Browsing by Author "Cho, Suyeon"

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    Living through Covid-19 Pandemic as International Students in Canada: Collaborative Autoethnography of Struggles and Resilience
    (University of Calgary. Libraries and Cultural Resources., 2021-12-01) Bello, Jhonattan; Cho, Suyeon; Liang, Siyin; Luo, Cong
    The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of a number of international students and the disruption inevitably has caused suffering. With an aim to provide an in-depth understanding of the international students’ experiences, we examined our own written narratives on how the pandemic challenged our lives, and how we strove to build resilience and deal with the challenges. Upon analysis of the qualitative data collected from our respective narratives and group discussion, the following themes emerged: (1)Intersecting Identities, (2) Systemic Barriers to Achieving Goals, (3) Systemic Risks Caused Instability, and (4) Strategies to Build Resilience. By addressing several complex challenges that the international students faced, we hope to inform higher education stakeholders who seek to better accommodate the unique needs of international students.
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    Pathways of Change Agents: A Pedagogical Possibility for Critical Consciousness Development in Youth
    (2021-09-20) Cho, Suyeon; Lund, Darren; Takeuchi, Miwa; Field, James
    In a society stratified by race, gender, religion, disability, and many other social positions, people have differential and unequal life opportunities. A pluralistic multicultural approach fails to recognize this systemic injustice and even contributes to perpetuating it by not addressing this problem. Therefore, acknowledging and challenging the structural factors that oppress the marginalized and minoritized people is imperative to achieving a more just and better society. This qualitative case study aimed to understand how to promote critical consciousness through an educational practice at schools. Accordingly, I examined a junior-high elective in Calgary, the Agents of Change, in which students identified a social problem that affected their communities and took action against it, with the focus on how this course facilitated the development of critical consciousness in youth. I interviewed the teacher and two students who engaged in the course for the 2019-2020 school year and investigated the course-related documents created by the participants. The findings demonstrate the development of critical consciousness in the students, which include: gaining a more contextual understanding of social problems; establishing a specific concept of activism based on their own life experiences and expertise; obtaining a stronger sense of self-confidence to bring about positive social changes; and acknowledging more social justice communities around them. How the teacher strove to facilitate the students’ growth and what contextual factors around the school and the curriculum were considered are also discussed in detail.