Researcher Positionality

As briefly referenced above, my positionality, to a certain extent, influenced my choice of research questions, research goals, and research methods for this study. It also was implicated on the ways I interpreted or analyzed my research data. Therefore, unfolding my positionality here is warranted. I am currently a transnational doctoral student at a research university in the northeastern U.S., and I had all my schooling up until my Masters in a small South Asian

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country, Nepal. As an international multilingual student, I am one of the million of international students in the U.S. and one of the thousands at my current university. In my early years as an international graduate student in a school in Louisiana (for a semester in the Spring of 2008) and here in my current school after that, I struggled to step up and participate in group discussions or seminar-format classes. I still remember that I never spoke up except as an in-class presentation leader in the first composition practicum I had to take in Louisiana, not because I had nothing to say, but because I could not follow the conversation and identify the right time to intervene or take turns partly because I was not yet accustomed to an American accent and seminar class format. That had a direct impact on my grade, and overall performance in the class, if not in the learning. Even though the course instructor had forewarned me about the impact of my non-participation in the final grade, I remained silent the entire semester. In other lecture-based classes though, I could do pretty well because that format was something I was used to, and it did not require regular participation in conversation other than during occasional group projects inside and outside the class. I should mention here that my story is not unique. Like me, many international students struggle to participate in class discussion, and group work not because they are incapable or deficient, but because they are systematically discouraged from speaking up in classes in their home countries. In lecture-based British model classes, particularly in Asian and African countries, speaking up or expressing different viewpoints in the class is interpreted as disruption or, even worse, as a challenge to the teacher’s authority in the class; therefore, maintaining silence in the class is seen as a virtue.

Another challenge I faced as an international student was composing assignments in the style expected in the American academy. I had done a number of term papers and an independent study in my Master’s degree in Nepal, but those projects were not necessarily thesis-driven and

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based on appropriate source use. So, when I was required to produce thesis-driven argumentative essays with proper source documentation all at once, I struggled to meet the demands. It took me few years of training and immersion in the American academic system before I could compose something close to what professors saw as persuasive academic writing.

So, my cross-border academic journey has been characterized by learning by trial and error, and frequent intercultural, inter-linguistic and inter-academic adaptations. As a degree-seeking student away from my place of origin, I have been to the classes where the student population was very diverse, and I have also been to the classes where I was the only

international student. And, as a writing instructor, I have had a similar experience. I have taught classes with really diverse student bodies, and I have also taught classes with few international students or none at all. Both as a student and as a teacher, I, therefore, have a personal

investment in this project and, given my unique positionality and point of view, I can see that my positionality has been, and will be, fully implicated in the whole process of the research and its findings.

I believe that my positionality speaks particularly to the position of many international students in American higher education, but my ‘double vision’—as an outsider and an insider in relation to the American academy—can inform my research into the struggles and challenges both domestic American and international students face in engaging in writing curricula that engage multiliteracies. Based on my experience of schooling and teaching in multiple academic sites (Nepal, Louisiana, and New York) and in multiple academic systems (British and

American), and my reading and research into diverse but closely interconnected fields of globalization, intercultural communication, media/new media studies, literacy studies, World Englishes, and rhetoric and composition, I can say that there are plural forms of academic

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writing, that there are multiple ways of organizing ideas in academic writing, that there are multiple forms of old and new media writing, that writing is done in multiple languages and English varieties, that writing now is done in multiple media and modes, and that writing now crosses borders and cultures like never before. My experience as a student and a writing teacher at multiple sites also tells me that there should be a better way to do and teach writing to a diverse body of students. My current project is dedicated to exploring one such approach to teaching writing.