Contents

Preface

Ever since the very first successful solid organ transplants, transplantation-related science has displayed exponential growth. Physicians and researchers from many specialties are becoming more involved in transplantation medicine, which has exceeded the boundaries of one medical specialty and become a whole new field of medical science. There are more than 75 periodic issues, among which are more than 40 high-impact journals, publishing the results of research work from all over the world. A PubMed search alone returns about 800,000 titles of indexed publications pertinent to the field of transplantation, which covers approximately 70% of the total published work worldwide. There are also numerous books, book chapters, and other publications on the field of transplantation-related topics that find their readers every year. Ongoing research is funded by tens of millions of dollars and euros; these funds come from government and private investors, and are surpassed

And yet, among countless publications covering most of the areas in this particular field, specific segments such as perioperative care for the organ recipient remain underrepresented, and many topics are still not covered. The resulting lack of large, prospective studies, along with the relative scarcity of conceptual-level review articles, has prompted the choice of the main topic of this book, with intention to fill in the gap by collecting and presenting articles dedicated to these ignored

This book is addressed to physicians and researchers working in the ever-expanding

Its purpose is to present the transplantation community with a collection of works written by prominent experts in a variety of transplant-related fields, encompassing the most recent scientific and practical developments and accomplishments in the highly specialized segment of transplantation medicine, such as perioperative

**Alexander A. Vitin, MD, PhD**

University of Washington,

Transplant Anesthesia, UW Medical Center,

Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine,

Associate Professor,

Seattle, WA, USA

Director,

USA

probably only by cancer and heart research funding.

research and practice fields of transplantation medicine.

care for organ transplant candidates and recipients.

problems.


**1. Introduction**

Aviation is a heavily regulated industry for the purpose of safe operations. All aircraft maintenance, including those in the General Aviation (GA) sector, falls under the scope of these safety regulations, since maintenance is an essential activity for sustaining airworthiness (denoted as continuing airworthiness). The GA aircraft operation, as defined by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), is an aircraft operation other than commercial transport operation or aerial work operation [1]. The nature and the needs of the GA sector are invariably different to those of commercial air transport conducted with the use of a large complex aircraft. The GA sector has a lower risk profile (as measured by the impact of an accident). In particular, if one considers the systems safety view of risk, whereby risk is a combination of the likelihood of the hazard and the consequences of any ensuing accident [2], then, although the probability of having an accident in GA is higher than in commercial aviation [3], the lower severity of such accidents results in a lower risk profile. Moreover, GA is characterized by highly diverse operations, operators and (mostly ageing) aircraft fleets, in conjunction with scarce/unavailable financial, infrastructure and human resources (mainly attributed to the aircraft owner's limited financial capacity). This unique mix has an effect both on the continuing airworthiness rules for GA aircraft and also on how maintenance is actually practiced within this sector of the aviation industry. Thus, we often see that in the drafting of regulations and regulatory oversight in GA, a "one size fits all" approach is not the norm at a worldwide level.

In an attempt to regulate GA operations in a proportionate (and cost e ffective) manner, continuing airworthiness rules and oversight are typically less stringent than in commercial air transport [4]. Therefore it is interesting to examine the safety performance of the GA sector, namely the safety record in relation to maintenance-related accidents. The GA aircraft maintenance has been identified as an accident-precipitating factor [5], with 30% of accidents in Australia attributed to this [6]. For the Australian GA sector, this observation is alarming when taking into consideration the size of the fleet (nearly 90% of all aircrafts), its flight activity (40% of total flight hours are produced by GA aircraft) [7], and the maintenance burden cost (close to 20% of the total operational expenses for GA aircraft) [8]. In practical terms, retaining the same safety record would increase the absolute number of maintenance-related accidents if there is a continued growth of the activity.

The Australian civil aviation regulator, CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority), has recognised the need for safety improvements, via a regulatory reform and modernization/alignment against best practices at the international level. Special attention has also been placed on ageing aircraft issues (structural fatigue, corrosion, etc.), as the Australian fleet has an increasing average age [8]. It is of note that CASA approached this matter with a change management mindset, attempting to achieve a consensus from the regulated parties. The management of change, as a systematic approach/methodology to enable change at an individual and organisation level [9], has also been promoted by CASA for safety management purposes in the wider aviation industry [10]. Past CASA attempts to impose regulations or dictate mandatory actions did not have the expected result, as compliance was found to be problematic. An extensive industry consultation process was employed for this purpose during 2018−2019 [11]. Tailoring of maintenance regulations (framework, oversight, and practice) for the GA aircraft was a topic on the industry's "wish list" from this consultation. This finding has also confirmed the feedback collected by CASA from their previous interaction with the GA sector.

Eventually, CASA decided to introduce a new set of maintenance regulations that mirrored the United States (US) Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules for GA aircraft, with these outlined in CASA's consultation accompanying documents [11]. The FAA rules' approach was by far the preferred industry choice, recording a 78% acceptance rate [11]. The decision to follow the FAA regulations for GA aircraft is not consistent with the CASA's overall regulatory structure and philosophy, as the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Regulations (CASRs) largely follow/mirror the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) rules. This triggers questions on the underlying reasons that provoke this type of change as well as what challenges may manifest as part of transitional e ffects.

Given the alarming statistics in the Australian GA sector, research by Naweed and Kingshott [12,13] undertaken in the interstices of work and safe operations in the Australian GA sector, has examined how a ffect influences decision making and action tendencies in maintenance engineering scenarios. This body of research has identified numerous contextual factors that feature in ways of working and give rise to system behaviours that can have a direct impact on safe operations. Identified contextual factors included distraction under pressure, incorrect manuals, maintenance costs, perceived customer disloyalty, managerial interference, and negative rumination. A number of the findings also echo normalisation of deviant behaviour, a theoretical stance where maladaptive practices come to be accepted as the norm [14,15], and which reflect a complex array of interacting factors at play where Rumsfeldian "unknown unknowns" can often loom large [16].

Empirically exploring the industry's perception on the role of regulations and the regulator, as well as other factors that may directly impact the practice of maintenance on GA aircraft, is necessary to obtain a better understanding of what is happening at an end-user level. The technical sta ff directly involved in conducting and certifying maintenance, as well as the aircraft owners, are both key stakeholders in the airworthiness sustainment business.


**13. Strain imaging in mixed aortic valve disease**

Very little information has been published on the use of strain imaging in the management of patients with mixed aortic valve disease (**Figure 3**). The next paragraph summarizes the findings and conclusions in one study:

• Longitudinal LV function is reduced in both pressure and volume overload, and both of this overload patterns are equally harmful to the ventricle. Gorgulu et al. [49] evaluated a total of 27 subjects with mixed aortic valve disease

**53**

*Clinical Applications of Strain Imaging in Aortic Valve Disease*

(53 ± 15 years). Fifteen healthy subjects (mean age 50 ± 6 years) were enrolled as the control group. Longitudinal peak systolic strain rate values of each segment derived from analysis of a total of 804 segments were significantly decreased in this patient population (P < 0.001). Global longitudinal peak systolic strain rate was also significantly decreased in aortic stenosis and regurgitation compared to the control group (−1 ± 0.5, −0.9 ± 0.3, and −1.6 ± 0.3, P = 0.001). As far as the comparison between patients with aortic stenosis and aortic regurgitation, neither global strain rate nor strain rate for each

*Severe aortic stenosis and regurgitation: this example illustrates the presence of severe LV dysfunction as demonstrated by a marked drop of GLS to −6% despite a borderline drop of LV ejection fraction to 50%. The combination of severe aortic stenosis and regurgitation likely produces significant volume and pressure overload*

Although strain analysis is been used with increasing frequency for the evaluation of cardiac function, there are still issues with reproducibility of deformation analysis data, particularly when different echocardiography machines or analysis software is used. Until this issue is resolved the current recommendation is to use

The fidelity of the strain data sets is dependent on the quality of the echocardiographic data, unfortunately endocardial contrast enhancing agents cannot be used during strain analysis, therefore strain analysis sometimes has to be obtained with substandard images. The current recommendation is not to report strain values if the echocardiographic images are of poor quality. Hopefully work-around solutions will be found to permit strain analysis with endocardial enhancement agents use. The current literature supports actionable interventions according to fairly welldefined values of decreased LV ejection fraction, this is not as developed on the characterization of LV dysfunction according to levels of decreased strain values.

the same machine and software when obtaining comparative studies.

myocardial segment was found to be different.

*of the LV with significant LV dysfunction that is unmasked by strain analysis.*

**14. Unresolved issues**

**Figure 3.**

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93341*

**Figure 3.**

*Advances in Complex Valvular Disease*

can discriminate young asymptomatic patients with progressive AR. This could allow young patients with AR to have a better definition of surgical timing

correction and found, with the use of speckle-tracking strain imaging, that LV subendocardial dysfunction was present in patients with chronic severe AR

• Kaneko et al. [45] evaluated 36 chronic AR patients undergoing surgical

• Park et al. [46] evaluated 60 patients with chronic AR with LV global strain rate on apical four chamber image (GS-4CH). During 64 months follow-up duration, 16 patients (26.7%) were deceased and 38 patients (63.3%) underwent aortic valve replacement (AVR). Deceased group had lower longitudinal strain (−12.05 ± 3.72% vs. -15.66 ± 4.35%, p = 0.005). On multivariate analysis by cox proportional hazard model adjusting for age, sex, body surface area, history of atrial fibrillation, blood urea nitrogen, LV dilatation, LV ejection fraction and AVR, decreased GS-4CH proved to be an independent predictor of mortality in patients with chronic AR (hazard ratio 1.313, 95% confidence interval 1.010–1.706, p = 0.042). They concluded that GS-4CH may be a useful

• Alashi et al. [47] evaluated 1063 patients with asymptomatic severe chronic AR and preserved LVEF to examine the prognostic utility of left ventricular (LV) global longitudinal strain (GLS). A significantly higher proportion (log-rank p = 0.01) of patients with LV-GLS worse than median (−19.5%) died versus those with an LV-GLS better than median [86 of 513 (17%) vs. 60 of 550 (11%)]. The risk of death at 5 years significantly increased with an LV-GLS of worse than −19%. They concluded that in asymptomatic patients with ≥III+ chronic AR and preserved LVEF, worsening LV-GLS was associated with longer term mortality,

providing incremental prognostic value and improved reclassification.

• Alashi et al. [48] evaluated 865 patients with ≥3+ chronic AR and preserved LVEF undergoing AV surgery, a baseline LV-GLS value worse than −19% was associated with reduced survival. In a subgroup of patients who returned for 3- and 12-month postoperative follow-up examinations, persistently impaired

In summary, in patients with severe AR LV strain analysis detects early subclinical myocardial. Dysfunction before there is a drop in LVEF. This provides the potential for improving AVR/intervention timing. In addition GLS may be a useful predictor of mortality in AR patients by providing incremental prognostic value and improved reclassification. Finally, persistently impaired LVGLS in AR is associ-

Very little information has been published on the use of strain imaging in the management of patients with mixed aortic valve disease (**Figure 3**). The next

• Longitudinal LV function is reduced in both pressure and volume overload, and both of this overload patterns are equally harmful to the ventricle. Gorgulu et al. [49] evaluated a total of 27 subjects with mixed aortic valve disease

before the occurrence of irreversible myocardial damage.

and preserved EF, this improved after surgical correction.

predictor of mortality in patient with chronic AR.

LV-GLS was associated with increased mortality.

**13. Strain imaging in mixed aortic valve disease**

paragraph summarizes the findings and conclusions in one study:

ated with increased mortality.

**52**

*Severe aortic stenosis and regurgitation: this example illustrates the presence of severe LV dysfunction as demonstrated by a marked drop of GLS to −6% despite a borderline drop of LV ejection fraction to 50%. The combination of severe aortic stenosis and regurgitation likely produces significant volume and pressure overload of the LV with significant LV dysfunction that is unmasked by strain analysis.*

(53 ± 15 years). Fifteen healthy subjects (mean age 50 ± 6 years) were enrolled as the control group. Longitudinal peak systolic strain rate values of each segment derived from analysis of a total of 804 segments were significantly decreased in this patient population (P < 0.001). Global longitudinal peak systolic strain rate was also significantly decreased in aortic stenosis and regurgitation compared to the control group (−1 ± 0.5, −0.9 ± 0.3, and −1.6 ± 0.3, P = 0.001). As far as the comparison between patients with aortic stenosis and aortic regurgitation, neither global strain rate nor strain rate for each myocardial segment was found to be different.


**4. STEM: Robotics and DIY**

Robotics has been successfully employed as a very effective STEM tool to inculcate not only useful digital skills such as programming and automation that form the basis of more advance and crucial technologies of the modern era such as Artificial Intelligence but also facilitate development of collaborative problem solving competencies. It has served as a very good advertisement for STEM. However, counter to popular belief, STEM is not just robotics. As a matter of fact, STEM methodology is not dependent on any specific hardware or software. It is the process of understanding a problem and then going through the Engineering Design Process steps to find a solution that forms the basis of STEM methodology.

With the advent of STEM methodology, many commercial STEM products and solution providers sprang into action and introduced very high quality STEM kits. These kits for the most part were Robotics kits, which were developed with the help of teams of engineers, educationists and neuroscientists. The Robotics kits came with a curriculum and a complete set of lesson plans and proved to be highly effective in achieving desired outcomes. However, they carried a very steep price tag that made it nearly impossible to employ them at mass scale, particularly in developing countries.

Fortunately, by virtue of explosion in manufacturing of low cost electronic components in the last couple of decades and availability of freely available opensource educational softwares, robotics and automation that lay the foundation for more advance technologies such as Artificial Intelligence have become more and more accessible to the less and less privileged. For example, as a substitute to the high-end Robotics kits, a locally available robot chassis, Arduino microcontroller, low-cost sensors and freely available open-source softwares including block-coding applications provide a reasonable and affordable alternate for STEM activities.

Although these open-source hardware and software provide a lot more versatility and flexibility in terms of adding new functionality, they do come with a catch. Like all open-source solutions, they require a fair amount of technical understanding and ability to do system integration. In addition, these require meticulously created lesson plans that make it easy for the facilitators to conduct the sessions and the students to create projects without any technical hiccups arising from the hardware or the software. In most urban schools where computers are available, the locally developed kits are an affordable and effective substitute for expensive STEM kits.

However, in rural areas where computers are not available, STEM lesson plans require careful integration of hands-on activities that not only facilitate achieving desired objectives but are also feasible and affordable in the local context.

In this context, DIY projects using low cost daily life materials or recyclable and reusable materials prove extremely effective. The efficacy of these activities has been proven in many urban and rural setups in extremely resource-constrained environments. Discarded plastic bottles, cups, plates, cardboard boxes, rubber bands, balloons, straws, etc. all are valuable resources for STEM activities. Lack of resources is not necessarily a handicap; it is often an opportunity to be as creative as possible with whatever means available.


In its emphasis on lifelong learning, the Finnish National Core Curriculum (2014) echoes wider European and world-wide educational discourses. Internationally, the conceptualisations of lifelong learning appear to have moved from seeing it intertwined with humanistic ideals in the 1960 and 1970s to considering it mostly from (neoliberal) economic perspectives (Olssen, 2006) as a way to address issues like unemployment and slow economic development (Volles, 2016). Ideals of multilingualism, in a similar vein, include values of celebrated individual and societal knowledges, but also commodifable skills required in the labour market and economy (Beacco, 2007; Pérez-Milans, 2015). As far as the curricula for "foreign" (*vieraat kielet,* as it is framed in the Curriculum) language education in Finland are concerned, they are clearly rooted in the work of the Council of Europe that has promoted language learning (and self-assessment as one aspect of it; see Oscarson, 2014) as a way to increase dialogue and understanding between European countries. Assessment and testing of students further operationalise these goals into desired activities.

#### **Research Questions and Methodology**

We explore the idea of agency discursively and materially enacted (Barad, 2007) in the assemblage, rather than between the book and the person holding it. This, to us, represents something of a hypothesis that taking another viewpoint to textbooks would enable a different understanding of the role that the textbook plays in the in the pedagogical ergonomics of the classroom, i.e. that a new agential cut would emerge (Barad, 2007; see Toohey, 2018 for a discussion). How we make our cuts in our research has a profound effect on how we study them. In the case of our chapter, assuming human (learner or teacher) agency over non-human (curriculum or textbook) would work to reinforce old agential cuts. Instead, we examine a perspective where the agential cut of a textbook could be found "inside" the assemblage (i.e. in the ways in which agency is construed in intra-action of humans and non-humans), rather than "outside" of a book or in the "interface" of book and teacher/student (i.e. book used by someone, in someone's hands, in a classroom). For us, this is an analytical exercise in that we do not have empirical access to actual classroom data of teacher-learner-curriculum-book assemblage. Rather, we analyse the phenomenon from the perspective of different subject and object positions assigned to the human and non-human participants in this assemblage (see section on methods for a more detailed description below). We understand that our approach also implies assumptions of agency being "located" somewhere; in our case in the intra-action of textbook, curriculum, learner, and teacher. However, we aim to understand more deeply if and how this change of viewpoint may change the way in which we view the socio-material agency of textbooks in the pedagogical ergonomy of classrooms.

#### *Research Questions*

Based on previous research by the frst author (Saarinen, 2005, 2015), we know that macro level political concepts and goals tend to be discursively operationalised into activities that are presented as doable, but consequently also as valuable and desired. This, however, is ultimately a very linear approach that, while acknowledging the dynamics of policy goals (such as those presented in the National Core Curriculum, 2014) also assumes that (education) policy is a top-down process.

In this chapter, we analyse the features of textbooks that enable and facilitate their role as material agents in the classroom. We are particularly interested in how assessment goals make ideals of learner and learning visible and what the implications of this are for textbook agency. We understand our main question as consisting of the following sub questions:

#### *Method*

In order to be able to conduct the analysis, we employ a discursive agency approach (DAA) of the textbook, i.e. an analysis of the ways in which agency is being sought and legitimised by discursive means (Leipold & Winkel, 2017). We wish to demonstrate how and what kind of agency materialises in this particular case of a new lower secondary English textbook, providing an analytical heuristic to illustrate enactment of agency in our context.

Basing their discussion on Rabinow (1984), Leipold and Winkel (2017) discuss the process of agency enactment from the perspective of subject positions and the role of discourses offering subject positions; meaning that subjects (and their agency) are "effects of discourses" (Leipold & Winkel, 2017, p. 512). We use this approach to understand how textbook discourses offer "subject positions" that are derived from Michel Foucault's work (Leipold & Winkel, 2017, p. 513, discussing Keller 2012); i.e. how they offer a particular reading of what the desired activity of the learner and teacher is in relation to the curriculum goals. The subject positions may be realised as

This framing will guide our critical discourse analysis of the curriculum, the assessment description and the two self-evaluation tasks. Our analysis will focus on the elements in the textbook that facilitate the agency of the book in constructing ideal learners and ideal learning.

#### *Data*

Our primary data is (1) the National Core Curriculum (NCC, 2014; FNAE, 2020) and (2) a new textbook series (including teachers' guides) for English as the frst foreign language in lower secondary (grades 7–9) (Banfeld et al., 2018).

The national core curriculum (NCC, 2014) was accepted in 2014 and took effect in 2016, and its assessment section was revised in 2020 (FNAE, 2020). The learning and learner behavior goals for assessment in the 2014 comprehensive school core curriculum and specifcally the revised chapter on assessment (FNAE, 2020) will be analysed. The textbook and teacher's guide are available both as a print and digital version. The book series is a new one for grades 7–9, specifcally designed based on the new curriculum. Specifcally, we chose the teachers' guide one-page description of assessment; one pupil self-evaluation task (*How am I doing*) from the textbook for the 7th grade, and one pupil self-evaluation form from the teacher's guide.

#### **Analysis: Ideal Learner and Ideal Learning as Construed in Curriculum and Textbook**

In this section, we present our analysis of the curriculum and textbook tasks, starting with our examination of the National Core Curriculum from the perspective of how ideal learner and learning are presented. From there, we move on to discussing the operationalisation of these goals into textbook assessment practises and their implications to learning.

#### *Learner and Teacher Agency in the National Core Curriculum*

According to the National Core Curriculum (NCC, 2014; FNAE, 2020), the main purpose of assessment across disciplines is to promote learning. The core curriculum further states that assessment and feedback based on assessment are the teachers' pedagogical means to support learners' development and learning. The main characteristics of the assessment culture that the schools should develop are (p. 46; our translation and emphasis):

The statement in the core curriculum that the main purpose of assessment is to promote learning is interesting in at least three respects. First, it implies that assessment can, and should, impact learners and their learning in a positive way. The core curriculum describes some features of assessment that are likely to help assessment achieve this impact by referring to the feedback that teachers give to specifc features of assessment (e.g. variation and interaction; see the above points listed), and to certain overall characteristics such as positive atmosphere and fairness, stressing the role of the teacher as an active subject. The core curriculum does not elaborate the impact further, which leaves the practical implementation to the teachers. This is very much in the spirit of formal decentralisation of education policy making and image of teacher autonomy that characterise the Finnish

education policy (see Simola et al., 2017 for a critical discussion of the Finnish educational system). The impact of assessment on learning is still a rather poorly understood matter (see e.g. review by Cheng, 2014). What is known about it, however, suggests that it is diffcult to predict and likely to depend on many factors such as the purpose and method of assessment, learners' age, profciency and beliefs about learning and assessment, and the teacher (e.g. what feedback they give and how).

The second point worth noting in the national core curriculum's (NCC, 2014) description is that it does not distinguish between different purposes of assessment (see e.g. Nguyen's, 2021, classifcation). The explicit purpose of formative assessment is to provide both teachers and learners with information that helps them to teach and learn more and more effectively, and there is evidence that it can increase learning outcomes (Cheng, 2014). In contrast, the other common use of assessment information in the school, the summative purpose, may be less suitable for improving learning. Failure to do well on summative assessments may in fact demotivate and discourage some learners and, thus, have a negative impact on their learning (Cheng, 2014).

This brings us to the third point of interest in the core curriculum description, namely that assessment is assumed to have an impact not only on learning (i.e. increasing learners' language skills) but also on the learners' perception of themselves, on their motivation, and on their ability to understand how they learn. These goals of assessment obviously relate to learner agency.

The goals echo well-known views on what makes teaching and feedback effective such as the ones proposed by Hattie and Timperley (2007) who stress the importance of aligning learning goals, assessment, and feedback. Teachers should ensure that learners know the goals and criteria. Self-assessment and learning to do this are considered an important part of learning: self-assessment ability seems to be a goal of learning in itself but it is obviously a way to "help learners to understand their learning process" (see above data example). Peer-assessment and practising giving feedback are also encouraged and regarded as a way for the learners to become aware of and understand their own development and how they can have an impact on their own learning and success at school. Thus, both self-assessment and peer-assessment can be seen as means to increase learner agency, if implemented in ways that actually enable learners to have such agency during the self/peerassessment tasks and assuming that such exercises increase their agency more generally in their studies and also in their life out of the school.

According to the NCC (2014), assessment covers learning, working practices / working skills (*työskentely / työskentelytaido*t), and behavior (*käyttäytyminen*). For the assessment of behavior, the core curriculum states that the student's personality, temperament, and other personal characteristics are not to be assessed.

The section on assessment in the NCC (2014) divided assessment into fnal assessment that takes place at the end of grade 9 and assessment that is carried out during the studies prior to the fnal assessment. The latter was further divided into

assessment that happens during the term or year, and assessment at the end of the term or year. These correspond to formative and summative assessment respectively, but were not named as such in the original 2014 curriculum. The recent revision of the section on assessment (FNAE, 2020) clarifes this and refers to formative and summative assessment explicitly as the two complementary purposes of assessment at school (FNAE, 2020, p. 2; our translation):

The purpose of assessment is to

The lack of clarity regarding the assessment purposes in the NCC (2014) may have contributed to confusion among the teachers about what kind of assessment (and consequently learning) the curriculum actually promotes. We lack systematic research on this but it may be that what assessment means for many teachers and students in the lower secondary school (years 7 to 9) relates more closely to summative rather than formative assessment. This interpretation is supported by the fndings of the large-scale survey of pedagogical practices in that level of education in the 2000s (Luukka et al., 2008; Tarnanen & Huhta, 2011) which found that language teachers did most of their assessments at the end of courses or terms. Since summative assessment and grade-giving takes place at those points, the most visible types of assessments, at least, are likely to concern summative rather than formative assessment. Since grade-giving is the core element of summative assessment in Finnish school-system, it seems justifed to say that teachers in Finland are very concerned about summative assessment, perhaps at the expense of formative assessment (see e.g. Tarnanen & Huhta, 2011).

The question of learner temperament and personality (not to be evaluated) versus learning styles and behavior (to be assessed) seems to be a fne line in the curriculum. In order to link the general curricular goals related to learner and teacher agency, we will next look at assessment in one seventh grade textbook.

#### *Assessment and Self-Assessment in the Scene Textbook and Teacher's Guide*

As seen above, the curriculum presents an ideal of learner and teacher agency, but does not operationalise that agency in any particular way. How does the ideal learner agency emerge in a language textbook? We will frst analyse the defnitions and characteristics of assessment in the textbook teacher's guide and then move on to analyse two learner self-assessment tasks in the book.

#### **Assessment Description in Scene Textbook**

The teacher's guide of the Scene textbook series contains a two-page description of the assessment instruments included in the series and of how the materials themselves (e.g., activities, exercises) can be used for assessment purposes (see the English translation in Table 9.1). The description is divided into an introductory sentence and three sections.

The introduction of the assessment instructions (Table 9.1) states that the assessment materials in Scene *cover the language skills in a comprehensive way* (our translation) and that they take the need to individualise assessments into account as well as the goals related to communication and knowledge of the target language countries and cultures. In this sense, the book introduction refers to the cognitive aspects of learning particular skills.

The frst section, *Digital tests and modifable Word tests*, describes how the teacher can compile their digital and printable tests from the tests included in the digital

**Table 9.1** Scene 1 Digital material for the teacher on assessment (our translation). The description is based on the National Board of Education language portfolio site and the NCC (2014)

#### **Assessment**

The Scene assessment material covers different areas of language skills in a comprehensive way, and the materials take into account individual needs, communicativeness, country knowledge and cultural knowledge.

#### **Digital tests and modifable Word tests**

The Scene product family has two assessment material options: digital test and modifable Word tests. The options are content wise identical. The only difference is the oral tests in the modifable Word tests.

Assessment materials are divided by sets, and each set includes

With the help of digital tests, making exams and their evaluation is easy on the Otava electronic platform. The teacher puts together the test, and the pupil takes it online. Tasks include multiple choices, drag-and-drop, embedded tasks, and open-ended tasks. The system automatically checks all other tasks except the open-ended ones, for which a model answer has been provided to ease assessment.

Of the modifable Word tests, the teacher can put together their preferred test. The modifable tests include an mp3 format test recording. The usability is facilitated by a contents list and track list of all content.

#### **Self-assessment and peer-assessment**

Scene encourages the teacher to make use of self-assessment and peer-assessment as a part of total assessment. Self-assessment and peer-assessment have been integrated in the textbook tasks and have been made as smooth and easy for the student as possible. Also, the digital material includes readymade materials for self-assessment and peer-assessment.

(continued)

#### **Table 9.1** (continued)

#### **Language portfolio**

According to the new curriculum, assessment should focus on formative assessment and the language portfolio supports this. It also makes versatile assessment methods possible. According to the curriculum, the teacher must compile "information about the students' progress in different areas and in different situations", and the language portfolio is a good tool for this. It also enables the use of ICT and oral tests. Developing prerequisites for self-assessment, as mentioned in the curriculum, happens naturally in portfolio work, because own work and working methods are refected on, and learning, its progress and the factors affecting it can with be observed with self-evaluation. Also, peer-evaluation skills develop, and students may become more aware of how they can affect their own learning.

The portfolio can be implemented in many ways. It can be a student's notebook, where all work is recorded, or a portfolio where the students themselves gather a certain number of English tasks. Also, the students' recordings and videos can be a part of the portfolio. As works are chosen, the student has to consider which tasks on the course are particularly successful and why. This helps the development of self-evaluation but also helps the student to understand how the grade is formed.

Scene 1 has a lot of material that can be used in language portfolio work as such. The digital material includes a list of tasks for each set, applicable for language portfolio work. Most of the Action and Go Online tasks are also applicable as language portfolio tasks. Also Show And Tell tasks can be conducted as written or oral portfolio tasks. The teacher's material includes, in addition, essay topics for each set, that can be applied in language portfolio work. Also, the cultural knowledge projects can be included in the portfolio. Everyone can conduct the tasks at their own level, for the advanced the tasks offer a challenge, and the weaker ones can do with basic language skills. The tasks encourage using one's imagination and challenge the pupils to test the limits of their language skills. The teacher's material also includes assessment forms that can be used to support self-evaluation and group evaluation. Also, the textbook includes several small self-evaluation and pair evaluation tasks that make it possible for the students to monitor their development as language users and learn to recognize areas where they are good or need more exercise. The electronic materials can also be utilised in the portfolio.

version of the textbook. The digital tests can be created and administered through the online platform provided by the publisher of the textbook, whereas the tests submitted to teacher as Word fles can frst be compiled in the digital platform and then printed out to be handed to the pupils. The areas covered by the tests are referred to by using the traditional categories of vocabulary, grammar, writing, reading, listening and speaking (speaking test is only available in modifable test version). The test formats are also listed and include the multiple choice, drag-and-drop, short-answer, and open-ended text production formats. The digital version is explained to be able to score the closed task formats automatically (e.g., multiple choice) and provide the short-answer questions with model answers for the human scorer.

What is striking about these template assessments is that they leave out possibilities for more personal and often quite material aspects of knowledge construction in the pedagogical ergonomics such as classroom interaction (see Jakonen & Jauni, Chap. 2, this volume; Muhonen & Vaarala, Chap. 4, this volume), knowledge construction, interests, or personal repertoires (see Dufva, Chap. 5, this volume). The ideal learner is one who picks the correct answers in a way that is easy to evaluate, which also limits the learner's degree of agency when it comes to assessment.

Two points are worth noting in the description of the tests in the Scene teacher's guide. First, the guide is ambiguous as to the purpose for which the tests are intended to be used. Since the scope and length of each test probably varies, it is likely that the tests can be used both formatively and summatively. However, it is more likely that they are used mainly summatively given that test-like assessment approaches are the most common approach when teachers give their fnal summative grades in language subjects in year nine (Luukka et al., 2008). This implies a summative assessment agency for the textbook.

The second point of note is that the focus in this section is on the teacher; the teacher's guide does not clarify if the pupils have any role in scoring the tests, particularly the responses to short-answer questions that the system cannot mark automatically. At least for formative uses of these tests, this could be a viable alternative to the teacher-based scoring. In sum, combined with the textbook centered tradition and the role of summative testing in the 9th grade (Luukka et al., 2008), the textbook has a particular kind of agency that seems to promote summative testing, with the teacher rather than the learner having an active role.

The second section on assessment in the teacher's guide is titled *Self-assessment and peer*-*assessment*. It is a very brief section but claims that the Scene series encourages the teacher to use both self- and peer-assessment in their assessments. It further describes that self- and peer-assessment are integrated into many exercises found in the materials to make them easier for the pupils and that the digital materials include a number of forms for these types of assessment.

The third and fnal part of the guide on assessment is called the *Language portfolio* and is much more detailed than the other parts covering about half of the space. This is in many ways the most interesting part of these suggestions to teachers on assessment. The text makes explicit reference to the emphasis in the National Curriculum on assessment that supports learning and presents the argument that the language portfolio is a very appropriate approach in this regard (the FNAE's language portfolio website is also mentioned as a source of this information; https:// www.oph.f/f/koulutus-ja-tutkinnot/eurooppalainen-kielisalkku). Furthermore, the text stresses how useful the portfolio is for training self-assessment, a key target of language education as we noted above. The portfolio is also said to help in peerassessment. The description then goes on to offer more detailed information about the types of portfolio and the materials in the Scene series that can be used in the portfolio, including several self and peer-assessment forms. While the language portfolio in itself offers a lot of possibilities for learner agency, its practical application is left open.

#### **Analysis of Two Self-Assessment Tasks in the Scene Materials**

In this section, we discuss two self-assessment tasks from the Scene 7th grade textbook. The frst one is located in the text section and invites pupils to self-assess their learning in the chapter; the second one stems from the teachers' guide and provides the pupils with tools for self-assessment. Analysing the learner – teacher –

textbook – curriculum assemblage, we examine the ways in which the different material actors (equipment, tasks, pupils, teachers, peers, language, home) come together with curriculum and teacher's guide assessment goals in this section of the book.

The frst self-assessment task is an example from the textbook section on families and relatives. The left side of Fig. 9.1 consists of listening to the designated lesson text (1), drawing a family tree (2), and engaging in a *Show and Tell* activity (3). The right hand side shows a self-assessment task titled *How am I doing?* This section includes two statements, where the pupil is instructed to "choose the most appropriate option" from a drop down menu (*Valitse sinulle sopivin vaihtoehto)* on a four step scale between "I Can do very well" (*Osaan erittäin hyvin*) to "I still need to practise" (*Tarvitsen vielä harjoitusta)*. The statements are "I can talk in English about my family and other relatives" (*Osaan kertoa englanniksi perheestäni ja muista sukulaisistani)* and "I can ask my friend how s/he is doing" *(Osaan kysellä englanniksi ystäväni vointia).*

The *How am I doing* tasks seem to represent a communicative view of language, emphasizing the goals of telling about family and asking about how friends are doing. The choices for replies seem to echo the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference; Council of Europe, 2020) *Can do* statements both in their formulation ("*I can* talk about my family…") and the choices for replies (*I can do this well / I still need practise)*. The self-assessment tasks echo the curriculum goals related to language learning skills, particularly those that concern learning to set goals for one's language learning and learning to evaluate how one studies language. On the other hand, *Can do* is also not just about what the learner knows but also a subtext of what they still do not know. It refects on the curricular concepts of self-assessment of language learning goals and study practices; development of self-assessment skills are part of a formative assessment scheme that is not intended to have an effect on the fnal grade.

In essence, the test extract presents the pupil as active in refecting on their learning, and fades out the teacher. The exercise is digital, i.e. it can be done on the computer by clicking on the appropriate choice. The view of language is mainly communicative; the view of learning constructivist, and the teacher is mostly absent from the assemblage of book – pupil – curriculum.

**Fig. 9.1** "How am I doing"? Self-evaluation of the textbook chapter on family and relatives

The second self-assessment task (Fig. 9.2) is found at the assessment section of the Scene Teacher's guide that also includes description of assessment principles in the book (see Table 9.1). It is a simple printable pdf format grid that lists about a dozen activities, divided into two groups, and requests the pupil to evaluate their behavior on a three-point scale where the scale steps are defned by using three kinds of smileys (a glad, neutral and sad one). The two kinds of activities can be characterised as working skills and behavior on the one hand, and as language learning related activities on the other. The frst set is somewhat longer with eight statements, such as *I do my homework every time*, *I raise my hand in the lessons*, and *I listen to my peers*. The second set comprises fve statements focusing on the homework, i.e. *I study the text at home*, *I study the words given to us as homework*, and *I study irregular verbs at home*.

While, grammatically, the activity is presented as pupil-centered (frst person singular *I do, I have, I participate* etc.), the pupil is still described as one who follows orders and is subject to behavior control, presented mainly in / by the book (*I have my study equipment with me*) or as if the instructions were given by the teacher (*I listen to the teacher's instructions*). Rather than an active subject, this presents the learner as an observed or passive agent (see Leipold & Winkel, 2017), whose behavior is controlled, and implicitly disciplined and subordinated.

The need for the student to be disciplined is exemplifed by self-assessment tasks that link the test to curricular goals of behavior in a way that emphasises the need to follow rules and control behavior. The message that the textbook sends to pupils in this passage can be summarised as *check that you have your equipment, check that you have done your homework, do not speak without permission*. Interestingly, the pupil doing self-assessment is presented as needing to listen to the teacher (*I listen to the teacher's instructions*) and to fellow pupils (*I listen to my partner*), but not to

**Fig. 9.2** Self-assessment grid (original on the left, with our translation on the right)

actively speak, which is restricted rather than encouraged. *I put my hand up in class* can refer either to being active in class (preparing to speak), or being obedient (asking for permission before participating). Either way, it is a way of passivising the pupil and regulating behavior physically.

Learning in the self-evaluation grid is represented as behaviourist repetition that takes place in a continuum of doing one's homework (presumably before class), participating in an orderly manner and speaking with permission (in class), and learning particular kinds of tasks at home (after class).

The view of language is that of language as separate individual categories that are practised apparently separately and drilled before and after class as homework (*I revise grammar, I study irregular verbs*). The role of teacher is that of a supervisor (*I listen to the teacher's instructions*) or controller by implication (*I put my hand up in class,* implying asking the teacher for permission to speak).

We would like to emphasise here, though, that this is not an analysis of the textbook itself or the tasks in it, but rather what is offered for the teacher as aid in pupils' self-evaluation. In other words, the analysis of how language is viewed is based on how it appears in self-evaluation. This implies that whatever the pupils are taught to do with the self-evaluation exercises is what they are assumed to be able to evaluate themselves on.

In addition to the verbal options, the self-assessment includes a set of smileys and frownies that depict the scale of the pupil's self-assessment. While the one on the left is clearly a happy one, and the middle one somewhat neutral, the one on the right appears more ambiguous. It is obviously the "wrong" choice in this structuralbehaviorist grid, representing possibly just general dissatisfaction, but possibly also unhappiness or even disgust. In any case, it seems that the curriculum goal of selfassessment becoming more analytical in the upper grades (see above) may result in a dissecting of learning, language and behavior in structural and behavioral goals that are easily identifable (and possibly also easily internalised) by the student in smiley face self-assessment.

#### **Discussion**

Bringing together the analyses of the curricular goals, the textbook assessment descriptors and the two examples of textbook tests, we fnd different and somewhat contradicting understandings of textbook agency and its implications to learner activities emerging in this assemblage. While the book facilitates internalizing a particular kind of appropriate behavior and learning, the curriculum goals appear abstract and somewhat unclear, and the pupil and teacher are being represented as passive. This contradicts the curricular goals of learner subjectivity. While learning is presented in the textbook both as constructive (*Can do* statements) and structuralist (grammar revisions and other independent drilling), the desired behavior and activity of the pupil is presented as following rules, being disciplined and obedient, and doing independent work on the text and other tasks. Cognitively, the tasks promote constructivist learning, while socially and materially, the textbook facilitates repetitive and passive behavioral tasks.

The view of language in the Teacher's guide section is that of language consisting of individual categories of "text", "words", "grammar". From the agency viewpoint, the agency of the book-pupil-classroom assemblage results in a passive traditional building blocks view of language as separate skills that are easily testable. Doing all this in the frst person singular format emphasises the idealised student as having internalised all this as a voluntary activity. In other words, the pupil's agency is that of a passive, disciplined subject who is active when following the rules, making the textbook a technology for directing behavior (for a discussion of Foucault's complex notion of *governmentality* as techniques directing human behavior, see Hutchinson & O'Malley, 2018). From the point of view of teacher agency, the "easily testable" structure of the tests may imply less work for the teacher in a way that does not assign agency either to teacher or to the pupil.

From our analysis of the curriculum, the teacher's guide assessment descriptions, and the two self-assessment exercises, two phenomena emerge that cut across the more traditionally observed (see literature review above) pupil – book interface.

First, the book offers and enables an agency of an active learner, in charge of their learning, within a socio-constructivist paradigm of learning and language and in line with the curricular goals and teacher's guide principles. However, the selfevaluation exercise in the teacher's guide emphasises agency that emerges around discipline, repetition, and language divided into blocks rehearsed separately, demonstrating a structuralist-behaviorist paradigm of language and learning. The latter fts poorly with the ways in which language and learning are presented in the curriculum, and represents the role of the teacher in vague and abstract terms.

Our analysis refects the layered nature of language education policy, where different language and learning paradigms materialise simultaneously rather than historically following each other, creating different and potentially conficting (language and learning) ideological constellations and tensions (Saarinen et al., 2019). From the point of view of learner agency, the intra-action of book, curriculum and human actors creates contradictory and conficting subject positions particularly for pupils that also have very material implications to the ideal behavior of the pupils.

The conficting views of language and learning are matched by a conficting view of subject and object positions, thus creating the dynamic possibility for different kinds of agencies to emerge. The textbook *How am I doing* task (Fig. 9.1) enacts agency mainly from the curricular goals, explicated particularly in the Language Portfolio section of the teacher guide. The second self-evaluation task, in turn, refects a different kind of agency where the pupil performs to the teacher a particular kind of passive learner, refected in the more teacher centered parts of the teacher's guide assessment section.

From the point of view of an active learner ideal, this is concerning. The lifelong learning ideal is thus condensed either into someone who "can do"; i.e. someone who has internalised and can fulfl the requirements of an active citizen; or into someone who needs to internalise a (learner and language user) position of being observed and controlled, behaving in a subordinated way, and conceptualising language as separate skills to be learned.

We experimented with the idea of new agential cuts (Barad, 2007) by not analysing the book purely discursively, or purely as used in classroom, but by analysing the discursive features of the book that enable a socio-material analysis of the potential agency of the book in construing an ideal learner. This also implied considering the intertwined curricular and learning ideologies. The arbitrariness of the traditional Cartesian (human – non-human) cut and how we analyse "objects" and "subjects" started to materialise in the different and sometimes conficting dynamics that emerged in our analysis: the textbook agency is not one but many.

The way in which we make these cuts indeed has a profound effect on how we can become aware of them in the frst place, and how we consequently study them. While our research setting did not allow for an analysis of what physically takes place in classrooms and homework situations, our analysis showed the potential for learner positionings that go against the curriculum and textbook idealisations of constructivist learning. As the existing cuts and ensuing understandings of agency are deeply entrenched in our research culture, imagining new cuts also required a lot of effort. While it seems that the role of textbook as agent could be studied with other material methods, such as the actual ways in which the pupil – textbook interaction takes place (see for instance chapter by Jakonen & Jauni, Chap. 2, this volume) as well, the concept of new agential cuts was helpful in challenging the human centered epistemologies we are adapted to.

To what extent political arguments and perspectives supporting the importance of self-assessment and its role in lifelong learning have entered the educational discourses, curricula and textbooks for foreign languages would be a topic worth investigating in the future. The ideals of self-assessment as politically commodifed and simultaneously empowering *Can do* statements on one hand, and as constraining behavioral control on the other, certainly meet in textbooks. However, this also implies an entanglement of the students' bodies and the knowledge that they are expected to embody as a result of learning. This gives us a perspective to understanding the ideological role of textbooks as not only describing, but materially construing a learner agency. Consequently, the textbooks not only facilitate and promote different views of learning (as constructivist and behaviorist), but also a particular kind of disciplined social and material behavior to the extent that learner behavior and learning are inseparably intertwined.

#### **References**

**Taina Saarinen** is Research Professor of Higher Education at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Recently, she has focused especially on language policies and new nationalism in higher education, with a cross cutting interest on historical and political layeredness of language policies.

**Ari Huhta** is Professor of Language Assessment at the Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Jyväskylä in Finland. His research interests include assessments that support language learning such as diagnostic and formative assessment, computer-based assessment, and selfassessment, as well as research on the development of reading, writing and vocabulary knowledge in a foreign or second language.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

## **Part V Epilogue**

## **Chapter 10 A Diffractive Reading**

#### **Mel Engman , Johanna Ennser-Kananen , and Taina Saarinen**

**Abstract** Towards the end of the editing process, we started to see the book as something more than a collection of chapters around a theme: as an assemblage, which included, of course, the community of authors. When we put out the frst call for contributions in May 2018, most authors volunteered a contribution rather quickly, others joined a bit later, and some dropped out for different reasons, underlining the dynamic nature of our assemblage. In pre-pandemic times, we met on and off campus, introduced some of our ideas at conferences, and had a workshop day to brainstorm, plan chapters, and refect on the process and the purpose of the book. We were connected by common meals, jokes, writing, thinking, and by annoying and challenging each other as colleagues and collaborators. Sometimes, we managed to give space to the other lives we lead: our families, homes, and hobbies. We are thankful that these were invited into our work and being-together. This chapter provides a concluding diffraction, not only as a metaphor of a prism that collects and reconfgures our varied ideas, but as a socio-material view into the book process itself.

**Keywords** Diffraction · Ontological variation · Relationality · Agential realism · Entangled ethics

M. Engman

T. Saarinen (\*) Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
School of Social Science, Education and Social Work, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
J. Ennser-Kananen Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### **Diffractions**

As we were fnalizing the book that this chapter concludes, a special issue on *Materials Use Across Diverse Contexts of Language Learning and Teaching,* edited by Guerrettaz et al. (2021), came out in the Modern Language Journal. Mel's joining us for this chapter changed it (and us). She brought a fresh pair of eyes to this volume, her experience of writing and reviewing work on socio-materiality and new materialism, and, maybe most importantly, a sense of possibility – the idea that within our limitations, doing the work with sincerity and (self-)criticality matters. Mel listened to us talk about the process of editing this volume, our original ideas, and the latest developments, and suggested that we use *diffractions* as a lens. This immediately made sense to us, frst as a metaphor for the book as a thing that collects and reconfgures our varied ideas, much like rays of light meeting an obstacle and fanning out, and then as a socio-material view into the book process itself.

*Diffraction* offered us a theory (Barad, 2007, 2014; Haraway, 1997) for thinking together about what is visible (and recognizable) and under what conditions. It also became an invitation to consider what has perhaps stayed out of sight and the relationships these in/visible phenomena hold with us, as human editors and authors, and with the book, as an entanglement of social and material elements. Barad (2007) explains:

One important aspect that I discuss is that diffraction does not fx what is the object and what is the subject in advance, and so, unlike methods of reading one text or set of ideas against another where one set serves as a fxed frame of reference, diffraction involves reading insights through one another in ways that help illuminate differences as they emerge: how different differences get made, what gets excluded, and how those exclusions matter. (p. 30)

Rather than co-authoring a re-iteration of the chapters, displaced into a chapter of its own, we rely on diffraction here to help us understand both the phenomenon being diffracted (i.e., language education research) and the instrument or intervention that does the actual diffracting (i.e., book focused on new materialist approaches to research). Diffraction draws us in. Our experiences, learnings, studies, theories, and also our networks, group belongings and collegial and personal relationships are all entangled with this book and its making. The idea of diffraction invites us to read ourselves, with our worlds, into this book: We are not outside observers ("refectors") of this product and its production, but bound up in it and always changing with it. In this sense, the book is not an outcome of us and our work, but we are just as much an outcome of the book.

Conducting research and especially writing a collection of chapters like this is often discussed as a linear process, as if we decided to have an idea and fulfl it following particular steps and procedures of proposing, writing, editing and resubmitting with a purposeful plan. What happens however, as anyone who has been involved in this kind of an effort knows, is much more arbitrary. This refects a larger contrast between Enlightenment-linear thinking and distributed agency (Barad, 2007). The process, rather than the end product, is the material outcome.

Here, we embrace diffraction and contingency, we see this book as the prism that diffused our work and work process and made different parts of it visible: expectations, doubts, and identities, things we did and didn't do, our relations and connections. As we allow this book to be a diffraction, we are inspired by Haraway (1997), who explains:

[D]iffraction can be a metaphor for another kind of critical consciousness … one committed to making a difference and not to repeating the Sacred Image of the Same … diffraction is a narrative, graphic, psychological, spiritual, and political technology for making consequential meanings. (Haraway, 1997: 16, cited by Jenkins et al., 2021)

In Haraway's sense, diffraction refuses reproduction of the same, refuses to be our mirror (Murris & Bozalek, 2019, p. 1056) and instead helps us understand the narrative of ourselves in this book as well the device doing the diffracting – an edited volume on new materialism and its making. What is it then, that became visible to us in the diffraction? How do we account for the difference in what was visible during the production of the book compared to what is now visible through this attempt at diffractive thinking?

#### **Some Things Come Easy, Others Are Hard**

(T)heories are not accepted because they are true. They are accepted because they are accepted by the authority fgures in each feld. (Deloria, 2012, p. 6)

Trying to grasp some of what theories subsumed under "new materialism" has challenged our thinking in more than intellectual ways. Having your ontologies and epistemologies questioned was uncomfortable and exhausting. Even when cowriting our own chapters, we kept being pulled back into familiar territories of social constructionism, humanism, and traditional distributions of agency. Our wrestling with new ideas also surfaced in a public debate, a community event (Ennser-Kananen, 2019), during which we put many questions on the (bar) table: How do we know what we think we know? What are our own concepts based on? Trying to deeply understand a new ontology was diffcult work and forced ourselves to question a lot of internalized education and socialization that had become part of our identity. Breaking, or even putting cracks into these ways of being and thinking (Lather & St Pierre, 2013), was something Taina described in very physical terms as "gearing my brain into another direction".

Other things came easy to us, for instance, how we editors, Johanna and Taina, frst came to understand materiality, and the intersections of the material and the social, in the way we did. Almost effortlessly, we (were) steered towards particular books, ideas, and names, but not others. So, while the process of engaging with new ontologies and epistemologies of new materialism at times felt like a great, sometimes impossible, effort, a still ongoing process, at the same time we were – without much effort or awareness of it – drawn to the literature and knowledge that seemed available, accessible and trustworthy to us. We followed the path that "Western" scholars are trained to take when they frst happen upon ideas that are unfamiliar and, perhaps, full of potential. We read seemingly foundational texts (e.g., Barad, 2007) and we read the texts that attempted to apply these ideas to queries about the nature of the world in general or language education in particular (e.g., Toohey, 2018). The book represents this path quite well, with similar citational genealogies across the chapters. Yet, a diffractive view of the book also reveals important epistemological and ontological gaps, omissions, and erasures.

While the *labor* of "learning new materialism," was challenging, stretching our thinking at the expense of family time and rest; the work of identifying and recognizing what that labor should look like came easy. The path we followed appeared to cross disciplinary boundaries (i.e., quantum physics, feminism, critical language studies), and in so doing we failed to recognize another longstanding path of scholarly thought that is concerned with similar relational ontologies: Indigenous work on materiality. In this sense, Rosiek et al.'s (2020) description of new materialist scholarship applies also to us (p. 2):

As a consequence, new materialist scholars' enthusiasm for agential realism could, by failing to acknowledge and seriously engage the Indigenous scholars already working with parallel concepts, end up reinforcing ongoing practices of erasure of Indigenous cultures and thought (Ahmed, 2017; Deloria, 1999; Todd, 2016; Tuck, 2014; Weheliye, 2014)

This was not an oversight. Wrestling with posthumanist and new materialist ideas, at the time and in the place where we frst became receptive to them, oftentimes meant going against our inner (Enlightenment-inspired) critic that insisted that these ideas were unscientifc, irrational, and a little immature. Mel directed our gaze to Indigenous thought to help us bridge that, to understand that theories do not have to follow the binaries and divides of Cartesian logic and Enlightenment ideologies – something we were doing intuitively but without the theoretical apparatus. This reading of theory that centers the material as immature highlights important conceptual contrasts – differences between the onto-epistemologies of the traditional academy (i.e., Enlightenment thinking) and the ones that this book's contributors attempt to take up. Agential realism, for instance, fies in the face of anthropocentrism and, apparently, requires the disciplinary vocabulary of quantum physics to legitimate its use as a theoretical framework in 'serious' social science scholarship. Yet, the idea of non-human agency is not unique to new materialism nor is it novel, even within the socioconstructivist paradigm (see Ahmed, 2008 on the misguided criticism of feminism as "anti-material" or "anti-biological"). The importance of agent ontologies to the relational nature of the universe has long been fundamental to many Indigenous thought traditions (Rosiek et al., 2020) and is well developed in Indigenous studies literature (e.g., Coulthard, 2014; Deloria, 1999; Marker, 2018; Vizenor, 2008). Is it really more comfortable for non-Indigenous scholars to sit in *discomfort* with NM scholarship than it is to engage with Indigenous takes on similar principles of distributed agency and space-time-matter relationality? The perceived challenges associated with explorations of agential socio-material relations are rooted in an ontological difference that shapes how we recognize and investigate phenomena. Related to this, the conceptual tools we recognize as legitimate for these explorations are determined by difference as well – difference that is ideological and political.

Our writing about the challenges associated with taking up new materialism (as an approach that is new to us) identifes the work as 'hard', yet our view of the book as a diffraction pattern of sorts also shows how 'easy' it is for white, Western/ Northern/European scholarship to misrecognize ways of knowing. We turn to Ahmed (2006) for help in considering issues related to recognition and orientation, with her description of how the European philosopher Husserl might understand his own writing table. "What he sees is shaped by a direction he has already taken, a direction that shapes what is available to him, in the sense of what he faces and what he can reach" (Ahmed, 2006, p. 550). Ahmed goes on to describe how our orientations to the world are shaped by various straightening devices, making some phenomena more visible than others. Academia is undoubtedly a powerful straightening device and, in thinking diffractively about this book, the recognizable scholarly path for understanding new materialism was, at least for us, clearly oriented toward a colonial version of "interdisciplinary" scholarship.

We are products of power relations (Foucault, 1980), and many of the recognizable 'things' in this world (i.e., objects, ideas, discourses) are as well. For instance, we all know what English is. It is recognizable to us when we hear it, read it, or use it, yet this idea of English as a single 'thing' is preposterous (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007); and any user of a non-prestige variety of English will tell you that its recognizability is negotiable. Our ability to recognize English *as English* is shaped by our relations to its users and its uses – our 'orientations' (Ahmed, 2006) to language – in the social and material world. Similarly, our recognition of academic 'things' like theory, data, and fndings are constituted by relations of power in institutions of higher education –the archival wing of empire (Richards, 1993).

It is important to note that the academy *can* serve as a point of entry into Indigenous and decolonizing knowledges. As la paperson (2017) points out, in the all-encompassing accumulating work of the imperial archive "the decolonial is always already amid the colonial" (p. xvi). The absence of decolonizing theory and method in the book-as-a-diffraction-pattern tells us something about the dominant orientations of new materialism in the academy (i.e., they are not inherently antiimperialist). Importantly, these orientations

...also point us toward the future. The hope of changing directions is always that we do not know where some paths may take us: risking departure from the straight and narrow, makes new futures possible, which might involve going astray, getting lost, or even becoming queer. (Ahmed, 2006, p. 554)

In this fnal chapter, we highlight theoretical and ontological pathways that were not recognized, not taken or followed, so that we might push for a change of direction. For instance, Deloria (1999) describes an understanding of the universe in terms of particular relations among particular phenomena rather than generalizing theories or laws. This emphasis on relations in the immediate environment, on *place* (Marker, 2018), provides a path for examining distributed agency in a specifc, localized way that can construct new, nuanced understandings of socio-material relations. Marker's

characterisation of place grows from an Indigenous ontology and refers to the livingness or "ensouled" nature of land as far more than a static component of the physical, natural environment. In essence "(a)ll inquiry, in this cosmology, must begin with an awareness of the interconnectedness of plants, animals, and humans, geologic forms along with the stories that tune and shape cognition of a landscape that is also conscious of human beings" (p. 454). We note that *place* is a potential commonality across this book's contributors (a bit of an oddity for academic publishing); and though researcher relations in and with this place were not explored in the book, diffraction helps us recognise the need for more attention to how our relations with place are entangled with other relations holding us. This is a potential strength of our RECLAS initiative as a local attempt at community sense-making, and the kind that rarely gets recognized in academic incentive initiatives.

We originally took up the challenge of the research profling initiative RECLAS to "develop the feld" in two ways. First, we felt the need to look in, i.e. to shift our perspective to look at our work in new material ways that extend beyond anthropocentric, Eurocentric, or otherwise dominant perspectives. Second, we wanted to look out, or (re)ground our work in societal needs and issues that understand society in not just more inclusive, but also ethically material ways, acknowledging the complex relations between the animate and the inanimate. While we began our journey in the RECLAS community by looking at the empirical, methodological and theoretical role of language in what we assumed to be a changing society, we are now moving on to unsettling our earlier understandings of our work. Thus, we are reinterpreting the name of our profling initiative ("research collegium for language in changing society") to mean "change for applied language studies in society" and even "social change through applied language studies", referring to an attempt and an invitation to rethink our work and reposition ourselves as researchers in ways that lure us out of our intellectual and academic comfort zones and at the same time respond to calls for research that is socially relevant and scientifcally sound.

#### **Towards an Entangled Ethics**

Diffraction is a useful lens for this fnal chapter because it provides a dynamic alternative to refection, but it also has ethical implications for our work. As Thiele (2014) reminds us, "(d)iffraction is an ethico-onto-epistemological matter" (p. 206). If our nature is fundamentally one that is made *in relation*, then we are accountable to this relationality and its intra-actions. This "urge of ethical accountability" (De Line, 2016, n.p.) echoes longstanding Indigenous thought traditions that take relationality as fundamental to understanding the universe (e.g., Coulthard, 2014; Deloria, 1999; Simpson, 2014; Wildcat, 2005). In this sense, we aim for diffraction rather than refection to chart the 'how' of the relations instantiated by and with this project.

Although efforts exist to ground our feld more deeply in approaches that highlight ethics and social change (see for instance Pennycook, 2001 and Critical applied linguistics; Bigelow & Ennser-Kananen, 2014 and the advocacy turn in educational/ applied linguistics), they tend to be morally anchored in the feld rather than ontologically anchored in the research. A view of ethics as foundational ontological premise, which precedes research and extends beyond it, and in which the research process is embedded, makes it impossible to separate ethics from the research process or the researcher. This aligns with Bennett's (2010, p. 37) call on humans to take responsibility for their choices, particularly when making decisions about whether and how to participate in activities that have the potential to cause harm. In this sense, new materialism could be an approach that understands ethics as ontologically and epistemologically rooted in research.

We read Bennett's (2010) call as an invitation to understanding ethics and research as intertwined practice. This implies a departure from an approach to ethics as a technical fx, legal obligation, or afterthought; an approach prevalent in professional and academic felds (see for instance BERA, 2018). This *agential realism* or *ethico-onto-epistemology* (Barad, 2007, p. 381; Barad in Kleinman, 2012, p. 77) means that rather than be situated in the world, we are entangled in the ongoing articulation of it. As such, ethics encompasses not merely socially negotiated constructs, but is materially and inseparably entangled in our research (see Coole & Frost, 2010 for a discussion of ethics) and us as researchers. Our research cannot be conceptualised in terms of the researcher, participants and context as separate entities, where the researcher is the subject, but rather we as researchers are part of the intra-action of enacting the phenomena we study. In Barad's paradigm, a researcher, then, would not minimize or mitigate their presence in the research process, but acknowledge their participation in it as unavoidable: "I am part of (but not central to) the assemblage of the classroom, and we push each other into existence, me and all the material and immaterial parts of this assemblage. We do not exist outside of each other but only in intra-action." Thus, rather than understanding researcher agency in terms of *"observer's paradox"* (originating with Labov, 1972; i.e. the investigator unwittingly infuencing the phenomenon), agential realism understands the researcher as part of the assemblage where the phenomenon under investigation emerges in the frst place. This challenges us to question our usual framings of how we know what we know. The ethical challenge for us as researchers is, then, to acknowledge our entanglement, and take on the responsibility it entails. A humility and empathy that derives from this understanding can be a motor for newly (re) gained attention to social justice and equity issues.

We believe that this kind of entangled ethics can help us carve out new spaces for understanding humans in an ethical relationship with the material environment (rather than as removed from or superior to it). This goes hand in hand with a process of increasing equity among humans. Defning society as an ethical interrelationship between humans and material, and thus understanding ourselves as deeply embedded in our environment, fosters an understanding of our own contingency, dependence, and responsibility for this environment that includes our fellow humans as well as the non-human reality.

Critical posthumanist realism can be seen as an anti-oppressive frame in that it both encourages and enables researchers to commit to ethically grounded relations in their research. When we challenge humanist approaches to research, we challenge a particular image of the human. As Pennycook says, humanism "was never a category that included everyone" (p. 3), but rather one where particular humans have dominated ways of thinking and knowing, i.e. the white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgender, industrialized, neurotypical, socioeconomically advantaged, European ways of being researchers and doing research. Opening up academic and scientifc spaces by decentering this particular type of humans has been at the heart of many applied linguists' scholarship for a while (Kubota & Lin, 2006; Canagarajah, 2012; Yosso, 2013; Flores & Rosa, 2015; McCarty & Lee, 2014; Motha, 2014; Anya, 2016; Piller, 2016; García et al., 2017, 2021; Rosa & Flores, 2017; Phipps, 2019; Rosa, 2019) and can be supported and receive new momentum from a theoretical basis that challenges a humanism of the privileged and replaces it with an understanding of the ethical relationality of humans and matter.

We can see this book as holding generations of migration, settlement, dispossession (past and future), and the spaces occupied and traversed along the way(s). It holds our relations with humans, non-humans, and place. As Deloria (1986) says, "the universe is personal and, therefore, must be approached in a personal manner" (n.p.). We lean into these relationships, and into Indigenous conceptions of relationality that imply an inherent morality.

#### **We Are Supposed to Be Here**

We have affectionately referred to this book as a 'snapshot' of one community of critical language scholars during a specifc period of time, noting how it reveals the objects of each scholar's attention at the time along with the questions they investigated with shared conceptual tools (i.e., new materialism, agential realism). In this sense, the book is an assemblage of bodies, curiosities, anxieties, tensions, and labors caught and compiled for the purpose of generating knowledge or, at least, for some increased collective understanding. This metaphor of the snapshot is convenient for refecting *a posteriori* because it is reductive – it condenses and simplifes all of the book's elements to a fat image that can be taken in all at once. However, it is also possible that our consideration of the book as a snapshot need not have such a minimizing effect. Barad (2016) tells us "there's this sense in which time and being have this thickness to it – the thick now – this particular moment has all times in it."

Our membership in this community, which got thrown together by our involvement with the academy and then again by our investment in this book, has shaped what we do and how we do it. It has enabled us to see further, think deeper, and step outside of our trodden paths. The notion of this book as a snapshot, as a "thick moment" that has all of the times, all our spaces and all our relations in it, offers a new way of understanding academic publishing. In addition to thinking of this compilation as either a fnished product (and thus failing to see the process nature of it) or permanently incomplete (and thus faulty), we see it as one that has "all of it", and, in this sense, is very much complete.

Diffractions of this book helped us see the role of different academic conventions and genres for our work. A lot of things infuence what we do – whether or not they align with some academic quality standards cannot always be our main concern. Having internalized "evaluating" and "refecting" as major ways of being academics, we sometimes lose sight of what the process itself does to us while we engage in it. Diffractions can be helpful in seeing and naming what we did, which in turn can reveal what is not intended for an academic audience, and thus cause irritation, disbelief, relief, and a spark for new fres all at the same time. Diffractions helped us understand that we are not merely autonomous rational choice-makers but entangled in the academic and personal, a realization that may change not just us as academics, but the academic world around us.

We are seeing and naming pieces in this diffraction without trying to put them together into a neat picture, but instead being in the presence and engaged with the things we did and did not do, the things that happened and did not happen. This sparked a memory from Taina's vacation, as she and her wife got a piece of advice from fellow travellers: "Remember, if you get lost, tell yourselves that this is where you were supposed to be." We are not lost. This is the book we had to make, because this is the book we made and the book that made us.

**Acknowledgments** Some of the conversations that are diffracted here were extensions of concurrent conversations with colleagues on another project. It seems appropriate to acknowledge the entangled nature of thought trajectories and human relations in both. Thank you, Jenna Cushing-Leubner and Nicole Pettitt, for being entangled and present in our work on this chapter (Cushing-Leubner et al., 2021).

#### **References**

**Mel Engman** is Lecturer in Education at Queen's University Belfast. Her research addresses questions related to Indigenous and heritage language maintenance and reclamation. She draws on years of experience and relationships with Indigenous and settler educators in North America and the island of Ireland to examine intersections of language, sign, and power in the social and material world.

**Johanna Ennser-Kananen** is Associate Professor of English and Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. Her work focuses on linguistically, culturally, and epistemically just education and teacher education, particularly as it pertains to the deconstruction of normative whiteness, the experience of students with refugee backgrounds, and the professional legitimacy of teachers from underrepresented groups. She is interested in New Materialism and Posthumanism, especially in so far as they intersect with critical, anticolonial and sociocultural theories.

**Taina Saarinen** is Research Professor of Higher Education at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Recently, she has focused especially on language policies and new nationalism in higher education, with a cross cutting interest on historical and political layeredness of language policies.

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