Ethical encounters in adult language education: A creative nonfiction approach

This study is set in the context of migrant adults attending English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) classes at an adult education institute in the UK where I was a language educator. ESOL is a field of education which is fraught with complexities and contradictions in policy and practice at both national and institutional levels. On the one hand, political discourse emphasises the desire to include and integrate migrants so they might participate fully in a rich social life in their new home. On the other hand, this same discourse suggests that integration can only be achieved through learning English (Simpson, 2015). There is also the implication that meaningful participation in society equates to contributing economically. Thus, until migrants have a command of English and some form of employment, they are positioned as two distinct identities: deficit speakers of the dominant language and learners of skills for employability. In a bid to reverse these deficit identities, ESOL curricula are structured around employability goals and like other contemporary fields of education, they are rooted in ideas of empowerment. Set against this ideological backdrop, my project concerns an exploration into the nature of social encounters in the ESOL classroom environment. It is a phenomenological account which traces my emerging relationship with one particular student, Henry (pseudonym), a highly qualified professional from Iran whose future ambition departs from the default identity options for ESOL learners: Henry’s primary aspiration is to become a doctoral researcher in aerospace engineering at a higher education institution in the UK. I approach these social interactions through the philosophical lens of ethical encounters which I define as moments of mutual welcoming between self and other in embodied inter-human spaces where one sensing body opens itself to another. Drawing on the relational ethics of Levinas (1998), I foreground the listening subject (myself) as a vulnerable, susceptible individual who remains open to the alterity of the Other (Henry) and responds to their call. Drawing on a large dataset of observations, interactions and narratives, this study captures moments of ethical encountering as I tune in to Henry’s calls but also become aware of my own aesthetic responses. These are made visible through the use of sociolinguistic analytical tools. I adopt a Creative Nonfiction approach (CNF) to bring these ethical encounters to life in The Novel which has 3 episodes: The Lorry, The Story, The Pandemic. I critically reflect on the value of such encounters in these settings and propose first steps for thinking about a pedagogy of encounter in ESOL and education more generally.