Chasing Encounters

Today marks the end of an era but the beginning of another one. Chasing Encounters was my personal/academic project to highlight the work of others, learn from them and showcase it as a form to level the playing field in knowledge production and mobilization. Thanks to all of you who listened and supported me throughout these years.

In this final episode, Alonso Mateo, a highly experienced educator and researcher in Spain, shares with us his work through an intercultural project with the Erasmus project in Europe.

I hope you enjoy it.

We are on pause and we will be coming up with more content as soon as we can. This hiatus is helping us to re-charge, re-evaluate and re-invigorate ourselves so we can come stronger.

Thanks for following us this far.

Three parents came to Chasing Encounters podcast to share their experiences about being graduate students and how their families supported them throughout their journey. We discussed how rewarding is when they feel the support of their children in difficult times. * Biography: Meng Xiao is a scholar on international student engagement and the founder of Dream X Education Inc., an educational agency supporting international students engaging in North America. Latifa Soliman is a faculty of English communication at Durham College and is proud to be teaching a diverse group of adult students who decided to re-join school after years of abandoning it, aiming to fulfill their goals and invest in their education. Yi Liu is a spiritual teacher who helps to elevate awareness, happiness & parenting skills. Her insight on spirituality stems from both Chinese and western wisdom. Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, October 20). CES6E1 – parenting while being a graduate student. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces6e1-parenting-while-being-a-graduate-student * Sources: Xiao, M., Liu, Y., Soliman, L., & Chudaeva, E. (2021). Being a Parent—Rethinking Parenting Philosophy from Global Perspectives (X. Qian, Ed.). Dream X Education.

Born in Peru, Fernando Calderón-Figueroa accompanies us to learn about how cities have been designed to welcome or not their citizens. His research focuses on geography and territoriality with a focus on different international cities. He describes his fascination for how amazing humans have developed technology to adapt to their needs and create shelter. However, he questions the impact of built environments in urban design, and the concept of trust among people in relation to those contexts. He posits that there is a history of displacement, gentrification and social mobility that responds to how cities evolve and change over time. Listen to know more about our favourite spaces in the city of Toronto and our relationships with them. * Biography: Fernando Calderón Figueroa is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of Toronto. Fernando’s main interests are urban and political sociology, social policy, and quantitative and computational methods. His dissertation addresses the relationship between the built infrastructure of cities and social capital in three different contexts: Canada, Peru, and Colombia. Fernando is a member of the Urban Genome Project, where he conducts interdisciplinary research on urban social policy and neighbourhood change. * Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, June 29). CES5E8 – geography territoriality and land. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e8-geography-territoriality-and-land * Sources: Olson, A. W., Calderón-Figueroa, F., Bidian, O., Silver, D., & Sanner, S. (2021). Reading the city through its neighbourhoods: Deep text embeddings of Yelp reviews as a basis for determining similarity and change. Cities, 110, 103045. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2020.103045

Colombian born and educated in Europe, Dr. Diana García shares her thoughts about her experiences being a woman in different contexts and how these have shaped her work with youth communities in urban and rural areas in her home country. She discusses how youth have been excluded from the Colombian sociopolitical conversations at local and larger levels. She questions her own privilege and positionality as she reflects on what she can do to support marginalized communities to challenge corruption and inequality. She asks how the national identity is constructed and what citizenship means for young students and how they can be empowered to fight essentialist views of what it means to e Colombian. We finished our discussion by questioning the role of elite private schools and organizations to help Colombia build a prosperous future for all. Biography: Diana C. García Gómez is a recent Ph.D. graduate from the Childhood Studies Department at Rutgers University—Camden. Drawing from the fields of childhood studies, memory studies, and employing qualitative and ethnographic methods, Diana’s research focuses on children’s and youth’s political participation in peacebuilding, collective memory, and social movements in post-accord Colombia. Her dissertation - Cultivating Hope - centers children’s and youth’s participation in transitional contexts by examining their engagement with collective memory processes in urban and rural settings. Diana holds a BA in Political Science from Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, and a MA in Cognition and Communication from the University of Copenhagen. Diana has also written on children’s representation by the Colombia’s truth commission’s social media in “’I have the right’: examining the role of children in the #DimeLaVerdad campaign” (forthcoming). Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, June 17). CES5E7 –Youth as peacebuilders. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e7-youth-as-peacebuilders * Sources: García Gómez, D. C. (2018). The Perfect Computer? Children’s Experiences with ICT in Rural Colombia. In A. Mandrona & C. Mitchell (Eds.), Visual Encounters in the Study of Rural Childhoods (pp. 218–232). Rutgers University Press.

With a vast language teaching experience, Dr. Heng Hartse describes his first experiences in ESL education as he tried to understand students’ backgrounds more in depth and trying to build bridges among the international students. He talks about second language writing and the difficulties some have when it comes to adapt to the Western forms of academic writing. He also discusses the tensions, challenges and possibilities of an EFL/ESL teacher. In understanding these, Dr. Heng Hartse explains translingual practice, world languages and English as a lingua franca (ELF) as concepts that respond to the emerging multilingual students in today’s classrooms. * Biography: Dr. Joel Heng Hartse is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, where he teaches academic literacy and TEAL teacher training courses. His work focuses on academic writing at the intersection the internationalization of higher education and the globalization of English, and has appeared in the Journal of Second Language Writing, Asian Englishes, Composition Studies, Across the Disciplines, the Journal of English for Research Publication Purposes, and English Today. He is co-author of the book Perspectives on Teaching English at Colleges and Universities in China (TESOL Press) and vice president of the Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing. See more at www.joelhenghartse.com Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, June 1). CES5E6 – Problematizing academic writing. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e6-problematizing-academic-writing * Sources: Fazel, I. & Heng Hartse, J. (2020). Gray areas of academic publishing: ‘Predatory journals’ under the lens. Journal of English for Research Publication Purposes 1(2). 157-67. https://doi.org/10.1075/jerpp.20008.faz Heng Hartse, J., Lockett, M. & Ortabasi, M. (2018). Languaging about language in an interdisciplinary writing course. Across the Disciplines, 15(3), 89-103. https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/atd/trans/henghartseetal2018.pdf Heng Hartse, J. (2018, October). On the possibility of a non-error-based approach to second language writing. TESOL Second Language Writing Interest Section Newsletter. Retrieved from http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolslwis/issues/2018-10-23/2.html Heng Hartse, J. & Kubota, R. (2014.) Pluralizing English? Variation in high-stakes academic texts and challenges of copyediting. Journal of Second Language Writing 24, 71-82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2014.04.001

A true American Southerner born in Georgia and with a vast experience in South America, Dr. Jason Mizell discusses some if his work with Testimonios as a form of research methodology. His work stems from his culture, family, and community efforts to bring the voices of the most marginalized peoples (Latinx) to the front. He describes how he uses his skills and privileges to support them and questions how linguistics can really be anti-racist from both pedagogical and empirical approaches. Dr. Mizell briefly explains what is necessary to become a researcher who uses Testimonios as a methodology, as such, you need: • To be invited • To build relationships in communities and gain trust • To be humble and learn with them • To know why you want to do the work with the communities and educate yourself • To be willing to push against the system * Biography: Dr. Jason Mizell is an Assistant Clinical Professor in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Connecticut. He has taught in and directed various P-12 dual-language and ESOL programs, including having taught at some of the most prestigious bilingual schools in Latin America. Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, April 13). CES5E5 – Testimonios as methodology. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e5-testimonios-as-methodology * Sources: Mizell, J. (2020). Testimonios and apprenticeship: Developing relationships that nurture active civic engagement and learning. In R. Harman & K. Burke (Eds.) Culturally sustaining systemic functional linguistics: Embodied inquiry with multilingual youth. Routledge. pp. 39-63 Accurso, K., & Mizell, J.D. (2020). Toward an anti-racist genre pedagogy: Considerations for a North American context. TESOL Journal. Advance online publication. doi.org/10.1002/tesj.554

Dr. Niyozov grew up in Tajikistan, former Soviet Union, in a small village and a large family. He is a true plurilingual person with a vast international experience in education and research by engaging with numerous cultural groups along the span of his life. These experiences provided an ontoepistemological rationale that has driven the work he currently does with immigrant and refugees and with religious education. In today’s episode, Dr. Niyozov argues that religious education is important because there are subjects that have not been taught in some parts of the academic world or engaged as they have become taboo. It is important to provide the space for different religious dimensions from different parts of the world, engage, question and challenges how education is or not welcoming these experiences. He points out that we need to find spaces for challenging and pushing back ideas and to allow space for conflict and disagreement so we need to be able to handle controversy; this way it takes away the fear of being able to engage in academic conversations respectfully. * Biography: Prof. Sarfaroz Niyozov is an Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies and Teacher Development and Comparative, International and Development Education at OISE, University of Toronto. Prof. Niyozov is highly experienced in teaching and conducting long-term research on marginalized communities in Canada and internationally. Niyozov has authored and co-authored more than 70 publications, including books, journal articles, chapters, editorials and reviews. He teaches courses on cross-cultural teacher development, religious education, comparative education and researching in the Global South. He has held a number of leadership positions at OISE (co-chair of Curriculum & Pedagogy program of CTL (July, 2019-present); director of the Institute for Educational Development at the Aga Khan University, co-director of CIDE Program (2013-2019). He leads and co-leads education interest groups at OISE such as South Asia Education, Muslim Education; Central Eurasia Education groups and is on the Steering Committee of the World Congress of Comparative, International Education Societies. * Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, February 24). CES5E4 – https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e4-religious-education * Sources: Niyozov, S., & Punja, Z. (2009). The role of spirituality in the life and work of Ismaili teachers. Insights from Central Asia. In J. Lin & J. Miller. (Eds.), Spirituality, religion and peace education. Greenwich CT: IGA Publishing.

Chilean born Marlen Mondaca describes her experiences within the nonprofit organization sector. She provides some useful information about what it means to work with international and development organizations such as Seeds of Hope, Save the Children, Plan International, and OXFAM. Rooted on a rights based approach, Marlen explains that some of the objectives of these organizations are alleviating poverty, supporting local organizations, providing formal and non-formal education programs on health, nutrition and child & family protection among others. Marlen offers specific information about the necessary skills anyone needs to pursue a career in this sector: 1) Having a good theoretical and historical foundation of international issues, 2) being able to make management or technical decisions, 3) having some knowledge of statistics, and program evaluation, 4) having good communication skills to connect with donors, managers and program officers, 5) having some experience in areas such literacy, numeracy, health, nutrition or experience in the region, 6) having knowledge of languages from the communities and 7) becoming a volunteer or finding a placement in any of the organizations. * Biography: Marlen Mondaca, Special Advisor to the CEO on Strategy and Thought Leadership. She assumed her current position in May 2020 following nine years as Director of International Programs and Chief of Programs and Policy Officer. She is a champion of children’s rights and gender equality. She began her career working with refugees in Guatemala and Honduras and then went on to work as a Public Policy Advisor for Oxfam Great Britain and Oxfam Canada based out of Santiago, Chile. While at Oxfam, she helped expand programming in the areas of violence against women, women and trade, and food security. Marlen is known for her long-standing commitment to programs and policies that are rooted in social justice and are holistic and gender transformative. Marlen believes that the international aid sector needs to re-imagine itself using principles of social justice, political ecology and localization. Marlen holds Masters’ Degrees in Journalism. * Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, January 27). CES5E2 – https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e2-international-aid-sector * Sources: https://www.savethechildren.ca/ https://www.oxfam.ca/ https://plan-international.org/

In today’s podcast, we have Yecid Ortega from the University of Toronto. He sees himself as a citizen of the world, and his work certainly reflects an international perspective to education and research. With a very marginalized background, he studied primary and secondary education in public schools and got interested in learning languages to understand the world. He tells the story of his life from poverty in Colombia, to working in the USA and to becoming a Canadian citizen. From a very young age, Yecid knew education was key to engage with communities and move socially. He noticed the idea of English as a symbol of power and has worked vigorously to dismantle it through critical education. His epistemological vision is engaged in a future of decolonial praxis in which educators, researchers and stakeholders work towards a better future for humanity. *Biography: Yecid Ortega is a Ph.D. candidate in the program of Language and Literacies Education (LLE) and the specialization program in Comparative International, and Development Education (CIDE) at OISE – University of Toronto, Canada. His general research interests are within decolonial critical ethnographic and case study approaches to research. Yecid explores how globalization, capitalism and neoliberalism influence language policy decision-making processes and their effects on classroom practices and students’ lived experiences. *Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2021, January 13). CES5E1 – From critical education to decolonial praxis. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces5e1-from-critical-education-to-decolonial-praxis *Sources: Ortega, Y. (2020). “Rebeldes en acción”: A case study in English teaching in a marginalized Colombian high school. In L. M. Berger (Ed.), Social justice and international education: Research, practice, and perspectives (pp. 111–134). NAFSA: Association of International Educators. * Coelho, D & Ortega, Y. (2020). Pluralistic approaches in early language education: shifting paradigms in language didactics. In S.M. Lau & S. Van Viegen (Eds.), Plurilingual pedagogies: Critical and creative endeavors for equitable language in education. (pp. 145-160).Taylor Francis. * Ortega, Y. (2019). “Teacher, ¿Puedo hablar en Español?” A reflection on plurilingualism and translanguaging

Drawing from her personal experiences and a critical lens, Dr. Ruth Hayhoe shares a brief history and background of the concepts of comparative, international and development research and education. She illustrates the complexity of this rich field, emphasizing that CIDE’s main goal should be about learning from others on equal terms. The paradigm that the south must learn from the north can and should be challenged. How does one begin to do this? Bidirectional listening. In this way, each country can choose its own political systems based on international cooperation rather than domination. * Biography: Dr. Ruth Hayhoe is a professor in the Department of Leadership and Higher Education at the University of Toronto (OISE). Dr. Hayhoe's research has mainly related to Chinese higher education and educational relations between East Asia and the West. She has been interested in the ways in which cultural values and epistemologies from Eastern civilizations may provide a resource for new thinking in global higher education development. She is also interested in the intersection between Asian ways of knowing and women's ways of knowing, and questions of gender in cross-cultural leadership, topics stimulated by her personal experience of institutional leadership in an Asian context *Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, November 5). CES4E4 – Comparative, International, Development Education and Research. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces4e4-comparative-international-development-education-and-research *Sources: Hayhoe, R. (2014). China through the Lens of Comparative Education: The selected works of Ruth Hayhoe. Routledge. Sivasubramaniam, M., & Hayhoe, R. (2018). Religion and Education: Comparative and international perspectives. Symposium Books Ltd.

Language and how we communicate with each other is at the centre of this conversation with multilingual and multinational, Dr. Uju Anya. With intelligence and good humour, she provides a healthy reality check: contemporary society is multilingual and we need to face it, accept it and educate with that framework in mind. For her, this necessitates changing up how language plays a role in the classroom to reflect interactions in everyday society. How do we do this? We need to reexamine the biases and purist notions we have internalized about language. Teachers, in particular, must move from being arbiters (police) of language and become the enablers of cultural and linguistic diversity. *Biography: Dr. Uju Anya is an assistant professor of second language learning in the Curriculum and Instruction Department and a research affiliate with the Center for the Study of Higher Education at The Pennsylvania State University. She specializes in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, and second language learning with a particular focus on race, gender, sexual, and social class identities in the language classroom. She has expertise in diversity, equity, and inclusion in educational policy and curriculum design, applied linguistics as a practice of social justice, intercultural communication, as well as service-learning and civic engagement in secondary and university-level language programs. *Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, October 28). CES4E3 – Policing Language. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces4e2-policing-language *Sources: Anya, U. (2016). Racialized Identities in Second Language Learning: Speaking Blackness in Brazil. Taylor & Francis. Anya, U. (2020). African Americans in World Language Study: The Forged Path and Future Directions. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 40, 97–112.

Norin Taj takes us on a journey from and back to Pakistan in this conversation. We start with growing up in her homeland, a place that contributed to her identities of being South Asian as well as Muslim - two complex and intricate entities that cannot be separated. Moreover, she shares stories of teacher training and teaching in Pakistan before immigrating to Canada, a move that provided her the opportunity to continue being an educator and a researcher. All of these experiences led her to return to Pakistan for her research that leaves us pondering two key questions: Should education focus on numbers/budgets or on actual education for the most marginalized? and how can girls’ education make use of better terms for empowerment? * Biography: Norin Taj is a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy with a specialization in Comparative, International and Development Education at OISE. Her research interests are in the global policy discourse on girls’ education and its understanding in the South Asian context, particularly in Pakistan. When not working, she enjoys painting and writing poetry. *Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, September 30). CES4E2 – “Empowering” girls education in Pakistan. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces4e2-empowering-girls-education-in-pakistan *Sources: 1.Monkman, K., & Hoffman, L. (2013). Girls’ education: The power of policy discourse. School Field, 11(1), 63-84. 2. Khoja-Moolji, S. (2015). Suturing together girls and education: An investigation into the social (re) production of girls’ education as a hegemonic ideology. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 9(2), 87-107. 3. Meyer, J. W., & Jepperson, R. L. (2000). The ‘actors’ of modern society: The cultural construction of social agency. Sociological theory, 18(1), 100-120.

Opening this season, Canadian Mexican JP Mathias teaches how if you follow the water, you can begin to understand abstract concepts such as development/underdevelopment or how political processes affect various groups differently within a community in a tangible way. Drawing from his educational background and from his work with different organizations, he discusses and questions water management in Indigenous territories (Pueblos Originarios) in Mexico illustrating how power relations and political processes affect marginalized communities by various stakeholders in the water question. He suggests that better education can potentially raise awareness of water inequalities, whether in Mexico or here in Canada, allowing for communities to imagine a new narrative that ensures equal access for all. * Biography Jon Paul Mathias is a PhD student in Human Geography at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the historical constitution of racial disparities in access to water in Mexico City. He has an MA in Political Science from the University of Toronto and a BA in International Relations from the Universidad Iberoamericana. He has worked as a researcher for the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Geografía (INEGI) and the Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos (OEI), both in Mexico City where he is originally from. . *Suggested citation* Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, August 5). CES4E1 – Water Inequality in Mexico. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ce-s4e1-water-inequality-in-mexico *Sources* Delaney, D. (2002). The Space That Race Makes. Professional Geographer, 54(1), 6–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/0033-0124.00309 Radcliffe, S. A. (2017). Decolonising geographical knowledges. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42(3), 329–333. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12195 Swyngedouw, E., Kaïka, M., & Castro, E. (2002). Urban water: A political-ecology perspective. Built Environment, 28(2), 124–137. https://doi.org/10.2307/23288796 Watts, M. (2003). Development and Governmentality. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 24(1), 6–34. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315258027-26 Vitz, M. (2018). A City on a Lake: Urban Political Ecology and the Growth of Mexico City. Durham and London: Duke University Press. https://bit.ly/2EY0rJU

We had an interesting conversation with Dr. Balyasnikova, working at York University. In this special summer edition, we got together at Queen’s Park in Toronto to have a chat about educational gerontology and community-engaged research. From Russia to the USA and now Canada Dr. Balyasnikova describes educational gerontology as a subset of adult education and health science that tries to understand learning experiences at a later life. For example, how certain learning experiences affect ageing or how ageist stereotyping impacts learning in older adult learners. She is also interested in community-engaged research which is embedded in the idea of working together to inform research and we see participants as collaborators rather than subjects of study while we build relationships. She invites us to question whether participants need research or not and what form research needs to take. Additionally, Dr. Balyasnikova enjoys using various art and narrative methodologies to understand participants’ lived experiences. She uses arts-based research as possibilities for participants to express themselves and she engages participants with stories, theatre, drawing or painting as multimodal narratives. Bio Originally from Saint Petersburg Russia, Natalia Balyasnikova completed her Ph.D. in Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia in July 2019. She explores older immigrants’ educational engagement in community-based settings. Using narrative ethnographic methods, she merges traditional ethnographic data generation with the facilitation of oral, written, and multimodal storytelling. With a focus on community-based research and public scholarship, Dr. Balyasnikova works with attention to the needs of the research partners and facilitates their vision for positive change. By analyzing learning that occurs at the intersection of ageing and immigration, her work suggests new pathways of community-based curriculum and educational policy in the context of changing demographics in Canada. Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, August 5). CES3E9 – Community-Engaged Research. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces3e9-community-engaged-research Sources Balyasnikova, N., & Gillard, S. (2018). " I Love to Write My Story": Storytelling and its role in seniors' language. Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 30(2). Balyasnikova, N., Higgins, S., & Hume, M. (2018). Enhancing Teaching English as an Additional Language Through Playfulness: Seniors (Ethno) Drama Club in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. TESOL Journal, 9(3), 481-497. Gómez, D. R. (2016). Language teaching and the older adult: The significance of experience. Multilingual Matters. Andrew, P. (2012). The social construction of age: Adult foreign language learners (Vol. 63). Multilingual Matters. Jeffery, B., Findlay, I. M., Martz, D. J. F., Clarke, L. (2014). Journeys in community-based research. University of Regina Press

In this episode, I embark on a monologue discussing what solidarity means and how it connects to ideas of community building. I answer questions from fellow colleagues who argue that solidarity goes beyond empathy and support but to acts of love and understanding others. In these unprecedented times, we have found the need to be in touch with others and show our acts of solidarity in order to survive. * Bio Yecid is a Ph.D. candidate in the language and literacies (LLE) educations & comparative, international, development education (CIDE) programs at OISE. His main research focuses on social justice and peacebuilding pedagogical approaches to language education in international contexts from ethnocritical and decolonial methodologies vantage points. * Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, April 27). CES3E8 – Solidarity in Uncertain Times. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces3e8-solidarity-in-uncertain-times * Sources Freire, Paulo. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Seabury Press. Gaztambide-Fernández, R. A. (2012). Decolonization and the pedagogy of solidarity. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 41–67. Ng, W. (2012). Pedagogy of solidarity: Educating for an interracial working-class movement. Journal of Workplace Learning, 24(7/8), 528–537.

Mike Mena spent some time with us to discuss his cultural and linguistic background. He helped us understand the intricacies of being Latino or Latinx in North America and other sometimes confusing identity markers such as Hispanic, Chicano or Mexican American. In our conversation, we challenged the identity labels that have been imposed when we navigate the different academic and non-academic spaces. Now, as a graduate student in New York, he problematizes what it means to be a diverse scholar in elite institutions when academic linguistic registers promote hierarchies and question our intelligence. Also, he recommends people of color to surround themselves and support each other as he suggests that the academic world can become difficult and prevent marginalized peoples to have access to certain funds of knowledge. Finally, he promotes his academic YouTube channel to provide resources to scholars of color so they do not feel intimidated by academic discourses. Bio: Mike Mena (@MikeMenaNYC) studies how ideologies of race and language converge in ways that reproduce hierarchical arrangements and income inequality. In 2018, Mike founded “The Social Life of Language,” an award-winning educational YouTube channel emphasizing the importance of understanding the work language performs in everyday life. * Sources: Mena, Mike & Ofelia Garcia. (forthcoming) “‘Converse Racialization’ and ‘Un/marking’ Language: The making of a bilingual university in a neoliberal world.” Language in Society. * Mike Mena YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7H1rLtG-2UOOVk_sD6uBUA * Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2020, March 16). CES3E5 – Latino or Latinx [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from

Cristina has international experience teaching in formal and informal spaces in Japan and in Canada. She was born in Trinidad and is the first woman in the family pursuing a Ph.D. We discussed how the English language has been used for domination and control but also shaped the way we think in a capitalist society. Mainly, these mentalities stem from colonization. To this, Cristina explains how colonialism is very different depending on the contexts, however, there are some patterns that help us understand what happens to the local languages, cultures and knowledges and what counts and what is being valued or not. We engaged in conversations around questioning why some people denigrate local languages and cultures in order to behave and speak properly to fit in this society and be perceived as more intelligent so they can move socially. While mastering English may be practical and gives us power, multilingualism helps us understanding other human beings and other modes of understating the world, and it allows personal and societal transformation. We finish our talk by discussing how decolonization is not only in psychological, material terms but an intentional practice about actions to challenge and change systems on a daily basis. Bio: Cristina Sherry Jaimungal is a scholar pursuing her PhD in Social Justice Education and Comparative, International, and Development Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Anchored in critical language studies, anti-colonial theory, anti-racism studies, and decolonial praxis, Jaimungal examines the colonial enterprise of English language education. Sources: *Cheuk, F., and Jaimungal, C.S. (March 2018). Paper Presentation “Unsettling Tongues and Tones: Fleshing Out the Colonial Reproduction of English Language Education”. Paper presented at the 2018 Comparative International Education Society Conference, March (25-29), 2018, Mexico City, Mexico. *Dei, G. J. S., & Jaimungal, C. (Eds.). (2018). Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance: Alternatives to Colonial Thinking and Practice. Stylus Publishing, LLC. *Lippi-Green, R. (2012). English with an accent: Language, ideology and discrimination in the United States. Routledge. *Lordan, M., George, J., & Dei, S. (Eds.). (2016). Anti-colonial theory and decolonial praxis. Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. *Motha, S. (2014). Race, empire, and English language teaching: Creating responsible and ethical anti-racist practice. Teachers College Press. Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, December 18). CES2E9 – Language, Race, and Colonialism [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces2e8-language-race-and-colonialism

Born in Yemen with Portuguese Indian ancestry, Dr. Lynn Mario de Souza joined us in this new episode to discuss his long-standing work in linguistics and language research. He describes how the social aspect of language involves understanding that many languages are spoken across time and spaces while involving language variations that have changed throughout history. He questions the nature of language education and warns us of its consumerism, he asks what languages are being taught and for what purposes. We engaged in conversations about knowledge production and dissemination and problematize why English keeps being considered as the language of scientific knowledge as there are other knowledges that are available, including Indigenous knowledges. Sources: Guilherme, M., & Souza, L. M. T. M. de. (2019). Glocal Languages and Critical Intercultural Awareness: The South Answers Back. Routledge. Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, November 27). CES2E7 – Ideologies of Language And Literacy Education [Audio podcast]. https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces2e7-ideologies-of-language-and-literacy-education

For the very first time we have two guests, Michael Karas and Patrick Huang who are quite knowledgeable with the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) programs. Michael, falling in love with languages while travelling to France and Patrick being quite musical, today, they describe their engagement in a duo-ethnographic approach to do research. First, they describe the bolts and nuts of what it means to teach and learn to get the CELTA certificate. Then, they both critically discussed their experiences teaching English in Canada and abroad as they use their conversations as data for their research. Finally, they encourage our audience towards a more reflective approach to teaching and to do research as a fertile ground to explore introspection and criticality in teacher education programs. * Bio Patrick has been an ESL teacher and teacher trainer for 15 years, working on CELTA (Certificate for English Language Teaching to Adults) - a pre-service qualification from Cambridge English - as well as Delta (the diploma level qualification after CELTA) courses in different contexts. He is a PhD student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in Toronto. Michael completed his PhD in Applied Linguistics at the University of Western Ontario. He currently teaches in the Master of TESOL program at Western. His research interests are broadly situated within Language Teacher Education and TESOL, and he has taught English in South Korea, China, and Canada. * Sources: Anderson, J. (2016). Initial teacher training courses and non-native speaker teachers. Let Journal, 70(3), 261-274. Lowe, R. J., Kiczkowiak, M. (2016). Native-speakerism and the complexity of personal experience: A duoethnographic study. Cogent Education 3(1), 1264171. Ramjattan, V. (2019). The white native speaker and inequality regimes in the private English language school, Intercultural Education, 30(2), 126-140. Rosa, J., & Flores, N. (2017). Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society, 46(5), 621-647. Sawyer, R. D., & Norris, J. (2013). Duoethnography. New York: Oxford University Press. * Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, November 6). CES2E6 – Duoethnograhy and Language Teacher Training [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces2e6-duoethnograhy-and-language-teacher-training

Questioning the Iranian Education System After the Iranian revolution, there was an education revolution trying to modernize it and thus threatening the traditional values. From Teheran to Toronto, Hooman delves into his critiques of the current Iranian system of education as he asserts that school became an ideological and revolutionary space that is currently empty to give priority to nation-building. He argues that Iran has a segregated system that affects psychologically and socially certain students. Although the system favors science and mathematics, education still revolves around some religious ideologies. He invites us to engage in questions such as: Who is the system for? who are the universities for? What is the quality of education for the current Iranian population? What are the concepts of development in a country in tension with the rest of the world? Bio Hooman Razavi was born in Iran and moved to Canada in 2002. He holds a B.Ed degree and has experience with teaching in Toronto and China for the past thirteen years. He is in the second year of the M.Ed program at OISE specializing in leadership and higher adult education as well as in the collaborative program of comparative international and development education. He has a broad interest in education and particularly interested in qualitative research about international students' experience in their study-work transition in the GTA. Sources: >Friedrich W. Affolter (2007) Resisting Educational Exclusion: The Baha'I Institute of Higher Education in Iran, Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 1:1, 65-77 >Iranian Rap singer - Amir Tataloo https://www.youtube.com/user/TheAmirTataloo >Challenges of Iranian Education System: Past and Present by Dr. Nahid Hosseini from York University (In Farsi): http://asre-nou.net/php/view.php?objnr=47721 >Changes in the Iranian Education System after 1979 Revolution- Podcast in 3 Parts by Dr. Saeed Peyvandi (In Farsi): https://tinyurl.com/iraneducation >Luxury schools in Tehran: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhT9iH1-aRI Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, October 15). CES2E4 – Questioning the Iranian Education System [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces2e4-questioning-the-iranian-education-system

In this new season of Chasing Encounters, we have Dr. Jonathan Rosa from Stanford University who inspired us with his vast knowledge at the intersections of race and language. From his connections to Canada and Chicago, Dr. Rosa enlightens us with ideas of how the way race plays into perceptions of domesticity and foreignness and how his experiences have shaped his interest in broader sociopolitical questions about language, identity, history and colonialism. We also discussed what a theory of raciolinguistic ideologies means internationally and how different contexts can be used to interrogate the legacy of colonial relations as we imagine of the possible sociopolitical futures. Sources: Bauman, R., & Briggs, C. L. (2003). Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. Cambridge University Press. Rosa, J. (2019). Looking Like a Language, Sounding Like a Race. Oxford University Press. Silverstein, M. (2017). The Fieldwork Encounter and the Colonized Voice of Indigeneity. Representations, 137(1), 23–43. Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument. CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257–337. Suggested citation for this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, September 3). CES2E1– Raciolinguistic Ideologies [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/ces2e1-raciolinguistic-ideologies

Chasing Encounters Special Summer Episode “ I thought I was getting a Canadian teacher,” Vijay Ramjattan says when an English student thought he was a white English teacher. In this special Summer episode of Chasing Encounters, Vijay delights us with a provocative conversation about how race, whiteness and accent intersect. It is not only in Canada, but a global issue that white native speakers are preferred in the English language teaching market, especially if they speak the American variation. We discussed how a raciolinguistic narrative permeates in society through our bodies - people judge based on the relation of body/accent. White people = perfect English, People of Color = low-rated English, thus less knowledgeable. Race is the floating signifier and accent becomes the tool to whiten a person. We problematize how we read bodies and use that to determine what type of language to use in what context. Vijay urges us to unravel the ideologies representing good accent and he warns us of the so call accent reduction programs as he invites us to focus on pronunciation training instead. Sources: Agha. A. (2003). The social life of cultural value. Language & Communication, 23(3-4), 231-273. Derwing, T.M., & Munro, M.J. (2009). Putting accent in its place: Rethinking obstacles to communication. Language Teaching, 42(4), 476-490. Ramjattan, V.A. (2015). Lacking the right aesthetic: Everyday employment discrimination in Toronto private language schools. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 34(8), 692-704. Reyes, A. (2016). The voicing of Asian American figures: Korean linguistic styles at an Asian American cram school. In H.S. Alim, J.R. Rickford, & A.F. Ball (Eds.), Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race (pp. 309-326). New York: Oxford University Press. Rosa, J. (2019). Looking like a language, sounding like a race: Raciolinguistic ideologies and the learning of Latinidad. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Roth-Gordon, J. (2017). Race and the Brazilian body: Blackness, whiteness, and everyday language in Rio de Janeiro. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Suggested citation for this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, July 8). Chasing Encounters – Episode – 13 – Race and Accent [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/chasing-encounters-episode-13-special-summer-episode-race-and-accent

Raul Mora questions how language and literacies are taught in the current sociopolitical contexts around the world. Raul posits that we should be critical about engaging in discussions about what it means to be multilingual or plurilingual in different contexts in Africa, Latin America or North America. We problematize the reasons why English has become “the second language” by default in research and education without recognizing Indigenous languages as well as sign languages as part of the repertoire of language diversity. We also talked about how the school can become a site that either challenges or supports the learning of languages while there are other multimodal ways of engaging in literacy, therefore the notion of literacy must be flexible, fluid and context based (letramento, literacidad, alfabetización). Bio Dr. Raúl Alberto Mora is an Associate Professor of English Education and Literacy Studies at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB) in Medellín, Colombia. He also serves as a faculty affiliate at 2 universities in Colombia and has been a visiting/guest professor at universities in Colombia and abroad. His current teaching duties include preservice language courses and graduate-level seminars on research and literacies in second language contexts as well as advising master’s and doctoral students. Suggested citation of this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, April 10). Chasing Encounters – Episode – 10 – Literacy and Second Languages Research and Education [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters Sources: Mora, R. A. (2015). City literacies in second languages. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 59(1), 21–24. https://www.literaciesinl2project.org/lslpleadership.html

Latinx immigration to Canada has increased over the past years, and its demographics have shifted according to socio-political events in the region. Diana recounts her/story about navigating the education system in Canada as a recent immigrant, and how her rebeldía kept her going. She argues that the legacy of racism and colonialism permeates through Canadian multiculturalism. For racialized and Indigenous students to collectively succeed within the education system, schools and other educational institutions have to take responsibility for recognizing the ways in which racism and colonialism operate as part of their policies and practices. We conclude with the importance of knowing about colonial histories as we create new futures that don’t perpetuate inequalities. Bio: Diana M. Barrero Jaramillo (@Barrero_Di) is a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her master’s research focused on how educational policies reproduce racial order in settler colonial contexts through the discourse of achievement gaps (http://hdl.handle.net/1807/89560). More recently, her work has shifted towards the role of memory, remembering and stories within educational research. Suggested citation of this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, April 2). Chasing Encounters – Episode – 9 – The Educational Researcher as a Storyteller [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters Sources: Bhattacharjee, K. (2003). The Ontario Safe Schools Act: School discipline and discrimination. Retrieved from Ontario Human Rights Commission website: http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/ontario-safe-schools-act-school-discipline-and-discrimination Gaztambide-Fernández, R. A., & Guerrero, C. (2011). Proyecto Latino year 1: exploratory research: report to the Toronto District School Board. Joshee, R. (2008). Neoliberalism versus social justice: A view from Canada. In Power, Voice and the Public Good: Schooling and Education in Global Societies (pp. 31–53). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-358X(08)06002-6 McMurtry, R., & Curling, A. (2008). Volume 1: Findings, Analysis and Conclusions. In The Review of the Roots of Youth Violence. Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario. Nasser, S. (2017). TDSB decision to scrap officers in schools program not “anti-police,” says chair. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) News. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/school-resource-officers-toronto-board-police-1.4415064 Royal Commission on Learning. (1995). Volume I: Mandate, Context, Issues. Chapter 2: Education and Society. In For the love of learning. Toronto: Ontario Ministry Education. Retrieved fromhttp://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/abcs/rcom/main.html Further Readings: Dion, S. D., Johnston, K., & Rice, C. M. (2010). Decolonizing Our Schools: Aboriginal Education in the Toronto District School Board. Toronto. Henry, F., & Tator, C. (2010). The colour of democracy : racism in Canadian society. Toronto: Nelson Education. James, C.E. & Turner, T. (2017). Towards Race Equity In Education: The Schooling of Black Students in the Greater Toronto Area. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: York University. Parekh, G., & Gaztambide-Fernández, R. (2017). The More Things Change Durable Inequalities and New Forms of Segregation in Canadian Public Schools. In W. T. Pink & G. W. Noblit (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Urban Education (pp. 809–831). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40317-5_43

Teachers’ self-directed learning within the frame of International Women’s Day is the focus of this week ‘s Chasing Encounters episode, titled “Exploring Digital Networks.” Anna Bartosik, teacher-researcher, joins us to talk about digital landscapes, where a number of language teachers explore their learning. We discuss whether International Women’s Day is still relevant in academia (Savigny, 2014), Twitter as a digital landscape of practice (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2014), and how virtual and other self-directed learning have the ability to shape teacher knowledge and positionality as transformative intellectuals (Kumaravadivelu, 2003). Anna offers some tips on reaching a wider network on Twitter, suggests some female academics to follow, and explains her interest in researching digital landscapes with a posthuman lens (Snaza et al, 2014). “ my learner journey has happened in these places (social media and others), not on those top-down mandated places of PD” Anna Bartosik Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, March 12). Chasing Encounters – Episode – 6 – Exploring Digital Networks [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/chasing-encounters-episode-6-exploring-digital-networks Sources: Blin, F., & Munro, M. (2008). Why hasn’t technology disrupted academics’ teaching practices? Understanding resistance to change through the lens of activity theory. Computers & Education, 50(2), 475-490. Knox, J. (2016). Posthumanism and the massive open online course: Contaminating the subject of global education. Routledge. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003). Beyond methods: Macrostrategies for language teaching. Yale University Press. Savigny, H. (2014). Women, know your limits: cultural sexism in academia. Gender and Education, 26(7), 794–809. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2014.970977 Wenger-Trayner, E., Fenton-O'Creevy, M., Hutchinson, S., Kubiak, C., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (Eds.). (2014). Learning in landscapes of practice: Boundaries, identity, and knowledgeability in practice-based learning. Routledge. If you want to follow up Anna’s work: https://annabartosik.wordpress.com/ Others to follow on Twitter: @YuliyaESL / @FaithMarcel / @AngelicaGalante / @OrtegaYecid / @dawnbazely / @EALStories / @nathanghall / @scottroydouglas / @seburnt /@RanyaOmer /@jdslagoski / @sureshcanax

In this episode, Dahlia Benedikt discusses Jewish youth movements and community movements as spaces to experience culture, support and resilience among intergenerational peoples. Dahlia explains how we understand educators as not just teachers or councillors but people who can contribute to our growth learning process as role models. She also discusses the importance of youth creating pedagogies directed to critical thinking, exploring ourselves and exploring the world. We unpack how capitalism and technologies have affected today’s youth and what is necessary to survive in this evolving world. Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, March 5). Chasing Encounters - Episode - 5 – Cooperative Work and Youth Advocacy [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/cooperative-work-and-youth-advocacy Sources: http://www.consciousmindscamp.org/ https://www.consciousmindscoop.ca/ Ibrahim, A., & Steinberg, S. R. (2014). Critical Youth Studies Reader. Peter Lang Publishing, Incorporated.

In this episode, Zehra and Yecid question what we mean by being a Canadian immigrant or a Canadian citizen. We wonder what Canadian values are and how we are supposed to integrate into the system. Zehra’s research look at Turkish and Kurdish immigrants in Canada by using a photovoice approach to understand their experiences and ultimately to question what we are all doing for immigrants Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, February 18). Chasing Encounters - Episode - 4 – Immigration and Identity [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/immigration-and-identity Sources: The Canadian Council for Refugees https://ccrweb.ca/ Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies http://carfms.org/ About Alevi https://irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/country-information/rir/Pages/index.aspx?doc=444446 Readings: Giroux, H. A. (1992). Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education. Psychology Press. Karakaya-Stump, A. (2017). The AKP, sectarianism, and the Alevis’ struggle for equal rights in Turkey. National Identities, 20(1), 53-67. Latz, A. O. (2017). Photovoice Research in Education and Beyond: A Practical Guide from Theory to Exhibition. Taylor & Francis. Li, P. S. (2003). Deconstructing Canada's Discourse of Immigrant Integration. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 4(3), 315-333. Liebenberg, L. (2018). Thinking Critically About Photovoice. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17(1), 1-9. Wang, C. (1999). Photovoice: A participatory action research strategy applied to women’s health. Journal of Women’s Health, 8, 185–192.

In this episode, Yecid and Pushpa from Nepal talk about languages, education and cultures. We delve into personal connections with the communities and the role of languages and English in everyday life as well as the importance of preserving home languages. Sources: Giri, R. A. (2010). Cultural anarchism: the consequences of privileging languages in Nepal. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 31(1), 87–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434630903398103 Issa, T., & Hatt, A. (2013). Language, Culture and Identity in the Early Years. A&C Black. Nepal Information: https://www.ethnologue.com/country/NP Renata Flores (Peru): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQUrV_v7OK8 Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, February 11). Chasing Encounters - Episode - 3 – Discovering Nepal [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/chasing-encounters-episode-3-discovering-nepal

This conversation between Yecid and Mama discusses their ideas about community and family and how we have supported them personally and academically. Concepts of communities of practice(Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1999), (de)colonization (Fanon, 1963, 2008; Rivera Cusicanqui, 2010) and knowledge creation (Santos, 2008) are being discussed to how we relate to the world we live today as we move away from isolation and hermit practices. Cite this podcast (APA): Ortega, Y. (Producer). (2019, February 4). Chasing Encounters - Episode - 2 - Our community [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://soundcloud.com/chasingencounters/episode-2-our-community