Ethnographers of difference in a critical EAP community–becoming

An engagement with difference has significant implications for the teaching and research of English for Academic Purposes where traditional focus has been on the preparation of students for university content courses, with an emphasis on skills development. What has largely been missing from this debate is a problematizing of the practices of a community of difference. This research draws on an ethnographic study of an EAP classroom in which I was both the teacher and the researcher. The international students become ethnographers of the diversity of the university community using alternative semiotic practices to carry out their research rather than a traditional reliance on reading and writing. I use examples of critical moments to show the ways in which difference is re-shaped when the students' hybrid knowledges are made central. Critical EAP practice becomes one of creating difference, thus disrupting established norms of power/knowledge and raising the possibility for further questioning and change.