal explanations,’ Journal of Critical Realism, DOI: 10.1080/14767430.2022.2076776
Gray, C., and Malins, J. (2007) Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design, Taylor & Francis Group
Haim, O., & Manor, R. (2025) ‘Exploring translanguaging in academic discourse through an ecological analytic lens.’ International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 28(4), 449–464. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2024.2433145
Monbec, L. and Ding, A. (2024) Recovering Language in Higher Education Social Justice, Ethics and Practices. Palgrave Macmillan
Newman, J. (2020) ‘Critical realism, critical discourse analysis, and the morphogenetic approach.’ Journal of Critical Realism, 19 (5) pp. 433- 455.
Porto, M., and Zembylas, M. (2020) Pedagogies of discomfort in foreign language education: cultivating empathy and solidarity using art and literature,’ Language and Intercultural Communication, 20(4), 356–374. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2020.1740244
Smeenk, W., Mayer, C., and James, E. (2025) ‘The Empathy Compass for addressing Societal Challenges in Education. A tool for higher education to stimulate, facilitate and assess empathic awareness in multistakeholder collaborations,’ Higher Education Research & Development pp. 1-19
https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2025.2510670
Tesch, R. (1990) Qualitative Research: Analysis Types and Software Tools, pp. 77–111 Falmer
Zembylas, M. (2024) ‘Affect, race, and white discomfort in schooling: Decolonial strategies for ‘pedagogies of discomfort’,’ in Critical philosophy in race and education. Routledge