TESOL Professionals Research Articles

Reflections on Ideologies Underpinning ELT Curriculum and Nature of Global Course Books Used in Saudi Arabia

The influence of neoliberal ideology in the educational literature has widely been discussed recently. Yet relatively little critical attention has been paid to the ways these hegemonic agendas have shaped and influenced the development of ELT curriculum and published teaching materials. This theoretical paper reviews literature on how neoliberal ideology influences ELT curriculum, namely published teaching materials. Also, it argues that ELT curriculum contents are essentially political and ideologically constructed to fulfil the politico-economic interests of ELT international publishers, located in the centre (e.g., UK and US). These neoliberal ideological constructions are preparing our students to become neoliberal citizens, consumers, or customers of English language learning, who can become apt members of callous marketization. This theoretical paper recommends that TESOL professionals need to play their role by demystifying and resisting these ideologies by redesigning the ELT curricula, such as course books. In addition, scripted curriculum and one-size-fits-all policy reflected in global course books contents do not fulfil the needs of diverse learners in various EFL/ESL contexts. Therefore, TESOL professionals, in particular teachers and academics need to be aware of current and potential educational policies and advocacies driven by western neoliberal educational ideologies. In practice, ESL/EFL teachers, academics and curriculum developers are required to consider their contextual local realities, such as students' English language learning constraints and teaching perspectives from teachers stand points in designing the EFL/ ESL curriculum contents.

“I Promised Growing up I Would Not Become a Teacher”: Exploring the Career Trajectory of a Language Teacher through Social Cognitive Career Theory

AbstractDespite some research attention given to expatriate native‐English‐speaking teachers' (NESTs) identities and the national educational ideologies that have led to their international recruitment, surprisingly little research has addressed their career trajectories as TESOL professionals. To address this gap, this case study explores the career of a long‐serving expatriate TESOL professional through the lens of Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), which was designed to understand how people develop interest in, make decisions about, and commit to a particular career. The methods are qualitative, involving a deductive analysis of interview data and a career timeline according to constructs from SCCT. Despite an initial reluctance to enter the profession, the participant's interest in language teaching began after teaching part‐time as a young adult. After this experience, he changed his career interests and continued his educational pursuits in Korea. His background contextual affordances, predispositions, learning experiences, and Korean language proficiency provided new opportunities and outcome expectations as he advanced his career. Although we focus on a single case, the SCCT model is further explored for its potential to better understand the factors involved in the development and commitment to a career in TESOL and for illustrating the career trajectories of TESOL professionals at scale.

Editorial Introduction to “Current and Future Directions in TESOL Studies”

I am delighted to present this special issue of the Rupkatha Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, titled Current and Future Directions in TESOL Studies. This issue brings together manuscripts authored by a diverse community of academics, researchers, teachers, graduate students, and TESOL professionals from across the globe to share an inclusive range of research findings, experiences, and practical and theoretical issues that celebrate the multifaceted nature of our field. This ongoing exchange is a global imperative as it underscores the importance of language and learning in fostering understanding and cooperation, thus bridging gaps between individuals and communities. In a world often fragmented by language, culture, and politics, communication across these divides is more critical than ever. As such, I am particularly pleased to note that the articles featured in this edition resonantly contribute to the furtherance of this goal.

Covid-19 as a Shock Event Maintaining a Career in TESOL during a Global Pandemic.

Covid-19 has had a major impact on the education sector worldwide with many universities, colleges and private language schools being forced to close and, almost overnight, turn to online teaching. In addition, the economic impact of the pandemic has led to many of these organisations making some difficult operational and financial decisions to deal with such a challenging situation. These have included restructuring, initiating rapid changes to both courses and operating practices, reducing salaries, offering shorter contract extensions and even laying off staff. Some educational institutions have since reopened but Covid-19 protocols such as mask wearing, social distancing and a limit on the use of paper-based resources have changed face-to-face teaching. For some researchers Covid-19 and an organisation’s response to it is an example of a career shock defined as ‘a disruptive and extraordinary event that is caused by factors outside the focal individual’s control and triggers a deliberate thought process concerning one’s career’ (Akkermans et al, 2018: 4). The purpose of this paper is to understand what influence Covid-19 has had on the career development of those working in TESOL and how individuals have dealt with all the changes arising from an organisation’s response to the pandemic. Through the presentation of 3 case studies involving an academic manager, a freelance teacher trainer and a newly qualified teacher all employed at large, well-known language school in Egypt, the author aims to investigate 4 important areas. Firstly, what key career competencies and personal attributes enable professionals to maintain a career in TESOL during a shock event such as a pandemic? Secondly, does this differ depending on a person’s life and/or career stage? Thirdly, is it possible that the short-term negative impact of a shock event might, over time, turn out to have a positive career outcome? And finally, what can we learn from the experiences of these TESOL professionals that might support others when dealing with career shocks in the future?

TESOL and Sustainability: English Language Teaching in the Anthropocene Era

As a recent convert to a more explicit environmental perspective in my teaching and research, the opportunity to review the edited volume TESOL and Sustainability: English Language Teaching in the Anthropocene Era came as a wonderful gift. I read the book from the viewpoint of an EFL teacher educator located in the Global South—to be precise, in the expanding-circle country Chile—and from the first pages noticed an important commonality with the various authors of the book. Although all of them are located in North America and are engaged with various TESOL contexts possibly more typical of inner-circle countries, they very clearly share with me the plight of TESOL professionals attempting to come to grips with our—unwanted but implied—complicity with cultural and linguistic imperialism; it is no coincidence that Suresh Canagarajah, author of Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching (1999) contributed the foreword to this volume. The connection between the global status of the English language and the environmental consequences of economic globalisation is one of the recurring themes of the book: ‘English owes its hegemony—and TESOL professionals owe their livelihoods—to the overproduction of urban sprawl, carbon dioxide, air and water pollution, herbicides, pesticides, nuclear waste, and the like’ (Delavan, p. 31). Like myself, the authors of the book have made it part of their research and teaching to find and practise viable alternatives, looking for ways to promote values and ideas that may help to deconstruct this hegemony. It is a clear aim of the book to persuade TESOL professionals to ‘counteract … anthropocentrism and anti-posteritism (that is, discrimination against future generations)’ (p. 20). In times when ‘[e]nvironmental sustainability is not business as usual in ELT anymore’ (Canagarajah, p. x), TESOL practitioners are called to develop creative, innovative pedagogic practices to offset the cultural ‘normality’ under which not only other living species, but also language—the focus of our work—have been ‘treated … as a profitable resource’ (p. xii).

Investigating the place of religion within the professional identity construction of two Muslim English language teachers in Saudi Arabia

Whereas the topic of “Religion” has garnered considerable scholarly attention in the general education literature, its place within TESOL circles has long been contentious. It is only recently that the religious dimension of the TESOL profession and professionals has seen the light of day. Yet, even when the literature in ELT does engage with these issues, it mostly investigates links between evangelical Christianity and ELT. The relationship between other religions [e.g., Islam] and English language education remains remarkably underexplored . This qualitative multiple case study is an endeavor to address this scholarly gap as it investigates the place of religion within the professional identity construction of two male Saudi Muslim English language teachers in Saudi Arabia. By drawing on in-depth interviews as the primary source of data, and following the principles of an abductive content analysis approach, the study illuminates that Islam was central to the participants’ professional identities in three significant ways, namely: (1) supporting their wellbeing, (2) shaping their relationships with students, and (3) providing them with a sense of duty to safeguard students’ religious values. The study concludes with both theoretical and pedagogical implications as well as future research directions.

Anti‐Asian racism: How it affects TESOL professionals like you and me

Anti‐Asian racism: How it affects TESOL professionals like you and me

Antiracism for East Asian students and professionals in TESOL: A response

Antiracism for East Asian students and professionals in TESOL: A response

Emotion labor and affect in transnational encounters: Insights from Western-trained TESOL professionals in Saudi Arabia

Informed by an ethnographic qualitative research study conducted with expatriate teachers of English in Saudi Arabia, we examine emotion(al) labor in the context of transnational mobilities with regards to cultural and institutional tensions. Engaged with wide-ranging interdisciplinary literature on emotion and affect, we discuss the place of transnational emotion(al) labor in four inter-related manifestations: (a) struggles and efforts to interact and communicate with students; (b) internalization and resentment of privilege and deficiency underlying discourses of native speakers; (c) responses to challenges from social, religious, and cultural difference; and (d) prolonged endurance, frustration, helplessness, and resistance to prescribed curriculum, testing, and top-down policy and practice. We also incorporate our reflections and emotion(al) labor as transnationally trained academics as we engage with the participants’ accounts. We show how our study could inspire dialogues with the self and conversations among researchers for support and solidarity beyond constructed boundaries of race, language, religion, ethnicity, and nationality.

The CIPP Model : Applications in Language Program Evaluation

This article introduces the CIPP Model (Context, Input, Process, and Product) and explains its application in the evaluation of language programs. The model has long been used in various fields to evaluate programs both before they begin (e.g., by assessing the alignment of the contexts and input) and after they are complete (e.g., by evaluating how well the process has been implemented and whether the product is up to standard). The flexibility of the model is a major strength. In the field of language teaching, this model is highly relevant to curriculum development and can be applied at both the course level and the program level. This paper first introduces competing models of language program evaluation. It then introduces the CIPP Model and explains its applicability in the field of language education, providing suggestions for the application of the model. The CIPP Model has the potential to assist TESOL professionals — teachers and administrators — in improving their professional practice, curriculum design, and program evaluation. Educators in a variety of contexts would benefit from furthering their knowledge of this widely applied evaluation model.

Introduction: TESOL professionals and the struggle against xenophobia and White nationalism

Introduction: TESOL professionals and the struggle against xenophobia and White nationalism

The Ethics of TESOL a quarter century on

Discussion of ethical considerations in Australian TESOL began 25 years ago, with arguments about the need for TESOL professionals to be aware of the potentially harmful consequences of their work, the loss of first language proficiency, and even the loss of languages themselves (Williams, 1992, 1995). The intervening quarter of a century has seen sweeping changes to the context in which TESOL professionals work and developments in our professional knowledge about the processes and consequences of TESOL professional practice (Canagarajah, 1999; Phillipson, 1992, 2013). In this paper developments in the sociocultural context of TESOL, the general education context and the TESOL professional context are explored. This article revises the arguments about ethical directions in TESOL presented a quarter century ago to take account of these changes. Guiding principles for individuals and professional bodies are identified. It is argued that our role is to sensitively help our learners to explore the potential consequences of the learning of English, and for professional bodies to take an active role in advocacy given the impact of globalization processes, more centralized curriculum and assessment frameworks, and the relatively reduced capacity of individual teachers to influence the institutions that employ them.

Book Review: Reflecting on Critical Incidents in Language Education: 40 Dilemmas for Novice TESOL Professionals

Book Review: Reflecting on Critical Incidents in Language Education: 40 Dilemmas for Novice TESOL Professionals

Shaping Professional Identity Through Professional Development: A Retrospective Study of TESOL Professionals

In an educational milieu student learning outcomes are directly related to teacher professional identity (TPI) i.e. improvement in the TPI will bear a direct positive effect on the learners’ academic achievements. Current study focuses on the development of TPI of English as a Foreign Language Teacher at English Language Institute (ELI) of a Saudi Arabian university through an in-service Cambridge English Teachers (CET) Professional Development (PD) program (CET-PD). Five determinants of TPI - Knowledge of Teaching Context (KCT), Collegial Collaboration (CC), Teaching Practices (TPs), Teacher Self-Efficacy (TSE), and Teacher Agency (TA) were studied before and after the PD program. Retrospective pretest-posttest research design was employed for addressing the research question: whereas responses on the five determinants were elicited from 120 participants through a self-administered questionnaire before and after the CET-PD program. Due to non-normality of data, a non-parametric statistic test-Wilcoxon signed Rank test was employed to analyze the collected data using SPSS. Results of the study revealed that three determinants of TPI - KCT, TSE, and TPs exhibited larger differences; whereas, for CC the differences were moderate and for TA the differences were minimal. By and large, due to in-service CET- PD program TPI exhibited improvement. The results of the study will be beneficial for teacher trainers to focus more on the teachers’ awareness of the learners’ and institutional contextual knowledge in a culture embedded in conservative norms. This study is a part of the quantitative phase of an ongoing Ph.D. project which employs mixed method convergent design.

Book Review: Reflecting on Critical Incidents in Language Education: 40 Dilemmas for Novice TESOL Professionals

Book Review: Reflecting on Critical Incidents in Language Education: 40 Dilemmas for Novice TESOL Professionals

Editorial: Australian TESOL contexts; a state in flux

The factors influencing the multiple contexts of English language provision in Australia are complex, and this issue of TESOL in Context holds a lens to some of them: the first of the three articles presents a historical overview of provision for English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D, formerly English as a Second Language or ESL) in Australia, the subject of the second is screening for EAL kindergarten children, and the third discusses issues of internationalisation in a K-12 school. Reading these we are reminded that as TESOL professionals we work in an environment of continual change, forced to respond in a frequently ad hoc manner to a number of pressures, including federal and state politics. As far back as 2002 Joe Lo Bianco expressed concern (in this journal) that EAL/D learner needs were still not being met at that time, and the three articles in this issue throw light on why this is still too often the case, despite recent legislative emphasis on a ‘fairer Australia’ (Australian Government, 2011) in which a stronger acknowledgement, understanding and support for linguistic diversity should provide the foundation for a socially just society.

Book Review: Promoting Teacher Reflection in Second Language Education: A Framework for TESOL Professionals, by Thomas S. C. Farrell, New York: Routledge ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series, 2015

Review of Thomas S. C. Farrell's Promoting Teacher Reflection in Second Language Education: A Framework for TESOL Professionals, New York: Routledge ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series, 2015.

Language Teacher Identity and the Domestication of Dissent: An Exploratory Account

In this article, the notion of dissent refers to a more critical, ideological orientation to advocacy for and by TESOL professionals. The notion of domestication refers to identity‐forming practices in the knowledge base of language teacher education (LTE) and in professional certification processes that potentially displace this critical orientation. After a discussion of field‐internal examples (e.g., epistemic dependencies, Kumaravadivelu, 2012; linguistics applied, Widdowson, 1980; language objectification, Reagan, 2004), the article takes up a specific context of domestication: TESL Ontario's accreditation processes and requirements for the certification of adult instructors of ESL (English as a second language). Examining organizational documents and membership survey data, the article suggests that the framing of advocacy is inadequate for the conditions of underemployment and overqualification in this jurisdiction. The article then suggests an alternative for fostering critical advocacy skills in preservice programming: an Issues Analysis Project, in which teachers identify a “gap” in the field (i.e., pedagogical, ideological) and design a blueprint for action (e.g., advocacy letter, policy statement, workshop, curricular innovation) that potentially offers a resolution. The conclusions take up the broader implications of the study for language teacher identity negotiation as well as the TESOL organization's efforts in promoting advocacy amongst its membership.

Teacher Candidates' Perceptions of Nonnative-English-Speaking Teacher Educators in a TESOL Program: “Is There a Language Barrier Compensation?”

A great deal of research has examined the status of nonnative-English-speaking (NNES) professionals in TESOL from multiple perspectives, including graduate students (Brutt-Griffler & Samimy, 2001; Liu, 1999; Park, 2012), program administrators (Clark & Paran, 2007; Nemtchinova, 2005), and ESL/EFL learners (Arva & Medgyes, 2000; Butler, 2007; Ma, 2012a). Little research has addressed native-English-speaking (NES) teacher candidates' perspectives on the NNES-NES divide in TESOL. To fill this void, this study examined the perceptions of teacher candidates from mainstream U.S. backgrounds toward NNES teacher educators. Seventy-six students in a TESOL program completed a web-based self-administered questionnaire. The rating data show no statistically significant differences between NNES and NES teacher educators in personal qualities, teaching preparation, and feedback to students, whereas NNES teacher educators scored lower than their NES counterparts in material presentation, interaction with students, and cultural awareness. The narrative data suggest that, although the NNES teacher educators' English variety was viewed as a barrier in classroom communication, the teacher candidates perceived admirably the strategies to compensate for their lack of Standard English competence through preparation and various communication techniques. The NNES teacher educators' bilingual, multicultural experience was viewed as a form of cultural capital for teacher preparation.

Participating in International Academic Publishing: A Taiwan Perspective

There has been growing concern among researchers and scholars about how nonnative‐English‐speaking academics in the expanding circle (Kachru, , p. 520) cope with challenges while publishing in English in international refereed journals in the center. Most found that academics from peripheral countries where English is a foreign language, compared with native‐English‐speaking counterparts in the inner circle, suffer from a dual disadvantage: linguistic unsophistication and intellectual estrangement due to geographic isolation. It is thus imperative to understand how scholars from these countries address these challenges. This commentary focuses on the experiences of a group of applied linguists in Taiwan. It starts with an overview of the recent development of a higher education policy in Taiwan that aims to enhance the quality of local research output and thereby the ranking of local universities among Asian or international top‐tier universities. Then it addresses this policy's impact on local applied linguists' choice of venues for publishing research and the challenges they perceive in the process. It ends with suggestions for governments imposing this pressure on local scholars to revamp their evaluation standards and for mainstream academia and TESOL professionals and their counterparts teaching English as a foreign language to help these scholars share their voices in the center academia.