English tEachEr candidatEs’ construction
of third spaces in a rEflEction Enhancing
duoEthnographic projEct
Dorota WerbińskaORCID: 0000‑0002‑1502‑7199 Pomeranian University in Slupsk
Slupsk, Poland dorota.werbinska@apsl.edu.pl
Key words: duoethnography, reflection, third spaces, English teachers’ candidates 1. introduction
While much research has been produced around the development of pre‑service language teachers’ reflective and/or reflexive skills [e.g. Badia, Becerril 2016; Gabryś‑ Barker 2008, 2012; Griffin 2003; Farrell 2006, 2007, 2015a, 2015b; Farrell Beacher 2017; Harrison, Lee 2011; Johnson 2009; Mann, Walsh 2013; Peacock 2001; Rich‑ ards, Farrell 2011], most of this work has been conducted through questionnaires, writing autobiographical narratives, analyses of school placement critical incidents or in‑depth interviews. Insightful as these data‑collecting instruments may be, there has been no evidence to date of attempting to address this subject with the use of duoeth‑ nography, a new form of qualitative method.
The present article will focus on this gap as I present a pilot duoethnographic pro‑ ject that was used as a method for developing pre‑service teachers’ reflective skills. I will introduce a duoethnograpic method and focus on its benefits. I will further describe the pilot duoethonographic project which I conducted with six pre‑service English teachers. Finally, in drawing the article to a close, I will argue for more du‑ oethnographic projects as venues for pushing pre‑service teachers beyond what seems to them as ‘the only truth’ and for encouraging them to create their own third spaces. 2. justifying the choice of duoethnography
Duoethnography as a form of qualitative method was created by Rick Sawyer and Joe Norris [2012] only a decade ago. It derives from narrative studies and refers to
Nr 9 SS. 193-206 2019
ISSN 2083‑5485
© Copyright by Institute of Modern Languages of the Pomeranian University in Słupsk
Original research paper received: 24.06.2019 accepted: 8.10.2019
William Pinar’s [2004] currere, according to whom each person’s life is a curriculum that can be studied critically. In line with this, in duoethnography, two or more indi‑ viduals discuss a certain topic, using artefacts and photos as sources or pulling from autobiographical experiences.
Duoetnography differs from autoetnography. In contrast to autoethnography fo‑ cused on hegemony and meta‑narration, duoethnography juxtaposes the histories of two or more diverse people, who experience the same phenomenon in a different way. Although duoethnography uses autobiography, the main focus is not the narrator, not the topic itself but personal experiences which are reconceptualised, questioned and reflected upon. In other words, the information garnered from duethnographic inter‑ actions is not aimed at presenting one “true” reality but rather the subjective experi‑ ences of the interlocutors. The recipient of the information decides whether or not the presented experiences can be transferred to other contexts.
In a way, duoethnographic approach may refer to Dewey’s conception of reflec‑ tion. According to Dewey [1910/1933] reflective teachers are distinguished by three qualities: open‑mindedness, responsibility and wholeheartedness [cf. Pollard 2005]. Open‑mindedness consists in the ability to listen to a problem from different per‑ spectives and realize its alternative interpretations. Responsibility, in Dewey’s un‑ derstanding, is the ability to predict the consequences of one’s behaviours, whereas whole‑heartedness denotes using every situation as a learning opportunity. A duoeth‑ nographic conversation considerably evokes the development of the reflective teach‑ er’s qualities. The conversation partners attentively listen to each other’s experiences but also listen to their own voices through questioning, justifying the previous deci‑ sions through what they know now or interpreting the present experiences with the help of the past. Looking at a problem from different perspectives they can better predict the consequences of their decisions, whereas engaging in the conversation with another person they can learn both from the person’s experiences and their own. Hence, their learning becomes more individualized, as students can develop ideas for which they are ready intellectually, culturally, and personally, and which they may never have reached had they not taken up the duoethnographic conversation.
The reflection upon one’s own life experiences, authenticity and establishing rela‑ tions with another person enables the partners of the duoethnographic project to reach new levels of awareness and create the third space [Bhabha, 1994]. Third spaces acknowledge the primacy of what Bhabha [1994] terms the “inter” or “the in‑between space”. Thanks to the third space, the narrated stories of experience can be understood anew, in local, not universal, terms. The understanding of a problem can be reached, and the reconceptualization of an issue in the light of a person’s biography may con‑ nect theory with practice [cf. Wallace 2016]. This is because the speakers talk about their own familiarity with a problem or about situations in which they have partici‑ pated. Their concentration on subjective knowledge is interrogation or the extension of objective or public knowledge. The creation of a situation in which the partners may articulate their thoughts, critically examine their experienced stories, subject to analysis their own beliefs and values, may leave a trace forever [Li 2017]. As they
develop connections between and across their experiences, their dialogue is not just a tool for conversation, but interthinking [Mercer 2000] which stands for a tool for people to think together, pursue joint goals and form teacher identities [Vermunt et al. 2017: 153]. The creation of a third space can also be treated as breaking the “culture of silence” [Gachago et al. 2014: 9] by positioning students as “agentive self‑con‑ structors”. In fact, a duoethnographic conversation as a source of transformation can provide evidence for learning by those who participate in it. Teacher candidates can recognize who they are as a person, obtain feedback on their image of self‑as‑a teach‑ er or, as Beijaard and Meijer [2017] suggest, even be prevented from developing an undesirable or “a deviating identity” [p. 186].
The constructing of the third space may resemble the conception of liminal spaces. Liminal spaces offer arenas “within which people try new ways of being and interact‑ ing and gather, reaffirm, and extend moral commitments” [Cook‑Sather, Baker‑Doyle 2017]. Both spaces (third and liminal) provide support, the diversity of the interlocu‑ tors’ cultures, challenge, and new possibilities of learning together. Therefore, heading for the third space (as much as heading for a liminal space), may suggest the necessity of acknowledging Balakrishnan and Claiborne’s [2012] extension of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development into a zone of collaborative development, which recognizes collaborative problem‑solving and interdependent learning.
This is mostly for these reasons – the development of teacher candidates’ reflection and a source of arriving at a third space with a potential transformation – that I have decided to pursue a duoethnographic project. I believed that the method was the right approach, as it seemed to enable the pre‑service teachers to explore their beliefs from a number of viewpoints, and critically challenge their assumptions on language teach‑ ing through experience sharing.
3. study aims and design
The design of the present project was inspired by Breault’s [2015] study and Brown and Barrett’s [2017] duoethnographic investigation. There were three aims of the study: (1) helping the participants disrupt their static knowledge of what teaching a foreign language involves; (2) pointing to the connection between the participants’ biographies and their decisions in the teaching profession; (3) obtaining students’ feedback about the benefits and limitations of duoethnography from their perspective as the project participants.
The participants of the project were a group of students (n=6) of the last term of their MA studies with an English teaching profile. The group consisted of five women (Dagmara, Justyna, Kinga, Patrycja and Martyna) and one man (Robert). All the participants were graduates of BA studies with teaching profile, all wrote and de‑ fended their BA theses in applied linguistics or ELT, and at the time of the project had finished their school placements in primary, middle or secondary school. In addition, four students were giving private tutorials in all age groups and all the participants expressed their willingness to perform the job of a language teacher in the future.
The study took place in the summer term (February‑May 2017) and com‑ prised the four stages presented below.
Stage 1: Introduction to the project (February 2017)
I started the first stage with a short Power Point presentation on duoetnography comprising the definition of duoethnography, genealogy and benefits of its using. Then I introduced the students to the aims of the project and the following three tasks within stage one:
1. Find a person in the group to conduct an interesting conversation. The person should differ from you in a significant way.
2. Talk to the person about what language teaching is supporting your claims with your own experience. Record the conversation1.
3. Hand in the written transcription of the talk and the recorded text. The time limit for the task is one month.
Stage 2: Summary of the talk with a focus on oneself (March 2017)
The second stage was preceded by receiving the students’ recordings with tran‑ scriptions concerning their views on language teaching. After reading all the conver‑ sations, I copied the transcripts to enable each participant to have access to his or her dialogue on paper. I distributed the copies and gave the instruction for the second stage which was:
1. Read the transcription of your dialogue with your partner carefully. Focus on the meanings of your words..
2. On the basis of the words used by you, make an interpretation of what kind of teacher you may become. Write down this interpretation, supporting your claims with examples from the conversation.
Stage 3: Summary of the talk with a focus on the conversation partner (April 2017)
Stage three was preceded by my collection of the information about how the par‑ ticipants viewed themselves, which was the aim of stage two. In the third stage I dis‑ tributed the copies of the same dialogues again, this time requesting the students to
1 In the study described here I did not provide the participants with prior reflective questions as I did not want to influence their thinking in any way. Encouraged by T.S.C. Farrell (personal communi‑ cation in Konin, Poland, October 2017) and to obtain more powerful insights, I provided students with a set of reflective questions in another duoethnographic study, conducted with 50 pre‑service BA teachers. The responses, however, were less insightful than the answers in this study which may be due to their less knowledge and skills (they were BA, not MA students as those described here) or, which seems more convincing to me, due to the limitation of the necessity of addressing the specific questions.
make interpretations of meanings used by their conversation partners. The tasks for stage three were:
1. Read the transcription of your dialogue with your partner carefully. Focus on the meanings of your partner’s words.
2. On the basis of the words used by your partner, make an interpretation of what kind of teacher he or she may become. Write down the interpretation, supporting your claims with examples from the conversation.
3. In pairs compare the descriptions made by you and by your partner. Discuss the validity and similarity of both interpretations. Have you heard the same person in both texts or perhaps the person you would like to hear?
Stage 4: Lessons learnt (June 2017)
The last stage of the pilot study aimed at gaining feedback information about the effectiveness of the whole project and the lessons learnt. I did not suggest any ques‑ tions so as not to narrow down the reception of the project and restricted my inquiry to the following instruction:
4. Evaluate the project in writing in terms of what you have learnt about language teaching
After the completion of the project I started examining all the data (transcripts of dialogues, the participants’ interpretations of their and their partners’ meanings and final evaluations of the project). I used thematic analysis to identify themes. In order to find the disruptions of meanings I closely examined the teacher candidates’ interac‑ tions (stage 1), as I trusted the polyvocal texts (learning from an interlocutor, learning from the past, looking at the past from what is known at present) and sharing the experience about language teaching could significantly challenge their assumptions. I treated the successive stages of the project (stage 2, stage 3, stage 4) as verifications of their modification of beliefs. In their interpretations (stage 2 and stage 3) and eval‑ uations (stage 4) I looked for new understandings that emerged for them which might shed light on the connection between one’s past and future.
In this article I will concentrate on the first research question only2. Trying to track down the disruption of the students’ beliefs on language teaching and their con‑ struction of new meanings (third spaces), four themes emerged: language teaching as a teacher‑related process, ways of teaching a language, pre‑service teacher prepara‑ tion for the language teaching profession, and teacher challenges. Using the data from the students’ discussions as a basis, I rewrote and slightly modified the dialogues (removing unnecessary pauses, repetitions, grammatical mistakes and highlighting the most important sentences) to suit the space restrictions and draw attention to what
was said rather than how it was said. I also wrote reflective introductions and conclu‑ sions, which referred to the obtained third spaces in this study, which is followed by the discussion of the overall project.
5. results and discussion
In the first section of the dialogue I aim to show how the belief about the role of the teacher in the language learning process is modified. A lot of students whose language learning falls short of the expected success attribute their linguistic failures to others, especially their language teachers. They tend to blame the teacher’s uninteresting methods, her lack of enthusiasm or being too demanding. The following fragments of dialogues may illustrate this perception.
5.1. Language teaching as a teacher‑related process
Example 1:
Patrycja: I personally believe it’s better if the teacher is more lenient than strict. Marta: Why lenient?
Patrycja: Teacher shouldn’t put pressure on students so as not to discourage them.
Marta. OK. But maybe it depends on the situation. For example, when students’ behaviour is disruptive during the lesson.
Patrycja: So do you think it’s better if the teacher is more strict?
Marta: i used to think like you but now i think the teacher should be both. If the students
see the teacher is too lenient or too strict, they will ignore the teacher, or won’t follow his or her instructions.
Patrycja: Maybe in the beginning we should try to be strict and then more lenient.
Marta: I’ve heard of it. One of the teachers told me that at the beginning of your lessons I should show the students that they won’t be able to do what they want, but later I can show them some “mercy”.
Patrycja: But do you think that being such a strict teacher will raise your authority in the classroom?
Marta: I think so. I’ll be trying to do it.
Example 2:
Kinga: What about your teacher in the secondary school?
Justyna: The teacher was a very young woman. She was very strict and demanding. Nobody liked her. I blamed my teacher for everything, even that I didn’t like learning English. And I think everyone did. But now i know that the educational system has more power than the teacher. The way of teaching was conditioned by her, but the rest, I mean books, materials,
even focusing on testing were conditioned by the system. So it wasn’t only her fault.
Example 3:
Patrycja: In my lower secondary school I had a teacher who was an introvert. When she was coming to the classroom you could feel the atmosphere of boredom. She immediately sat on her chair and kept saying “I’m so tired today, you need to do something on your own”, that was writing something or doing an exercise.
Patrycja: She was nice and looked friendly but her attitude to language teaching was careless and annoying. I was dissatisfied with this kind of language lesson.
Marta: Do you think she had some kind of professional burnout?
Patrycja: i didn’t think about that but you may be right. I saw some symptoms of burnout
like the boredom of teaching. She didn’t want to conduct the lessons but do her own stuff. Marta: The job may not have been for her.
In the above exchanges, we can see that the perceptions of teachers change. It is clear that personal experiences can modify students’ beliefs. Although Patrycja in the first extract still holds a typical student’s opinion that it is better to have a lenient teacher, as she is more liked by students, Marta and Justyna think differently. Hav‑ ing experienced school placement, Marta knows that a teacher’s strictness, and then the adoption of a more lenient attitude to students, may work as an effective coping strategy which could still earn the teacher authority. Likewise, Justyna knows that a teacher’s classroom behaviours are sometimes dictated by the accountability sys‑ tem with which the teacher must comply. Following Lowe and Kiczkowiak [2016], it can be confirmed here that, when examined on a personal level, popular beliefs may prove unsustainable. Marta’s comment in the third dialogue may serve as an example of looking at the problem from another perspective. She does not approve of a teacher who is bored with conducting lessons but she does not limit herself only to criticizing. Instead, she looks for possible explanations pointing to a probable origin of the teach‑ er’s unwillingness to run lessons, which could be suffering from professional burnout.
5.2. Ways of language teaching
In this section of the dialogue, the participants discuss some of the ways of lan‑ guage teaching. Although most of them opt for communication and group work, teacher‑fronted classes are not totally dismissed.
Example 4:
Patrycja: I have a question connected with group work. Do you think it’s a good option? Marta: It’s very good because students can cooperate with each other.
Patrycja: But also talk about different topics.
Marta: Yes, you’re right. But when they work in groups, they can cooperate and correct each other’s mistakes.
Patrycja: In my opinion a teacher‑fronted class where all students listen to the teacher’s presentation is not effective at all. A safe option for the teacher.
Marta: that’s true but it might be very comfortable for new teachers. The students will
have to listen to the teacher, he or she will have them work. So it’s good in some situations. Paulina: Yes, it could also increase the teacher’s self‑confidence and motivation.
Marta: True, but later on this model might not be so appropriate because, as you know, students are important and we should focus more on them.
In this dialogue, we can see that the participants start realizing the complexity of the profession and the form of conducting a language lesson. Although the contempo‑ rary discourse emphasizes the importance of learner‑centred teaching, the participants, although familiar and convinced to the truthfulness of learner‑centredness, can still
think of situations in which a teacher‑centred language class may prove beneficial. Both Marta and Patrycja know that teaching focused on the student brings more pos‑ itive effects, yet they can point to concrete benefits related to teacher‑fronted classes, such as the increase in a novice teacher’s motivation and her confidence.
5.3. Preparation for language teaching
In this section of the dialogue, the participants discuss their preparation for the lan‑ guage teacher profession. This issue is important, as much is being said about the lack of compatibility between theory and practice, or what is offered at teacher preparation schools and the requirements of the market. Example 5 relates to what they mean by language teacher preparation.
Example 5:
Justyna: Kinga, do you feel that you are prepared for being a language teacher?
Kinga: No. I don’t feel prepared. I may feel ready because I really want to do it but I don’t feel prepared enough because I still have lots of questions, like what the teacher’s job is really like, how we have to behave when it comes to weird situations in class, how to deal with students’ disobedience, how to treat parents and conduct meetings with them, and many other aspects that I think I will learn when I have become a teacher.
Justyna: I agree with you. I’m sure that the profession will bring me pleasure and satisfaction. I have devoted a lot of time to be well prepared for the school placement. But honestly, I don’t really know if I am well prepared for starting the job now. The only thing I know is that I want to do that in the future.
Kinga: That’s a lot. Well, when it comes to being prepared it is hard to answer because i think you will never be prepared enough if you don’t start teaching. The theory will
never be enough and we can only learn teaching in actual practice. Justyna: OK.
In the above section, the students come up with a very important aspect of teach‑ er preparation, the role of teacher education studies, the role of curriculum and the students themselves. They raise the issues of their personal preparation as language teachers, and in the course of their duoethnographic conversation, they agree that a lot depends on their own involvement and professional experiences which they en‑ counter in their work. Kinga’s words that “you will never be prepared enough” are congruent with the notion of teacher’s becoming [Britzman 1991]. This means that “learning is not merely a matter of acquiring knowledge”, but “ a matter of deciding what kind of person you are and want to be” [Brickhouse 2001: 286]. Therefore, being a teacher should not be considered in essentialist terms as something that people are but as a process and something that is created and recreated through practice. Then its status changes from an entity to a process, from who people are and what they have (teaching credentials) to what people do, perform, and become at a particular moment. Although the following Example 6 concerns giving private tutorials in English for children, a common activity among students of English philology in Poland, private lessons may denote for them an alternative practical form of teacher preparation for the future job.
Example 6:
Kinga: Do you think that the tutoring experience will influence you as a future teacher? Justyna: Of course. This is a kind of practice. Children are unpredictable and we never know what questions can be asked or how children can behave during the lesson. This gives us knowledge that we’re not able to learn in theory.
Kinga: I agree with you. However, it differs from teaching a whole class because we usually teach one or two students. In my case, it has already given me a lot because I have access to go over grammatical structures all over again. As you said, children are unpredictable and it is really true, so i think that tutoring classes are not only for the kids but also for us. the kids learn but so do we.
The conversation about tutoring in terms of teacher preparation for the job can be treated as a new look at a tutoring issue Although it is not as widespread as it used to be only a decade ago, there are still many teachers in Poland who offer private language tutoring without qualifications for language teaching. The questions how much a tutor can learn about language teaching via private teaching, or what can be and cannot be self‑taught by a tutor about learners, language learning and language teaching constitute a new perspective in thinking about private tutoring and language teacher preparation.
5.4. Language teacher challenges
Towards their finishing teacher education studies, the participants seem to better realize language teacher challenges, which is illustrated in Example 7 below.
Example 7:
Dagmara: I’ll tell you about my private lessons. I have about twenty people now. This is about twenty hours per week. That’s a lot. And my youngest student is about three years old. It’s a lot of work, I prepare individually for each class. I know that a lot of professional English teachers have so many lessons. First at school and then they give lessons.
Robert: Honestly, I think that a private teacher has to come up with some kind of system and some curricula for different age groups, so that they shouldn’t prepare every time for every lesson, or they will burn out.
Dagmara: I know. But I don’t want to resemble some of the teachers and go one by one through the exercises and …
Robert: The teacher should also work on self‑development. How many hours a week, do you think?
Dagmara: A week?
Robert: A week. Why not? I think that self‑development should be constant. reading at
least one or two books a year. Dagmara: Yeah, a year. Not a week.
In this section, two challenges have been raised: teacher burnout due to the teach‑ er’s overwork and the necessity of teacher professional development. Interestingly, the candidates for the job have named the problems of teachers who, on the one hand, work more and more because they have opportunities to do so, but who, on the other hand, stop catering for their professional skills due to the lack of time, energy or interest.
Throughout this study, I have attempted to approach the issue of language teaching from the perspective of a duoethnographic research. My intention was to use critical and reflective dialogic engagement in order to witness the preservice teachers’ con‑ structions of third spaces. At the same time the complexities of language teaching as seen by those who are just about to enter the ranks of the profession were helped to emerge. In this duoethnographic project, some of the teacher beliefs were disrupted from their uniform meanings, which was only possible through their opening up in sincere interactions and dialogues. Each excerpt shows that the issue discussed and related to language teaching generates new aspects which appear as the participants share their experiences, doubts and personal knowledge. Many teacher candidates are imbued with authoritative discourses [Bakhtin 1981] which can be considered as “the words of the fathers”. Some of these may, however, become internally persuasive [Bakhtin 1981] and, thereby, “half ours and half someone else’s” [Gomez, Johnson Lachuk 2017]. The participants must make decisions about which of these viewpoints are “truths” to be maintained for a long time, and which of these can be appropriated for shorter periods. What matters is the fact that duoethnographic practices may inter‑ rupt teachers’ pre‑conceived assumptions and potentially replace these authoritative discourses with internally persuasive discourses that question previous notions.
While the conversations seem anecdotal, as based on personal experiences, they are not one‑sided. Looking at the issue of language teaching in a complex way, acknowl‑ edging various aspects of a discussed phenomenon generates a qualitative change for the interlocutors. They pause and think, and come up with an idea or accept their con‑ versational partner’s point of view. Looking at tutorials from the perspective of teacher education, considering the benefits of teacher‑centred classroom, coming up with lan‑ guage teachers’ challenges, or considering the profession in terms of becoming rather than being, may serve as illustrative examples. It could be added that even though some of these opinions could sound banal for those who are more experienced or knowledge‑ able, they provide the project participants with revelations for them and with personal knowledge that is available to them at this moment of becoming a teacher.
In the duoethnographic conversations there are no abstract and therefore empty entries. Talking about their own familiarity with language teaching, they interrogate their subjective knowledge, or Vygotsky’s [1986] “spontaneous concepts” which arise from everyday experiences, and provide examples for the existence of their pub‑ lic knowledge about teaching a language, or Vygotsky’s [1986] “scientific concepts” which come from formal schooling. They pose questions and explore new connec‑ tions. Consequently, their reconceptualised definition of language teaching may help them better face up to the differences and complexities of the job, or direct their atten‑ tion to reflecting on what kind of teacher they would like to become.
In order to understand what stands behind language teaching in detail, more qualitative work certainly needs to be carried out into how language teaching is con‑ ceptualized by various actors taking part in the process, including the candidates for the profession. Such research may help better understand the complexities of the lan‑ guage teaching profession and deal with it more effectively. In order to do this, re‑ search methods which are personal and, in a way, provocative [Lowe and Kiczkowiak 2016] may help to access such issues.
6. limitations of the study
The current study undoubtedly has limitations which may refer to its major pur‑ pose – arriving at third spaces with a view to developing teacher candidates’ reflec‑ tive skills. A possible objection could be that there is no reference to the distinction between the participants’ arriving at third spaces, on the one hand, and their devel‑ opment of reflective skills, on the other. Likewise, there is no explicit separation as to what constitutes reflection and what could be only a statement of opinion or belief. Moreover, the demonstration of long‑term benefits of duoethnography in, for exam‑ ple, superior teaching of those who were subjected to a duoethnographic project could have proved extremely valuable.
It could be said that the distinctions were not considered because they did not seem significant in this project. It was taken for granted that the construction of a third space was itself an act of reflection, whereas the modification of an opinion as a result of a duoethnographic interaction in several participants could be considered as im‑ proving their reflective skills. That said, I could only agree with Farrell [2018] that we still lack clarity or consensus about what reflective practice involves, and that it is dif‑ ficult to observe reflective practice “in practice”. Future research on the development of reflective skills via arriving at third spaces should definitely utilize longitudinal methods so as to better assess the significance of such projects for their participants’ learning about teaching or future language teaching.
7. concluding remarks
In this article, I have described a duoethnographic project which I conducted with six MA teacher candidates in order to help them create their own third spaces about language teaching and, thereby, develop their reflective and reflexive skills. The study participants described here looked at four of the issues: language teaching as a teach‑ er‑related process, ways of teaching a language, pre‑service teacher preparation for the language teaching profession, and teacher challenges, producing several “third spaces”, or knowledge reconstructions, in which the discussions on language teaching has affected them.
The implications of this project could involve more focus on such issues as a real number of effective hours an English teacher in Poland works per one week, her actual, not perceived, professional development and the form it assumes, the aware‑ ness of teacher becoming by different educational stakeholders, or the changeable role of the teacher and her behaviours in different classroom situations. Undoubtedly, the topics of the participants’ interactions in other duoethnographies could be further problematized and possibly open up new perspectives and generate new third spaces, as different individuals will inevitably come up with other experiences and (re)con‑ ceptualizations.
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summary
English teacher candidates’ constructions of third spaces in a Reflection‑Enhancing Duoethnographic Project
Duo‑ethnography is a research methodology, through which people of difference recon‑ ceptualise their histories of a particular phenomenon in juxtaposition with one another. Al‑ though initiated by researchers, duo‑ethnographies can also be used by students as a useful pedagogic tool that develops deep reflection. After discussing the efficacy of duo‑ethnog‑ raphy, a one‑semester‑long duo‑ethnographic project is described, which was conducted by the author with six preservice English teachers. The study consisted of four stages and the object of focus in this article is the English teacher candidates’ creation of third spaces in their duoethnographic conversations. The examples of the generated third spaces are discussed, as well as limitations and possible implications of this study.
