Engaging with the ‘global’-‘local’ debate in English language teaching: professional identity and teaching practice

Abstract

The continuing expansion of English as a means of international communication has led to negative effects on other languages and cultures. Among the concerns is the critique of the English language teaching industry regarding its hegemonic relationship with local languages especially in English language teaching and learning contexts and practices. As a consequence, a move from previous paradigms of English language teaching to creatively devise new practices that would address locally emerging communicative needs is advocated fostering the values of local cultural, linguistic and teaching and learning norms. Based on this understanding and aspiration, this study involved Vietnamese EFL teachers and investigated the contextual factors contributing to the development of a localized teaching methodology that uses compatible elements of communicative language teaching, the ‘traditional’ approach or a local fusion of both methods. The debate on professional aspects of English language teachers under the binary, native speaker and non-native speaker in a broader, cultural and political context of English learning and teaching, has impacted on the way teachers see themselves and the way teachers conceptualize their teaching practice in English as a foreign language contexts. Research on identity issues considering the politics of English and the pervasiveness of the discourse of native speaker authority in TESOL programs is of great significance in understanding influential factors contributing to language teacher professional identity. This study also explores the impact of TESOL programs on teacher professional identity in local teaching contexts in Vietnam involving teachers’ sense of their pedagogical, linguistic competence and professional roles as language teachers. Drawing on various theories of language teaching and learning, critical pedagogy, teachers’ professional identity from native and non-native perspectives, and teacher cognition and beliefs, this study explores the process of negotiating appropriate teaching practice by a group of Vietnamese MA TESOL teachers after their education in Australia. To understand the teachers’ professional identity and their teaching practice, a qualitative case study approach with the intensive use of in-depth interviews, reflective writing and observation was adopted to generate data. The findings suggest that the TESOL teachers’ self-positioning in Australia as learners and as English teachers in Vietnam contributed to their re-conceptualization of professional identity. Many teacher participants’ growth was not totally shaped by Western ideology and theory in teaching and learning but through the critical construction of knowledge which is both culture-driven and locality-driven. Their previous education background and teaching experience became the platform for them to negotiate their professional identity back home in Vietnam. However, compared to senior teachers with longer years of teaching experience, junior teachers were more deeply influenced by dominant Western-based discourses, which appeared to orient and govern their perceptions, hence influencing their pedagogical approaches in their local teaching contact. Indeed, the teachers’ changed identities were found to contribute much to their choices of pedagogical practices. On the ideological level, while the junior teachers were likely to favour the ‘communicative’ approach, those with longer years of service seemed to feel under less pressure to abandon locally adopted teaching practice or feel ‘backward’ in enacting their role as non-native English teachers. Despite this, some participants still succumbed to the dominant discourses in language teaching and learning. Based on the findings, a number of implications for the ELT field have been suggested, in particular for TESOL education programs and TESOL professionals.