Dialogic investigations of teacher–supervisor relations in the TESOL landscape

Osman Z Barnawi,Mark Boylan

doi:10.1080/2331186x.2016.1217818

Abstract

AbstractThe study referred to in this article adopted a dialogic approach, putting the voices of experienced teachers and supervisors into the form of a dialogue in order to examine how both parties perceive, enact and justify their pedagogical practices in actual school settings. Various sets of data were utilised, including interviews, classroom observations and a post-observation conference with Saudi EFL teachers and supervisors. The findings demonstrate that teachers and supervisors all occupy different positions in the school hierarchy in the TESOL landscape, depending on the “type” as well as “amount of capital” they possess. Specifically, although some supervisors continue to believe that their accumulated experience, including teaching credentials, supervision and administrative experience, outweighs the academic and scientific capital of teachers, teachers also claim that their accumulated experience of several years of teaching, their EFL qualifications and training, their knowledge of ground r...

Highlights

The contemporary discourses of teaching and learning strategies in the fields of TESOL—Teaching English to the Speakers of Other Languages—applied linguistics and language teacher education have recently emphasised the importance of teachers’ agency in devising context-sensitive pedagogical classroom practices appropriate to the specific intellectual needs of local learners (Barnawi, 2016; Canagarajah, 2002; Kumaravadivelu, 2006; Phan, 2014; Phillipson, 1992)
Using Bourdieu’s (1986) forms of capital, together with Bakhtin’s (1981) work on dialogism, as conceptual frameworks, the purpose of the study was to find an answer to the following question: how and in what ways do teachers and supervisors perceive, discuss, practise and justify their pedagogical practices in actual school settings? It is hoped that the findings of this study will provide a new foundation for understanding teacher–supervisor relations in the TESOL landscape
English qualifications as multiple forms of capital in the Saudi context The findings of the study revealed that both teachers and supervisors perceive their status—as English educators in the Saudi context—in different ways

Summary

Introduction

The contemporary discourses of teaching and learning strategies in the fields of TESOL—Teaching English to the Speakers of Other Languages—applied linguistics and language teacher education have recently emphasised the importance of teachers’ agency in devising context-sensitive pedagogical classroom practices appropriate to the specific intellectual needs of local learners (Barnawi, 2016; Canagarajah, 2002; Kumaravadivelu, 2006; Phan, 2014; Phillipson, 1992) This notion is being widely discussed in TESOL teacher training and education programmes, professional development programmes, workshops and classroom observation and supervision (see, for example, Kumaravadivelu, 2006; Phan, 2014, for more details). The above scenario is supposed to represent a relationship based on a co-agency approach and discursive critical engagement between teacher and supervisor in actual school settings

Objectives

Results

Conclusion